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Cops Are Raiding Homes of Innocent People Based Only On IP Addresses (fusion.net)
Kashmir Hill has a fascinating story today on what can go wrong when you solely rely on IP address in a crime investigation -- also highlighting how often police resort to IP addresses. In the story she follows a crime investigation that led police to raid a couple's house at 6am in the morning, because their IP address had been associated with the publication of child porn on notorious 4chan porn. The problem was, Hill writes: the couple -- David Robinson and Jan Bultmann -- weren't the ones who had uploaded the child porn. All they did was voluntarily use one of their old laptops as a Tor exit relay, a software used by activists, dissidents, privacy enthusiasts as well as criminals, so that people who want to stay anonymous when surfing the web could do so. Hill writes: Robinson and Bultmann had [...] specifically operated the riskiest node in the chain: the exit relay which provides the IP address ultimately associated with a user's activity. In this case, someone used Tor to make the porn post, and his or her traffic had been routed through the computer in Robinson and Bultmann's house. The couple wasn't pleased to have helped someone post child porn to the internet, but that's the thing about privacy-protective tools: They're going to be used for good and bad purposes, and to support one, you might have to support the other.Robinson added that he was a little let down because police didn't bother to look at the public list which details the IP addresses associated with Tor exit relays. Hill adds: The police asked Robinson to unlock one MacBook Air, and then seemed satisfied these weren't the criminals they were looking for and left. But months later, the case remains open with Robinson and Bultmann's names on police documents linking them to child pornography. "I haven't run an exit relay since. The police told me they'd be back if it happened again," Robinson said; he's still running a Tor node, just not the end point anymore. "I have to take the threat seriously because I don't want my wife or I to wake up with guns in our faces."Technologist Seth Schoen, and EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn in a white paper aimed at courts and cops. "For many reasons, connecting an individual to a crime linked to an IP address, without any additional investigation, is irresponsible and threatens the civil liberties of innocent people."
You can't trust what the public will do with such a capability as an anonymizing onion router, so therefore running a Tor exit note is a ticket to having big legal problems, never mind the guns in your face. I wouldn't do it if my life depended on it. I have a wife and kids...
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Makes sense, so long as you're also willing to charge every employee of every telecom company as being accessories to terrorism or child porn distribution.
Tracking it back to you is fine.
Asking you if you know anything about the crime in question is fine.
Raiding your home at 0600 is not fine.
Threatening an innocent party not to participate in their legal activities is not fine
This signature is false.
Sure they are. They provide cellular service to "burner phones" that can be bought with cash and without ID. I see no ethical difference between that and running a Tor node: both are providing a means for somebody to obscure their identity, which can be used for both good and evil.
Perhaps the solution is as simple as letting all police departments operate Tor exit nodes. Then they can investigate each other when child porn is posted.
Last year this happened to me! I had run misc. anonymous networks at home to understand the concepts better (I ran a TOR exit node for about 2 months/ Alongside I2P); and for my own development process(es).. FBI came along with the local police to take every piece of electronic device I owned.. along with all my code that I had been working on for years. I also lost my job (doing telework) of 5 + years because my work laptop was taken also..and the FBI had to contact my work (at a well known bank) for them to decrypt the laptop.. I was let go a few days afterwards without reason and my neighbors never talk to me now . This really fu*ked up my life for about a year, just getting back on track now. Its absolute bullshit ! Its been about a year now and have yet to get back any of my property (not that Id use it); but its really screwed up how they can manipulate the courts by tossing around the "child porn" verbiage when they really have no evidence otherwise. Where did that leave me?? FUC*ED..thats where...ha My lawyers advised against any attempt to retaliate against the FBI. Im really curious if anyone else out there is working on any sort of group legal action to be taken up with the FBI about this... we are citizens and should not be treated this way. Hell, no one should be presumed to be doing something illegal just because they are using anonymous networks .
A nice improvement would be doing away with the "guns in your face" part. Even if this couple had been the perps that the cops were looking for, what part of of "posting child porn" necessitates an early morning armed raid? Do cops not know how to interact with the public at all anymore besides by kicking down doors and shooting their pets?
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.