The irony is strong with this one.
Posted on 04/24/2011 9:10:24 AM PDT by decimon
BUFFALO, N.Y. – Lying on his family room floor with assault weapons trained on him, shouts of "pedophile!" and "pornographer!" stinging like his fresh cuts and bruises, the Buffalo homeowner didn't need long to figure out the reason for the early morning wake-up call from a swarm of federal agents.
That new wireless router. He'd gotten fed up trying to set a password. Someone must have used his Internet connection, he thought.
"We know who you are! You downloaded thousands of images at 11:30 last night," the man's lawyer, Barry Covert, recounted the agents saying. They referred to a screen name, "Doldrum."
"No, I didn't," he insisted. "Somebody else could have but I didn't do anything like that."
"You're a creep ... just admit it," they said.
Law enforcement officials say the case is a cautionary tale. Their advice: Password-protect your wireless router.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
>>Do you remember the days when people parked their cars in the driveway with the keys in the ignition?
We’re becoming a low trust society; this is just another manifestation of it.<<
Funny you bring that up. It is what people do in the area around my farm in Kentucky. It’s one reason I bought it. :)
The irony is strong with this one.
The government has to understand that unsecured wifi is common. They have to understand that unsecured routers can and often are used by anybody. Next time, bring a laptop with a good powerful usb dongle and test to see if they can use the router. If they can, it means that anyone could. And the government should know that people doing things like dl porn through that router is probably being done by people who aren’t the owner of that router. The gov’t did find the guy, right? It just took a little bit longer, required more work.
I think the government should just assume that the person with the unsecured router is not the person doing the bad thing.
My current wireless router name is “Obama sucks”. It drives my liberal neighbors nuts. I change it every few months to something new that bashes the idiot in office. It’s almost like having a sign in the sky and nobody knows who put it there.
Yes I have, however neither of those are relevant. Even if the perp was hosting his porn off-site, every time he viewed it or it touched his computer, a copy of the image would wind up on his hard drive, usually in the page file. Also, all of the file names and the location from where they had been accessed would still be on his computer, regardless of where they were hosted. And using a proxy server might hide the IP address of the downloading computer from the server end, but does not affect what is stored on the host computer.
I've been working with computers and computer security for almost 20 years. I know what can and can't be done to hide your tracks, and how long it takes. Other than using strong encryption and refusing to provide the password, anything you have accessed on your computer cangenerally be located pretty quickly. The only quick solution is to physically destroy the drive. You may have prosecuted these cases, but it is clear you don't have a strong understanding of the technology behind it. That's okay, I don't have a strong understanding of the legal process used to prosecute them. We are just experts in different fields.
>>Do you consider your actions to be theft of services?<<
No. I have to agree to terms of service from time to time. Would it be theft of services if the place offers free wi-fi?
I don't see that as being an intent in this case. But it could well be a consequence.
Let's say that going after pedophiles is a 'right wing' thing and that going after guns is a 'left wing' thing. The means employed for either can be used for the other.
>>Do you consider your actions to be theft of services? <<
BTW, thanks for not just saying I AM stealing. I was a bit disappointed by the response of a few others. :)
You can sue them for not negligence. Everyone knows just because an IP goes back to your house doesn’t mean it’s you. Checking for an open wifi connection is very simple. Of course someone could even be remote controlling their computer and that would be a bit tougher to check. But come on...at least check the wifi deal.
Also why storm into the guys house? It’s not like someone’s life was on the line; however, they did put the police and that guys family at risk. Apparently they weren’t identifyign themselves as police and instead were more interested in calling this guy names...like pervert and pedophile. That’s slander. They can’t call you a pedophile until it’s proven in court. So that the very least libel and/or slander could apply.
Now if he had gotten killed by this false arrest then I’m sure more people would see the errors the cops made, but since the cops didn’t shoot him or get shot everyone just wants to sweep their negligence under the rug and say it’s no big deal.
Cops have a tough job and they should be held to higher standard to protect themselves and the public. This was some shoddy police work. Heck they found the other suspect fairly quickly. They could have done a lot of that analysis before barging into this guys house.
Well, the good thing is that the cops are now aware of unsecured routers, and they understand that illegal activity isn’t being done by people on their own routers. And now cops will test to see if the router is unsecured. If it’s unsecured, they’d assume that the person doing the illegal activity on it is not the owner of the router, and they won’t come busting down the door.
>>You said it was “SWAT”.<<
I think the post before yours clarifies: Some people think of “swat team” and “Jack Booted Thugs” (JBT) as synonymous.
He should have said JBT. Still, as many have already pointed out, you are inserting a straw man into the discussion.
With a small yagi antenna I can see networks that are 3 to 5 miles from my location and connect to them. I always laugh a bit when I see a network that ID’s as Linksys. Never find one of these that is secure. Hill top location helps with the range. Change the default ID of the router and lock it up with a strong password and encrypt your wireless transmissions.
IP address should not be enough to establish probable cause. They threw this guy down the stairs and basically treated him like he was guilty before even establishing if he was in fact guilty. There are all kinds of ways a website can send an image to your cache without your knowledge and provide incriminating evidence against you. The FBI needs a better cyber crime unit that understands the issues associated with these types of situations. Sending a SWAT team was incredible overkill for what would most likely be a non violent offender.
>>I can tell you are a cop appologist.<<
I discussed with an acquaintence who used to be a cop and who’s father is a sheriff my theory that anyone that aspires to be a cop today is either a naive “I can change the world” type or a brown shirt thug. He said that they are actually broken into three groups:
25% Those that really want to and believe they can make a difference (what I called naive).
25% Just want an easy job and will eat lots of donuts and only write the minimum of tickets. i.e. typical government employee.
50% Ex high school jocks and bullies/thugs who like the power over others. What I called the “brownshirts”.
It means that your chances of getting pulled over by a bully/thug are about 50%. That is why I suspect, as our culture continues to decline it would behoove the average citizen to get a CCW and drive armed.
Adobe Scene7.
Apparently, in your internet world, dynamic flash-container image delivery doesn't exist. Sadly, in the real world, it does.
There is robust, illicit cottage industry that exists - an industry that does know how the internet works - that is dedicated to nothing but allowing child pornographers to hide from authorities.
"Also, all of the file names and the location from where they had been accessed would still be on his computer, regardless of where they were hosted. "
Terrific. And, what happens when those locations are in China or Russia or some other far away place where the US federal government enjoys virtually no access?
"I've been working with computers and computer security for almost 20 years. "
Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been practicing law for over 50-years, that - unfortunately - doesn't mean she's any good at it.
"ou may have prosecuted these cases, but it is clear you don't have a strong understanding of the technology behind it."
And yet, with my admittedly limited understanding of "how computers work", I've managed to poke large, gaping holes in your "theory". How about that.
I think that's more of a philosophical point but it's a good one. Is it illegal to possess pictures of rapings?
>>My current wireless router name is “Obama sucks”. It drives my liberal neighbors nuts. I change it every few months to something new that bashes the idiot in office. It’s almost like having a sign in the sky and nobody knows who put it there.<<
Priceless! It almost makes me want to get comcast again.
Almost... :P
Well if they guy was fancy...he could have an encrypted system that has two passwords.
One password reveals benign info. The second password gives the dirt. But if the benign password is used it proceeds to electronically destroy the illegal content by writing random 0’s and 1’s over the disk 10 times. Depending on how much stuff he has it may be fairly quick to do. But that would still require the investigator to log on to his machine with his OS loaded so the program could load. If the drive was removed it would be a bit tougher. But he could have the drive linked to his TPM chip on his computer and that would require them to use that computer to open it. So unless you get really fancy you’ll probably just use his system to unlock it and at the same time walk right into his trap.
Or what if he used an SSD drive? I believe those are even easier to clean.
And he could have used an onion router to hide his origins. Or he could use an onion router and then use terminal services on a hijacked computer to view the content. Now it would be really tough to track back.
I’m just saying there are still ways to destroy or hide. If you know of ways to track back in the scenerios I detailed I’d like to learn about them.
If you can show me where the "SWAT" team was involved, that may mean something. Fortunately, it's been established that it was a word created from the figment of the original poster's imagination.
Therefore, I can tell you're an idiot.
“There’s absolutely no cause for action.”
How about the part where they threw an unresisting suspect down a flight of stairs?
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