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 ...
If your not contributing to the cost of this business Wi-Fi then your stealing.
Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.
Can you please provide the quote in the article that says that, and if you would be so kind, please let me know who it was that was saying it?
Thanks!
>>Is it illegal to possess pictures of rapings?<<
Only if you know they are real, I suspect. More precisely, only if it can be proven in a court of law that you knew they were real. And if you have a lot of them and it can be proven that you frequented a site that clearly advertized them as real, you could have a problem I suspect. But I only suspect. For all I know it is completely legal. Heck, I just found out recently that in the 1960’s LSD was legal. For all I know it still is...
>>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.<<
Give it up. The straw man has been burned alive. Stay on topic.
Or he's wanting the police and courts to be a bit more thorough before storming into a man's house where someone could have been killed when a simple check of open wifi would have told them someone else may be the culprit.
What the cops did is the same as storming into ATT because the traffic passed through their router. Now that would be stupid right? And so is the cops storming into this guys house with no real evidence that he had done anything. The problem is the cops and the courts either don't know how this stuff works or they are willingly acting stupid. I'm not sure if they are being deliberately obtuse over IT or are truly just ignorant, but it either way it doesn't make it right.
“it turns out is later proven to be 100% accurate - The man owned the internet connection that was used to download child pornography.”
“I don’t know how much simpler it can be. You’re either being argumentative or obtuse, I really don’t care which it is.”
Come on Mr. Lawyer man. “Accurate” and “Criminal” are not interchangeable here.
It is you who are being obtuse. Do you not - even in your wildest dreams - see a problem with police entering an innocent mans home at gunpoint?
It was entirely possible for police to check to see if his WiFi was secure or not. an open connection would, at the very least, be cause for a different approach. They had the technical means to track this guy down - its not hard, but not trivial either.
So, would you agree that the guy was innocent? Or are you one of those prosecutors who will find something on anyone (as you well know, it’s very possible to do this) to justify what is at best a police blunder?
Do you not see how this could have escalated into someone getting shot/killed?
I think you are being needlessly argumentative about the relevance of “correct” information pointing to the actual criminal.
>>If your not contributing to the cost of this business Wi-Fi then your stealing.
Just because you can do something doesnt mean you should.<<
You are delving into business, IT morality minutia and stating an opinion with which I disagree. Not that I am right, or you.
If I understand your position correctly, you would believe that a guy that lives above a “free wi-fi” coffeeshop and accesses from his apartment would be morally in the wrong. Am I correct?
You may want to read the entire article before continuing on this discussion. It makes it better for everyone if we are all referring to the same article.
"Straw Man" - one of the most often misused terms of the fallacious arguments.
You prove why.
Pointing out that there WASN'T a SWAT team when someone says that there was a SWAT isn't a fallacious argument, and it certainly isn't a straw man argument.
However, the fact that you - repeatedly - fail to understand this, doesn't say much about the rest of your diatribe.
Moral of the story - don't you phrases you clearly don't understand.
>>If your not contributing to the cost of this business Wi-Fi then your stealing.
Just because you can do something doesnt mean you should.<<
Another thing I probably should mention. In the office where I work the amount of internet surfing is staggering. I believe that you would say that anyone doing that for non-business purposes (hitting FR or paying bills, etc) is stealing from the company. However, the company has a “reasonable use” policy.
Free wi-fi is the future.
And "I'll wait."
From the article..."awakened by the sound of someone breaking the back door down..." and "assault weapons pointed at him.."
I dunno about you, but that don't sound like Sheriff Andy Griffith to me.
Quacks like a duck......
If you really were a prosecutor (it's easy to be a big-mouth on an anonymous internet forum like this one), you would know how poisonous a raid like this (on a noncriminal) is to potential jury pools in other cases. The suspect in this case purchased a legal router, legal internet service, and legally hooked them up without password protection. According to the article, he is no longer accused of committing any crime. Your violent disdain for his lack of computer skills aside, this case and the publicity surrounding it has done nothing but undermine respect for law enforcement at all levels. Defending the indefensible only prolongs this destructive discussion and further pits people against legitimate legal authority. A real prosecutor would know this.
Oh no. I saw that part - the part where the man's lawyer says that he was "basically" thrown down the stairs, but they're aren't going to sue.
If they had a case, they'd be suing. They don't, so they aren't.
However, I am glad to know that in the world you inhabit, attorneys aren't given to wildly unsupported hyperbole when making their case. Does your world also have the unicorns that crap Skittles?
OK let’s replace SWAT with ICE. What’s the difference. Fact is agents came in with guns drawn and ready.
Whether it was SWAT, ICE, FBI, CIA, Secret Service or Janet Reno really doesn’t matter. The fact that they are agents from the government storming into an innocents man house is what is at stake.
They didn’t do basic detective work to find the real perv. So I guess you can say it was “Good enough for government work” to these guys. What’s violating one man’s rights when it comes to capturing someone who is looking at kiddie porn? I’m all for nailing the kiddie porn bastards, but let’s make sure we have the right person first. If not, let’s just all agree to have random inspections of our homes and computers to find kiddie porn—are you ok with that?
Of course he doesn’t, unless he does something like hacking to access the internet.
The people who buy the service are sharing the service, they’re nice people who are giving what they bought away for free.
Why would it be theft?
>>”Straw Man” - one of the most often misused terms of the fallacious arguments.
You prove why.
Pointing out that there WASN’T a SWAT team when someone says that there was a SWAT isn’t a fallacious argument, and it certainly isn’t a straw man argument.
However, the fact that you - repeatedly - fail to understand this, doesn’t say much about the rest of your diatribe.
Moral of the story - don’t you phrases you clearly don’t understand.<<
Give it up. The straw man has been burned alive. Stay on topic.
BTW, what I find comical is that you are correct, but it is still irrelevant. Someone else said straw man and I decided to run with it even though, technically speaking your argument is more accurately called Argumentum Red Herring.
Most people think of the two as pretty much the same thing and it was (and is) good enough for the point being made.
It’s not my service that you are using. I would consider it stealing if you were using my service. But then that
s why I encrypt and password protect my WiFi.
Why don’t you let the Coffee shop know what you are doing and let them decide if it’s OK with them. I don’t think that your “free” service would last much longer.
Oh gracious, an "assault weapon". Pray tell, coming from a journalist, I wonder what that could be?
It is scary when you think about it. I know of many many programs and some operating systems that are available for nothing but this purpose, I am not going to mention any of them as not to make it easier to find them.
WEP,MAC doesn’t matter which takes anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes to crack maybe less. I always suggest get the router to suit your purpose in other words keep the signal as weak as possible from my experience a weak signal is some protection as even if you have the key or pass phrase you can not logon if the signal is too weak.
In simple English don’t go buy the industrial strength router that will put a signal across town when all you want is household use.
>>Why dont you let the Coffee shop know what you are doing and let them decide if its OK with them. I dont think that your free service would last much longer.<<
You’d be surprised. ;)
BTW, in my case it is not a coffee shop or “advertized” free wi-fi. I was just using that example.
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