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 ...
Based on their treatment of the owner, i have to assume that they had an arrest warrant. If not, then it is even worse for them that they roughed up a man without probable cause to even be making an arrest. As i said, i’d take that case. I am very careful with the cases i take on contingency. I have to believe in them absolutely. I have never taken a false arrest that i lost, and i would take this one, based on what we know now. Maybe you would not. I would say, see you in court.
Very right you are.
>>Well, based on that logic, maybe they should have broken the door down and pointed guns at the offices of the Internet Provider first, just to be safe.
As far as that goes, why not go ahead and take over MAE-EAST or MAE-WEST, or whatever the biggest peering point was, that was involved in the connection? I mean, if you’re going to get all dressed up in your SWAT gear, you might as well make it count.
>>50% Ex high school jocks and bullies/thugs who like the power over others. What I called the “brownshirts”.
On a vaguely related note, science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle has noted on his web site (excellent reading, BTW; he is a true conservative and modern Renaissance man) that Science Fiction convention organizers learned early on that anyone who wanted to run convention security MUST NOT get that job.
The same sort of thing at work is why I was such a big fan of Fred Thompson in the 2008 Presidential race.
All I can tell you is that I find my clients don’t have any idea that a stranger could be using their WiFi. They’re not “cool” about it - they are clueless.
But your mileage may vary. What evidence do you have that they are just being cool about it?
I do not think it right to assume they’re stupid. Therefore, they’re cool with it.
My argument is not based on gathering data about what certain people might and might not want. I’m not saying your data is bad wrong or incorrect in any way. It’s almost “de facto”. Free Wi-Fi is Free.
Great so our rights are now based on "most of the time" status. So if most of the time serial killers are white males (which is true) we must provide white males less rights since most of the time they are the culprit.
We don't need a constitution or rights when the seriousness of the charges outweigh the individual liberties and freedoms of a single person/family--right?
So you're saying the ISP has more rights than an individual in this country. Why not afford the individual the same rights that the ISP has? They assumed it wasn't an ISP owner or employee that was doing this when they requested the details on the IP address. If that person worked at the ISP they could have destroyed the evidence. But guns drawn weren't needed there. But they were at a house that had an open wifi device--and anyone who knows anything about wifi knows that anyone could attach and surf from it. Pretty much the same situation as the ISP has...but the ISP was provided a reasonable request and they answered.
But they weren't...so you're argument that likely really doesn't cut it here.
Yes, it is bizarre that the police would not know it was an open wifi device BEFORE breaking into a home with guns drawn and risking life of those in the house and those of LE. It really doesn't make any sense. They should better investigative work before resorting to gestapo tactics. Now if they thought a child was locked up in the house...yes what they did made sense because a life was on the line.
A strong password with WPA2 and broadcasting your SSID is more “secure” than hiding it.
First normal people won’t be able to hack WPA2. So those who can will target the guy trying to hide.
BTW: When I say hiding the SSID (I’m assuming you’re still using the same level of encyrption WPA2 along with strong password). By hiding it you are drawing attention to yourself by those able to hack such devices.
I think I understand, you are saying that by hidind the SSID, all else being equal, the hackers might just decide I had a reason for hiding my SSID. This would be the same kind of argument as putting an ADT sign in your front yard would tell a thief that you thought you had something valuable enough to pay a security company.
I don’t happen to think the hackers, given the number of wireless devices on my street and in my neighborhood, are going to drive around specifically looking for an encrypted and hidden SSID to hack. So I am simply hiding the existance of my internal network from my neighbors who don’t have the extra tools to break past a SSID they don’t recognize (I have of course named my own SSID, using standard password rules of non-obviousness).
I have my standard Verizon wireless router broadcasting it’s SSID, so people who just assume there’s a network on my house see one.
It’s not “more rights” — there was no expectation that the offender was using the ISP computers. I just don’t understand your argument. I wouldn’t expect the police would go into AT&T with guns blazing if they picked up a phone conversation indicating someone was breaking the law either; they would use standard procedure to gain access to the AT&T database to find the location of the phone call.
But they WOULD break into the house. IF they then found someone had hooked up a wire to the house, and was calling from somewhere else, that’s what they would learn based on their warrant search of that house.
It seems like you are asking the police to always act as if there is some further-distanced perpetrator who is purposely or accidentally setting up the identified suspect. It doesn’t make sense.
Now, if your complaint is simply that they shouldn’t have gone in with guns drawn, well I don’t like that tactic either, and it’s used all too often. I understand that the police always think they might meet an armed felon ready to blow them away, but frankly that’s what we pay them for.
But I don’t think whether they come in with guns or not should be based on how certain they are that the house they are invading is the right house with the right perpetrator. The warrant is what established that standard.
I may have been asuming away that people understood technology as well as I do. So let me step back and explain in a bit more detail.
LE clearly understands that the routers along the way are not the end point of the perp. However, they were not informed enough to understand that an open wifi device could be used to access this crap. And I bet many cases if not most will involve some type of "anonymous" Internet access when accessing kiddie porn. Either that or the pervert is so stupid he wouldn't have the means to destroy the evidence if LE knocked on his door and asked to come in.
So either the cops hastily wanted to jack someone up and ignore their rights as much as possible by using loop holes in the law to violate them (which I think is clearly obvious). Or they are so stupid on the way the Internet works and really missed the boat as they should have also stormed the ISP to capture the logs (based on their bahavior against an innocent person).
Come on...you know an employee at an ISP (at the right level and permissions) can blame this on someone else. But the cops trusted them enough to give them the courtesy of answering the request without guns pointing at them.
However, an innocent indivdual with an open router gets the gun treatment. Something doesn't add up in that scenario. If this guy was a computer mastermind he wouldn't be using his own router so the risk of him destroying the evidence was nill. In fact, it would have given them an opportunity to add more charges to the guy.
So I am objecting to them serving the search warrant with guns drawn and breaking into his house. Yes due dilligence is required before breaking into a person's house. The judge that issued the warrant screwed up too (assuming the cops didn't lie and say it was a closed wifi router).
But they do see your SSID. Hackers have the tools to easily see the signal and see that it’s “blank”. Then all they need to do is capture your device talking to your AP and wammo they have your SSID. It’s not hard at all to get it.
Personally I’d rather stay hidden in the masses with a benign SSID name. But I guess I am drawing attention to myself by having my SSID set to “0Bama Sux”. On one hand it may help me if the hackers agree with me, but on the other it may draw the ire of some that make them want to hack.
I don’t think it is a misunderstanding of the technology. There is a fundamental difference between the involvement of an ISP in delivering internet access, and the involvement of a local wireless router.
On the surface, they do have in common that both are “ways to access the internet”, once you assume that a wireless router exists to attach to the internet, which it wouldn’t have to.
But the purpose of home routers is not to provide a legally protected pass-thru access for internet services. The ISPs do exist for that purpose, and the law recognises that they are intermediaries.
The fact that you could, in some instances, have a wireless router used by someone outside the home does not in itself provide the legal protection of “passthru service” that the ISPs get because that is their reason for existance. In fact, standard end-user agreements could well prohibit access from people other than those on the property (although I haven’t read the fine print of my service).
A weak analogy. In jurisdictions where they have red-light cameras, the smart legislatures have written the law to make it illegal for your car to run a red light — so you can be ticketed without them having to prove you were driving. But in those states, they usually have a process by which you can show you were not driving by giving up the person who WAS driving.
But assuming you don’t live in such a state; suppose you park your car in your driveway with the keys in the ignition. You do that all the time. Your car is seen leaving the scene of an armed robbery. A camera catches the license plate, so the cops run it, get your address (note they don’t bust down the doors of the DMV with guns drawn to get that address, they simply call up the interface). They get a warrant, come to your house, find your car in the driveway, and procede to no-knock your house. As you are pinned to the ground, you insist that it wasn’t you.
Eventually, they find out that someone walked by your house, saw the keys, stole your car, did the robbery, and returned your car. So you were innocent.
By YOUR argument, the cops should have checked first to see that the keys were in your car, unlocked. Then they should have assumed that someone else might have taken your car without your knowledge, so they should NOT have burst into your home with guns drawn, but should instead have nicely knocked and asked permission. After all, they should have realised there was some possibility that another person was driving your car, since the keys were in it.
I would note that in the TV shows, the cops often come to the wrong house tracking down the license plate lead, only to find that the car was “stolen”, but the person’s report hadn’t made it through the system yet. Until they learn that, they treat the owner as the perp, and it seems natural to do so to me.
These morons with badges obviously can’t even read the very constitution they’re sworn to uphold.
I hope this guy ends up collecting megabucks in a civil suit.
They are first beholden to the constitution or charter of the union they pray to every morning anymore.
Another authoritarian JBT-boot-licker is heard from.
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