Search warrants are a dime a dozen any more. Once you convince the judge, (who is usually not only NOT up on technology, half of 'em aren’t even up on the law) that THEREZ KIDDIE PRON ON THAT MACHINE! You’re in. The 4th amendment is a shell of what it used to be in this country.
What about WPA with MAC filtering?
Fasterfox, one of the top twenty most popular extensions for Firefox.
from the Op’s link,
If having a thumbs.db file with illicit images is a serious crime then what do ya think having .gifs, .jpgs and whole web pages is?
Clicking on a hyperlink can land your ass in jail!
CMC +fnord!
One’s ability to convince a judge to sign it?
I seem to recall a warrant being issued in CA for a suspected hydroponic marijuana-growing operation on the following criteria-
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Resident puts out trashcans at the last minute the morning of the trash pick-up, rather than the night before.
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Resident has a spike in electricity usage.
:eek:
The trash can thing seems to be something that cops look at a lot, when they suspect illegal activity. I guess they figure the resident is trying to minimize the time someone could look through their trash?
ETA- forgot to add- why would this surprise anybody? This is the society we live in today- warrantless wiretaps, people being held indefinitely without hearing or legal representation, suspension of habeus corpus… welcome to the “bastion of freedom.” :rolleyes:
WPA is a much better option and what we’re preparing to transition to where I work.
MAC filtering is good, but by no stretch of the imagination should it be considered secure. There are many wireless adapters that you can configure to present any MAC you specify. And just a few minutes of sniffing an active network will net you several valid MACs to use.
What he said.
Bricker, if you’re seriously implying with your patented rhetorical gotcha game that the mere clicking of a link provides sufficient grounds for one’s life to be destroyed for six months at minimum while the fathanded feds poke through every last molecule of one’s world, then maybe it really is time to tear everything down and rebuild it from scratch.
If it was good enough for the Secret Service in Operation Sundevil, it’s good enough for Child Porn now.
Bricker, you know law but I know technology.
The FBI is playing with things it obviously does not understand. There is no authentication in any of the protocols. No layer, from Ethernet up to HTTP, makes any serious attempt to verify who you are. Yes, some of them can be encrypted. That not only doesn’t provide authentication, it is also beyond the capacity of the average non-technical user.
Furthermore, the Internet isn’t just used by humans clicking links in web browsers. It’s used by programs like this one running this page, that trawl the web automatically and grab whatever images they find. Is running a program like that now prima facie evidence that I have an intent to look at child pornography?
Finally, of course, there is the problem of spyware: A compromised machine can do anything. Right now, they mainly send spam. In the future, with this policy in place, they could become a positive danger to life and property.
The evidence is a joke. Any competent computer expert not actually committing perjury would be honor-bound to poke holes in it until it was like unto flimsy swiss cheese. The invasions and the accusations and the lives destroyed are worse than a joke. The mere accusation of pedophilia is equivalent to a conviction in the public eye, and every honest person knows it.
absolutely. THere was a local case a couple of years ago, a special ed teacher was accused of attempted child molestation. Prosecutor held a frigging news conference, named names, showed picture, school, of course, immediately suspended the man.
Problem was, the ‘evidence’ was a fucking joke. It consisted of emails sent to the child. Prosecutors and police didn’t even check the trail to see where the fucking emails were sent from. They just looked at the goddam name on the email. It was a bogus free account, set up by and sent by a friend of the accusor.
A few days after the news conference, the same set of folks had to hold another one saying “oopsie”.
The accused? Died of stress related heart attack a short time later.
Keep in mind that the ‘criminal geniuses’ who came up with this scheme and managed to get by the prosecutors and cops were underaged special ed kids.
Again, though, the issue is probable cause. Nothing more.
Your objection seems to be that the execution of a search warrant and the seizure of computer equipment, with no other action taken, is the equivalent of a criminal charge and conviction, or is at least so onerous that more than simple probable cause should be required to undertake it.
I don’t agree with that analysis.
Nor do the courts that have considered the issue.
Now, you may gnash your teeth at this truth, but that’s the bottom line. That’s the state of the law in this country right now.
I’m sure the first person to get screwed by this – Joe User who just clicks on a random link and gets a search warrant served against him – will not agree that this is enough probable cause to seize his equipment. Many will follow, I imagine.
Just because it is does not mean it should be. I don’t think anyone’s arguing the legality of the situation in the thread; we’re rallying against the reasoning behind making it legal.
What’s probable cause exactly?
I think people are saying this is “probable cause” only in the sense that teenagers hanging out in a mall constitute “probable cause” that they’re stealing something.
-FrL-
I guess we rather expected you to gnash your teeth as well, given the evidence above. That is, that in this particular regard the law is an ass. If the law, in all its majestic wonder, should declare that a kangaroo is a lizard, it still isn’t. Perhaps as a legal technicality, “probable cause” is a valid category for this sort of flimsy inference, but as reasonable people we are not bound to accept it simply because a berobed maroon sez so.
When was the last time that happened? Bricker, for all of his personal likeability*, has never posted about the law using his own personal opinion of the morality/practicality of said law. If he’s posting about the law, he’s posting as Attorney Richard X, not poster Bricker. Thus has been the state of things since time immemorial.
*and I do like him, because he is a reasonable and personable individual when he’s posting as Bricker the man, rather than Attorney Richard X.
What about the actual policy issue? Why is the government setting up kiddie porn sites in order to entrap people? Is this really serving the public?
I seem to recall that prior to the Internet age, I read an article stating that the federal government was, practically speaking, the sole significant publisher of kiddie porn, all done in the name of stamping it out.
I am curious about Bricker’s thoughts on the policy question here.
The long-lost brother of Speed Lawyer?
Frankly, we need a few heads of these Nifong-types publicly displayed on spikes, as an encouragement to the others to behave.
(I mean that figuratively, but literally would be fine, too. [Practices the Vir Finger Wave].)
I’d certainly like to see a more sympathetic defendant than a guy who, when the FBI knocks on his door, spends 27 minutes frantically smashing hard drives and thumb drives.
But yeah, I’m not persuaded that this is the most efficient approach. I wouldn’t mind the initial technique only to develop a lead, but it seems to my eye that we’d be better served with a more drawn-out investigation… not because we flout constitutional rights otherwise, but because a stronger case, getting more people, could be developed over time.
Seriously, though: we’re talking about people who create a paying market for four-year-olds to be sexually penetrated and the act memorialized for all time by movie and photography. The FBI is not making a poor choice by targeting this kind of crime.
In the case of pedophilia there must be a higher standard. Lives are ruined by the mere mention of pedophilia. It isn’t a law: It’s a cultural category.
Which forum is this in, again?
But that isn’t the whole story. There is another aspect you are ignoring entirely that is pervading all law in this country, to the detriment of personal liberty and respect for the rule of law: The government no longer understands the fundamentals of technology.
There is no indication the FBI even realized that the evidence from this sting would be so suspect to even moderately computer-literate people. I wouldn’t suspect such blatant ignorance if other parts of the government hadn’t done things like legalize software patents and then proceed to allow companies to patent obvious techniques with plenty of prior art. Or create the DMCA, which mainly outlaws competition in the world of digital media. Or pass a bill that, if taken at face value, outlaws trolling (and, indeed, a goodly amount of all Internet social interaction). Track record matters here, and the government’s track record with regard to any telecommunications technology more advanced than television is somewhere between pitiful and willfully obtuse.
I take your point, of course, and hereby abandon my previous pro-kiddyporn stance. Clealy, those wrongly accused should be afforded a Letter of Apology, and perhaps enrollment into a witness protection program.