Bizarre pornography raid underscores Wi-Fi privacy risks

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3 points·alphadoggs··5 comments

"Law enforcement officials say the case is a cautionary tale."

I think it's also a cautionary tale for law enforcement officers. It seems when it comes to pornography, all their rational thought processes drop down (they do have those, don't they) and they go into a "let's go get that bastard" mode. Sadly, although such stories are quite common, i.e. there's nothing bizarre about them in that sense, there's little you can do if it happens to you: They just say "OK, you weren't it" and go away.

I think the war against child pornography is being fought as mindlessly as the one on drugs, with quite similar results.

All they had to do is simply check if the guy had an unprotected wifi signal or not, but it was much easier breaking down the poor man's door and harrasing him.

So basically under your proposed rule, someone could download as much child porn as he wanted in complete safety as long as he made sure to keep his wifi unprotected? Your rule needs some refinement! :-)

I implied that they could be more civil if there is a chance that the owner of the internet connection is not the criminal. They could knock on the door, politely ask the owner to answer some questions and do the rough stuff after they are absolutely sure that that guy is the one they are looking for.

They find that a crime is being committed using a router belonging to person X. You say they are being irrational by getting a warrant and searching X and his computers to see if he was the one committing the crime?

Where then would you suggest they start?

If someone robbed a bank, and was seen driving away in a specific car, do you think it would be irrational for them to look up the owner of the car and go search it and him? It's essentially the same thing.

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