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Comment by SilverBirch | Hacker News Reader

It's also just very basic police work. We're investigating this company, we think they've committed a crime. Ok, why do you think that. Well they've very publicly and obviously committed a crime. Ok, are you going to prosecute them? Probably. Have you gone to their offices and gathered evidence? No thanks.

Of course they're going to raid their offices! They're investigating a crime! It would be quite literally insane if they tried to prosecute them for a crime and how up to court having not even attempted basic steps to gather evidence!

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A company I worked for had a 'when the police raid the office' policy, which was to require they smash down the first door, but then open all other doors for them.

That was so that later in court it could be demonstrated the data hadn't been handed over voluntarily.

They also disconnected and blocked all overseas VPN's in the process, so local law enforcement only would get access to local data.

that's kinda the normalization argument, not the reason behind it

"it is done because it's always done so"

Isn't it both necessary and normal if they need more information about why they were generating CSAM? I don't know why the rule of law shouldn't apply to child pornography or why it would be incorrect to normalize the prosecution of CSAM creators.

I'm not sure what you're getting at, physical investigation is the common procedure. You need a reason _not_ to do it, and since "it's all digital" is not a good reason we go back to doing the usual thing.

It's a show of force. "Look we have big strong men with le guns and the neat jack boots, we can send 12 of them in for every one of you." Whether it is actually needed for evidence is immaterial to that.

It can be both things at once. It obviously sends a message, but hey, maybe you get lucky, and someone left a memo in the bin by the printer that blows the case wide open.

Or maybe they are storing documents with secrets in a room or even in the bathroom.

If law enforcement credibily believes that criminals are conspiring to commit a crime and are actively doing so in a particular location what is wrong with sending armed people to stop those criminal acivities as well as apprehend the criminals and what ever evidence of their crimes may exist?

If this isn't the entire purpose of law enforcement then what is exactly?

No, a search warrant isn't intended to [directly] apprehend criminals, though an arrest warrant may come later to do that.

But one could reasonably assume that a location that is known to be used for criminal activity and that likely has evidence of such criminal activity likely also has people commiting crimes.

When police raid a grow-op they often may only have a search warrant but they end up making several arrests because they find people actively commiting crimes when they execute the warrant.

Well, yes, it is actually pretty normal for suspected criminal businesses. What's unusual is that this one has their own publicity engine. Americans are just having trouble coping with the idea of a corporation being held liable for crimes.

More normally it looks like e.g. this in the UK: https://news.sky.com/video/police-raid-hundreds-of-businesse...

CyberGEND more often seem to do smalltime copyright infringement enforcement, but there are a number of authorities with the right to conduct raids.

“Americans are just having trouble coping with the idea of a corporation being held liable for crimes.”

I’m sorry but that’s absurd even amidst the cacophony of absurdity that comprises public discourse these days.

I'll bite.

How was TikTok held liable for the crimes it was accused of?

It was force-sold to Oracle.

That had more to do with wish to control it and steal it then crimes.

That wasn't a punishment, that was a reward.

Was it ever actually accused of crimes? Was it raided? Was there a list of charges?

It always seemed to me that TikTok was doing the same things that US based social networks were doing, and the only problem various parties could agree on with this was that it was foreign-owned.

American companies held liable for crimes include Bank of America ($87B in penalties), Purdue Pharma (opioid crisis), Pfizer for fraudulent drug marketing, Enron for accounting fraud. Everyone on hn should know about FTX, Theranos, I mean come on.

Corporations routinely get a slap on the wrist (seconds of profitability), not required to admit guilt, or deferred prosecution agreements.

EU wants to circumvent e2e to fight CSA: "nooo think about my privacy, what happened to just normal police work?"

Police raids offices literally investigating CSA: "nooo police should not physically invade, what happened to good old electronic surveillance?"

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