Man's life Over, Cops Decide He Watched Child Porn in First Class

Now you izzy being in merry old england with no fifth amendment protection so the UK government can demand your encrypted passwords have more of a problem in protecting your privacy from the government.

You would need to use a combination of strong encrypted with steganography programs and you might wish to go so far as having a completely hidden computer OS using truecrypt.

Let me know if you wish my help as I am always willing to help our cousins from across the pond.

Have you noticed that BillRM always gives these helpful tips in child pornography threads? And, in a recent post in this thread, he bragged that the Feds wouldn't be able to crack his computer security, and that he'd never cooperate with them if they showed up to arrest him for possession of child porn, and, after all, other people in the household could have had access to the computer, so how could they prove who downloaded the child pornography...

He sounds like he's already preparing his defense...he certainly identifies with these people getting arrested for child pornography....

And then he wonders why people get certain ideas about him.

What normal person wants to give out tips, to collectors of child porn, to help them better hide their illegal material from the government--in a thread about child pornography?

Not that BillRM is at all normal...But he really does reveal something very sick, and very sociopathic, about himself, way too often. It's not about right or wrong with him, it's all about not getting caught.

In other word the same monitoring programs that the government now use concerning downloading CP on p2p networks can be used for illegal cartoons.

As I said it should be amusing to have the Feds in full battle gear raiding homes looking for underage cartoons characters doing the nasty.



I never said that the UK was perfect for one thing videos showing adult consensus S&M activities is illegal but they do, at least so far, are far more sane concerning CP sentencing.



I had a former co-worker who was showing such drawings around one day as he feel they was amusing.

To each his own however my opinion as already stated was it was in slight bad taste however never never at the time dreaming it would be a possible Federal crime in the future.

Of course, another one of your "innocent" explanations....

I hate to ask what you consider "slight bad taste".

I remember with amusement when you was trying to threaten me with a raid by the big bad FBI and they was reading my postings and would come and get me due to them.

As if we live in a police state where publicly disagreeing with the government laws and actions under them is enough to get a raid from that government police force.

Sorry dear I am not a law breaker and there is nothing on my hard drives that is illegal let alone CP but on the other hand I am not going to offer to make it possible for any government agency to access those drives on principle.

To me it is the duty of citizenship not to make it easy for the government when they get out of line in invading citizen privacy and that is why I am also the proud supporter of the ACLU and the EFF.

When I travel aboard I alway take my cheap notebook and back it completely up before leaving as I am not going to allow customs to search my computer if they ask to even if it mean that they will seize that computer.

Let them spend all the funds they care to trying to break my layers of protections as I then pick up another cheap netbook off ebay and restore the information onto the new notebook.

Innocent when you are talking about cartoon drawings how far had we gone down the slope toward insanity had we already gone!!!!!!

The drawings was shown to me for a minute or so ten or more years or so ago so I do not remember details just they involved the Simpson daughter doing the nasty with the clown character on the show or at least that is my memory.

Like when they show up with a valid search warrent...

Search warrants valid or invalid does not mean that a citizen is under any moral or legal obligation to aid the police in searching your property.

Second, valid warrants had been used to break down the doors of innocents citizens more then once in the middle of the night and to terrorized the children as will as the adults in those households.

Police of late love to play soldiers instead of law enforcement officers and love to treat even low risk warrants as for example in searching for CP as a license to break down doors instead of just knocking on the door and serving the warrants.

In relationship to the subject of this thread there been a number of cases where tracing back using ISP addresses looking for CP downloaders the police in full battle gear had broken into homes and then placed the parents and the children on the floor at gun point only to find later that the isp information had been in error from the ISP provider or there had been an open wifi that someone had tap into from outside the home.

It had happen enough that some judges had taken note and are demanding more proof then an isp address before issuing a search warrant.

But strangely children victims of such over the top warrant serving does not seems to be a concern of such people as you Firefly.

The story gave the local FBI some credit with doing more checking in CP cases however it more likely that Federal judges that had woke up and are demanding more checking.

I can see just picture you setting watching TV as a flashbang come sailing in to your home but after all the dear police had a valid search warrant!!!!!!

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/06/swat-team-throws-flashbangs-raids-wrong-home-due-to-open-wifi-network/



The long-standing, heavily documented militarization of even small-town American police forces was always going to create problems when it met anonymous Internet threats. And so it has, again—this time in Evansville, Indiana, where officers acted on some Topix postings threatening violence against local police. They then sent an entire SWAT unit to execute a search warrant on a local house, one in which the front door was open and an 18-year old woman sat inside watching TV.

The cops brought along TV cameras, inviting a local reporter to film the glorious operation. In the resulting video, you can watch the SWAT team, decked out in black bulletproof vests and helmets and carrying window and door smashers, creep slowly up to the house. At some point, they apparently "knock" and announce their presence—though not with the goal of getting anyone to come to the door. As the local police chief admitted later to the Evansville Courier & Press, the process is really just “designed to distract." (SWAT does not need to wait for a response.)

Officers break the screen door and a window, tossing a flashbang into the house—which you can see explode in the video. A second flashbang gets tossed in for good measure a moment later. SWAT enters the house.

On the news that night, the reporter ends his piece by talking about how this is "an investigation that hits home for many of these brave officers."

But the family in the home was released without any charges as police realized their mistake. Turns out the home had an open WiFi router, and the threats had been made by someone outside the house. Whoops.

So the cops did some more investigation and decided that the threats had come from a house on the same street. This time, apparently recognizing they had gone a little nuts on the first raid, the police department didn't send a SWAT team at all. Despite believing that they now had the right location and that a threat-making bomber lurked within, they just sent officers up to the door.

"We did surveillance on the house, we knew that there were little kids there, so we decided we weren't going to use the SWAT team," the police chief told the paper after the second raid. "We did have one officer with a ram to hit the door in case they refused to open the door. That didn't happen, so we didn't need to use it."

Their target appears to be a teenager who admits to the paper that he has a "smart mouth," dislikes the cops, and owns a smartphone—but who denies using it to make the threats.

While the open WiFi issue has caused many problems over the last five years—especially in child porn cases—the FBI is becoming more savvy about how it executes search warrants. As we noted last December, a well-run FBI child porn investigation (also in Indiana) took rather obvious precautions before executing a warrant:

On April 30, two FBI special agents drove past the Carmel home and noted the existence of two WiFi networks reachable from the property. One used WEP encryption, the other had the more robust WPA2, but the key point from the FBI's perspective was that neither network was unsecured. A search thus seemed much more likely to find its proper target.
Because most people aren't stupid enough to make obvious threats from their own home Internet connection, the corollary principle also holds: if a home does have an open WiFi connection, investigators might want to ease away from the flashbangs-and-SWAT-team approach; the threat of getting it wrong is a real one.

But Evansville police aren't backing down from their initial SWAT raid (read more about their later justification for using such force). And the targets of that raid aren't pleased. As the owner of the first house told the paper, "The front door was open. It’s not like anyone was in there hiding. To bring a whole SWAT team seems a little excessive."

The city will be paying to repair the damage it caused.

Not that all Evansville residents think the SWAT raid was in any way improper. Writing on the same Topix message boards where the initial threats emanated, one resident responded to critics: "They had a warrant. Sometimes warrants turn up nothing. Her home was repaired. On with your life now crusader!!! Lol"

"Noodle heads come on here thinking they are just big bad asses, threatening cops and their families," wrote another, "then the cops come back and bitch slap them with SWAT teams and flash bang grenades. Awesome. Teach these fools a lesson and make examples out of them."

But when all you have is an IP address, some non-trivial percentage of the time you teach a lesson to the wrong fools.

(Thanks to a local Ars reader for bringing the case to our attention.)

.Reader comments 244
.

The author of this article could not had said it better.

http://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20110425/11220014028/swat-team-raids-home-because-guy-had-open-wireless-router.shtml

SWAT Team Raids Home Because Guy Had An Open Wireless Router
from the wrong-lessons-learned dept
This is just ridiculous. Apparently a SWAT team raided the home of an innocent guy, accusing him of downloading child porn:

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.
It seems that law enforcement folks now admit that they screwed up, but the "lesson" they're getting out of it seems completely backwards. They're saying the lesson is that you should protect your WiFi router. That may be a good idea for some people, but there are plenty of legitimate reasons for offering an open WiFi connection. Furthermore, as noted, some people don't know how to set up their WiFi security.

But the bigger questions are:
1.Why is law enforcement sending in a SWAT team for child porn downloads? You could potentially see it in cases of production, but with downloads, can't they just do a standard arrest?
2.Why didn't they do a simple check beforehand to see if the router was open before bursting into the home with assault weapons and unproven assertions?
3.How come none of the "cautionary lessons" involve law enforcement folks realizing that they overreacted?
What's really disturbing is that the thrust of the original article is all about how this is a cautionary tale for wireless router owners, rather than a cautionary tale about overaggressive law enforcement.

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Well at least this time they did not break into the man home in the middle of the night and held him and his wife and child at gun point on the floor with their valid search warrant.

This so call war of CP have collateral damage concerning completely innocents families not help by police departments wishing to play soldiers instead acting as law enforcement officers and judges that do not demand more checking before issuing search warrants.

http://www.victoriaadvocate.com/news/2012/aug/11/sl_open_wifi_081212_184839/


Rene Figueroa had never been so scared in all of his 45 years.

He drove up to his home, less than 1/4-mile from Victoria East High School, June 20 to find it crawling with cops, his front door smashed open, a search warrant handed to him.
"I could barely read the search warrant; my hands were shaking so badly," he said.

Arriving back in Victoria from a business trip to Houston, Figueroa first thought all of the sheriff's cars meant someone had been murdered in his house.

Instead, officers had a search warrant to look for child pornography.

He told officers it was a mistake, but Figueroa had to wait outside for three hours, neighbors gawking, as the search continued and deputies seized items from the Pennsylvania Avenue home he shares with his wife and 7-year-old son.

But Figueroa knew they had the wrong man. But he didn't know how or why.

"My knowledge of computers is limited. I log on, I do my reports and I'm out," Figueroa said.

As the investigation continued, he began to suspect someone had stolen his unprotected Wi-Fi to download child porn.

"What if this guy had put something on my computer?" he worried. "I'm going to jail.

"I visualized me losing my family, my house, everything was gone because of our ignorance of not having our Wi-Fi secured."



THE WRONG MAN

Task Force member and Victoria County Sheriff's Office Sgt. Daniel Simons, who supervised the search at Figueroa's home, had doubts early on about his guilt.

Later the day of the search he told Sheriff T. Michael O'Connor that he thought Figueroa might not be involved.

"It's where the evidence took us. Through our investigative leads, we found what we believed to be child pornography being traded from that address," Simons said.

"I had my suspicions early on that it wasn't him, but I believe in taking the investigative process all the way through before I come to any conclusions."

Chief Deputy Terry Simons said completing the forensic investigation was necessary before clearing Figueroa.

"Our actions that day weren't a mistake," the chief deputy said. "We were there under the color of law, authorized by a court to conduct an investigative process that led us to a criminal defendant that I believe will be convicted. It just wasn't Mr. Figueroa."

Once the forensic investigation was completed, Figueroa was cleared.

But to get there, it took about 60 lab hours of investigation to say this person did not do these transfers, the chief deputy said.

Six weeks later, Figueroa's neighbor, Jason Leita, 37, was arrested by the Victoria Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and charged with possession of child pornography. He has since posted bail.

"My family went through a tough ordeal. The bottom line is the authorities had a job to do," Figueroa said. "Unfortunately, we were in the cross fire of the mix."



PROTECT YOUR WI-FI

Now that his name is cleared, Figueroa's main concern is alerting the public to the dangers of unprotected Wi-Fi.

"Please, please, please take this as a warning. Block your Wi-Fi with a password so this doesn't happen to you," he said. "We didn't think anyone would be stealing our Wi-Fi for anything, much less for criminal activities. It's one of the worst nightmares ever that anyone could go through."

Figueroa had added a password to his Wi-Fi in late March, but the damage already had been done. He noticed it began taking longer and longer to access the Internet; his security company recommended a password to prevent others from stealing his signal.

Unfortunately, the task force investigation had begun before that, and his unique IP address was the one officials targeted to investigate.



Other security issues

Having your Wi-Fi used by others without your permission, essentially stealing it, is not the only problem an open Wi-Fi system can cause.

Hackers can use your open Wi-Fi to access information on your computer, experts say.

"If your network is open, just like computing at an airport or coffee shop, everything you do can be sniffed by hackers using man-in-the-middle attacks or installing Trojans, spyware or viruses on your computer," said Rick Farina, wireless security engineer for California-based AirTight Networks.

These attacks can allow identity thieves to steal passwords, Social Security numbers, credit card numbers and more, he said.



LEGAL MATTERS

The search of Figuroa's home and the subsequent arrest of his neighbor on suspicion of downloading child pornography on the stolen Wi-Fi also leads to some interesting legal questions.

"From a legal standpoint, the main issue may be to prove who actually did the downloading" unless the files were found on the neighbor's computer, said Dimo Michailov, a Washington, D.C., attorney who specializes in cybercrime.

"Open Wi-Fi issues usually involve proving (beyond reasonable doubt, for a criminal case) who did the 'act' since, by definition, an open Wi-Fi can attract a number of other actors," said Michailov, a founding member of the Cybercrime Law Internet magazine.

Michailov also said the serving of the initial search warrant on Figueroa could prove problematic for prosecutors in the Leita case.

"This may involve criminal procedure under local law - I am not familiar with it - but if there are flaws with the search warrant on the open Wi-Fi owner, there may be flaws with the search warrant with the second person," he said.

What happened to Fugeroa - while uncommon - is not unique.

In recent years, about a half dozen cases across the country have involved criminal activity on an open Wi-Fi network without the owner's permission.

Victoria defense attorney George Filley, a one-time prosecutor, sees open Wi-Fi issues opening up legal questions similar to those addressed by Michailov.

"One of the questions that sticks out in my mind: Is there any criminal liability on the owner of the Wi-Fi?" he said.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization that bills itself as a defender of the public's rights in the digital age, hopes issues with open Wi-Fi don't force changes in its availability.

"Open wireless networks exist all over - from your local Starbucks, to many major airports, to your neighbor's house down the street. It contributes to the public good, and it's a considerate service to offer," said Adi Kamdar, a foundation activist.

He said exceptional cases like this one should not result in locked-down networks across the country.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is looking for ways to further protect network operators, he said.



TASK FORCE

The Victoria task force formed because of the increase in Internet crime, officials said. It consists of Victoria County Sheriff's deputies, Victoria police officers and agents of the Office of Homeland Security based in Victoria.

The task force first formed in summer 2011 as part of a nationwide initiative and reorganized again this year.

Since July, the task force has executed eight subpoenas, 10 search warrants and four undercover sting operations.

Including 2011, the task force has made six arrests and developed at least 100 potential cases. At least three more arrests are pending.

The need for the task force is there, Sheriff O'Connor said.

"There are predators out there of all kinds," the sheriff said. "To continue to be a full-service agency and stay ahead of the curve on these things," the task force became a priority."

The local task force is funded in part by the Victoria County District Attorney's asset forfeiture fund.

"We're using bad guys' money to do good things," said O'Connor. He said some software support also came from the district attorney's office and some money from the sheriff's office general fund.

The sheriff's office has eight officers trained in cybercrimes, Daniel Simons said. They have received a cybercrime investigation certificate issued by the state after taking a 40-hour course. They also have received specialized digital forensics training, he said.

"This sheriff's office is equipped to investigate child pornography and child predation cases," Chief Deputy Simons said, acknowledging special training is needed because Internet criminals also are good at what they do.

"These people are fairly sophisticated in their trading of child porn. It's not all child pornography either; there is also child solicitation," he said. "Our investigators are able to track them with great specificity. "

The sheriff said the task force's work will continue.

"People need to realize the severity of the problem," O'Connor said. "It doesn't stop once school starts."

Figueroa, even after what he has gone through, supports the task force.

"I am proud of these guys. They have a tough job. They're doing a good job getting these people off the street," he said.



MOVING ON

Figueroa isn't angry at law enforcement; that has abated since June 20 - though he would like his broken door fixed - and has moved on with his life.

"They have apologized," he said, singling out Daniel Simons and Deputy Michael Henry as being particularly sympathetic and helpful. "Sheriff O'Connor personally apologized to me and promised to fix the door."

But Figueroa said he has more than a broken door to fix.

"We're victims here, too," he said. "The children are obviously the main victims, but to be put in this situation, we're victims. And it's not fun to be a victim."

Figueroa said his support group group and his faith have helped him get through the ordeal.

"The neighbors who know me, knew it wasn't me," said the representative for several national credit unions.

"The most supportive was my wife. She had to hear me gripe, complain, cry and get very angry at times. We prayed together a lot."

A drummer who once played in a Christian rock band and continues to play at his church, Figueroa said he is just a regular guy.

"We're normal people trying to raise a 7-year-old son," he said. "I'm a Little League baseball coach, a football coach and volunteer at his school."

He also hopes the incident can lead to a better relationship among his other neighbors.

"I don't hang out with very many of my neighbors ...," he said. "We'd like to have a block party later this year and get to know our other neighbors and try to rebuild the neighborhood once all this is said and done."





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I did not see that posting before so Firefly are you telling me that you think that izzy is a CP collector so my comments to him as to how he might be able to maintain his computer privacy even from the UK government is aiding him in hiding his CP collection?

If so I will take you word for it as you had proven so correct in your charges to date and I will withdraw my offer to help him set up a secure system.

PS you might wish to also look into Bill Gate perhaps being a CP collector or at least aiding them by having his bit locker build into his newer OSs that encrypted hard drives and grant security good enough to stop law enforcement at least if he is telling the truth that there is no back door build into that combination of hardware and software.

One thing oh my another tip it is best to use open source security programs then commerce programs such as pgpdisk or bit locker for the reason of possible backdoors in the software.

Beside izzy Firefly would you also be kind enough to send me a list of all the other CP collectors who are members of this website so if they ask for help I can turn them down?

Merry Old England is a concept that exists only in the minds of vbery stupid Americans like you. As for your constitution and amendments, no thanks don't want them, I much prefer what we have over here.

There's nothing on my computer that's of any interest to the police.

I know, and he's not once shown any concern for the children. It's almost like they're just a commodity, and don't matter. He always empathises with the abuser.

Hello izzy

Well security have more uses then keeping the police out such as in having all my financial records including all the passwords to all my accounts including banking and other such accounts and taxes records for the last five years and so on are on my computers.

So it nice that I can have such information at my finger tips and yet not need to worry what would happen if for example my netbook got lost or stolen from me.

Hundred of thousands to millions of laptops go missing in airports alone every year in the US for example.

Oh well, as long as Firefly postings are implying you are a CP collector I can not in good conscious give you any details help in securing your computers in any case.

Firefly has suggested no such thing about me, you're the one who acts like a paedophile.

And you do act like one. All of your responses show you care little about the abused, and empathise with the abuser.

Odd I had not hear any concern for the children when it come to over the top police raids where children can be scare for life or when a large percents of the total black fathers in the US are taken away from black families by an insane US criminal system for decades for non violence offenses. With plenty of jail cells waiting for those fatherless children to reach the age where they to can be lock up.

No concerns for the professor, who story started this thread, children if Firefly blood lust is met and he is lock up for decades or the harm and the guilt that the coach children must be feeling for having their horse plays that the coach recorded being use to try to imprison their father for decades.

The concern for children that Firefly is so willing to expressed at a drop of a hat seem more design to try to justify her blood lust and not being any real concern for children.

LL your references to victims of heavy handed policing come as an afterthought. If you were to ask people what sort of criminal should be spared jail and given community based punishments, I doubt rapists, paedophiles and drunks whose negligence results in the death of others would be top of many people's lists.

And spare me the faux concern about the treatment of blacks, you've made your position quite clear on the Zimmerman thread.

Sure she had as she had stated that by giving informations to you and others concerning computers and internet security I am aiding all the pedophiles on this website with the statements seeming to cover you directly izzy.

I too was surprise as I alway consider you an asshole but not a pedophile asshole or that the likelihood that there was any large group of pedophiles following the postings on this website beingvery small.

Seem Firefly is telling me otherwise or there would not be the danger she is claiming in my sharing computer/internet security informations.