Thoughts from a lurker:
I believe that it is important for all of us to resist the use of flawed
statistics, whether it's used to prosecute the innocent or the guilty.I believe
that it matters how we gather and use evidence.I believe that it is important
for the means to justify the end result--the ends cannot be used to justify the
means.
I know this runs the risk of allowing a guilty person to go free. But our
justice system is built on the principle that it is better to presume
innocence, rather than guilt. And there is no guilty person in the world who
can perfectly and completely cover their tracks. Invariably, one can build up
enough evidence in other ways to make a case, if one exists.
All of that said... I do not believe that we are obligated to help. Obligation
is a strong word. Some of us here have the knowledge to try and assist. Some of
us do not (and I'm in the latter category). There are no employees; nobody is
being paid; everybody is a volunteer. That means any sense of obligation must
be left to an individual's sense of morality or code of ethics. Which, yes,
means that sometimes an invalid warrant may pass unquestioned, if only because
nobody with the knowledge is available to question it. That's life in a
volunteer organization.
If I had the knowledge, I would step up. Unfortunately, I do not. I will
support those who do step up, and I will not condemn those who do not.
 -Lance
On Monday, July 25, 2016 12:03 PM, Steve Dougherty <steve at asksteved.com>
wrote:
Hi Hayley,
To make sure it's clear, this is a publicly visible mailing list.
I assume you've seen the news post about flawed surveillance techniques?Â
https://freenetproject.org/news.html#20160526-htl18attack It goes over our
understanding of attacks used by law enforcement and why they appear to be
heavily fundamentally flawed. If we can help elaborate on parts of it please
let us know. The attacks we are aware of included information about how far
away the request probably originated; (Hops To Live - HTL) you didn't mention
that, and without it the attack is even less accurate than the effectively
entirely inaccurate thing it already is.
As a non-profit organization running an open source project, we don't currently
have employees, hence the lack of a phone number. You may be able to find
someone in the community willing to participate; if this is the case I think
it is we've been following it with interest for a while now. Could you please
elaborate on what is involved in reviewing the search warrant, reviewing the
police report, or being an expert witness? Would this be an attempt to
invalidate the search and suppress evidence acquired with it?
Now addressing others on the list: I note an ethical dilemma here. It may well
be that the accused is guilty of the things they are accused of, and
invalidating this presumably-mistaken search warrant would allow them to go
free. That said, do we want to resist the application of flawed statistics in
prosecuting Freenet users? I'm leaning toward probably. Selectively assisting
in fighting search warrants that seem invalid also seems unethical. Are we
obligated to help?
- Steve
On Mon, Jul 25, 2016, 2:33 PM Hayley Rosenblum <hrosenb1 at slu.edu> wrote:
Hello,
I am a law intern at Rosenblum, Schwartz, Rogers, & Glass, P.C. in St. Louis,
MO. As a criminal defense firm, we have recently been hired for a Possession of
Child Pornography case. According to the police report , a special investigator
began running copies of Freenet that had been modified for law enforcement to
log the IP address, key, and date, and time of requests that were sent to these
law enforcement Freenet nodes which were then compared to keys of known child
pornography. The special investigator observed an IP address routing/and or
requesting suspected child pornography file blocks. The special investigation
noted that the number and timing of the request was significant enough to
indicate that the IP address was the apparent original requester of the file.
We have doubts about the legitimacy of this based off some brief research we
have done on Freeness and how it works. Is there anyone I could contact to
discuss having a Freenet employee/specialist to review the search warrant and
police report and/or potentially hire as an expert witness. If so, how much
would you charge for that?
Any information or further contacts would be great. I didnât see a phone
number on the website, so I figured iâd start with an email!
Thank you,
Hayley Rosenblum
Law Intern
Rosenblum, Schwartz, Rogers, & Glass P.C.
rsrglaw.com
hrosenb1 at slu.edu
office:Â 314-862-4332_______________________________________________
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