On Thu, 16 Apr 2015, Bob Scofield wrote:
On 04/16/2015 08:28 AM, Chris Jenks wrote:
Connecting isn't controlling. Instead of being scared you could do
like me and just leave your wifi wide open and not worry about it.
Excessive worry about security has been draining the life from people
in every area of my life.
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Here's one reason I'm in the excessive worry camp. As a legal research
and writing attorney for criminal defense lawyers, I have worked on
several search warrants for child porn. I even worked on one case where
the San Jose Police Department thought it worth their while to travel
through five counties to execute a warrant in Vallejo.
If someone downloads child porn through your wifi connection, there's a
good chance that the police will search your house and seize all of your
computers. And while child porn searches might not be as messy as
others, some search warrant executions can leave a house in shambles.
Some police agencies, when preparing to obtain a child porn search
warrant, will stand near the suspect's house to see if the wifi is
secured. In my opinion this is done so that, if the connection is
secure, the police can eliminate a defense at trial. I seriously doubt
that the existence of an unsecure connection would prevent the police
from obtaining the warrant.
Search warrants for computer equipment always contain a request to hold
the evidence for a longer period of time to give the police a chance to
do a full examination of the hard drives. So dealing with a search
warrant can be a hassle even if you're innocent.
Bob
I'm sure this does happen and that it could happen to me, and that sure
would be a hassle. But it seems like the right way the police should be
doing things is to determine who is downloading the pornography through
the wide-open wifi and THEN execute their search warrant. If I secure my
wifi to prevent being the victim of injustice, then I'm just pushing the
injustice off onto other people. It's not wasted time and effort in my
book, if I have to go through hassles and trials, for our government to
see that there is a better way to do things for everybody. This kind of
philosophy is what got me excited about open source in the first place.
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