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https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/10/police_raid_man_for_downloading_google_search_docs/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/10/police_raid_man_for_d... is a

• tpmx 5y ago
  No, the core issue is the London Metropolitan Police being incompetent (and slow).
  • gowld 5y ago
    Not just incompetent, but callous and cruel toward the citizenry, making themselves agents of capitalist oppression.
    • jdjdu 5y ago
      How? By investigating a report of a crime, determining it was false, and releasing the guy?
      • dheera 5y ago
        There is no reason to take the guy into custard for downloading a file, he didn't do anything violent, and should be allowed to stay home as long as he cooperates with the investigation. Cooperative people accused of non-violent crimes should NEVER be taken into custody until proven guilty in a court with fair trial.
        • mellosouls 5y ago
          There is no reason to take the guy into custard for downloading a file He was definitely in a jam
        • deleted 5y ago
          [deleted]
        • jdjdu 5y ago
          >Cooperative people accused of non-violent crimes should NEVER be taken into custody until proven guilty in a court with fair trial. Uh, so if someone set fire to a bunch of homes in a neighborhood, and there's video of them doing it, but they did it knowing the homes were empty, they should just be left free until the trial is over? I'm sorry but I feel like a lot of online comments on criminal justice are very shortsighted
          • unholythree 5y ago
            A quick google search indicates arson is considered a violent crime in the US even though it is a property crime. I assume because of the high potential of injury or death. I do however agree with you that there are some property or financial crimes in which arresting a suspect would be warranted, especially if they had incentive to flee or intimidate potential witnesses.
            • dheera 5y ago
              Property crimes, yes, arrest. Financial crimes, no. Holding them hostage isn't useful or productive. As long as they are cooperative with investigation, let them be until a verdict is reached. It's too easy for governments to accuse people on a whim of financial "crimes" that aren't really crimes. That sets a very bad precedent for misuse of power. Next thing you know they'll be randomly arresting people from their bedroom for suspected tax evasion instead of auditing them. Not good for those who did follow the rules. There are real crimes, yes, but there is too much grey area and there is no danger to people or property to let financial crime suspects be at home.
        • crimsoneer 5y ago
      • denton-scratch 5y ago
        They charged him without any evidence. They were harrassing an activist. It wasn't incompetence. [Edit: the article didn't say they charged him; I was wrong] Well, that's how it looks to me, on the basis of a single report in a tech journal with a sort-of tabloid outlook. Maybe there will be more information in coming days.
        • feu 5y ago
          >They charged him without any evidence. The article explicitly says that the police did not charge him.
        • tssva 5y ago
          No where in the article does it say they charged him with anything.
          • denton-scratch 5y ago
            I'm wrong - they didn't charge him. I don't know why I wrote that - I had read the article. But they did arrest him.
            • crimsoneer 5y ago
              That's how the UK legal system works. An arrest is an investigative tool.
        • chrisseaton 5y ago
          > They charged him Eh?
          • bmsleight_ 5y ago
            A British term, means formally charged with an offence. Police compile evidence and/or arrest a person. If the Police think there is enough of a case, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decide if there is enough evidence to support a 'charge' https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/cps-says-role-cps-deciding-whether-charge-individual-criminal-offence https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/cps-says-role-cps-deciding-w... Basically Police arrest, looked at the evidence then took no action as Police decided no crime - therefore not charged.
    • ryanlol 5y ago
      There’s no reason to blindly believe every report of crime. In this case there probably wasn’t sufficient evidence on the victim’s side that any crime had happened.
• dang 5y ago
  Ok, we'll change to that from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58165478 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58165478. Thanks!
  • rexreed 5y ago
    A Title change might be good too, because like others, I thought it was Google Docs snitching on a downloader. A possibly more accurate title would be: "Activist raided by London police after downloading docs found on Google Search"
    • dang 5y ago
      Ah ok. Fixed. Thanks!
      • ChrisKnott 5y ago
        I would change "raided" to "arrested". The word "raid" is only used by El Reg and not any primary source. The account the arrestee gives in the BBC is "four police officers turn[ed] up at [my] door at 8:30" which suggests to me they just served him with a warrant and he let them in. Perhaps some people might call any execution of a warrant a "raid" but to me it suggests a forced entry.
        • dang 5y ago
          Ok, we've done that. Thanks!
• capableweb 5y ago
  > So they're name dropping Google in the title for clickbait No, Hutchinson found the documents by searching on Google for the meeting minutes. The website might have protected the place where you found the link to the meeting minutes, but the meeting minutes themselves were hosted in a directory that not only was publicly accessible if you had the URL, but also allowed Google's crawler to access it and store it. There is a slippery slope here, either way (if he gets free or if he gets sentenced), but none the less, Google is relevant to the case.
  • tehwebguy 5y ago
    Google is super relevant to the case if they identified someone who downloaded a non-protected file in response to a police request. Not sure there is any slope left to slip on, this is basically the worst case scenario already I think. Edit: Whoops, all of my assumptions were wrong!
    • denton-scratch 5y ago
      I beg to differ. I don't think Google is relevant. As far as I can see, Google provided a search-result, which eventually (after Google's batted it around internally a few times) turns into an HTTP request to the CBS website, which resulted in password-free access to a public document. So that will show up in the CBS webserver's access log; that's how they got the IP address. Nothing to do with Google. Getting from the IP address to the person is messier; websearches, requests to ISPs, and presumably searches of activist databases the cops no doubt maintain might all have played a part. My guess is the cops knew there was no case against him, because they tried the URL, and saw that there was no password challenge; but charged him anyway, because he was an activist, and they wanted to intimidate him.
      • ChrisKnott 5y ago
        He wasn't charged.
        • denton-scratch 5y ago
• zoomablemind 5y ago
  > ... the core issue is that the website didn't properly protect its data. It seems that the bigger issue is that the activist was arrested by the police on supposedly only IP address evidence presented by the company/society. Somehow the IP had to be linked to the person, probably a warrant should be needed for that too.
  • throwthere 5y ago
    That's not a bigger issue because the police simply had a warrant for the person who shared the documents. The first sentence of the article is: > A man who viewed documents online for a controversial London property development and *shared them on social media* was raided by police after developers claimed there had been a break-in to their systems.
    • zoomablemind 5y ago
      Quoting from the article: "...Hutchinson said his identification by Leathermarket and subsequent arrest raised questions in his mind, saying police confirmed to him that the company had handed over an access log containing IP addresses: "Now, how that ended up with me being in the frame, I don't know. There's part of this that doesn't add up..." ..."
  • Maxburn 5y ago
    They didn't even have that much evidence, google didn't participate in finding the defendant. He shared these docs on social media and was found that way.
• calvinmorrison 5y ago
  > So they're name dropping Google in the title for clickbait when the core issue is that the website didn't properly protect its data. The core issue is the government raided someones house for doing nothing wrong.
  • shellac 5y ago
    The police raided someone's house after a complaint. The government had nothing to do with this.
    • calvinmorrison 5y ago
      The government is entirely predicated on rule of law and the monopoly of violence imposed by police. Nice try though
• CodeWriter23 5y ago
  > So they're name dropping Google in the title for clickbait We're talking about The Register here. Clickbait is foundational to their business model.
• LeifCarrotson 5y ago
  The law must have a different definition of "password protected area" if it can be accessed without entering a password. It's like the people who get tickets for speeding or for going through a red light while their car is parked, because their street-side parking in front of their house is in the field of view of the license plate reader. They're denying a tautology! A document is not password protected if you can access it without a password. A person not in a vehicle cannot commit a moving traffic violation. However, the automated computer system which issues those tickets does not actually comprehend those concepts, or any concepts at all. It merely follows rigid rules to send an alert on access to a particular file, or to issue a ticket with to the owner of the license plate number identified by the camera when a speed sensor returns a value not less than the speed limit (eg. NaN). But who is the "they" who are denying those tautologies? As we abstract more and more to automated systems, it's important to remember that these systems are as dumb as a brick. A brick connected to the Internet and with very complicated melted sand inside, but a brick nonetheless. When decisions recommended by these bricks have significant consequences, it's important to keep a human in the loop.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• raxxorrax 5y ago
  I don't think this is name dropping and obvious that it wasn't sufficiently protected. These cases seems trivial, but they are certainly governmental abuse. In a perfect world, there would be consequences. Not for the officers but for those requesting the raid.