7 ms·

Why did they raid you?

by bapak 1y ago

BLKNSLVR 1y ago
Short version: Possibly the worst thing to be raided for: distribution of CSAM. Apparently based purely on the 'evidence' of my IP address being on some list - that's the only explanation I ever got. Funny thing is, they did so little background research they didn't even know to expect kids in the house when they raided at 6:30am. It still triggers me. This was in August 2022. I wrote pages and pages of my memories and thoughts about it, and it still makes me angry for about ten different reasons. The long version I haven't written yet and probably never will. I don't want to dwell on it, I want to get on with my life and have an even worse drama to deal with at the moment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44533637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44533637 I know I'm alive, that's for sure. I'm trying to make lemonade by the goddamn bucket load. P.S. I have written prior HN comments referring to the raid if you care enough to go back that far.
- 725686 1y ago
  In the USA? Where you can be sued if someone slips on your sidewalk? Can't you sue the gvmt?
  - toast0 1y ago
    You can sue the government, but the grounds for winning are much narrower. Meerly suffering harm from government action is not sufficient. Having property impounded as part of an investigation, pursuant to a warrant, is likely not actionable, unless there was malice involved. Using slim evidence isn't really actionable.
  - Muromec 1y ago
    Why would you be able to sue the government for conducting a search authorized by a judge? It's expected that result of some searches is "Oopsie doopsie nothing found".
    - TimorousBestie 1y ago
      It’s even worse than that, in the US police have broad latitude to destroy property, kill pets, seize any cash or assets (theoretically related to the crime, but very easy to abuse) and etc. while executing a search, with little to no recourse.
      - dylan604 1y ago
        Not just kill pets, but kill people. Even if they raided the wrong home.
        TimorousBestie 1y ago
        Yeah, it’s true.
    - colechristensen 1y ago
      You could sue if they made some major mistakes or were fabricating evidence or some other significant malpractice. It's a pretty high bar.
      - behringer 1y ago
        You can but chances are you'll still lose.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - ulrikrasmussen 1y ago
      I think it's fair to expect that the authorities must have a very good probable cause to perform a search of your home, and that any search that turned out to be unwarranted results in a big compensation and a public announcement stating that the specific police department and judge violated the right to privacy.
    - whycome 1y ago
      I'm guessing search should still happen in a way to limit damage (physical, psychological) to other parties (in this case, the kids present).
  - SJC_Hacker 1y ago
    > In the USA? Where you can be sued if someone slips on your sidewalk? Can't you sue the gvmt? Sure you can sue anybody for anything. Whether your case actually gets heard or not is another consideration. And even if it gets heard, the judge can simply dismiss it for a variety of reasons before proceeding to trial. Also, state and the federal governments have sovereign immunity and qualified immunity. Basically the government has to allow itself to be sued. True this doesn't apply to counties or cities, however there is still a much higher bar for tort even for local police. Generally if they are operatikng within the law, like executing a valid search warrant, the standard is much higher than it would be for an average citizen.
  - sleepyguy 1y ago
    The government has endless resources; you would go bankrupt unless a law firm saw a huge payout in taking your case. The system is rigged in favor of the government. They could have burned down his house and the neighbor's house, and not been responsible. Land of the free, God Bless America......
    - DFHippie 1y ago
      Also, there is almost no deterrent effect. The people who authorized or perpetrated the abuse are not punished if you sue and win a settlement. They don't even have to hire and pay the lawyers. The payment comes out everyone's taxes, perhaps with interest if the government has to pay by issuing debt. When the police abuse their power, it's the community that pays their salaries that feels the pain.
    - mulmen 1y ago
      This was in Australia but your point stands.
  - BLKNSLVR 1y ago
    Australia. We looked into anything that could be done to minimise the chances of such a thing happening to innocent parties, but the only option was to make a complaint about an individual officer. There's no (easy, obvious) way to question the system they use to determine "validity" of raids or due diligence prior to requesting a warrant, or evidence required to justify a warrant. The whole thing just felt to me like it was blindly rubber stamped all the way through because "protect the children". Pity my daughter was a child and absorbs such experiences... My son was also a child, but he's less affected by such things.
    - behringer 1y ago
      It's good for children in the US to learn early that they can't trust the police.
      - codr7 1y ago
        Same goes for almost any other country I've been to. But the US does seem to be one of the worst places from what I see online.
      - rdtsc 1y ago
        In which country can the children trust the police?
        slaw 1y ago
        China?
        more_corn 1y ago
        Japan, England
        giantg2 1y ago
        Can they? I've heard of police in Japan pinning murder cases on people they don't like. I believe there has been some reporting on this related to why thy have such high clearance rates. Don't the police in the UK still have a lot of sexual misconduct scandals?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - grokgrok 1y ago
    If your downspout is draining onto the sidewalk and turning it into an invisible ice rink...
- tastyfreeze 1y ago
  Where you actually charged and prosecuted for anything or did they just steal your gear without due process?
  - goda90 1y ago
    The latter wouldn't be unheard of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...
  - BLKNSLVR 1y ago
    They had a warrant for the raid. Or at least they showed me a piece of paper, but my mind was so thrown that I literally couldn't read it (I've never experienced such a thing before or since - I literally couldn't make out letters on the page, such was my state of shock at the time). I wasn't arrested or charged, they found nothing of what they were looking for on the multi terabytes of disks they seized. No further action other than the raid.
    - FpUser 1y ago
      Did they eventually return your gear?
      - npongratz 1y ago
        > (After 8 months they told me to pick up all my gear, they found nothing, but thanks for traumatising my kids)
        unixhero 1y ago
        Don't forget yourself, the breadwinner of the household!
- biofox 1y ago
  That's absolutely horrifying! Glad to hear you've managed to move past it, as it would have absolutely broken me. My home was searched by the police for something much less serious (buying lab equipment, completely legally), and the experience left me having panic attacks every time there was a knock at the door.
  - mrandish 1y ago
    It makes me crazy that police in the U.S. nowadays can get a search warrant permitting seizure of large amounts of valuable computer and networking gear along with digital devices certain to massively disrupt anyone's life - only from buying things which are completely legal to buy and possess. Apparently all it takes is "a suspicious pattern of behaviors" to get a judge to issue an expansive warrant. The "suspicious pattern" is often defined ad hoc by police under no objective standard and never detailed in the warrant request. Judges are really failing in their duties because there are too many cases like this happening. Depriving people of their valuable property for 8 months or more is also abusively punitive. In warrants that grant seizures of all or most digital devices, judges should require police to return the items within 30 days if they don't either file charges or go back to the judge with good cause for an extension. If police can't get around to actually looking at the evidence they claimed was so crucial in 30 days maybe it's not a high-priority crime. And if having a reasonable time limit makes it too hard to look through so much stuff, they're free to more narrowly tailor their seizure requests so they don't have so much to troll through.
    - BLKNSLVR 1y ago
      And my experience was in Australia, so the "decline of policing" has well and truly reached out shores as well. To possibly make this even more frustrating, when I was told I could pick up my gear, the detective in charge said that a few things they found flagged as suspicious: 1. I had / used virtual machines 2. I had "Tor" on my computer(s) 3. I had downloaded stuff from Megaupload Now I'm not entirely sure whether these comments were based on what they found on my seized gear, or whether these were actually sufficient 'red flags' to make them think the warrant was justified initially, but, my god, how completely out of their depth, and therefore totally unqualified, they are to make life-changing adjudications about these things - and that their access to metadata only makes it more likely that they'll make false positive mistakes (which is just terrible for society overall). I'm literally not sure what they meant by saying "you have tor on your computer", whether there's evidence of my having visited the dark web, or just having a (way outdated) copy of the tor browser saved somewhere. And I think the only things I'd ever downloaded from Megaupload were Android ROMs. Regarding Virtual Machines: I can't even... they're obviously non-technical so couldn't possibly understand, and yet... gah, I can't even...
- frumplestlatz 1y ago
  > It still triggers me. This was in August 2022. I wrote pages and pages of my memories and thoughts about it, and it still makes me angry for about ten different reasons. As someone who was arrested in his PJs at 4am due to a false accusation that the police did not investigate and for which they did not have probable cause, I feel this in my bones. $15k in legal fees, a day in jail, and three months later, the charges were dropped because, as per the DA, “we cannot in good conscience pursue this case”. No consequences for the person who made the false accusation, or the officer that enacted an arrest without probable cause. My heart still skips a beat whenever I think I hear a knock at the door or noises in the middle of the night. I’ll wake up from a dead sleep in a panic. In theory I could pursue a lawsuit against both the accuser and officer, but that feels overwhelming — I’ve just tried to move on. It completely changed the way I see the police and the criminal justice system. The process is, in of itself, punishment. I was fortunate enough to be able to afford good legal representation, and I now have a great deal of empathy for those who are railroaded by the system because they cannot.
  - BLKNSLVR 1y ago
    I'm only postulating here, but I have a strong suspicion that my ability to get past it as well I have (not perfectly, but I don't have nightmares or break into a sweat when I hear police sirens - although it does remind me almost every time) is because I had to give the impression to my kids that there was nothing to worry about; this is not a big deal; this is not traumatic and will not change the course of your life. > It completely changed the way I see the police and the criminal justice system. The process is, in of itself, punishment. One million times this. Even if it's not completely true at it's base, it's true for those unfortunate enough to have experienced this. One of the funny (?) things about it, is that most of the individual officers were nice enough people, personable (other than one inflammatory officer who should not be employed in a role that comes into contact with people), one even gave the cat a pat. It's the system / systems, and likely the perverse incentives for their monthly stats. I'm glad I didn't end up needing legal representation. The way I deal with it is to actively let it go, forgive the situation in my mind, treat it as one of those anomalous circumstances that happen every second on a global scale. Treat it as a reminder of the unpredictability of life and an opportunity to be thankful that it's not my 'normal'.
sans_souse 1y ago
I woulda just left it at "screen name checks out"
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  Yeah, BLKNSLVR came from "Black and Silver" based on some crappy piece of art I did way long ago. It wasn't until using it as an in-game handle that a friend read it out to me as "Black Enslaver" that I even realised it could read another way. I don't like that it can be interpreted that way, but I also refuse to stop using it since that's someone else's reading. The only factor I use to treat one human different from another is whether they're a jerk or not, and I have to know them well enough to work that out. I've come across a few jerks in my time, and they take many and varied forms.
  - sans_souse 1y ago
    Thank you for the explanation! I totally forgot about this, and I appreciate the clarification. Now I can read your screen name as its meant to be. Btw if I came off like a jerk - not at all my intent. My brain made the association and I couldn't unthink it

Why did they raid you?

by bapak 1y ago

Why did they raid you?

Short version: Possibly the worst thing to be raided for: distribution of CSAM. Apparently based purely on the 'evidence' of my IP address being on some list - that's the only explanation I ever got. Funny thing is, they did so little background research they didn't even know to expect kids in the house when they raided at 6:30am. It still triggers me. This was in August 2022. I wrote pages and pages of my memories and thoughts about it, and it still makes me angry for about ten different reasons. The long version I haven't written yet and probably never will. I don't want to dwell on it, I want to get on with my life and have an even worse drama to deal with at the moment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44533637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44533637 I know I'm alive, that's for sure. I'm trying to make lemonade by the goddamn bucket load. P.S. I have written prior HN comments referring to the raid if you care enough to go back that far.

725686 1y ago
In the USA? Where you can be sued if someone slips on your sidewalk? Can't you sue the gvmt?
- toast0 1y ago
  You can sue the government, but the grounds for winning are much narrower. Meerly suffering harm from government action is not sufficient. Having property impounded as part of an investigation, pursuant to a warrant, is likely not actionable, unless there was malice involved. Using slim evidence isn't really actionable.
- Muromec 1y ago
  Why would you be able to sue the government for conducting a search authorized by a judge? It's expected that result of some searches is "Oopsie doopsie nothing found".
  - TimorousBestie 1y ago
    It’s even worse than that, in the US police have broad latitude to destroy property, kill pets, seize any cash or assets (theoretically related to the crime, but very easy to abuse) and etc. while executing a search, with little to no recourse.
    - dylan604 1y ago
      Not just kill pets, but kill people. Even if they raided the wrong home.
      - TimorousBestie 1y ago
        Yeah, it’s true.
  - colechristensen 1y ago
    You could sue if they made some major mistakes or were fabricating evidence or some other significant malpractice. It's a pretty high bar.
    - behringer 1y ago
      You can but chances are you'll still lose.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - ulrikrasmussen 1y ago
    I think it's fair to expect that the authorities must have a very good probable cause to perform a search of your home, and that any search that turned out to be unwarranted results in a big compensation and a public announcement stating that the specific police department and judge violated the right to privacy.
  - whycome 1y ago
    I'm guessing search should still happen in a way to limit damage (physical, psychological) to other parties (in this case, the kids present).
- SJC_Hacker 1y ago
  > In the USA? Where you can be sued if someone slips on your sidewalk? Can't you sue the gvmt? Sure you can sue anybody for anything. Whether your case actually gets heard or not is another consideration. And even if it gets heard, the judge can simply dismiss it for a variety of reasons before proceeding to trial. Also, state and the federal governments have sovereign immunity and qualified immunity. Basically the government has to allow itself to be sued. True this doesn't apply to counties or cities, however there is still a much higher bar for tort even for local police. Generally if they are operatikng within the law, like executing a valid search warrant, the standard is much higher than it would be for an average citizen.
- sleepyguy 1y ago
  The government has endless resources; you would go bankrupt unless a law firm saw a huge payout in taking your case. The system is rigged in favor of the government. They could have burned down his house and the neighbor's house, and not been responsible. Land of the free, God Bless America......
  - DFHippie 1y ago
    Also, there is almost no deterrent effect. The people who authorized or perpetrated the abuse are not punished if you sue and win a settlement. They don't even have to hire and pay the lawyers. The payment comes out everyone's taxes, perhaps with interest if the government has to pay by issuing debt. When the police abuse their power, it's the community that pays their salaries that feels the pain.
  - mulmen 1y ago
    This was in Australia but your point stands.
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  Australia. We looked into anything that could be done to minimise the chances of such a thing happening to innocent parties, but the only option was to make a complaint about an individual officer. There's no (easy, obvious) way to question the system they use to determine "validity" of raids or due diligence prior to requesting a warrant, or evidence required to justify a warrant. The whole thing just felt to me like it was blindly rubber stamped all the way through because "protect the children". Pity my daughter was a child and absorbs such experiences... My son was also a child, but he's less affected by such things.
  - behringer 1y ago
    It's good for children in the US to learn early that they can't trust the police.
    - codr7 1y ago
      Same goes for almost any other country I've been to. But the US does seem to be one of the worst places from what I see online.
    - rdtsc 1y ago
      In which country can the children trust the police?
      - slaw 1y ago
        China?
      - more_corn 1y ago
        Japan, England
        giantg2 1y ago
        Can they? I've heard of police in Japan pinning murder cases on people they don't like. I believe there has been some reporting on this related to why thy have such high clearance rates. Don't the police in the UK still have a lot of sexual misconduct scandals?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- grokgrok 1y ago
  If your downspout is draining onto the sidewalk and turning it into an invisible ice rink...
tastyfreeze 1y ago
Where you actually charged and prosecuted for anything or did they just steal your gear without due process?
- goda90 1y ago
  The latter wouldn't be unheard of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  They had a warrant for the raid. Or at least they showed me a piece of paper, but my mind was so thrown that I literally couldn't read it (I've never experienced such a thing before or since - I literally couldn't make out letters on the page, such was my state of shock at the time). I wasn't arrested or charged, they found nothing of what they were looking for on the multi terabytes of disks they seized. No further action other than the raid.
  - FpUser 1y ago
    Did they eventually return your gear?
    - npongratz 1y ago
      > (After 8 months they told me to pick up all my gear, they found nothing, but thanks for traumatising my kids)
      - unixhero 1y ago
        Don't forget yourself, the breadwinner of the household!
biofox 1y ago
That's absolutely horrifying! Glad to hear you've managed to move past it, as it would have absolutely broken me. My home was searched by the police for something much less serious (buying lab equipment, completely legally), and the experience left me having panic attacks every time there was a knock at the door.
- mrandish 1y ago
  It makes me crazy that police in the U.S. nowadays can get a search warrant permitting seizure of large amounts of valuable computer and networking gear along with digital devices certain to massively disrupt anyone's life - only from buying things which are completely legal to buy and possess. Apparently all it takes is "a suspicious pattern of behaviors" to get a judge to issue an expansive warrant. The "suspicious pattern" is often defined ad hoc by police under no objective standard and never detailed in the warrant request. Judges are really failing in their duties because there are too many cases like this happening. Depriving people of their valuable property for 8 months or more is also abusively punitive. In warrants that grant seizures of all or most digital devices, judges should require police to return the items within 30 days if they don't either file charges or go back to the judge with good cause for an extension. If police can't get around to actually looking at the evidence they claimed was so crucial in 30 days maybe it's not a high-priority crime. And if having a reasonable time limit makes it too hard to look through so much stuff, they're free to more narrowly tailor their seizure requests so they don't have so much to troll through.
  - BLKNSLVR 1y ago
    And my experience was in Australia, so the "decline of policing" has well and truly reached out shores as well. To possibly make this even more frustrating, when I was told I could pick up my gear, the detective in charge said that a few things they found flagged as suspicious: 1. I had / used virtual machines 2. I had "Tor" on my computer(s) 3. I had downloaded stuff from Megaupload Now I'm not entirely sure whether these comments were based on what they found on my seized gear, or whether these were actually sufficient 'red flags' to make them think the warrant was justified initially, but, my god, how completely out of their depth, and therefore totally unqualified, they are to make life-changing adjudications about these things - and that their access to metadata only makes it more likely that they'll make false positive mistakes (which is just terrible for society overall). I'm literally not sure what they meant by saying "you have tor on your computer", whether there's evidence of my having visited the dark web, or just having a (way outdated) copy of the tor browser saved somewhere. And I think the only things I'd ever downloaded from Megaupload were Android ROMs. Regarding Virtual Machines: I can't even... they're obviously non-technical so couldn't possibly understand, and yet... gah, I can't even...
frumplestlatz 1y ago
> It still triggers me. This was in August 2022. I wrote pages and pages of my memories and thoughts about it, and it still makes me angry for about ten different reasons. As someone who was arrested in his PJs at 4am due to a false accusation that the police did not investigate and for which they did not have probable cause, I feel this in my bones. $15k in legal fees, a day in jail, and three months later, the charges were dropped because, as per the DA, “we cannot in good conscience pursue this case”. No consequences for the person who made the false accusation, or the officer that enacted an arrest without probable cause. My heart still skips a beat whenever I think I hear a knock at the door or noises in the middle of the night. I’ll wake up from a dead sleep in a panic. In theory I could pursue a lawsuit against both the accuser and officer, but that feels overwhelming — I’ve just tried to move on. It completely changed the way I see the police and the criminal justice system. The process is, in of itself, punishment. I was fortunate enough to be able to afford good legal representation, and I now have a great deal of empathy for those who are railroaded by the system because they cannot.
- BLKNSLVR 1y ago
  I'm only postulating here, but I have a strong suspicion that my ability to get past it as well I have (not perfectly, but I don't have nightmares or break into a sweat when I hear police sirens - although it does remind me almost every time) is because I had to give the impression to my kids that there was nothing to worry about; this is not a big deal; this is not traumatic and will not change the course of your life. > It completely changed the way I see the police and the criminal justice system. The process is, in of itself, punishment. One million times this. Even if it's not completely true at it's base, it's true for those unfortunate enough to have experienced this. One of the funny (?) things about it, is that most of the individual officers were nice enough people, personable (other than one inflammatory officer who should not be employed in a role that comes into contact with people), one even gave the cat a pat. It's the system / systems, and likely the perverse incentives for their monthly stats. I'm glad I didn't end up needing legal representation. The way I deal with it is to actively let it go, forgive the situation in my mind, treat it as one of those anomalous circumstances that happen every second on a global scale. Treat it as a reminder of the unpredictability of life and an opportunity to be thankful that it's not my 'normal'.

sans_souse 1y ago

I woulda just left it at "screen name checks out"

BLKNSLVR 1y ago
Yeah, BLKNSLVR came from "Black and Silver" based on some crappy piece of art I did way long ago. It wasn't until using it as an in-game handle that a friend read it out to me as "Black Enslaver" that I even realised it could read another way. I don't like that it can be interpreted that way, but I also refuse to stop using it since that's someone else's reading. The only factor I use to treat one human different from another is whether they're a jerk or not, and I have to know them well enough to work that out. I've come across a few jerks in my time, and they take many and varied forms.
- sans_souse 1y ago
  Thank you for the explanation! I totally forgot about this, and I appreciate the clarification. Now I can read your screen name as its meant to be. Btw if I came off like a jerk - not at all my intent. My brain made the association and I couldn't unthink it