5 ms·

This might be a very naive question (I know nothing about these things) but is it possible that a piece of information obtained by such illegal means could be u

This might be a very naive question (I know nothing about these things) but is it possible that a piece of information obtained by such illegal means could be used to aid an investigation without using it as evidence in a court?

nikcub 13y ago
That is what I think they must be doing, but practically it must be difficult to work. For eg. Anonymous hack a child porn site and dump the database, which they send to police. I can't see an easy way how the police can use that information without it coming up in court as to how they got the lead in the first place. If they were to subpoena that persons email account or apply for a search warrant, the probable cause would need to be something that the police discovered independently. The database would be a good source of leads, which would have to be worked separately. It is very possible for something to go wrong. Everybody needs to know about Operation Ore: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ore http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ore US feds sent a database of users of an online payments service that was servicing child porn sites to police in the UK. What was lost in the communication, or what the US feds didn't know, was that the same payment service was also being used by legal or legitimate adult sites. The UK police treated each user as a child pornographer, and made 3,700+ arrests out of the 7,000+ suspects. Most of these people were innocent, and the dragnet caught up teachers, lawyers, police officers, etc. and resulted in 33 suicides. It took these people a very long time to have their names cleared, and most have never recovered.
- jacquesm 13y ago
  > Most of these people were innocent, and the dragnet caught up teachers, lawyers, police officers, etc. and resulted in 33 suicides. It took these people a very long time to have their names cleared, and most have never recovered. I'll bet some of them even had nothing to hide. If you just take into account the fall-out from this particular incident (which should have led to a few more heads to roll) then that alone is an excellent reason why dragnet style surveillance is a really bad thing. It leads to a large number of false positives and those in turn will have very negative real world consequences for innocent people that would have otherwise been able to just continue to live their lives. Law enforcement should be done with the scalpel, not with the blunt end of an axe.
  - thecodeore 13y ago
    "it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer" -- Ben Franklin... Today it seems the government believes it is better for 100 innocent persons suffer than to allow 1 guilty to escape....
    - icebraining 13y ago
      Yeah, back then hey just convicted really guilty people, like escaped slaves.
      - pgeorgi 13y ago
        And today they would also hang some of the slaves that didn't flee under the assumption that they might try to escape at some point as well... (and it's possible that they did in the past - the cited passage wasn't law) Slavery was a grave error of that time. But it doesn't devalue the other, unrelated principles of yore as presented in that Ben Franklin quote of the GP.
      - veidr 13y ago
        Yeah yeah, and witches, too. But the fact that, centuries ago, non-whites and women weren't considered Persons with a capital P still doesn't negate the fact that the USA has abandoned its most important foundational principles (rule of law, fundamental and inalienable civil rights, freedom of speech) over the past 12 years.
        icebraining 13y ago
        12 years, you say? Where was the rule of law and fundamental civil rights when 80 000 citizens where sent to internment camps based solely on the nationality of their parents? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment
        veidr 13y ago

nikcub 13y ago

That is what I think they must be doing, but practically it must be difficult to work. For eg. Anonymous hack a child porn site and dump the database, which they send to police. I can't see an easy way how the police can use that information without it coming up in court as to how they got the lead in the first place. If they were to subpoena that persons email account or apply for a search warrant, the probable cause would need to be something that the police discovered independently. The database would be a good source of leads, which would have to be worked separately. It is very possible for something to go wrong. Everybody needs to know about Operation Ore: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ore http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ore US feds sent a database of users of an online payments service that was servicing child porn sites to police in the UK. What was lost in the communication, or what the US feds didn't know, was that the same payment service was also being used by legal or legitimate adult sites. The UK police treated each user as a child pornographer, and made 3,700+ arrests out of the 7,000+ suspects. Most of these people were innocent, and the dragnet caught up teachers, lawyers, police officers, etc. and resulted in 33 suicides. It took these people a very long time to have their names cleared, and most have never recovered.

jacquesm 13y ago
> Most of these people were innocent, and the dragnet caught up teachers, lawyers, police officers, etc. and resulted in 33 suicides. It took these people a very long time to have their names cleared, and most have never recovered. I'll bet some of them even had nothing to hide. If you just take into account the fall-out from this particular incident (which should have led to a few more heads to roll) then that alone is an excellent reason why dragnet style surveillance is a really bad thing. It leads to a large number of false positives and those in turn will have very negative real world consequences for innocent people that would have otherwise been able to just continue to live their lives. Law enforcement should be done with the scalpel, not with the blunt end of an axe.
- thecodeore 13y ago
  "it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer" -- Ben Franklin... Today it seems the government believes it is better for 100 innocent persons suffer than to allow 1 guilty to escape....
  - icebraining 13y ago
    Yeah, back then hey just convicted really guilty people, like escaped slaves.
    - pgeorgi 13y ago
      And today they would also hang some of the slaves that didn't flee under the assumption that they might try to escape at some point as well... (and it's possible that they did in the past - the cited passage wasn't law) Slavery was a grave error of that time. But it doesn't devalue the other, unrelated principles of yore as presented in that Ben Franklin quote of the GP.
    - veidr 13y ago
      Yeah yeah, and witches, too. But the fact that, centuries ago, non-whites and women weren't considered Persons with a capital P still doesn't negate the fact that the USA has abandoned its most important foundational principles (rule of law, fundamental and inalienable civil rights, freedom of speech) over the past 12 years.
      - icebraining 13y ago
        12 years, you say? Where was the rule of law and fundamental civil rights when 80 000 citizens where sent to internment camps based solely on the nationality of their parents? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment
        veidr 13y ago