7 ms·
My Landlord Ratted Me Out to the Cops
- chatman 13y agoCool granny with iMac. Well done, too.
- RBerenguel 13y agoI can't help but feel that since the landlord believed that the wifi was secured and the only person with the password was the tenant the only decent thing to do was actually cooperate with the police. Wasn't it?
- scotty79 13y agoThat's why he ends the story with: > I’m not even all that pissed off about it. She genuinely thought I was the only person with the password. I probably would have given me up too.
- RBerenguel 13y agoYes, but the tone throughout the story feels otherwise, don't you think? It was more like an impression of how the text felt than this actual final line acknowledging it.
- Shish2k 13y agoPissed off towards the police, yes; not the landlord
- Ntrails 13y agoIt's really the title. The story isn't about him being ratted out to the police, it's about the police officers sent not having the most rudimentary understanding of technology, and maybe a bit about the language barrier. Even knowing that the wireless network was unsecured would not have stopped them from taking his computers and the router (as there was no particular reason to think he hadn't unsecured it knowing they were coming).
- 6d0debc071 13y agoKinda - dealing with the police is, ideally, the same regardless of how good their suspicions are. You can tell your side of the story in an interview room with your lawyer there, or when it gets to court. Don't answer any questions, (unless the law requires you to,) they can lie about it later or they might misremember. Say you're not going to discuss anything without a lawyer, ask for a translator if you don't speak their language well. If they don't have a warrant (if that sort of thing's applicable where you are) don't let them into your home, (if I'd been him, I'd have met them on the doorstep to my flat with the door closed and locked behind me.) What you say can hang you, especially when you're talking to people who don't know what you're talking about.
- NKCSS 13y agoFunny story, but why wait 5 years to write it up?
- garg 13y agoWhy not?
- guynamedloren 13y agoMaybe the case just recently closed, and he can legally talk about it. Turns out the wifi had no password. :)
- sspiff 13y agoI was thinking something along the same lines, I think it's illegal to comment on ongoing investigations. The case might have been dormantly open until recently, when it was closed because of a lack of new information.
- kybernetyk 13y ago> The two cops are at the door, holding our computers. That's service. When the German police took away my computer and I turned out not to be guilty I had to get it back from the police station in the next large town. The computer was pretty much destroyed. I don't know what they do in 'computer forensics' but I assume it has something to do with slamming a hammer into the main board and playing soccer with the hard drives ...
- codfrantic 13y agoDid they replace / fix / laugh maniacally / shrug ?
- kybernetyk 13y agoThe cop I asked about what happened to the computer said something along the lines that they got it in that desolate state and they had protocols (records) to prove it. Later I asked my lawyer what to do about this. He told me it was pretty pointless to try and I should see it a 'cost of doing business for living in this great democracy'.
- codfrantic 13y agoDid not expect this is a country like Germany, all my trips Germany and interactions with Germans have been exceptionally pleasant. I've always had the idea that German government has it's shit together quite well. (Maybe that's just because the public highway rest stops are so nice in comparison to most of europe :P ) I will remember to photograph all my equipment thoroughly (including the latest newspaper in the picture) before I agree to someone taking it... Thanks for sharing!
- hwh 13y agoGerman goverment pretty much has its sh* together quite well. What has been described here shows how that is: While Germany offers a lot of freedom with "basic rights" (the constitution starts with an enumeration comparable to the Bill of Rights), there is a certain expectancy in the law that the state will not ever fail. There is no good damage compensation for damages done by the state. (We do not have punitive damages anyway here in German law, so expect to get the value of a pair of used glasses when a police officer mistakingly destroys yours.) This is a general line. You don't get much for being in jail when it turns out you've done nothing wrong. There's no "fruit of the poisoned tree" doctrine that forbids the use of proofs in court that were gotten illegally. You get basically nothing for the time that your stuff got seized when it turns out in the end (after 12-15 months typically) that you've done nothing wrong. Please come and pick up your 486 machine, we're done analyzing - otherwise we'll get rid of it (on your expense). Germany as a state grands you a lot of rights, but expects you to do your share as a citizen - like not becoming a suspect.
- fracchio 13y agoBest horror story ever.
- NetMonkey 13y agoI think this actually went pretty well. - Internet crime is reported - Police IT team tracks it to specific IP and address - Contacts owner, she says (incorrectly) the WIFI is secured with only the two people at the address having access - Regular police is sent to collect all computers at the address - When the police IT team realizes the computers weren't connected to the scam, they are returned within two weeks. The only thing that really went a bit bad is the reported attitude of the regular police officers sent to the address. Of course it would have been better to have sent someone better at both IT and english. If either of those had been different they might never have taken the computers, but the two weeks to clear things up are pretty good as government organizations goes.
- jeltz 13y agoAgreed, other than the bad attitudes everything went as it should. The police only keeping the computers for two weeks and then handing them back personally is better than I expected and shows the Danish police is professional.
- altero 13y agoTwo questions: * did police payed the damage caused by confiscating computers? It could be easily thousands euro. * crime was a few stolen theater tickets. Confiscating stuff seems like over-reaction, when bike is stolen (similar value) they do not even bother to come to crime scene.
- corin_ 13y agoAs much as I normally hate political/police over-reactions of anything because it's digital, I think it's not reasonable to make a tickets--bike comparison. They weren't there because someone stole theatre tickets, they were there because someone stole credit card numbers - which is more serious, largely because it's a lot more scalable than stealing a bike.
- altero 13y agoI think it is fair comparison. There are gangs stealing bikes, it is also frequently target to vandalism. And it is scalable to the level, that is not safe to leave your bike without lock. Also article only talks about single credit card. We should not make difference between crimes, just because one has strong bank lobby behind it.
- x0054 13y agoOpen WiFi in this day and age is kind of stupid. I have to think that with BabelFish, or what ever they had in 2008 I could secure a router regardless of the language.
- kennywinker 13y agoI'm not an expert in wifi security, but aren't most securing methods pretty hackable? In 2008, what are the odds that his landlady had a WEP router that could be hacked in 30 seconds?
- abritishguy 13y agoWPA is the default for most routers and can be considered "secure" for the purposes of a home network.
- nwh 13y agoMany routers sold use their own serial number as the WPA key though, and have a lot of the serial number in the default SSID. It's something I'm constantly telling my friends to fix.
- x0054 13y agoIt's target hardening. If you have some security, the criminals will simply move on to someone who has none.
- belorn 13y agoIt is also a bit surprising that the police force is using regular police to do technology heavy investigations. Would it really have killed the budget to send along a adviser who know the difference between a computer screen and a hard drive. Say he had been guilty. He could "given" the police the nice clean computer, while the real evidence sits on a NAS/cloud somewhere, or been encrypted, or have done anything that would confuse people who don't have a clue where digital evidence actually resides. It becomes a designed system to catch innocents, while guilty people can run circles around the system.
- kennywinker 13y agoNot only that, they let him dick around on his computer in front of them. A quick "rm -rf" would have made evidence retrieval a fair bit harder, wouldn't it?
- bjterry 13y agoNot really, rm -rf only unlinks the files, it doesn't erase the data and any computer forensic is going to look for deleted files.
- glitch003 13y agoThat's not the point. The point is that they let him touch the computer while the police were present. He could have his computer set up where if he unlocks it with a "special" password, it behaves normally while zeroing all the sensitive data in the background, for example. The point is, there's no limit to what he could do once he's allowed to touch the computer.
- VLM 13y agoNot really, at least for most filesystems. Now "cat /dev/urandom > /dev/sda &" or equivalent while stalling the cops by looking at emails on the other computer, that might be something of a problem. That's how I decommission drives and other media assuming I can't physically destroy (which I usually can and do, but sometimes it happens). Overwrite with random data. Sometimes multiple times if I'm in no hurry. Much easier if the device is in an external reader rather than being your boot disk of course. Sometimes it takes awhile. I still have scar on my hand from snapping my first glass platter. Hmm platters from this era, were always metal, yeah that's what I thought before it shattered.
- jlebrech 13y ago"the files are IN the computer?"
- jpindar 13y agoI believe you typed this in the wrong tab. This is not reddit.
- wintersFright 13y agoA good reminder to have offsite backups
- rbanffy 13y agoOnce (in 2005 or so) I was robbed, my backpack taken with my laptop inside. I was working as a consultant at the time and just got out of a meeting. I lost the last changes that weren't on the Subversion server (2005, remember). I resumed work the next day, from the slightly older/slower/noisier laptop the one in the backpack replaced. The importance of off-site backups cannot be exaggerated.
- PeterisP 13y ago"Backups" suck - it's a hassle to restore them, and due to all kinds of reasons how hardware can die, some restoration is needed every now and then. On the other hand, if all your [important] data automagically syncs on the cloud, you can take any blank computer and be productive within 30 minutes. If your everyday environment is VM's on the cloud then you don't need even that and you're good to go from any device instantly, but it's a bit too limiting for me - but keeping all data + portable executables with config on Dropbox is simple, and leaves actual backups only as emergency precaution for cases if the cloud services screw you somehow.
- wintersFright 13y agoI haven't checked Dropbox t&c's but I wonder whether backups come under its 'suitable for' uses. Ie: do they consider it a highly reliable form of storage. Personally I wouldn't trust any cloud storage with hundreds of gigabytes of family photos and movies. I have multiple disks on site and one truecrypt terabyte disk offsite which is rotated regularly. For work/code though the vm + cloud is a good solution.
- PeterisP 13y agoT&C is a fairly useless as a suitability measure of anything. Sure, I'd use another "proper" backup service - but the expectation is that I'd use Dropbox in 99% of restoration needs and the other one only in the chance that, say, Dropbox dies - which hopefully happens less often than my computers die. For personal data, Dropbox's versioning has been a lifesaver for me - if I have overwritten or changed something, I can get back also the previous versions; quite a few backup solutions don't keep the history. But for me the important data is various documents, so it's not that large - for example, I personally don't see the reason for making family videos, as even for our wedding video we just browsed through it once and haven't touched it in all the years afterwards, there's new stuff to do instead of watching old stuff.
- denzil_correa 13y agoPardon me, but shouldn't it be compulsory that if the police know they're dealing with a foreign national they speak to him with an interlocutor of his preference? I mean - why should the onus be on the accused to blurt out his rights and then do the entire merry-go-round. I'm sure it won't be that difficult to arrange for 1 English (global business language) interlocutor in Copenhagen. The onus should be on the police to allow an opportunity for explanation.
- icebraining 13y agoOn the other hand, if you're a guest in a country, shouldn't you be responsible for making sure you can understand and be understood, either by learning the language or knowing someone you can call? Personally, I think a middle term would be more appropriate - police agents should have a decent grasp of English (i.e., better than mine), and visitors to the country should know either the local language or English. An "interlocutor of his preference" seems an excessive requirement.
- _delirium 13y agoThat's usually the case in Copenhagen. I'm surprised it wasn't here. You can typically interact with civil servants (and banks, and just about anyone else) in English. Official government forms are usually available in both Danish and English (but not, as you note, in any arbitrary choice of language). Even the online citizen-service portals typically are translated. I would say Denmark is somewhat undecided what to do about language. Whether the norm should be "if you move here you must integrate", or whether it's good that Copenhagen has foreigners from all over who use English (rather than Danish) as the lingua franca, is one of the actively contested areas of Danish politics. The business sector is increasingly using English internally, and wants to put out an image to expatriates that Copenhagen is an international city where they're welcome, and where everyone speaks English. But some Danes are understandably worried about the implication that they will not be able to get a job in their own country speaking only Danish. This is already the case, sometimes de-facto and sometimes a formal requirement, for many professional jobs, but perhaps not for police. And there are also cultural worries about what it would mean if Copenhagen becomes more of an international, English-speaking city than a Danish city (Berlin has some similar cultural debates, but Germany's government and big businesses are less English-accommodating than Denmark's).
- abritishguy 13y agoI was questioned by police a year ago. I hadn't done anything and was at the police station voluntarily but after an hour I exercised my right to leave - the 2 officers knew absolutely nothing about the crimes they were meant to be investigating and everything I said was either not understood or they believed that what I was saying wasn't "how it worked". Their ignorance would be funny if it wasn't for the fact that some people have been arrested and convicted of crimes for which they were innocent of because of it.
- pellias 13y agoNote to self: Put all the stuff in truecrypt.
- tuananh 13y agoWEP is pretty much the same as open wifi.
- jpindar 13y agoLegally, a door locked with a flimsy easily broken lock is locked.
- plg 13y agoguys what's the law in the USA (and if anyone knows, in Canada) with respect to running an open wifi router? If you pay for your internet service and you leave a wifi router open, are you liable for any activity that occurs?
- dlss 13y agoIANAL, but I'm guessing no. Free wifi is too common to be the sort of thing you're legally liable for. Basically there's no way Panera would give wifi away if that were true.
- ijk 13y agoAh, but that's why Panera and Starbucks have that little click-through agreement absolving them of all responsibility.
- 6d0debc071 13y agoAs far as I'm aware, you can't absolve them of a statutory duty, you don't have the authority. You can only absolve them of things that you could bring to bear against them personally - and even then I know that contract law is complicated enough to make that a dicey proposition.
- coldpie 13y agoAs far as I'm aware, there's no precedent. You could make the argument in court, and I don't know which way it would go. In a civil case (copyright infringement), my guess would be you'd be found responsible unless you could prove through other means that it wasn't you. In a criminal case, perhaps not.
- pekru 13y agoLucky! Well, you should be glad you aren't in India! You would be in jail if that was the case. Indian police's track record in handling cybercrime is unparalleled. http://www.rediff.in/news/2008/jan/21inter.htm http://www.rediff.in/news/2008/jan/21inter.htm And the ISPs stupidity too adds to it, most of the times. *in the lines of Four Yorkshiremen.