I notice you completely ignored my point about prefetching and wget.
I'm not sure what you're "guaranteeing" will happen, wind.
I am guaranteeing that the FBI will start confiscating computers belonging to people who have open WiFi access points, and raiding the houses of grandmothers who are paying for the Internet connections of their grandkids, and the like. Just like what has happened with the RIAA lawsuits.
There is a pretty big difference between being sued civilly by the RIAA and having a search warrant executed on your property...
Don't feign stupidity. You know damn well what my words mean.
Probable Cause is all that is needed to obtain a search warrant, not conclusive proof. Granted that, the FBI knocking on your door at dawn and seizing all your stuff is a pretty serious intrusion into privacy. Judges issue search warrants, and on an individual basis, not the law enforcement agencies. If and when this link scheme started to get out of control and failed to produce people collecting child porn, I would have to think that Judges would stop risking signing the search warrants because Probable Cause of criminal activity would cease to exist.
That's extremely naive, for the following reasons:
- Many judges - perhaps most judges - are stupid.
- The "probable cause" doctrine is extremely weak. Judges have accepted anonymous phone calls, strange odors, and "suspicions" as sufficient bases to justify arrests and searches.
- The FBI only needs the approval of one judge to get a search warrant - any judge, be it at the federal, state or local level. They can choose which judge to ask for a search warrant, and if rejected by one, nothing stops them from making the exact same request to another.
- The War on Drugs has conclusively demonstrated that judges are willing to issue search warrants for idiotic reasons.
- The War on Terror has conclusively demonstrated that judges are willing to issue search warrants for idiotic reasons.
- The War on Drunk Driving has created a huge body of legal doctrine which basically says that the cops are always right.
- Contrary to your assumption, there isn't a review process to make sure that these search warrants are accomplishing anything.
- Federal judges are political appointees. Political appointees are notoriously ideological.
Its not as if the FBI now has carte blanche to go knocking down the front door of anybody who clicks on a link.
Are you not paying attention? If this story is true, the FBI
does have carte blanche to bust down the door of anybody who clicks on the wrong link.
I'm not very familiar with the exact legal definition of entrapment, but as I understand it entrapment only occurs when the government tempts someone into committing a crime when they would have otherwise not done so.
I don't
care what the legal definition of entrapment is. What the FBI is doing is Stupid and Wrong, regardless of what the law says.
I think the tendency here is to overreact and assume that the worse is about to happening and the FBI is knocking down the doors of innocent people who had no idea they just clicked a link to child porn, but honestly we know almost nothing about how this thing was structured, and even if it is true to begin with.
That's called "presumption of innocence," and yes that is my tendency.
