Of course, they may have just asked all the authorized users, and had each of them deny it.

Or they could... check the logs, pull the IP, get a warrant, and get the account/ address associated with that IP.

This is basic stuff.

They got a warrant. Judges aren't going to issue a warrant based on asking a bunch of people if they sent a message.

That's just a fancy way of saying "speculate," and judges don't seem to object.

We should see when the warrant application becomes public.

Yep, often followed with "based on my training and experience".

Which is just a fancy way of saying "this is what the other cops in the lunchroom reckoned", and judges don't seem to object.

Don't have to wait, they updated the linked article with more details.

As I figured, they got her IP address from the logs.

Judges routinely issue warrants just because the good ol police officer man says it's totally ok and he'll get a nice lollipop for doing it.

My point is just because a judge issues a warrant doesn't actually mean anything at all. It has the same factual basis as me saying the sky is actually made of M&M's and judge granting a decree that it must be true because I said it.

There was grave misconduct in the Taylor case! Police shouldn't routinely be assaulting homes with weapons drawn. My issue is just the process you're describing here.

"They got a warrant. Judges aren't going to issue a warrant based on asking a bunch of people if they sent a message."

Judges absolutely issue warrants all the time just for the hell of it. The very up parent seems to be indicating that some sort of due process was done because "oh, a judge issued a warrant" and I'm emphatically stating: a judge issuing a warrant means as much as me saying the sky is made of M&M's - just the ravings of irrelevant madmen in the face of actual facts.

Edit: I will say - the warrant process should absolutely be adversarial. Justice is to be blind. Which means if a crackhead and a cop come to a judge and requests the legal authority to break into a home with lethal force, the judge should weigh both requests the same. That's the intent of our legal system - the executive does what it thinks it's supposed to do in light of what the legislative has passed, while the judicial watches them to make sure they don't screw up.

Instead they all get together as buddies and stomp their collective boots into the skull of their fellow citizens.

A good way to prosecute your side of this argument would be to point out any country in the world that has an adversarial warrant system and how well it works. I'm unfamiliar with any. Much of Europe doesn't even have the exclusionary rule, meaning that evidence of crimes obtained under false or broken warrants remain admissible.

If your argument is simply that most police shouldn't be armed, you'll get no argument from me.

On the destruction of evidence, this one has always baffled me - so is there evidence or not? Presumably when I go to a judge saying I need the legal authority to kill some babies at 3 AM because otherwise the evidence will be destroyed... I have enough evidence to justify killing those babies, right?

... So this begs the question... Why do I need authorization to kill babies at 3 AM? In case the suspects destroy more evidence? What was my evidence to kill babies to begin with? Just a hunch? Because a judge should absolutely shit on that, and it should be adversarial. A judge should laugh when evidence for a warrant request is "oh, I need the warrant because they'll destroy the evidence for me to request this warrant."

From my rough observation of the news for the past 20 or so years, the evidence of these crimes these babies died to protect has never been worth it. Maybe you know of a few where the death of a few babies were worth it because the crimes were so heinous. Every time I'm aware of - it's just been drugs, which could have been done in daylight hours, with no dead babies.

Now maybe this is your point about unarmed police. I'm not sure. But a warrant tends to be a fuck ton of latitude (as I've said in prior comments - judges just hand them out like candy), so just send in cops who want to kill with their bare hands and you'll get the same result, in my opinion.

I agree I'm being extreme, but that's where we are today. We tried the whole "let's just all get along and try to fight crime together" method, and it turns out cops will just lie to judges and go kill kids. This isn't me doing a slippery slope "what if" scenario. This has already happened. A bunch of times. Too many times in my opinion.

So now it's time for us to take away everyone's toys until they can show us they can all be good.

Be specific. What country has better rules regarding warrants than the US? This should be easy, because it seems hard to believe that we could be the best country in the world at this process. Then we can go look at how that country handles things, in specifics, and learn something.

Basically, I'm saying I don't trust cops because they kill 1,100 people a year. That's it. That's my whole argument. Just 1,100 lives. Every year.

You're saying that's not relevant to what we're talking about and let's look at how European countries seem fine with their more lax evidentiary protocols, legal systems, and trusting cops. Even though their cops only kill 50 people a year (at equivalent population rates).

I really don't have a "better" warrant system to propose other than an adversarial one because at the end of the day I don't trust cops, and you're advocating for a legal system that intrinsically does. This is me saying "hey, blue is actually yellow" and you saying "no, blue is blue." Our perceived realities are too far apart.

I'm not interested in your feelings about the police killing people, because I share them, and there's nothing for us to discuss about it.

I am interested in the provenance of warrants, because they're central to the actual story we're commenting on.

Basically you both are in violent agreement, I think.

I’m pretty sure this is the case in most if not all US jurisdictions. You have to pass police Academy and annual or at least somewhat regular proficiency, physical, and written tests to ensure you are competent.

It not like you can just get hired as a cop because you have a cop friend.

The point of licensing is to bypass the CBA; the state can revoke a license --- for reasons other than "failed an exam" --- and having done so, the local department cannot retain the officer regardless of the results of labor arbitration.

This is something Illinois is working on right now, at the behest of the Lightfoot administration, though I haven't seen much news on progress. It's a big deal.

A judge does not have the power to grant a random private citizen the right to break into someone else’s home, with or without legal force, under any circumstance. Even a court order to allow breaking into your own property, say to evict squatters or tenants, would involve law enforcement. The judge can’t just deputize you like it’s the Wild West.

No. They have to convince a judge who is neutral in the matter. They have to have probable cause the criminal activity has/is occurring at the stated location the warrant is requested to be issued for. And the officers are under oath for this process, yet we see very few repercussions for a breakdown in this process. The affiant is open to persecution for perjury. The officers in the Taylor case lied by listing her and two others on the warrant. [0]

It's not an adversarial process, it's one of fact based decision making. Why would the judge blindly trust or mistrust the officer? The judge should trust the facts being presented are true, but that doesn't constitute a rubber stamp. And, as stated, if said officer lies about that evidence they should be prosecuted appropriately. Facts are often questioned to ascertain validity, that clearly did not happen in her case.

[0] https://www.wave3.com/2020/05/12/breonna-taylor-shooting-war...

But to me, the more important question is "what are the ramifications for subverting the intended warrant process"? It seems that both sides here are arguing that the warrant process should be based on veracity and proportionality, and it regularly isn't. So what process oversees and corrects the rubber-stamping of warrants?

But merely broken (if not fraudulently obtained) warrants aren't a basis for excluding evidence, because of the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule.

What do you imagine is the point of having one? It's to hold police accountable and Judge if what he/she being told is potentiality total BS.

[0] https://www.wave3.com/2020/05/12/breonna-taylor-shooting-war... [1] https://www.wisconsinrightnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09...

Maybe go reread it.

"The connection with Glover is an important piece in this puzzle. The narcotics investigation was not just going after Glover, but several people believed to be involved in a drug trafficking ring. Police had reason to believe that Breonna Taylor had been involved because they believed that packages were being delivered to her apartment which Glover picked up and he said that she was in possession of several thousand dollars that belonged to him." [0]

This is readily apparent in the warrant.

And another, just to clarify. [1]

[0] https://clashdaily.com/2020/08/report-breonna-taylor-extensi... [1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/09/04/report...

From NPR: "The purpose of the raid on Taylor's home was to find evidence linking her to an ex-boyfriend, Jamarcus Glover, a convicted felon with a history of drug trafficking, according to court documents.

Police didn't find any.

Now it appears prosecutors attempted to tie Taylor to a life of crime after her death." [0]

Now color me sceptical, but that appears to be an interesting argument if she's not a target as you continue to incorrectly posit.

Please top spreading misinformation.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2020/09/02/908625259/prosecutors-plea-of...

I do wonder how much of the response to this post just begins with the assumption that red states are incompetent. If this had happened in a blue state no doubt the comments would be different. On the internet it's all ideology all the time.

Comcast has this weird system that allows users to open their WiFi AP to other Comcast customers, in return for the ability to hop on to any other "open" Comcast AP.

AFAIK, Comcast made it opt-out.

So, someone could have driven by to use her AP specifically in order to implicate her.

I have multiple VLANs at home, and I only have one WAN IP.

for what its worth: claims to have tested and says they are different public IPs

If you have some simple logging and a foolish "hacker", it's a pretty trivial investigation.

It is also a trivial piece of data to plant. Given the facts, I see no particular motivation for her to have sent the message. However I do see a motivation for the department to try to frame her. And they've already established a willingness to make stuff up.

And I'd also want to know more about the setup. What is the machine used for? What else is on it? How is the logging set up?

Given the general incompetence shown, I wouldn't be surprised if the machine needed to provide ingress is also one that is publicly accessible for downloading data from the public. With lots of stuff in unlogged POST requests. If so, they could indeed have a request from her close in time to when the message was sent. And it might be legitimately hard to figure out whether she was doing something authorized or not.

Our plea bargain system is so lopsided that 97% of criminal charges end with a guilty plea without a trial. Even if she is 90% sure of winning at trial, unless she has a million dollars lying around and a deathwish, it STILL isn't worth it to fight the system.

I first looked into this after Aaron Swartz's suicide. Every time I've looked since it has seemed even more broken.

This is bad news for anyone who cares about justice. And good news for any authorities who are trying to target someone that they don't like.

If we're discussing police charging into houses of people accused of nonviolent crimes armed to the teeth, we're on the same page. But otherwise, I'm not clear what your suggestion is here.

Look at what happened to Aaron Swartz. If he lost at trial, he was facing a lifetime in jail. They were also seeking damages that he had no hope of paying because his finances had already been drained by the legal fight. A legal fight that was projected to cost over a million dollars more than already spent.

Or he could take a plea bargain. Which would have put him in serious debt, in jail for a few years, and made him a life-long felon.

Or he could commit suicide. Which, of course, he did.

In that surprisingly typical example, if his odds of winning were 90%, on average he spends as much time in jail if he chooses to fight. Which he couldn't afford to do. And you still have to accept that chance of losing your whole life in jail.

In that situation, I'd probably have accepted the plea bargain. No matter how much I believed myself to be in the right.

Given those incentives, it is somewhat surprising that 3% of people do choose to fight. But then again, that's down in the range of the portion of the population with serious mental illnesses.

You wrote other things, and I'm sorry I didn't read them carefully, because I'm a nerd and a human and I can't get past "a lifetime in jail". I'll try to revisit later and respond to them, and wouldn't want to suggest my not responding to them is an indication that they aren't good points.

That was before they added nine more felony counts on September 12, 2012. As techdirt said at the time in https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120917/17393320412/us-go..., the theoretical amount that he could have been put away for was 50+ years with a fine of up to $4 million.

That's the lifetime that I was talking about.

The fact that they were seeking a far lesser conviction, didn't stop them from throwing around those figures. And I'm sure that Aaron Swartz had to think about those numbers.

Incidentally Aaron Swartz wasn't even the first programmer to commit suicide while being prosecuted by a team including Stephen Heymann. That dubious honor goes to Jonathan James in 2008.

All of this notwithstanding, the important point is this. For most of US history, plea bargains were illegal. The way that they now railroad people into pleading guilty en masse demonstrates that they should still be illegal. And the fact that our plea bargaining system is so lopsided means that the right to a fair trial is more theory than practice.

As a double check on that, consider https://innocenceproject.org/bad-drug-test-leads-to-wrongful.... Widely used roadside drug tests that are inadmissable in court have been found in practice to be wrong more than 1/3 of the time. And yet, 90% of people charged wind up accepting the plea bargain.

The state literally has no evidence that they can present in court. And knows that a lot of those people are actually innocent. But they all get railroaded.

Welcome to justice, American style.

https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc...

35 years is a "whale sushi sentence". You have multiple ways of knowing it's false, if you dig in: again, Swartz's lawyer, the prosecutors own statements, and a straightforward reading of the sentencing guidelines (2B.1).

A particularly important detail of how sentencing works: charges group. The press releases often imply that you might serve time on every count, but in reality, in almost all circumstances, you serve the sentence associated with the most severe count.

The TechDirt article makes the same mistake. TechDirt has gotten better over the last few years; Mike Masnick got tight with the Ken White / Popehat scene, and I assume they get feedback now on legal stuff. But that article is exactly the kind of thing what White is talking about when he says that the media bears some culpability in people's misunderstanding of how sentencing works.

To be clear: all I'm litigating is whether Swartz faced a "lifetime" in prison --- or, for that matter, any double-digit-years sentence whatsoever. I'm not qualified to evaluate the sentencing guidelines, but my layperson read of the guidelines results in Swartz facing 1-2 years if he'd been convicted on everything. You shouldn't take my word for it at all, but do note that my reading lines up with what Swartz's attorney said as well.

Still, the fact that prosecutors seek to create this confusion in the general public makes it likely that they seek to create it in defendant. And stressed out people who should know better often wind up with bad conclusions because stressed out people under pressure don't think well.

That said, Swartz's attorney told Swarts that they would be seeking 7 years. Your lay reading may say that they wouldn't get it. But the gap between what you hear from different sources is extreme. And once you're in front of a judge, I don't trust courts to do the right thing.

Swartz had excellent counsel, federal criminal defense attorneys understand the sentencing guidelines the way we understand singly-linked lists.

I agree, strongly, that there is a massive power disparity between ordinary defendants and prosecutors. But I'm going to gingerly venture that you can't gauge the magnitude of that disparity by the number of cases that plead out. Some component of that is power imbalance, but the greater component of it is that law enforcement generally prosecutes lay-up cases. Many years of reading and listening to Ken White, who is no friend of the DOJ, leads me to believe this is even more true with federal prosecutions.

See https://www.texastribune.org/2017/03/07/report/ for how there is only one county in the country that actually double checks drug tests after someone has plead guilty. The result is that the one county alone manages to exonerate more people each year than the next three states combined.

There is no reason that I know of to believe that Harris County has an abnormal number of people wrongfully convicted. They are only unusual in figuring that out and turning them free later.

This is very likely not true according to his very good attorney. He felt that there would be no custodial sentence, and that losing the case was not likely.

It doesn't take a ton of expertise to set logging, most web services log access by default.

Warrants do not require evidence, just a signature.

The system is Internet-exposed. Even proving the user is in the country that you think they are is nontrivial.

If you run an internet exposed service and you log IP addresses and have the ability to issue a warrant, it is entirely trivial to trace a request back to a specific house.

There are a lot of ways to obfuscate your IP address, but if you don't know how to cover your tracks, it's easy to get caught.

Having an IP address alone is not generally probable cause enough to get a warrant, because they are regularly rotated, and shared, across geographic areas. And that's assuming nothing proxying that connection at all.

It might not be enough to convict her, it is enough to get a warrant. While they do rotate, ISPs do this with law enforcement a fair amount and I'm pretty sure they keep track of who owns which IP at any given moment.

> And that's assuming nothing proxying that connection at all.

A clever knowledgeable person would proxy, most people wouldn't know how. This is why I said it would be a foolish hacker. It's also possible someone else tapped into her wifi and did it. Or maybe there was no IP.

I'm just suggesting what is the most obvious piece of evidence which a judge would accept to grant a warrant here.

Find out the ISP that owns the address, ask the ISP what customer it was assigned to at the time in question, and while that doesn't tell you who was using it for the particular accesses you are investigating (it could be anyone in the house at the time, or someone outside using that house's WiFi, or someone from anywhere in the world using malware installed on a computer in the house), it does tell you that that house has a decent chance of having relevant evidence, and that will probably be enough to get a warrant to go look for that evidence.

That does not negate the fact that an ISP can trivially correlate a time-stamped IP addr with a specific user.