

Police Track Down Drug-dealer via WoW - garply
http://kokomoperspective.com/news/local_news/article_15a0a546-f574-11de-ab22-001cc4c03286.html

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whyenot
All this effort to track down someone accused of a victim-less crime who had
already left the country and posed no future harm to people in the US. Yet, we
have Nigerians terrorists flying around with explosive underwear. Somehow it
seems like our priorities in the US are a little screwed up.

~~~
natrius
All this effort to track down Nigerian terrorists flying around with explosive
underwear, which, including related attack vectors, threaten a couple of
thousand lives per decade, when ~50,000 people die each year from car
accidents.

Yes, our priorities are screwed up.

~~~
joeyo
All it means is that we consider intentional killings worse than accidental
ones and that biases our priorities accordingly.

~~~
natrius
Which is screwed up. A premature death is a premature death. Preventability is
independent of intention. I think it'd be easier to prevent a few thousand car
accident deaths a decade than it would be to eliminate terrorism. A rational
society would focus its effort on saving the lives that minimize effort per
remaining productive lifespan.

~~~
joeyo
Whether it is rational or not, I don't know. It very well may be that society
is optimizing an objective function quite different from the one that you
claim it should.

Consider the emphasis that our legal system places on the criminal mind (
_mens rea_ ) which is often necessary for something to be a crime. If we
really weighed all deaths/crimes equally than we could dispense with intent
and only consider the act itself.

~~~
natrius
_"It very well may be that society is optimizing an objective function quite
different from the one that you claim it should."_

What is it optimizing for? Shouldn't it be intentional, and therefore
apparent? If we're willing to throw so much money at saving so few lives, I
don't see how it can ever make sense to allow lives to be lost that could be
saved more cheaply. Sure, defending against terrorism helps to prevent
property losses as well, but I still don't think we come out on top.

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drewcrawford
> “I did a search off the IP address to locate him,” said Roberson. “I got a
> longitude and latitude. Then I went to Google Earth. It works wonders. It
> uses longitude and latitude. Boom! I had an address.

Wait, what? How can you get house-accurate geo coordinates from a (presumably
dynamic) IP, without contacting the ISP in question? I thought the police got
a warrant for this?

~~~
ramchip
He probably used a Visual Basic GUI interface.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU>

~~~
drewcrawford
Yeah, but this isn't TV. A guy actually got arrested on this "evidence".
Granted, they had his billing address, but I would imagine the defense will
have an opportunity to lampoon the police on the stand.

~~~
epochwolf
They just used the information to find his location and have him deported to
the US. There was already a warrant for this guy's arrest.

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dangrossman
It's a little concerning that Blizzard responded to a politely worded request
with billing information, IP addresses and screen names.

~~~
petewarden
It was a politely worded _subpoena_ at least, which indicates he'd gathered
enough evidence to convince a judge in California, even if it had no legal
force in Canada. I doubt they'd extend the same cooperation to J Random
Stalker asking about his ex-girlfriend, but I agree it's still a bit
worrisome.

~~~
kingkawn
Jurisdiction here means that Blizzard could've sent back a politely worded
request asking for a more legal binding order. But its bad PR if a police
investigation is slowed by them and then the dude axe murders somebody, so
they probably cooperated out of self-interest.

~~~
dmoney
It should also be bad PR if they give out their customers' information when
they don't legally have to.

It's also possible they didn't realize the subpoena wasn't legally binding.

Edit: They didn't just give out his info to the police: somebody gave his
character name to the press. Near the top, it says "(WoW Armory listing for
Hightower's character)" which links to [http://www.wowarmory.com/character-
sheet.xml?r=Bladefist&...](http://www.wowarmory.com/character-
sheet.xml?r=Bladefist&n=Rastlynn)

~~~
kingkawn
Pothead Level 80 Shaman's everywhere should be quaking in fear.

------
henrikschroder
I'm mostly annoyed at the sensationalist headline, this has got nothing to do
with the game itself. They knew their suspect used a service provided over the
internet by a company based in California, and used that to track their
suspect. The article actually doesn't say how, but I'm guessing they knew his
US ISP and address, and sent that in their request.

Oh, and the company happened to be Blizzard, and the service happened to be
World of Warcraft, but that's completely irrelevant, it could have been any
service, and it's not like the police officers played the game, so the claim
that the law reached into the game is completely false.

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
Sensationalist? Hardly. Since it was only through his WoW gameplay that they
managed to track him down, the headline was entirely factual and relevant.

~~~
henrikschroder
The HN headline was good, the actual headline was "Long arm of law reaches
into World of Warcraft" which is sensationalist, and untrue.

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NathanKP
I'm all for catching a drug dealer but it seems unethical for Blizzard to
willingly give up one of their players' information. As the article said "they
didn't have to respond". Instead they choose on their own to give up the info.
That doesn't make me trust Blizzard. Of course, I'm not a drug dealer so I
have nothing to fear, but still, they seem a little loose with information
about their users.

~~~
DrJokepu
The guy has agreed to it when he signed up for the service. It's in the terms
and conditions of World of Warcraft:

Blizzard may, with or without notice to you, disclose your Internet Protocol
(IP) address(es), personal information, Chat logs, and other information about
you and your activities: (a) in response to a request by law enforcement, a
court order or other legal process; or (b) if Blizzard believes that doing so
may protect your safety or the safety of others.

Personally, I see nothing wrong with that. It's not the job of Blizzard to
provide help for criminal suspects on the run.

