
My Landlord Ratted Me Out to the Cops - SanderMak
http://thebillfold.com/2013/09/my-landlord-ratted-me-out-to-the-cops/
======
NetMonkey
I 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.

~~~
altero
Two 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_
As 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
I 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.

~~~
kbar13
? You can't make purchases anywhere with a bike.

~~~
aroch
It's pretty easy to sell bikes...We have several specialty bike stores around
here and if you walk in with a decent road bike in good condition you can walk
out with $500 easily.

------
kybernetyk
> 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 ...

~~~
bluedino
The exact same thing happens in the US. About 2 years after your equipment is
confiscated, you get a letter stating that you can come get your stuff within
the next 6 days or they are going to auction it off. So you've got to spend
the gas to make a 2 hour drive to wherever they took your stuff, and then
everything will be broken anyway. It's obsolete by now. And it's all covered
in evidence stickers that don't peel off but at least give your case some
'street cred'. They always manage to break the case in about 5 places and the
hard drives always come back DOA.

And it used to be they didn't have an Mac monitors, keyboards or mice, so
they'd take ALL your Mac stuff. But for a PC they just take the tower.

~~~
specialist
Do you know if renters / home owners insurance covers confiscation and
destruction of computer equipment?

From your perspective, your computers have been stolen.

------
RBerenguel
I 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
That'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
Yes, 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.

~~~
Ntrails
It'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).

------
abritishguy
I 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.

------
belorn
It 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
Not 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?

~~~
VLM
Not 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.

~~~
glitch003
That'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.

------
denzil_correa
Pardon 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
On 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.

~~~
darklajid
No.

Unless you make that a legal and well-known requirement for residence in a
country, that's just not okay. Do I agree with the general idea, that 'guests
in a country' (i.e. foreigners with a working permit) should learn about the
local culture, the language? Sure.

But

\- the author claims that he knew some danish. Learning the local language to
flirt, order a beer and talk about the weather isn't the same as defending
yourself in a legal case

\- you need the translator anyway for short-term visitors that you want to
charge (unless you ask people to learn the language before they go there as a
tourist)

I'm speaking from the perspective of someone that worked in Tel Aviv for a
year. I cannot speak Hebrew (well.. words, stupid phrases. I cannot speak a
coherent sentence). That's unfortunate, since I tend to like the parts of the
language I know. Languages are just .. hard, for me. Learning a language while
you're working full time is worse. Being shy about using it -> even worse. The
idea that a cop would've expected me to defend myself in Hebrew is .. a
nightmare.

Frankly, if I'd be charged in London I'd ask for a German translator. I think
antirez wrote an article (during that 'accent' discussion) recently that
struck home: Even if you know a foreign language, you're often limiting
yourself to the same topic. Smalltalk in English? Why not. Talking tech stuff?
Sure thing. But I wouldn't try to argue with a cop just like I wouldn't feel
comfortable discussing arts or doing pillow talk in that language.

~~~
icebraining
Well, I did say you could have someone to call; in your case, you could have
the number of a German translator who you'd call if you were to be arrested.
My question is mostly whether arranging for that translator should be the
police's responsibility or the foreign national's.

------
wintersFright
A good reminder to have offsite backups

~~~
PeterisP
"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
I 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
T&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.

~~~
wintersFright
Don't tell your wife this :)

------
pekru
Lucky! 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.

------
NKCSS
Funny story, but why wait 5 years to write it up?

~~~
guynamedloren
Maybe the case just recently closed, and he can legally talk about it.

Turns out the wifi had no password.

:)

~~~
sspiff
I 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.

------
jlebrech
"the files are IN the computer?"

~~~
jpindar
I believe you typed this in the wrong tab. This is not reddit.

------
tuananh
WEP is pretty much the same as open wifi.

~~~
jpindar
Legally, a door locked with a flimsy easily broken lock is locked.

------
plg
guys 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
IANAL, 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
Ah, but that's why Panera and Starbucks have that little click-through
agreement absolving them of all responsibility.

~~~
6d0debc071
As 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.

------
x0054
Open 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.

~~~
mcherm
> Open WiFi in this day and age is kind of stupid.

Why? I genuinely want to know. What harm is there if my WiFi is open? Is there
a danger that someone will use up my bandwidth? (I don't really care.) Is
there a risk that evil [child pornographers / terrorists / whoever it is we
hate this week] will use my open WiFi connection and thus be completely
untraceable (which they could never have achieved without my assistance)?

~~~
rquirk
If your IP is traced to images of child abuse then you will at the very least
have a lot of explaining to do. Is it really worth running the risk of someone
using your open wifi for this?

Firesheep is another example of why not. If you use WPA then even plain http
traffic is encrypted from your computer to the wireless router. If you have
completely open wifi then the traffic between your computer and the router is
in the plain for everyone to inspect freely.

------
chatman
Cool granny with iMac. Well done, too.

------
pellias
Note to self: Put all the stuff in truecrypt.

------
fracchio
Best horror story ever.

