I understand that they could look at them for many months. In the meantime, my life will go on. I don't believe there is a whole lot you can do about it. If they take too long, I will consider asking a lawyer to look into getting my stuff back but it would have to be expensive stuff to make the lawyer worthwhile. I am guessing I would buy a new PC (they did not seize this guys bank account or credit cards), I probably don't need 100 Terabytes of storage so my costs are not so bad. My message to the cops and my lawyer would be charge me or lets clear this up. There are laws to protect you from the government from taking your stuff in an unfair manner if you want to go that route. If there is a misunderstanding I will talk to the cops all they want. If I feel I need representation, I will get some. If I am really innocent, I doubt they could ask me too much that would upset me. My guess is they would rather move on in their case instead of spinning their wheels with me. I have thought it was rough on people to have all their stuff seized and I suppose you could try and collect some damages if you bought new gear while your stuff was being held (if for no reason) but I think that very often the cops seize the right stuff. I would really like a poll since we have a lot of network professionals on here, exactly how many of us have had something seized by the cops with NO CAUSE. Anybody, I would like to hear from a real life case. Sorry people...most cops want to put the right people in jail and are not trying to violate your rights. There are bad eggs but that is why we have judges. When I hear someone I don't know say they are innocent and the cops say they are guilty, I tend to believe the cop. Everyone in jail says he is innocent too. BTW - in this case, the cops have not even said this guy is guilty of anything yet. Steven Naslund -----Original Message----- From: Joe Greco [mailto:jgreco@ns.sol.net] Sent: Friday, November 30, 2012 4:49 PM To: Naslund, Steve Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: William was raided for running a Tor exit node. Please help if
OK, I get it. I think my BS detector is set to high today. I am just
really suspicious that this guy that runs an large ISP can't at least wait until there are charges before all the uproar. I think if the cops came and seized my home PCs right now I would probably give them the time to look at them, realize there is nothing there, and give them back to me before freaking out completely. I would be wondering what was going on but probably not raising a defense fund.
You do realize that it is completely common for "looking" at them to take months. This is a big thing to people in this community, because the police will happily come and confiscate the tools you need to do your job, and not return them for months, years, or sometimes even ever, even in cases where it seems fairly straightforward to identify that the person has done nothing wrong. The police, and many of the policies surrounding this issue, often assume that the party is guilty, and also assume that seizure isn't a significant professional issue. ... JG -- Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net "We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN) With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.