Saying You Have An Open WiFi AP May Not Help You Beat Child Porn Charges

Legal Issues

from the what-would-matlock-do dept

CNet had a slightly bizarre story Wednesday as part of their regular series looking at the intersection of technology and the judicial system. A federal appeals court recently rejected the appeal of a Texas man convicted on child-porn charges, who’d argued that the fact that he had an open WiFi access point that anybody could access made the original search warrant for his home invalid. There are some strange parts to this tale. The case began when a woman in New York reported getting some child porn sent to her over Yahoo Messenger, and the FBI traced the sender back to an IP address from Time Warner Cable in Austin, Texas. The ISP gave up the name on the account using that IP, and a search warrant for the account holder’s house was executed, and child porn was found in the account holder’s part of the house. The man argued that the warrant should be invalid because the open AP meant one of his roommates or somebody outside the house could have sent the images that sparked the investigation — and indeed, the Yahoo account was registered under the name “Mr. Rob Ram”, and one of the guy’s roommates was named Robert Ramos.

While there would seem to be room for some doubt in all of this, the appeals court rightly noted that the level of proof needed for a warrant is much lower than that needed for a conviction, and the fact that child porn was sent from his IP is a reasonable basis to issue the search warrant. This case would appear to have some slight parallels to some of the RIAA’s cases against file-sharers, where it simply goes after whoever holds the ISP account without making any effort to identify the actual copyright infringer. This idea of secondary liability isn’t standing up for the RIAA, but it’s a little different than what’s being argued here. The charges against this man weren’t based on what was sent from his ISP account; rather the FBI used that as the basis for an investigation that resulted in charges based on materials found in the guy’s house. The RIAA, of course, doesn’t really bother so much with the investigation part, preferring instead just to hit anybody they can with a lawsuit. One more twist to the child porn case: the guy entered a guilty plea to the charges, pending the outcome of this appeal. Arguing that you shouldn’t have been caught, and not that you didn’t do it, probably doesn’t help your case much.