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I'm more bothered by the idea that the architecture of the Internet would be turned into a "get out of jail free" card. Unless your attacker is completely incompetent, the only evidence you'll have is an IP address; if you can't use that then you have nothing.


I hate to parrot quotes as an argument, but I feel like this one is appropriate here: "Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" - William Blackstone (various others have said it over the years with "ten" replaced by some other value, usually even higher than ten)

Given that having your computers and data seized is already punishment for a lot of people, possibly significant and life-altering punishment, I think courts should be damned careful about allowing police to take that action. I've known people who's businesses have been destroyed by computer seizure. And I've known people who have only gotten their computers back years later (which effectively is the same as "never", because computers have a relatively short shelf life), despite no charges ever being brought against them. My business probably wouldn't currently be destroyed by the loss of all of my personal computers, but it would certainly be a very serious hardship, far beyond what I feel would be just punishment without a trial. And, seizure of all of my servers (including the ones where the backups are stored) probably would very nearly destroy my business and cost me tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost sales and data.

A search is one thing, effective theft of my means of putting food on my table is something altogether different, and I think police ought to have to have a pretty damned good reason for taking away my livelihood for an indeterminate period of time.




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