oops, wrong address
October 22nd, 2006 | by jg3 |As a computer professional, I have seen several cases where problems were caused by “slipping a digit” or “fat fingers” typing out the wrong number.
As a network security professional I deal daily with the effects of having millions of insecure computers connected to the Internet. Few know better than I the havoc and danger that situation could impose. In my office we regularly and offhandedly contrive plausable situations where clever exploitation of the Internet as it stands today could have a significant impact on real — offline — life as we know it. And usually these theories don’t require any huge physicist brainpower, just a little malice and the patience required to put together a model train.
So I am doubly horrified when I read about a bungled investigation in which a wrong IP address brings real-life horror to innocent people. Americans. In America.
It causes the public, the real people who would presumably benefit the most from a well-wired society that works cheaper, faster, and more efficiently to ask Do ‘computer police’ have too much power?
I was held at gunpoint, searched, taunted, and led into the house. I had no idea what this was about. I was scared beyond description.
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My wife and I were interrogated about Internet crime. … we do not even e-mail.
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Our home was searched by a para-military search-and-seizure team.
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At 5:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 2, the chief investigator of Pittsylvania County returned our possessions and said that the wrong IP (computer) address had been identified. We would not be charged.
Think about it.
Filed under: Computers, Politics, Security, The Internet
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