Fusion
Cops are raiding the homes of innocent people based only on IP addresses
Internet Protocol (IP) addresses can be incredibly useful for a police investigation, but they can also lead cops astray.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) wants police officers and judges to be more careful in how they use IP addresses, thinking of them as helpful clues rather than a smoking gun. “Police too often take IP address information to mean that a person associated with an address is the party who committed a crime,” write EFF lawyer Aaron Mackey, technologist Seth Schoen, and Executive Director Cindy Cohn in a white paper aimed at courts and cops. “For many reasons, connecting an individual to a crime linked to an IP address, without any additional investigation, is irresponsible and threatens the civil liberties of innocent people.”
This is Why the FCC's New Net Neutrality Rules Could Disempower Communities of Color
Out of 1.2 trillion Google searches in 2012, Trayvon Martin was the ninth most searched event. But the unarmed black teen who was fatally shot in Florida may have never become a household name if it wasn’t for Twitter, Facebook and the blogs that kept his story in the news until it reached a national level.
Now black and Latino network neutrality advocates say it will be much harder, and maybe even impossible, to catapult stories like Martin’s to a national level if new Federal Communications Commission ‘fast lane’ rules are implemented.
Internet neutrality advocates (or activists who believe that all Internet traffic should be treated equally) say a similar media experience like Trayvon Martin’s would be harder to replicate if the FCC’s new rules are implemented.
“It’s really a freedom of speech issue and the right to speak freely and the FCC is basically turning control over to the Internet service providers so they can determine who gets to speak and who doesn’t, they’re the ones will end up determining if they speed or slow down your content,” said Joseph Torres, a senior director at Free Press. "The FCC chairman plans to deliver a gift for ISPs, who are among the most powerful and profitable corporations in the world, at the expense of muting the most vulnerable voices in our society," Torres said.