> Huh, how is that sloppy reasoning unless you take that out of context? I don't think the EFF is saying that the IP address should never be used as information. It seems they are in perfect agreeance that if there is enough corroborating evidence in addition to the IP information, then the police can consider action.
Shouldn't it depend on the action? An IP address alone would not justify going to the location it was assigned to and arresting, charging, and holding in jail until trial the person(s) found there.
However, if the action is just to get a search warrant to search that location for more evidence, that seems OK to me. With nothing else other than that the IP address was used for some criminal activity, that is pretty good evidence that something related to the crime took place at the location the IP address was assigned to at the time.
Without first going to the ISP and filing a warrant to get the information regarding whom had that ip address its not even enough for a warrant.
If you've been following some of the recent stupidity police have opted repeatedly to just use some sort of resource to correlate ip address to physical location. This could be because this provides instant gratification or because they lack enough evidence as of yet to even justify THAT warrant.
As an example one such resource used to list a single coord for all unknown addresses in the US. This led to parties at that address dealing with hundreds of cases of unpleasant police contact wherein each officer individually learned that this address wasn't the center for criminality on planet earth. Unfortunately this knowledge didn't percolate upward.
So we aren't dealing with just proxies, tor exit nodes, open networks, many users connecting to the same router and other relatively complex matter. We are dealing with the fact that the police can't even be bothered to confirm with the ISP which customer even had that address at a given time.
In that context, without an initial warrant to gather the most basic of information IP addresses rarely are sufficient for anything at all except further research.
>>> if the action is just to get a search warrant to search that location for more evidence, that seems OK to me
So you believe based on nothing more than your IP address showing up connected to alleged criminal activity, the police should be allowed to batter ram your door at 3am, shoot your dog dead, detonate explosive in your living room, and potentially kill you if you are not fully awake instantly and follow their commands to the letter with perfect accuracy?
Because that is how the US Police force "serves" a search warrant in 2016.
Shouldn't it depend on the action? An IP address alone would not justify going to the location it was assigned to and arresting, charging, and holding in jail until trial the person(s) found there.
However, if the action is just to get a search warrant to search that location for more evidence, that seems OK to me. With nothing else other than that the IP address was used for some criminal activity, that is pretty good evidence that something related to the crime took place at the location the IP address was assigned to at the time.