a question

[ksmith]

Before I search further, I'll toss out a general question. Do/Can internet cafes and other public places log the IP addresses of folks using the service and could law enforcement use that info to track/trace a person of interest? IOW, if you take off, toss your laptop over the nearest bridge and use public?

Comments

[daveamongus.livejournal.com]

Your own laptop is safer in that instance, because there's only one bit of real, hard-to-falsify bit of information that identifies it as yours, and that's what's called a MAC address, commonly known as a hardware address.

There's two scenarios here: One is that you get on at Panera, where yours is just one of many laptops in their physical location. You've got everything turned off, such as Google Desktop, that goes out and identifies you somehow to the rest of the internet (and thus pins you to an IP address at a certain time). You use only other sites that you don't provide personal information for, and you're essentially lost in the cloud of traffic from that particular Panera.

The other scenario is that you do just about anything from your laptop, or a cafe-owned PC, that identifies you and marks the time that you were at the location and the local (private) IP address that the local router provided you when you logged on. Then, in theory, all of that information is subject to subpoena and could conceivably be tracked back to you.

Part of the trouble is, this is also a somewhat cumbersome step. One of my favorite laughers in watching Law & Order is when they get an IP address for a child molester or something off an internet forum, and actually just sit down at a computer and track that IP to their location. Nope, need a subpoena, because only your ISP knows what IP address is assigned to what physical location--that's the business they're in.

So if the Feds twist Google's arm, they'll get the IP address you're logged on from. Then they have to check with ARIN or another, similar resource to find out who owns the IP, then twist their arms to find out where that IP is located and then deal with the business or homeowner or whatever at the very end.

One of the interesting things about prosecuting folks on the basis of what passed to their IP address is the concept of open wireless networks. There's a potential "reasonable doubt" qualifier in the notion that a homeowner or business has an unsecured wireless network, meaning anyone can drive up and use that node from their vehicle, or an adjacent building, or whatever.

And last I heard from the file-sharing cases, there's a question as to whether or not they can compel businesses to log activity. Some have made the argument that they don't need to log activity for the technology to work, therefore they don't keep any logs and offer the cops nothing to subpoena.

The problem with putting an APB out on a laptop is, again, that there's an issue of addressing. The only way someone who is hopping form network to network is going to be identifiable is by either their MAC address, which can be difficult to determine and hard to track, or by their activity on known sites where they provide a login or personal information.

[elmunadi.livejournal.com]

A lot of hardware out there (many if not most DSP-based NICs) are capable of changing/spoofing MAC addresses. There are software tools to enable this, and it's a known, if not overly common hack.

If you spoof MAC addresses, sanitize the device you're working from of any personally identifiable info, use TOR and/or other link-washing tools, and are ruthless about encryption (keep all tools/data in a TrueCrypt-crunched-hidden-volume on an "openly" encrypted volume), you're going to be a serious pain to anyone building a case, unless they happen to have eyewitness to you and your onscreen activities.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

All this leads me to conclude that my protag most assuredly does not possess this level of expertise. But this stuff is good to know.

[elmunadi.livejournal.com]

The scary/amusing thing is that there are tools available to novices to make most if not all of this easy. If your protag does much (if any) netsearching on anonymous surfing, the tools are plain to see and pretty easy to set up & use.

but, that said, not everyone has that specific motivation ;^)