SWAT team blasts into wrong home due to unprotected wireless router
One reason you should always password-protect your wireless router:
The Evansville Courier-Press reports,
Stephanie Milan, 18, was relaxing in her family’s living room Thursday watching the Food Network when a heavily armed squad of Evansville police officers arrived on the front porch.
Dressed in full protective gear, police broke the storm door of the home at 616 East Powell Ave. — the Milans’ front door was already open on the hot summer day. They also broke a front window. They tossed a flashbang stun grenade into the living room that made a deafening blast. A short distance away, a local television crew’s cameras were rolling. The police had invited the station to videotape the forced entry of the residence.
Stephanie Milan said she managed to remain calm because she knew her family hadn’t done anything wrong. Still, she was stunned and confused.
After speaking to Milan and her grandmother, Louise, police determined those inside the house had nothing to do with their investigation.
Police were executing a search warrant for computer equipment, which they said was used to make anonymous and specific online threats against police and their families on the website topix.com.
The threats were indeed specific and serious, but apparently did not come from the Milans. ”They told us that someone’s using our router that wasn’t protected to threaten the cops and it wasn’t us,” Milan told NBC local 14, Evansville, IN.
What doesn’t make sense is this: if the police took this threat so seriously as to bust into a house with grenades, and then determined someone was using that house’s wireless router, why did they not even search the surrounding houses at all? Granted, the router could have been used by a passer-by with a wireless device, but could also have come from a neighbor who has been using that router for a long time. Why does one house get blasted and the others don’t even get questioned?
Local News 7 ends its report with this moralistic note: “The Constitution does not give a person the right to make threats or use intimidation against another person.” Unless, of course, you’re on the SWAT team.
ProLibertate.com has a longer analysis.