IP addresses in criminal cases Are IP addresses enough to convict someone of criminal activity? So for instance, if someone was using their home WiFi network, which would have one IP address, then they use their mobile network which would have another IP address, would this be all that’s needed to convict someone of criminal activity if there was no proof that it was them that committed it? Or are IP addresses not substantial enough?
It depends. If the prosecution proves beyond reasonable doubt that noone else could use that IP address at that particular time then yes. But can it prove so? Maybe yes. Maybe not. Depends on the results of forensic examination of the device, network traffic, any other corroborating evidence etc.
Your kid is not in trouble; he's a minor. You're in trouble. A criminal case for the charges a prosecutor would bring, i.e. destruction of property (the data) or for a relevant cyber or computer crime (malware, etc.), and/or a civil case for damages due to the destruction of the data would both hinge on one point: the concept of intent. See intent - Wex Legal Information Institute and Civil Law vs. Criminal Law: The Differences | Rasmussen College. Did you knowingly intend to cause damage or data loss with the structure of the name? It's pretty clear you did. The structure of a name that can invoke an SQL command is not in any sense a standard name in spelling or format or punctuation. So how would you convince the jury or judge that you had no intent when you named your kid? The possible poor design of a data system that didn't sanitize inputs is no defense. Saying the door was unlocked so I assume the homeowners didn't care if I trashed their house will get you laughed into jail or on the hook for a stiff civil judgement.
I interpret the sentence &quot;intruder enters your home using the internet&quot; in the question as not as physically entering the home but as virtually entering the home, in other words hacking into the victim's home network remotely. When that interpretation is incorrect, please comment. Note that an action can only be considered self-defense when the self-defense prevents a crime currently in progress from being completed. When A hacked into B's computer and then B punches A in the face later, that's not self-defense, that's illegal vigilante justice. The self-defense argument would only work if it actually prevents the completion of the crime. For example, if A and B were in the same room, A sees B hacking into A's computer right now and uses physical force to prevent B from completing the hack (like yanking the keyboard out of B's hands). Also keep in mind that the intensity of self-defense must be appropriate for the severity of the crime. What is and is not appropriate is for a court to decide in each individual case, and the guidelines that are to be applied vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. But causing bodily harm to people when the crime they are committing does not cause bodily harm is often not considered within the limits of self-defense. For further information about what is and is not allowed in self-defense, I recommend the series about self-defense by Law Comic.
The law in every country where your service is available prevails. That means that if your servers are in Estonia, your file storage is in Lithuania, your company is in Switzerland, you are in France, you hold Thai citizenship, your users are in the USA and the signal transits through the U.K., Belgium, Germany, Canada and Poland then you are subject to the laws of each and every one of them. In addition, if China has reason to believe that the stored files contain matters relating to their citizens then they can take an interest. And so on and so forth ... A country has jurisdiction wherever it wants to have jurisdiction subject to the limits of and its ability to actually enforce its laws. What you are proposing is certainly illegal in many countries and you need to seek professional legal advice - not rely on strangers on the internet.
Using Tor is not illegal. Nor is hiding your IP address, which is - among other things - what Tor does. Going to .onion links is not illegal. What you find and interact with at those .onion sites may be illegal. See Law StackExchange Is it legal to host a directory of .onion urls? Running a Tor Relay is not illegal. That could change. Running an Exit Relay could expose your IP address as the Relay, so that could lead investigators of illegal activity to you. Read https://www.torproject.org/eff/tor-legal-faq.html.en As always, check your state laws http://statelaws.findlaw.com/criminal-laws/computer-crimes.html And do your own research with the links above and at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network) and at https://www.torproject.org/
You misunderstand the significance of the phrase "innocent until proven guilty." This is in part because you are not considering the entire phrase. The full phrase is that an accused party is "presumed innocent until proven guilty." This does not mean that the accused is innocent, only that criminal procedure must take as its starting point that the accused did not commit the crime. The major implication of the presumption, and indeed its original purpose, is that it places the burden of proof on the prosecution. This means that if a prosecutor asserts that you stole something, you do not have to prove that you did not. Rather, the prosecutor must prove that you did. The only reason to present evidence of your own is to rebut the prosecutor's evidence. Another practical implication is that a decision to detain someone awaiting a criminal trial may not be based on the assumption that the accused committed the crime. On the other hand, that decision is not based on the assumption that the accused did not commit the crime. There is a presumption of innocence, but no assumption of innocence, and the government is not obliged before the person is convicted to treat the person as if there is no accusation or charge. Wikipedia has a decent discussion. If we modify your question accordingly, it becomes How can two people be presumed innocent until proven guilty if their stories conflict? Now the answer should be clear. The prosecutor must develop evidence that shows which one of the people has committed the crime. If the prosecutor cannot do that, neither person may be punished.
That depends on several things: Do the authorities have solid evidence of what happened? Authorities in which country? A screenshot is not evidence, that would be easily faked. It takes access to the metadata. Does the country where the perpetrator lives consider it a serious crime? Note that when two people exchange such messages, who is the criminal and who is the victim can depend on the ages of both, and the exact rules of who is guilty of what may differ from country to country. There are countries which prosecute child abuse by their citizens or residents abroad once they come back. So it may be that nothing happens, or it may be prosecuted.
In the UK this is just called &quot;an appeal for the suspect to come forward.&quot; The UK police are not allowed to lie or mislead as suggested in the OP, and any reduction in punishment is in the hands of the courts when passing sentence (unlike some other jurisdictions, I believe).