An unprotected wireless router nearly leads to an innocent victim being arrested and labeled a sex offender.
SARASOTA, FL - Malcolm Riddell awoke at 6 a.m. one day last year to some of the most heart-sinking words a homeowner can hear: "FBI, open up."
When he did, a dozen armed FBI agents swarmed through the lawyer's lofty Palm Avenue condo in downtown Sarasota. They held him against the wall, separated him from his wife and then questioned him on the porch looking down 12 stories onto Sarasota Bay.
Riddell says he was not nervous or scared, just clueless. The FBI agents searched through his computer equipment for a while, then made it all clear: child pornography images were flowing through Riddell's wireless Internet connection.
Riddell's unprotected(unencrypted)wireless router put him in the middle of a child pornography investigation that would eventually lead to a man who admitted possessing and sending 10 million illegal files from a boat in the Sarasota marina below Riddell's windows.
"How in the world could that be?" Riddell said. "We started discussing the possibilities."
The agents cleared Riddell that June morning of any suspicion. But for a short time, Riddell faced accusations of a felony crime that can lead to decades behind bars and a lifetime designation as a sex offender.
As the FBI searched his home, Riddell learned first-hand the dangers of leaving a home wireless router unprotected without a password, and open for others to jump on and use his Internet service.
But the dangers became clear when the FBI convinced Riddell to let them put a tracer on his router to see if they could catch the person using the screen names "Hardalone243," "Hardpedo" and "Hard_foryou68."
"At that point there were six people on my router," Riddell said. "We didn't know which one was the guy."
The FBI had been tracking "Hardalone243" since September 2009, but needed help identifying him, according to a special agent's affidavit filed in federal court.
Agents say they eventually tracked the images back to Mark Brown, 52, who was arrested Sept. 30 on a boat, "Aloan at Last."
Brown worked as the captain of the yacht, moored in the Sarasota Marina within view of Riddell's building. FBI agents say Brown used several unsecured, non-password protected wireless networks near the boat.
In interviews after his arrest, Brown told investigators he had more than 10 million files of child pornography photos and videos on his computer. Brown remains in custody while awaiting trial on a federal child pornography charge that could result in decades in prison if convicted.
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