Not long ago, an armed raid was carried out to serve a search warrant for kiddie porn and the suspect ended up dead:

Rebecca Hill considered her husband, Darius, "the most honorable person I've ever met."

A Marine veteran who served in the first Gulf War, the home-improvement contractor lived near Perkasie with his wife and two small daughters, a seemingly placid man with "Death Before Dishonor" tattooed on his right arm.

That he died Monday night in a hail of bullets in his upstairs bedroom during an FBI raid of their Hilltown Township home has left Rebecca Hill beyond incredulous.

"I just don't understand what happened in my bedroom for things to have turned out this way," Rebecca Hill, 39, said yesterday.

Darius Hill, 39, died of multiple gunshot wounds early Monday evening. One of the wounds was self-inflicted, Bucks County Coroner Joseph Campbell said, but it remained unclear whether that wound was fatal.

While scant information has been released about what happened in the Hill house Monday, Bucks County District Attorney Michelle Henry did confirm last night that "the federal search warrant was for the possession and distribution of child pornography."

She did not have a detailed list of what was seized but said it included computer equipment.

Law enforcement authorities did not disclose the shooting for nearly 24 hours.

The FBI refused to comment, other than to say that the shooting was being investigated internally.

Henry said that Bucks County detectives were investigating whether the use of deadly force was justified, and she confirmed that Darius Hill was holding a handgun. She would not elaborate on the shooting or what led to it.

Rebecca Hill was present only for the outset of the raid and has gleaned few bits of information. She said she knew of no involvement by her husband in child pornography.

The search-warrant application remained sealed yesterday.

Kiddie porn is of course a criminal offense, but it is a possessory one, and when I read about anyone dying during the execution of a search warrant, I'm always a bit suspicious. The problem with possessory crimes is that anyone can put anything anywhere.

For example, someone could break into your house, stuff a bag of heroin under your couch, and unless you found it, you'd have no way of knowing it was there. And it wouldn't have to result from a burglary; if you threw a party, a guest could leave anything anywhere, and even assuming you're a good housekeeper, drugs can be awfully tiny and difficult to spot.

Things on your hard drive might be even more difficult to spot, especially if you did not put them there, and did not know they were there. It might surprise many people to know this, but if you use your search feature (START> Search>Files or Folders), and simply enter *.jpg or *.gif, you'll see an incredible number of images that you never deliberately downloaded. That's because the cache feature can cause them to be downloaded automatically, and in theory, they stay on your hard drive forever. (Even if "deleted," they can be recovered.) Annoying porn popups can leave x-rated images on the hard drives of the most prudish people.

But let's return to the invader who gets into your hard drive. What's really creepy is that unlike the situation of someone who might leave drugs in your house, he doesn't have to get inside. He could be anyone -- a total stranger simply "piggybacking" onto your WiFi signal, and downloading (or uploading) illegal images and files to his heart's content.

The Inquirer had a piece about this today, and the implications are ominous:

For law enforcement, tapping into wireless accounts is the latest way in which child pornography can evade the reach of the law.

"I think we are going to find more and more of it," said Delaware County Detective David Pfeifer, who is with the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force.

Computer users, he said, do not often take the extra step to secure their wireless Internet routers, leaving their accounts vulnerable to Internet theft from outside the home.

Delaware County District Attorney G. Michael Green said there were more cases where child pornography was being downloaded by criminals using wireless service registered to another person. "That technique is a real concern," he said.

And it can also become a real problem for the unsuspecting wireless owner. The person who downloaded the pornography is gone, and it is the registered owner of the wireless account who is left to answer police questions.

Technically, "the account holder is responsible for the crime," said Detective Sgt. Gordon Samartino of the New Jersey State Police ICAC in Hamilton, where there have been a few cases involving the use of unprotected wireless to access child pornography.

"The search warrant ends up at that house," he said.

I mean, like, that's totally unfair! Didn't the founding fathers say something about how we're supposed to be safe from unreasonable search and seizure?

Saying "the account holder is responsible for the crime" is like saying that the homeowner is responsible for a crime committed by a burglar.

Apparently, that's precisely what they're saying:

Actually using an unprotected account is "piggybacking."

"Wardriving is like walking through a neighborhood and writing down the addresses," said Kevin Watkins, a researcher at McAfee, a computer security company. "Piggybacking is where it changes. Piggybacking is like entering the house."

It is not easy to detect someone piggybacking on your account, Watkins said. The service may be slower if the unauthorized user is downloading large files.

"Another way is if the feds knock on your door to see if the illegal activity is coming from your computer," Watkins said.

I also see an issue of unequal protection, because I don't think they're going to conduct armed raids against governments and large espresso coffee house chains which host free anonymous "hot spots":

Another concern for those who try to police Internet crime is "hot spots," where anyone can anonymously use open wireless accounts, such as cyber cafes, hotel lobbies and libraries.

Rob D'Ovidio, an assistant professor at Drexel University, says such places are "a great haven" to launch criminal activity.

If you don't like it, they'll say you should have secured your WiFi signal.

Which is, of course, good common sense. But failure to secure a signal is not a crime, nor should such a failure give rise to criminal culpability (nor should it furnish probable cause for a potentially deadly search warrant) for crimes committed by someone else -- any more than the failure to lock a front door or a car door should give rise to liability for a hit and run accident, or a murder committed in the house.

This is all part of an increasing trend of preemptive law enforcement. It's tough to go after the guilty parties, so the idea is to frighten potential crime victims into doing as they're told under the belief that if they don't, they share in the guilt. It might be bad idea to fail to secure a WiFi connection, but it is not a crime, nor should it be.

Of course, this tendency is not limited to computer piggybacking. There are legislative efforts in many places which make it a crime not to lock your car (because it might be "attractive" to criminals). If you don't lock your car or your house, of course, you're a stupid fool. Just as you'd be a stupid fool to walk the streets of Philadelphia wearing the Hope Diamond. But failure to take precautions against crime is not criminal behavior.

Unless you believe in the idea that all victims are somehow guilty of aiding and abetting the criminals.

UPDATE: Here's Glenn Reynolds today:

They told me that if George W. Bush were re-elected, clueless cops would be confiscating computers willy-nilly. And they were right!

Police in Denmark confiscated the computer belonging to the guy who does the Rottin' in Denmark blog. They accused him of using a stolen credit card to buy stuff online. The blogger explained that he has an open WiFi access point, and that anyone can use it. It took them a long time to figure that out, but they took his computer (and his room mate's computer) anyway.

Rottin's account of the police visit is funny. But it also makes me wonder if I should close my open WiFi network. I don't want cops taking away my computer.

I guess we should be glad we don't live in Denmark where police can just seize your stuff because bad guys messed with it.

But the logic of this escapes me. If someone steals someone's credit card and uses it on my computer, I don't think that should allow the cops to take my computer away, because I didn't do anything wrong. I mean, suppose someone steals my credit card. Should that entitle the cops to confiscate my wallet?

If a car thief steals my car and uses it in a crime spree, do the cops get to take my car away too?