Anyone who follows the slate of lawsuits against music fans is cognizant of the crucial role that IP addresses play in attempts to cow suspected file sharers. But as we have seen time and time again, IP addresses are not consistently reliable means of identifying users. Law enforcement officials and a family in Gretna, Virginia and learned that lesson the hard way after their home was searched by a law enforcement team that included Miami Heat center Shaquille O'Neal, according to a law enforcement official.

The spectre of an angry, uniform-wearing Shaq, let alone an entire team of deputies and federal marshalls would be enough to turn one's knees to jelly. That's the sight apparently witnessed by farmer A.J. Nuckols, his schoolteacher wife, and three children last month when their home was raided and their computers, DVD, video tapes, and other belongings were confiscated after they were connected to an IP address reportedly used to access child pornography on the Internet.

It turned out to be a case of mistaken identity. Nine days after the raid, an investigator told Nuckols that "the wrong IP address had been identified" and that he and his family would not be charged in the investigation. It's great that the Nuckols family is off the hook, but they now have to live with the stigma of having been the targets of a raid by law enforcement.

According to Lt. Mike Harmony of the Bedford County Sheriff's Department, the problem lay with Fairpoint Communications, the ISP for the Nuckols family. As part of an ongoing investigation into Internet trafficking of child pornography, investigators identified an IP address via which an undercover investigator was able to download child porn. The IP address was traced to Fairpoint, which was served a subpoena requesting the name and address of the subscriber using the IP address in question. "Fairpoint said that on that date and time, the IP address was assigned to the Nuckols household," Lt. Harmony told Ars Technica. "Some time after the search warrant was executed, we were notified that Fairpoint had misread the court order and done a wrong conversion on the time."

After receiving updated information from the ISP, investigators executed another search warrant on Friday, October 20. This time, they seized a PC with child pornography on the hard drive and obtained a statement from the investigation target that he had in fact downloaded and shared child porn.

The misguided raid, along with numerous other cases of mistaken online identity, raises serious questions about the use of IP addresses as identifying data. Take the music industry's crusade against file sharing as an example. Although the RIAA is reluctant to divulge how they acquire the names and addresses of those that they target, it generally begins with an IP address flagged as sharing music by a program like MediaSentry. From there, a request is made to the ISP owning that block of IP addresses to identify the account using the address at that point in time.

As the Nuckols family and Bedford County Sheriff's Department found out, ISP data is not always accurate, which poses problems for everyone involved. For law enforcement, it makes identifying guilty parties more difficult. And for those mistakenly targeted by police or the RIAA, it can result in very traumatic experiences, not to mention costly legal fees. Although the temptation to pluck an IP address of the Internet and use it as a means of making positive identification is strong, investigators need to dig deeper and use a greater breadth of data to be sure they have the right culprit.

Further reading: