Invasion of privacy by law enforcement using shareaza le

[marvinr]

Any google search for shareaza and law enforcement will reveal that the police have a customized version of shareaza called shareaza le, that basically allows anyone using it to make a direct connection to your computer and access your files without you even knowing it. How many Shareaza users are comfortable with allowing the police to access their computer at will at any time without their knowledge? This is big brother plain and simple and I think most people who know this, and the fact that shareaza uses a database that maps your ip address to city and street, are going to be having second thoughts about using shareaza.

[raspopov]

Obviously Shareaza is used for user's filesharing and it's absolutely unimportant that some users are policemen or astronauts.

[marvinr]

When I said that law enforcement is allowed direct access to your computer I do not mean in the same way as with the normal shareaza client. Shareaza le is designed to allow access to any shareaza user's file system without their knowledge, and to permit stealth downloading of any files found. It is like the police having a skeleton key that gives access to your house and property anytime at will.
There is also the issue of every user's ip address mapped to a city and street. What that means is that when shareaza is used, every file that you exchange can be traced back to you. If you are ok with this lack of privacy, good for you! But police entrapment does exist, more than ever nowadays, and shareaza users are exposing themselves to potential serious trouble

[raspopov]

[marvinr]

what it means is that while you are using shareaza, unbeknownst to you, a cop could be scrutinizing all your files, whether you have shareaza set to allow viewing of shares or not. Also it is possible that he or she might have access to your entire hard drive, and be able to retrieve personal information that might be used against you. Also, if the aim is entrapment, there is no reason to believe that illegal files will not be planted on your computer

[raspopov]

[marvinr]

I am assuming from your answers that you know nothing about shareaza le. Since Shareaza is open source, it is possible a private contractor hired by interpol or the FBI or some other law enforcement agency took the original Shareaza source code and modified it to suit their purposes. This version of Shareaza is not available to the general public which is why I can only speculate about its capabilities based on statements made by police departments that have used it.
I do not want to imply that the developers of the original shareaza are involved in the creation of shareaza le, but at the same time it was developed, the original Shareaza client added a tracking feature that maps ip addresses to geographic location, which seems suspiciously complementary to what shareaza le does.Given these facts, can I trust Shareaza as a safe client for file sharing?

[raspopov]

[old_death]

marvinr, they might be using some modified version of Shareaza with those capabilities, but unless somebody were to install their Shareaza fork on his computer instead of the genuine Shareaza, they couldn't access his file system beond what he specifically shares with the enabled filesharing networks.