> If you run an internet exposed service and you log IP addresses and have the ability to issue a warrant, it is entirely trivial to trace a request back to a specific house.

Having an IP address alone is not generally probable cause enough to get a warrant, because they are regularly rotated, and shared, across geographic areas. And that's assuming nothing proxying that connection at all.

> Having an IP address alone is not generally probable cause enough to get a warrant, because they are regularly rotated, and shared, across geographic areas.

It might not be enough to convict her, it is enough to get a warrant. While they do rotate, ISPs do this with law enforcement a fair amount and I'm pretty sure they keep track of who owns which IP at any given moment.

> And that's assuming nothing proxying that connection at all.

A clever knowledgeable person would proxy, most people wouldn't know how. This is why I said it would be a foolish hacker. It's also possible someone else tapped into her wifi and did it. Or maybe there was no IP.

I'm just suggesting what is the most obvious piece of evidence which a judge would accept to grant a warrant here.

It might not be enough to get an arrest warrant, but it could be enough for a search warrant.

Find out the ISP that owns the address, ask the ISP what customer it was assigned to at the time in question, and while that doesn't tell you who was using it for the particular accesses you are investigating (it could be anyone in the house at the time, or someone outside using that house's WiFi, or someone from anywhere in the world using malware installed on a computer in the house), it does tell you that that house has a decent chance of having relevant evidence, and that will probably be enough to get a warrant to go look for that evidence.

Yes IP addrs are shared and rotated, etc.

That does not negate the fact that an ISP can trivially correlate a time-stamped IP addr with a specific user.

Is this merely an assertion or do you have evidence to back up that this isn’t enough for probable cause? I believe a whole lot of people have been served search warrants due to ISP logs.

An ISP log contains more than just an IP address, they contain customer information as well. And to obtain that log the ISP either has to cooperate, or the police have to get another warrant. The IP address by itself isn't enough to get the warrant to raid a house.