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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Comcast has been forced to shell out $700,000 in refunds and cancel the debt of more than 20,000 Massachusetts customers after a state attorney general investigation found the company routinely jacks up consumer bills via a bevy of misleading fees. An investigation by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healy found that Comcast routinely advertises one rate, then charges customers up to 40 percent more when the bill for service actually arrives. When shocked customers then tried to cancel or downgrade to cheaper broadband and TV plans, Healy's office found they were socked with a $240 fee for violating long-term contracts. Many users were promised a locked-in rate of $99, but hidden fees and surcharges quickly left many with service plans they couldn't afford, the AG said. Under the new settlement with Massachusetts, Comcast must forgive all outstanding debts for unpaid early termination fees and related late fees, clearly disclose all fees in future advertisements, and train the company's service reps to more clearly outline billing caveats. "Comcast stuck too many Massachusetts customers with lengthy, expensive contracts that left many in debt and others with damaged credit," Healy said in a statement. "Customers have a right to clear information about the products and services they buy. This settlement should encourage the entire cable and telecommunications industry to take a close look at their advertisements and make sure customers are getting a fair offer."

alphadogg quotes a report from Networkworld: Browsing through the latest news releases from ITT Technical Institute you'd never think the for-profit school would be capable of the things that Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey says the state is suing it for. The school, which boasts of over 130 locations in 38 states, touts its efforts for women in STEM, its donation of laptops to public schools in Indiana and its record giving for United Way. But AG Healey is suing ITT Tech "for engaging in unfair and harassing sales tactics and misleading students about the quality of its Computer Network Systems program, and the success of the program's graduates in finding jobs." ITT Educational Services, however, rejected the AG office's claims and lashed out at the office for the manner in which it has brought the suit. ITT's statement reads in part: "The litigation follows the Office's wide-ranging fishing expedition that lasted for more than three years..." If the state wins, the school could be forced to reimburse students for tuition and fees, though ITT says it will defend itself against the charges.

jfruh writes: The "wild west" days of ridesharing services may be coming to an end. The governor of Massachusetts has proposed a bill that would regulate Uber, Lyft, and their rivals in the state. Among the new rules: ridesharing services would have to run background checks on their drivers and keep a roster of active drivers; vehicles would need to have some external marker indicating that they're a ridesharing car; and drivers would need to hold at $1 million worth of insurance when transporting passengers.

curtwoodward writes: Many states have laws that prevent car manufacturers from operating their own dealerships, a throwback to the days when Detroit tried to undercut its franchise dealers by opening company-owned shops. But dealers have taken those laws to the extreme as they battle new competition from Tesla, which is selling its cars direct to the public. In some states, dealers have succeeded in limiting Tesla's direct-sales model. But not in Massachusetts (PDF): the state's Supreme Court says the dealers don't have any right to sue Tesla for unfair competition, since they're not Tesla dealers. No harm, no foul.

First time accepted submitter marshallr writes "Technical Information Release TIR 13-10 becomes effective in Massachusetts on July 31st, 2013. It requires software consultants to collect a 6.25% sales tax from their clients if they perform 'computer system design services and the modification, integration, enhancement, installation or configuration of standardized software.' TIR 13-10 was published to mass.gov on July 25th, 2013 to provide the public a few working days to review the release and make comments."

Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton takes a look back at the recent Boston case where police seized a student's laptop but had to give it back. "The EFF was right to argue that police had no right to seize the laptop of a Boston College student who was accused of forging an e-mail from his roommate. But according to the judge's reasoning, the police probably could have gotten away with it, if they had appeared to care more about pursuing the student for downloading pirated movies instead." Click the link for Bennett's analysis.
On May 21, Justice Margot Botsford of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ordered police to return computer equipment that they had seized from Boston College student Riccardo Calixte in March. Police had obtained a warrant and seized the computer equipment on the basis of three alleged acts committed by Calixte: (a) forging an e-mail to a Boston College mailing list purporting to be from his roommate, Jesse Bennefield, claiming to "come out" as gay and announcing his membership on a gay dating site; (b) illegally downloading movies to his computer; and (c) hacking into the school's grading system to change grades for students. Justice Botsford ruled that on the one hand, even if Calixte had sent the forged e-mail, that did not constitute a crime, and on the other hand, the documentation supporting the search warrant had made only cursory references to the downloaded movies and the grade-hacking, not enough to support the standard of evidence required for a warrant.

The EFF was right to argue on Calixte's behalf that forging an e-mail to a mailing list does not constitute "obtaining computer services by fraud or misrepresentation" and hence does not violate Massachusetts's computer crime statutes. Unfortunately for future defendants in the same situation, the judge's ruling suggests that the court might have upheld the warrant even if the police had only pretended to care more about the alleged crimes committed by Calixte -- the hacking into the school's grading system, and the downloading of movies -- and less about the sending of the forged e-mail, which the courts found not to be a crime.

A portion of the judge's decision reads:

He [Jesse Bennefield, Calixte's former roommate and the "informant" whose tip led to the issuance of the search warrant] stated, among other things, that "he has observed Mr. Calixte hack into the BC grading system that is used by professors to change grades for students"; he also told [police detective] Christopher that "Mr. Calixte has a cache of approximately 200+ illegally downloaded movies as well as music from the internet."

The affidavit does not reveal any investigatory steps taken as a result of this January 28, 2009, conversation between Bennefield and Christopher. Rather, the bulk of the affidavit is devoted to a discussion of two email messages, apparently sent from the Google and Yahoo email services...

And later:

Moreover, although Bennefield reported this allegedly criminal conduct in late January, Detective Christopher did not seek a search warrant until March 30, 2009, two months later, and the affidavit does not reveal any effort to verify or follow up on any of the complaints, even by asking Bennefield for further details. By contrast, the claim that Calixte sent false emails is supported by two pages of detailed information, listing the steps taken to determine who sent the emails, the time they were sent, and the evidence suggesting that they were sent from Calixte's computer.

In sum, the principal focus of the affidavit was on the emails. Faced with the reality that the alleged email activity was probably not illegal, the Commonwealth now seeks to justify the search warrant, post hoc, based on an affidavit that fails to indicate either the time or the place of the criminal activity its informant claims to have witnessed, and that reflects no effort or attempt to verify the sketchy information supplied...

In other words: Even if the police didn't really care about the pirated movies and the grade-hacking, it might have helped to make the warrant stick if they had made more of a passing reference to those issues in the motion for a warrant, at least according to the reasoning expressed by the judge.

Compared to the analysis that the police conducted in order to determine whether Calixte sent the e-mails (such as looking up the records to see if the IP address was registered to his user account at the time), there's probably not much that the police could have done to determine if Calixte had downloaded any movies illegally, short of seizing his computer. Even if the campus had a log of all remote sites that Calixte had connected to, there would be no way to determine what he might have downloaded over a peer-to-peer protocol that encrypts downloaded data, as most peer-to-peer programs do.

But ironically, the fact that there is so little the police could have done to follow up on that investigation, would have made it even easier for them to create the appearance that they cared about the downloaded movies, even if they didn't! All they would have to do is say, in fancier language: "We asked the campus network if they could tell us what Calixte downloaded from various IP addresses, and they couldn't tell us anything. We asked them if they had any way of knowing what files might reside currently on Calixte's laptop, and they couldn't tell us anything." Basically: "We tried. We hit a wall right away. But we tried, and that proves we care." The warrant application as it was written, might as well have said that with regard to the issue of the downloaded movies: "We didn't try at all."

From the informant's side, the judge said that there was not enough evidence to support the issuance of a warrant because Bennefield's affidavit fails

"to state Bennefield's basis of knowledge that Calixte has in fact downloaded files to his computer, or that they are 'illegal.' Contrast Commonwealth v. Beliard, 443 Mass. 79 85 (2004) (named informant's basis of knowledge established by firsthand observation, furnished with detail and specificity)."

OK, so if you're a potential "informant" planning on ratting out your roommate, and you think that your roommate has downloaded some movies illegally, just ask him point-blank if you can see a couple of seconds of his clip of Wolverine, or some other movie in current release of which the 3,000 screens it is legally playing on does not include your roommate's laptop. Then you can "furnish with detail and specificity" the accusations that you want to make later.

So maybe the police have learned their lesson and they'll know how to get around this roadblock next time. I still wouldn't call that a tragedy for civil liberties, at least with regards to the acts alleged in this case. The EFF wisely took no position on whether Calixte actually did commit any of the acts that he was accused of, only that the police had no right to seize his equipment. But if the police can ever prove that someone hacked into their school's grading system, that person should be punished; that's not a civil liberties issue. Even downloading movies, which we tend to think of as a more victimless crime, means that for every dollar saved by someone watching a movie for free in their dorm room, the shortfall has to be made up by paying ticket buyers.

And if Calixte actually did send the forged e-mail pretending to be from Jesse Bennefield, then while the courts were correct to rule that that was not a crime, Bennefield could probably sue him in civil court, especially now that the police have done all the heavy lifting of uncovering the evidence. According to the warrant affidavit, the message to the Boston College mailing lists was sent from an IP address that had been registered to a computer with the same network name as Calixte's laptop. The e-mail also included a screen shot of a fake profile for Bennefield on the www.adam4adam.com site, and the network logs showed that an IP address registered to Calixte was the only IP address in that dorm to visit the gay dating site www.adam4adam.com in the five days prior to the e-mail being sent. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but if you had to bet everything you owned on a "Yes" or "No" answer to the question of whether Calixte sent the e-mail, which would you pick?

The EFF was right to go to court for the narrowly prescribed legal principles that (a) forging an e-mail to a mailing list does not constitute "obtaining computer services by fraud or misrepresentation" or "unauthorized access to a computer system," and that (b) vague accounts of illegally downloaded movies or rumors of hacking into a school grading system, are insufficient for the issuance of a search warrant. But that doesn't mean that the police can't overcome those obstacles next time, and it doesn't mean we should hold up Riccardo Calixte as some kind of cyber-liberties hero.

Frequent Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton takes a look back at the recent Boston case where police seized a student's laptop but had to give it back. "The EFF was right to argue that police had no right to seize the laptop of a Boston College student who was accused of forging an e-mail from his roommate. But according to the judge's reasoning, the police probably could have gotten away with it, if they had appeared to care more about pursuing the student for downloading pirated movies instead." Click the link for Bennett's analysis.
On May 21, Justice Margot Botsford of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ordered police to return computer equipment that they had seized from Boston College student Riccardo Calixte in March. Police had obtained a warrant and seized the computer equipment on the basis of three alleged acts committed by Calixte: (a) forging an e-mail to a Boston College mailing list purporting to be from his roommate, Jesse Bennefield, claiming to "come out" as gay and announcing his membership on a gay dating site; (b) illegally downloading movies to his computer; and (c) hacking into the school's grading system to change grades for students. Justice Botsford ruled that on the one hand, even if Calixte had sent the forged e-mail, that did not constitute a crime, and on the other hand, the documentation supporting the search warrant had made only cursory references to the downloaded movies and the grade-hacking, not enough to support the standard of evidence required for a warrant.

The EFF was right to argue on Calixte's behalf that forging an e-mail to a mailing list does not constitute "obtaining computer services by fraud or misrepresentation" and hence does not violate Massachusetts's computer crime statutes. Unfortunately for future defendants in the same situation, the judge's ruling suggests that the court might have upheld the warrant even if the police had only pretended to care more about the alleged crimes committed by Calixte -- the hacking into the school's grading system, and the downloading of movies -- and less about the sending of the forged e-mail, which the courts found not to be a crime.

A portion of the judge's decision reads:

He [Jesse Bennefield, Calixte's former roommate and the "informant" whose tip led to the issuance of the search warrant] stated, among other things, that "he has observed Mr. Calixte hack into the BC grading system that is used by professors to change grades for students"; he also told [police detective] Christopher that "Mr. Calixte has a cache of approximately 200+ illegally downloaded movies as well as music from the internet."

The affidavit does not reveal any investigatory steps taken as a result of this January 28, 2009, conversation between Bennefield and Christopher. Rather, the bulk of the affidavit is devoted to a discussion of two email messages, apparently sent from the Google and Yahoo email services...

And later:

Moreover, although Bennefield reported this allegedly criminal conduct in late January, Detective Christopher did not seek a search warrant until March 30, 2009, two months later, and the affidavit does not reveal any effort to verify or follow up on any of the complaints, even by asking Bennefield for further details. By contrast, the claim that Calixte sent false emails is supported by two pages of detailed information, listing the steps taken to determine who sent the emails, the time they were sent, and the evidence suggesting that they were sent from Calixte's computer.

In sum, the principal focus of the affidavit was on the emails. Faced with the reality that the alleged email activity was probably not illegal, the Commonwealth now seeks to justify the search warrant, post hoc, based on an affidavit that fails to indicate either the time or the place of the criminal activity its informant claims to have witnessed, and that reflects no effort or attempt to verify the sketchy information supplied...

In other words: Even if the police didn't really care about the pirated movies and the grade-hacking, it might have helped to make the warrant stick if they had made more of a passing reference to those issues in the motion for a warrant, at least according to the reasoning expressed by the judge.

Compared to the analysis that the police conducted in order to determine whether Calixte sent the e-mails (such as looking up the records to see if the IP address was registered to his user account at the time), there's probably not much that the police could have done to determine if Calixte had downloaded any movies illegally, short of seizing his computer. Even if the campus had a log of all remote sites that Calixte had connected to, there would be no way to determine what he might have downloaded over a peer-to-peer protocol that encrypts downloaded data, as most peer-to-peer programs do.

But ironically, the fact that there is so little the police could have done to follow up on that investigation, would have made it even easier for them to create the appearance that they cared about the downloaded movies, even if they didn't! All they would have to do is say, in fancier language: "We asked the campus network if they could tell us what Calixte downloaded from various IP addresses, and they couldn't tell us anything. We asked them if they had any way of knowing what files might reside currently on Calixte's laptop, and they couldn't tell us anything." Basically: "We tried. We hit a wall right away. But we tried, and that proves we care." The warrant application as it was written, might as well have said that with regard to the issue of the downloaded movies: "We didn't try at all."

From the informant's side, the judge said that there was not enough evidence to support the issuance of a warrant because Bennefield's affidavit fails

"to state Bennefield's basis of knowledge that Calixte has in fact downloaded files to his computer, or that they are 'illegal.' Contrast Commonwealth v. Beliard, 443 Mass. 79 85 (2004) (named informant's basis of knowledge established by firsthand observation, furnished with detail and specificity)."

OK, so if you're a potential "informant" planning on ratting out your roommate, and you think that your roommate has downloaded some movies illegally, just ask him point-blank if you can see a couple of seconds of his clip of Wolverine, or some other movie in current release of which the 3,000 screens it is legally playing on does not include your roommate's laptop. Then you can "furnish with detail and specificity" the accusations that you want to make later.

So maybe the police have learned their lesson and they'll know how to get around this roadblock next time. I still wouldn't call that a tragedy for civil liberties, at least with regards to the acts alleged in this case. The EFF wisely took no position on whether Calixte actually did commit any of the acts that he was accused of, only that the police had no right to seize his equipment. But if the police can ever prove that someone hacked into their school's grading system, that person should be punished; that's not a civil liberties issue. Even downloading movies, which we tend to think of as a more victimless crime, means that for every dollar saved by someone watching a movie for free in their dorm room, the shortfall has to be made up by paying ticket buyers.

And if Calixte actually did send the forged e-mail pretending to be from Jesse Bennefield, then while the courts were correct to rule that that was not a crime, Bennefield could probably sue him in civil court, especially now that the police have done all the heavy lifting of uncovering the evidence. According to the warrant affidavit, the message to the Boston College mailing lists was sent from an IP address that had been registered to a computer with the same network name as Calixte's laptop. The e-mail also included a screen shot of a fake profile for Bennefield on the www.adam4adam.com site, and the network logs showed that an IP address registered to Calixte was the only IP address in that dorm to visit the gay dating site www.adam4adam.com in the five days prior to the e-mail being sent. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but if you had to bet everything you owned on a "Yes" or "No" answer to the question of whether Calixte sent the e-mail, which would you pick?

The EFF was right to go to court for the narrowly prescribed legal principles that (a) forging an e-mail to a mailing list does not constitute "obtaining computer services by fraud or misrepresentation" or "unauthorized access to a computer system," and that (b) vague accounts of illegally downloaded movies or rumors of hacking into a school grading system, are insufficient for the issuance of a search warrant. But that doesn't mean that the police can't overcome those obstacles next time, and it doesn't mean we should hold up Riccardo Calixte as some kind of cyber-liberties hero.

danimo writes "In response to his letter to the Massachusetts administration, the KOffice team has written an open letter to Microsoft manager Alan Yates. It clarifies some false claims that Yates made, such as KOffice, StarOffice and OpenOffice.org being one codebase and that OpenDocument was thus never a real standard. Massachusetts has meanwhile adopted OpenDocument."

In honor of Microsoft's 30th year, Epeeist writes "The BBC is running a Have Your Say article on Microsoft at 30." From that article: "Microsoft will always adapt and buy into other areas to keep themselves at the top. They're the company everyone loves to hate." While they're reflecting, most people are focusing on the now. teslatug writes "Brian Jones, a Microsoft PM on the Office team, has just confirmed that the new default XML format of Office 12 is not compatible with the GPL. Brian believes that LGPL may be compatible, but others have raised issues about the ability to redistribute." Relatedly, shades66 writes "Microsoft's Alan Yates tripped over his own words in responding to the Massachusetts Information Technology Division's late-August declaration for OpenDocument and other open software standards." For some more colourful commentary, smooth wombat writes "John Dvorak has written an article for MarketWatch in which he postulates that the reorganization by Microsoft is actually a prelude to its breakup into three separate entities."

In honor of Microsoft's 30th year, Epeeist writes "The BBC is running a Have Your Say article on Microsoft at 30." From that article: "Microsoft will always adapt and buy into other areas to keep themselves at the top. They're the company everyone loves to hate." While they're reflecting, most people are focusing on the now. teslatug writes "Brian Jones, a Microsoft PM on the Office team, has just confirmed that the new default XML format of Office 12 is not compatible with the GPL. Brian believes that LGPL may be compatible, but others have raised issues about the ability to redistribute." Relatedly, shades66 writes "Microsoft's Alan Yates tripped over his own words in responding to the Massachusetts Information Technology Division's late-August declaration for OpenDocument and other open software standards." For some more colourful commentary, smooth wombat writes "John Dvorak has written an article for MarketWatch in which he postulates that the reorganization by Microsoft is actually a prelude to its breakup into three separate entities."

prostoalex writes "The state of Massachusetts at a meeting of state information officers adopted a broad-based strategy to move to open standards. The strategy does involve Linux among other open standard solutions, while moving away from Microsoft-based platforms is one of the decisions. State Administration and Finance Secretary Eric Kriss insisted that decision was made on technical grounds and had nothing to do with antitrust investigation of Microsoft by the state of Massachusetts."