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Cops Bust Starcraft Clan
I spoke with Patrick Barnes, identified as the lead member of the clan. He's a Comp. Sci. major, and I can tell from the sound of his voice that he likes the material (he finds it easy).
The way Patrick described it to me, there was a technical glitch in uploading the website -- I'm still not sure exactly how this happened, but apparently they contacted the wrong server. Anyway, whatever happened, it got the attention of someone at Kent State. The students with their names on the clan site got letters in the mail saying they were to have a meeting with their Resident Director in two days.
On the day of that meeting, it was cancelled. Then, on Thursday, the cops (campus cops, apparently) came to one of their dorm rooms, and confiscated a computer and CDs. Everyone in the clan was taken to the station and individually questioned about what it was, what it meant, whether they were hackers, who was the "leader," and so on.
The confiscated computer is having its hard drive copied and analyzed for evidence. According to Patrick, it might be returned tomorrow, or, as the law allows, not for a year.
Patrick was the only one of the members I spoke with who was willing to talk at any length. He predicted the other members of the clan would be more worried than he, and he was right (their lawyer had told them not to talk about it). I hope in a few years they can look back on this as simply a surreal trip into the land of university cops who don't understand gaming.
I'll hand the conclusion over to this story's submitter, Effugas, who asks:
"Instead of simply laughing and moving on, what can we, as a community do to prevent these kind of occurances in the future? Would something as simple as a confidential 'reality check' group of experts, made available to law enforcement as consultants, be helpful? Would a set of guidelines, peer reviewed by the community, be useful? Instead of cursing the darkness, how can we praise the light?"
Kent State University was placed in an international spotlight after a tragic end to a student demonstration against the Vietnam War and the National Guard on May 4, 1970. Shortly after noon on that Monday, 13 seconds of rifle fire by a contingent of 28 Ohio National Guardsmen left four students dead, one permanently paralyzed, and eight others wounded. Not every student was a demonstration participant or an observer. Some students were walking to and from class. The closest student wounded was 30 yards away from the Guard, while the farthest was nearly 250 yards away.
The divisive effect of the Vietnam War on American society was especially evident on campuses throughout the country. At Kent, the day after the announcement to send U.S. troops into Cambodia marked the start of a weekend of anti-war protests that began on campus and spilled into the city of Kent's downtown. Broken windows and other damage to a number of downtown businesses prompted fear, rumors, and eventually a call by the city's mayor to the governor for assistance.
The National Guard arrived Saturday night. That day some students assisted with the downtown cleanup. That night some other students set fire to the campus headquarters of the Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC). Sunday morning the governor came to Kent and in the city's firehouse held a press conference saying the University would remain open. After a Sunday of relative calm, an anti-war rally at noon on Monday brought 2,000 to 3,000 people to the University Commons area. When the Guard gave the order to disperse, some in the crowd responded with verbal epithets and stones. The Guard answered with tear gas, but when the spring winds altered its effect, the Guard attempted to enforce the Ohio Riot Act with raised bayonets, forcing demonstrators to retreat. The Guard then changed formation. As the Guard approached the crest of Blanket Hill, some Guardsmen turned toward the Taylor Hall parking lot and between 61 and 67 shots were fired. Four students were killed and nine wounded. That afternoon, University President Robert I. White ordered the University closed.
History, sorrow and healing remain a part of Kent State University. The University Library has dedicated a Memorial Room containing books, papers, studies, and other materials relating to the events. In addition, the University has established an academic program designed to help students and others employ peaceful conflict resolution to resolve disputes. On May 4, 1990, the University community dedicated a permanent memorial. Each year, the May 4 Task Force student organization holds a candlelight vigil and commemoration program to enable the University, the Kent community, and others to privately and publicly express their feelings. In observance of the 25th anniversary in 1995, a series of commemorative programs and events were held throughout the Spring Semester at Kent, highlighted by two-day scholarly symposium titled "Legacies of Protest" which examined political and civil unrest.
The University will continue to remember the four students who died -- Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, and William Schroeder -- through scholarships in their names and in the words inscribed on the May 4 Memorial: "Inquire. Learn. Reflect." The Memorial site is next to Taylor Hall, on a hill overlooking the Commons, near the site of the shootings. Pamphlets are available at the site.
To learn more about annual commemorative activities on compus, such as the candlelight walk and vigil, please contact the May 4 Task Force student organization at (330) 672-3096.
For general information about the events of May 4, 1970, contact the May 4 Task Force, the Kent Alumni Association at (330) 672-KENT, or the Office of University News and Information at (330) 672-2727. You may also e-mail margaret@ksunews.kent.edu for more information.
2) Apparently this was not as amusing as you had hoped it would be because nobody on /. is old enough to remember the Kent State massacre.
3) The students that were shot WERE actually threatening someone (by throwing rocks and bottles) unlike these gamers, who were just indulging in testosterone-tinged trash talk.
4) Why stop at online games? Why not arrest the students at football games carrying banners threatening the opposing team? Oh wait -- those are school sanctioned death threats, so that's ok!
Seeing as how most of the shooting sprees I've read about over the past several years - the shooters have mostly been driven by revenge; they got fucked over by somebody, and were willing to kill and die to set things right - perhaps if people stopped being assholes, stopped screwing eachother over, other people wouldn't get so upset that their only option in life would be to go on a shooting spree. . .
.
No wait. That's wrong. lets just ban the guns, video games, books, tv, movies, abberant thought. .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Kudos to Jamie for investigating this further; the following was my original submission on this topic:
=======
The mind boggles. Police have apparently raided a student's dorm room due to his participation in a heavy metal music inspired gaming clan, "Bled For Days." The article goes to some length not to mention the exact game, including ominous references to a "war-like" "game of chess" where "it's not like we were going to kill you or anything". The game in question, of course, is the seminal Humans vs. Bugs vs. Yellow Psychic Aliens wargame, Starcraft. The presence of a web page listing in-game rivalries was apparently taken for death threats. For all the talk of "children" being unable to differentiate fake violence from the real thing, it seems to me that "adults" were the ones breaking into someone else's home, carrying loaded weapons, confiscating expensive goods while availing themselves of the opportunity to search for anything more valuable(i.e. drugs).
As hilariously pitiful as this seems, there's a real problem here. The tragedy is that, sooner or later, the credibility of authorities trying to fight real computer crime will be so stretched that even when society desperately requires their intervention, the police will find themselves unable to get even the slightest shreds of voluntary cooperation. A bizarre and ultimately truly dangerous attitude, the apathetic chuckle, has spawned over recent years by Zero Tolerance(and apparently, Intelligence, Accountability, or Political Responsibility) policies; the exact policies that have lead to first graders being suspended for pointing chicken at eachother and being expelled for kissing a girl on the cheek. People are willing to quickly accept these ridiculous and flagrantly neglectful abuse of power because "it's funny to laugh at...but I can't do something about it, isn't that someone else's job?"
This threatens the core legitimacy of what really are genuinely critical services; the police, the school, and the administrators all become jokes, not to be taken seriously. The immediate reaction my friends had to this incident at Kent State was, "The last time police at Kent State didn't understand what the students were up to, somebody won a Pulitzer Prize". Since the most damaging effect of any computer security violation is the long term degradation of trust in a given service, the ignorance these busts show eventually makes it harder to actually control and address genuine security issues, such as DDoS attacks. Instead of simply laughing and moving on, what can we, as a community do to prevent these kind of occurances in the future? Would something as simple as a confidential "reality check" group of experts, made available to law enforcement as consultants, be helpful? Would a set of guidelines, peer reviewed by the community, be useful? Instead of cursing the darkness, how can we praise the light?
Actually, the body count was 5 but the 5th was a young man who wasn't politically savvy enough to die right away and get counted during the 15 minutes that anyone was paying any attention to the story, but rather lingered for a day or three before succumbing to his wounds.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
...but I'm wondering if whoever is running the "wrong server" they accidentally contacted and uploaded to saw the page, thought they'd been cracked (perhaps the pages being uploaded were about to be used to "deface" whatever was supposed to be there, the sysadmin may have thought), and made a panicked call to the cops saying somebody was "hacking" his system.
We all know how rational US law enforcement/government is about anything involving computers, and perhaps they looked at the pages uploaded in the supposed "hacking", saw the "death threats" [in the game] and did their usual ridiculous overreaction.
Mind you, this is all wild speculation on my part. The article doesn't really say much.
---
"They have strategic air commands, nuclear submarines, and John Wayne. We have this"
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
I'm sure that the university would like to allow free speech, but this isn't about that. The university sees potential fault on their part. If one of the kids snaps, and they have evidence that he was making threatening statements, and the threats were posted on their computers, don't you think they'd be sued? This is the headline that the university sees in the future:
"Kent allows group of kids to post death threats on their own servers, even after being alerted to their presence. This 'hate board' was a key factor in the organization of actions that led to the murder of Joe Smith, a fellow game player 25 miles from Kent State. The Smith family is suing the university for not forcing the students to take the hate messages off their computer system."
I'm no journalist, but you can imagine a (better worded) message with that content in the news. Whether they "did wrong" or not, they got sued. Bad press doesn't wash away with a not guilty. Which is why they're trying to cover their ass prematurely.
I'm not saying that the university is right in cracking down on l33t starcrafters, it's just a sucky situation all around. The nation's tense over all these stupid mass murders, and companies are so afraid of these rampant, frivolous lawsuits, so everything is getting more paranoid.
I offer no solution, just trying to shed some light on the problem.
I couldn't quite tell if the cops involved were campus cops or municipal cops. Since in some areas campus cops at state universities are effectively state troopers, I suppose it doesn't really make any difference. The point here is an issue of jurisdiction. You live in a school dorm and use a school network. You expect to have some degree of privacy, but it appears if that is not the case. You can be monitored, and while a warrant was obtained, it was probably rather easy to obtain due to the extra fine print that is inserted all over university documents with regards to use of the school's network and what is considered acceptable behavior in dorms.
There are extenuating circumstances here that create extra problems. If these students lived in their own house and paid for their own isolated internet connection that had no connection to the university, the "evidence" collecting methods that caused the problems in the first place wouldn't exist and nobody would ever have obtained a warrant against them, let alone ever found out about the website in the first place.
I'm quite certain these types of issues have been going on for quite some time, but before Columbine people generally turned a blind eye to the activity since it wasn't on their radar screen. I had my account canceled on a university computer back in 1992 because I telnet'ed into the system from another university when I was visiting there and was accused of unauthorized access as a result. They apparrenly watch things like that pretty closely and I don't doubt they have stepped up their surveillance in past years as computers have gotten more powerful and networks have been used more.
I don't suppose there's an easy solution to this problem. Part of the advantage of living in a dorm room is unfettered access to the university's often ample internet bandwidth, and in many cases you don't curtail any activities based soley on what someone else might think of them. But the network is not public. There are restrictions in place and like it or not, the university has probably gone to great lengths to assure they they will have the means to "protect" themselves and others from any "dangerous" students, no matter how they go about discovering this information.
The solution isn't really simple. The solution to this problem is to isolate yourself from the university. Don't use a university network and don't live in dorms. Rent a local house with your roommates and pick up a dsl or cable connection for your bandwidth. It might cost more (in some cases it might not), but that is sometimes the price of freedom. On a separate network, this wouldn't have happened. On a separate network, the student who had his equipment confiscated for "hacking" a website by running some dns tests on it after it was cracked would not have heard a peep about it.
-Restil
restil@alignment.net
Play with my webcams and lights here
Welcome to the new America, where you're guilty until proven innocent, at least in some regards. The proliferation of kooks who go on a tear and wipe out a bunch of people (witness Illinois yesterday, Edgewater Technology recently, etc) you should expect that people will tend to go a bit over the top where random violence (real or perceived) is concerned.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, but watch the civil liberties, boys! It's the sort of thing that can come back to snap you in the ass if you're not careful.
They had a warranty.
I think I got one of those with my toaster oven. I'm going to go serve it up to those annoying kids that live in the apartment below.
Mmmm.. Donuts
No, I shouldn't expect an irrational, dangerous reaction to the proliferation of kooks who kill. You see, there is *no* proliferation of kooks who kill. Nothing is happening today that didn't happen fifty years ago, or a hundred for that matter. There is just a mistaken popular perception that violence is on the rise, when in fact it is on the decline. And the kooks--well, they were around way back when--they aren't new. Watching the History Channel recently, they were talking about a kook who made headlines in the late 40s by going into a school full of preteens and opening fire, killing several. There were disgruntled office workers back then, too. And children also went nuts and murdered other children for bizarre reasons--remember Leopold and Loeb, anyone? So, what's the difference between then and now? Well, now we have CNN, FoxNN, MSNBC, HNN, CNBC, and your local news all blaring about these incidents, presenting so-called experts who convince us that there must be something wrong with our society, that it's unprecedented when so and so kills such and such over whatever it is. Horseshit. Violence, random or otherwise, is nothing new, and no amount of ill informed backlash will diminish it. But I guarantee that all these measures we're putting in place to curb violence will only make it worse, because the worse you treat people, the more you take away their rights and sense of worth, the more likely it is that they'll explode and try to take as many overbearing bastards with them as they can. Example: a few unbalanced kids feel picked on and pressured by school admins and especially fellow students; taunted and made to feel worthless, they take their own lives after indiscriminately killing as many students and teachers as they can--except, curiosly, for the one boy one of the gunmen warned to stay away because he'd treated the gunman right in school. Example 2: a man watches the TV news day after day and is angered at the U.S. government's mishandling of an investigation into the leader of a religious community in Waco, Texas, during which they trample all of the suspect's rights one by one and try to villify him with false allegations of child abuse, which have no place in a raid which was actually based on the selling of a single sawed-off shotgun by the partner of a licensed gun dealer--in fact, it would have been a routine arrest and fine, except that when the ATF decided that their suspect's congregation was a "cult", ignoring the religious freedom which founded this country, they decided to "take him down" on live TV as a media stunt. The man watching this is so angered when ATF and FBI bungling first ignores rights and then kills people by accidentally starting a fire, that he and a friend decide to pay the government back in kind by bombing a large government building.
So, let me slightly amend what I said about there being no more kooks or violence now than there's ever been. If there are more kooks and violence now, it's a direct result of the media causing hysteria by constantly harping on the few incidents which do occur and will always occur by nature, causing the people and government to become vengeful idiots who strip away the fundamental rights of the people, some of whom are prone to react violently to having their rights and human dignity stripped away.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
The news story doesn't ONCE even mention the name "Starcraft"! It's pretty obvious to us from the group's web site... but in the Stater article all it says is "a possible computer crime", "students set up a 'war-like' game", "the site includes a list of rules, rankings of members, allies and the enemies...", etc. Come on, couldn't they spare a single sentence to say "It's a game of STARCRAFT, one of the most popular online games since 1998 by industry juggernaut Blizzard"?
Cruddy media like that only serve to distort issues and panic people. Budding journalists: you've got to at least give a shit when you apply pen to paper.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I go to school at Kent State University, and one night in October, I was trying to meet new people and I came across a room in my hall which was occupied by several individuals. The door was wide open, with the guys inside sitting around playing or watching Tony Hawk on the TV in the far corner of the room. I peeked in and said "wazzup" and found myself sitting there with them.
No more than fifteen minutes later, a police officer came to the door, saying we were being too loud, something which I can't contest since it it was quite late at night. The officer asked us why we were still up, and why we were being so loud. The kid whom the room belonged to appologized for the noise and assured the officer that we were just getting a little carried away in a conversation. The officer didn't exactly take that too well, and then asked to do a room search. Why he felt compelled to do a room search is still beyond me, my guess is that if you are up past a certain point at night, you must do drugs, being considered "suspicious"... but whatever... my story continues.
The kid said it would be alright if the cop looked around, and quite matter-of-factly stated he had nothing to hide. As soon as the cop turned around, he found several marijuana seeds sitting on the desk behind the door.
I'm now fucked.
The officer then asked to see anything else in the room that may be of illegal nature, and the kid pointed out that there was probably (!!) naddy light in the fridge.
Fucked x 2.
So for the record, since I was simply in the room, I was charged with not only violating my dorms quiet hours policy (low volume levels between 8pm-11am) but was in "possession" of both alcohol and marijuana under Kent State's "Joint Responsibily" clause.
The schools policy on the matter is stated very clearly in the student handbook: First marijuana violation = $100 fine. Nowhere in the book was I able to find a punishment for an alcohol violation. When I went to the schools proprietary court system called Judicial Affairs for an intake hearing, I was told that the pressing punishment was to be kicked out of Kent State.
Let me recap: I was at the wrong place at the wrong time and I am now being told that I face being kicked out of college little over a month after starting. I had no prior offenses.
Paranoid that the school would actually kick me out, I had gone, two days after the late-night incident, to the local health clinic on my own free will, hoping to help clear the charges. I paid $85 for a drug test, which came up negative of all "street drugs," weed included. Armed with the knowladge of both my clean drug screening, and the fact that the school never gave me a sobriety test, I felt a little comfortable going into my hearing.
My parents were there, two KSUPD officers representing the officer which was there that night, my RD, the RA of the floor this happened on, and finally the judge.
Soon after the actual trial started, which was a full month after the incident, I began to feel very cornered and nervous. The judge attacked me for the fact that I was around the guys at all, would not accept that I did not know them before that night, that I did not know the seeds and beer were in the room, and that my grades were low enough (2.0GPA, and this wasn't even at midterms yet, what the fuck...) to warrant my being shoved out the door.
I Fired back stating that they broke their own policies for room search seing that the cop had already entered the room before he asked to search. The punishment being pressed upon me was not in accordance with the printed university handbook. The fact that I had no previous criminal nor Kent State record. The fact that my grades were in the toilet because I had missed a test in Algebra and still needed to make it up, thus giving me an F in the class. (FYI, before the test, I had an "A" and ended up with an "A" as a final grade...)
Finally, the hearing officer told me that I was being both irresponsible for own actions, and being arrogant. He then proceded to actually YELL at me, telling me that I "NEED TO GROW UP AND ACCEPT RESPONSIBLITY" for something which I had no responsiblity for. I didn't see the weed seeds(!) in the room, and I sure as hell don't have x-ray vision to see through refrigerator doors.
I waited till the very end to show him my drug test results. This enfuriated him even more.
The Resident Assistant ( a student ) tried pleading for my case, but to no luck. My Resident Director ( the Kent state employee who is hired to watch after a whole dorm building ) sided with my judge. The cops was obviously clueless, since they weren't there that night.
The judge finally left, came back, and said that he really wanted to remove me from Kent State, but would instead be "lenient" and give me a $100 fine plus 12 months of strict diciplinary probation. In this time, I can not violate any rules, including another noise violation, or even simply locking my keys inside my room. The drug thing was my warning card, I guess. Perfect.
The appeal I had was answered by the school in a rejection stating that the punishment was fair due to the "overwhelming perponderance of evidence against [me]." Evidence which was never hashed out during the trial.
Oh the joys of being a Kent State Student...
* The M-16 Fiasco
* The "War-Games" and computer confiscation blunder
*Constant reminder of our great 1970 year
*Foreign speaking English teachers...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
We asked for this, you know... we really did.
The Zero tolerance stuff is fine for 4yr olds who can't think and reason. It's perfectly appropriate to tell a kid that of age range "We don't hit, now kiss your brother and say you're sorry."
For ADULTS and even adolescents, we are doing them an intellectual disservice by teaching them that all violence is wrong. All violence is NOT wrong (step off me, you pacifists... I'm just warming up...) Self defense is a perfectly legitmate scenario for violence. You can also make a strong argument for the existance of a legitimate WAR (OK, you pacifists... take your best shot).
We are robbing people of the ability to reason and evaluate for themselves their moral justifications for their actions. I'm not just talking about simple rationalization here... a 6yo kid can do that.
We've done this to ourselves by caving into our fear, and promoting simple-minded drivel like this... sheesh.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
You are wrong about the Kent State Massacre. The students that were shot were ones that were merely walking between classes. They were not participating in the protests.
Their only crime was being in the way of the bullets of some government jack booted thugs.
It seems that we as citizens have learned NOTHING from that event. Though the public reaction to the Kent State Massacre was outrage, the 1990's saw more American citizens than ever massacred by government stormtrooper "mistakes". I'm referring to Waco and Ruby Ridge. And there wasn't the outrage that was seen in 1970. For one thing, the news media in 1970 was NOT the establishment's puppet as it is today. Waco and Ruby Ridge were both reported incorrectly with a pro-government slant.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Yep, god knows that listening to heavy metal, much like watching a horror movie, is proof of guilt.
If I hear one more person say that I should be a good little boy and put my evil, vile, disgusting guitars away for good I'm gonna puke. I'm a 27 year old that plays and listens to heavy metal. While I probably wouldn't listen to music where the lyrics are what you are claiming, if the music was cool enough I might. Does that make me a terribly evil man? If you even heard this (which is doubtful), it was probably a song about the evils of pedophilia (just like people thought the song about how evil and terrible rape is done by Dark Angel was thought to be a diatribe about how good it feels to rape someone by the elite christian idiots).
Grow up. People express themselves in different ways. The violent music is a way to work out your agressions without hurting anyone. If I were forced to stop playing violent music, who knows what evil things I would actually do. I feel pent up enough if I don't play for a couple of weeks to do something um, not very nice. If I was told I could never play again, I don't even want to think about where that would lead.
Some people have a violent nature, or need to blow off some steam every now and then due to stress in their life. Some of us have found constructive ways of dealing with our violent tendencies, or the stress that causes serious mental problems for us otherwise. People that claim this is proof of just how fucked up we are are the fucked up ones in my mind. What kind of shit are you holding back? You've never watched a horror movie? You've never had an evil thought? You've never written a naughty poem? Come on, dude. Nobody would believe that of even the most tight-laced anal son-of-a-****. People are guilty of nothing just for creating or listening to music, writing or reading a story, or creating or watching a movie which depicts terrible acts. Unless you want to start arresting Stephen King and all the other good horror writers? Ah, just as well go ahead. It won't be long before that will be on the governmental "policing" efforts radar anyway.
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Heh, these guys don't seem to be the smartest, no. They seem to be stupid kids or whatever to whom 'sex' is still a big deal, heh.. fun. No biggie.. move along now.
;-)
I'm a tad bit jealous of Adam, though (read the part about the female member)
Moz.
see a Text Widget
Wow! Not only does their page look horrible, they also created a whole NEW web design sin just for their page:
Giving their real names *and* listing that their interests include pot smoking, sex, and underage drinking.
Man, that has to be the easiest "computer crime" search warrant those cops have ever gotten!
BfD member page (with self-incriminating statements)
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
This implies that at least one other supposedly intelligent adult (the judge) looked at this case and decided it had enough merit to send in the storm troopers. Of course, this really shouldn't surprise you too badly -- America has become so terrified of crime that civil rights fell along the wayside a decade ago; getting a warrent to deprive an individual of their civil rights is little more than a formality these days. And hey, why not? If you don't have anything to hide, you shouldn't mind the police searching your house, right? God Bless America.
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Anyways, being an Admin I would leave myself logged into a Sparc and just use screen to resume the session. This friend would log onto the same Sparc and then telnet out to the ISPs using his hacked accounts. This was all the proof they needed, I was brought in for questioning.
"I have a printout of a log that shows that every time 'slow learner' used this computer for illegal activity, you were also logged in. How do you explain that? Why won't you tell us how you were helping him?"
"Uh, I can show you a log that shows that I have been logged in for about 5 months straight."
This went on for a while.
A large group of us (mostly locals) would hang out on IRC and even get together every so often for a party. I attended a majority of these parties, so did "slow learner". Unfortunately, so did my gf (now wife). So she was brought in for questioning.
"So you would attend these 'Hacker Parties'? What went on there? Why are you getting yourself into computer crimes? Who was the leader of this 'Hacker Party'".
"Uh, we just got together a lot."
Again, this went on for quite a while. A large number of us were just good friends at school and used IRC to keep in touch while some of us were out co-op'ing and such. We'd throw a party after finals and such and just do stupid, but not yet illegal, stuff. Drinking, music, standard party stuff really.
This guy kept threatening to drag me downtown (the *real* cops) if I kept refusing to cooperate. The worse part was my boss had to sit there and listen to this guy, pretty much powerless to make him stop pestering me. And threatening to take my computers.
Without getting lost in the details, here is the deal on the dead kid in the midwest:
On August 15, 1979, James Dallas Egbert disappeared from the campus of Michigan State University. A gazillion rumors churned up, most of them centered around the idea that he was a D&D player who got so involved with the game that he ended up in the steam tunnels under the university and died. In fact, that wasn't the case...he committed suicide in his apartment almost exactly a year later.
The astute reader will notice that I didn't say that Dungeons and Dragons killed him. In fact, Egbert had a whole lot of other problems that were much more serious that a role playing game. But an awful lot of other people, including the major news services latched onto the evils of the game and that's all that it took for the players to find themselves on the outside of societal norms.
-h-
30 Years ago they'd have teargassed and shot!
Yup. If the kids are as innocent as most /.ers appear to believe (i.e. if the warrant was for the "threats" implicit in the shitlist, and the "threat" was that players on the list would be blown up in the game), a civil suit will likely show by a preponderance of evidence that whoever demanded the warrant was an idjit.
If they were involved in cracking, or if there was evidence to suggest that the "shitlist" was a list of, say, players to be harassed in real life, or have their machines DOSsed, or what-not, then any civil case they launch will fail.
I'm filing this case under "potential outrage", not "confirmed outrage" until I see more evidence.
Two teenagers were just picked up by the kent state campus police department for being 'lamers', and 'campers' in Quake.
They will be attempting for the death penalty for such disasterous crimes.
--
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I can now breathe easier, thanks to that crack force of Kent State campus police!
The cops supposedly raid the dorm room because of the website. Yet the website is still up. Then one of the students say they somehow contacted the wrong server when uploading the website? Uhh, OK.
I am guessing that either they were seriously harrasing people over the net, email bombs or some DOS attacks, or they were trying to crack someones system. We need to get the whole story before damning the cops on this one.
Q.
What is the problem? I think that it's a combination of hysteria and lack of communication. Take a look at the clan's web site. Looks scary, doesn't it. But in the context of the game, it's just in character. But since we're (I mean the collective "we're") gripped in a panic over the possibility of another Columbine, sites like these get special scrutiny. Do these guys deserve their treatment? Of course not. And in the end, the police will give back their stuff, the administration will issue some sort of press release praising the police for protecting the rest of the student body, implicitly suggest that the members of the clan are some kind of social deviants and then give a great sigh of relief that a potential disaster was averted.
Can we stop it? Probably not. Social inertia is a powerful force. This kind of thing has been going on for about as long as there have been universities.
On the other hand, over time, what was perceived as revolutionary becomes commonplace...it's just that the revolutionaries eventually forget just what is revolutionary.
=h=
This could easily be mis-interpreted as a hacker attack.
/. editors would have us believe, we wouldn't hear about it in the first place.
Oh yeah, uploading via FTP to a mistyped ip address. REAL hacker attack there!
They are living on University property, the campus cops can do what they like.
No, cops cannot do what they like. We have people called judges who are supposed to use their wisdom to determine whether police can enter and search people's quarters. Unfortunately the police in their overreactionary stupidity probably blew this "threat" out of proportion to the judge who was probably all to willing to comply.
If anything bad had really happened, if this country were going into totalitarian meltdown as the
But if we were, you'd be ignoring it right?
Nobody knows what real problems are anymore.
I consider steady erosion of rights by incompetents in power "real".
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Several years from now, campus police or real police will raid Counterstrike/Quake/Firearms matches. No, they won't raid the students' dorms, but will show up as actual players in the game(complete with police skins). Any of the clans attempt to shoot one of these Police players will be charged with assaulting an officer and be taken to cs_jail.
They can then spraypaint their warrants somewhere on the map's walls.
Okay I made that up since I'm dyin for a cigarette.
Disturbing? Yes. Surprising? No: if suspending children over pointing at a teacher with a chicken wing (potential deadly weapon!) and going 'bang' is OK, this makes sense as well.
This all is a result of this 'zero tolerance' thing that people seem to want (or at least don't protest against -- pretty much the same). When 'zero tolerance' towards drugs was new, students got suspended for keeping Tylenol in their lockers. But I guess it was worth it, since our schools are now 100% drug free and we're about to achieve the same for violence!
(exits stage left, laughing hysterically)