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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?"
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.
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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)