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Use a Honeypot, Go to Prison?
scubacuda writes "Using a honeypot to detect and surveil computer intruders might put you on the working end of federal wiretapping beef, or even get you sued by the next hacker that sticks his nose in the trap, according this (old) Security Focus article. Honeypots could be federal criminal law calls "interception of communications", a felony that carries up to five years in prison. Because the Federal Wiretap Act has civil provisions, as well as criminal, there's even a chance that a hacker could file a lawsuit against a honeypot operator that doesn't have their legal ducks in a row. "It would take chutzpah," said
Richard Salgado, senior counsel for the Department of Justice's computer crime unit, "But there's a case where an accused kidnapper who was using a cloned cell phone sued for the interception of the cell phone conversations... And he won.""
"interception of communications", a felony that carries up to five years in prison.
Unless you're John Ashcroft and his brownshirts. What about whatever the NSA picks up? Echelon? Carnivore? Even if data that wasn't covered by a warrant is discarded, it was still intercepted.
Trolling is a art,
What if you use a beowulf cluster of honeypots? Couldn't you be executed under California's three strikes rule?
Repeal the DMCA!
troller.
I almost agree with you too, but until we have a government with a sense of decency, or a population with a long enough attention span to play disciplinarian, this is what we need. Look at Linda Tripp. Is it right that prosecutors can dangle participation in a book-deal-worthy case in front of somebody, and then "casually" mention things that they *wish* they knew about people but were unable to legally find out, and then prosecute based on evidence gathered by people that are *technically* not police? This is why they have those laws, you can't depend on prosecutors to be above this shit.
/. only takes those great idealogical stands when it suits them. Once you get to play secret agent and fuck over the life of some script k1ddi3!!1LOL! by being a prick, suddenly it's only facist opression when they try and shut you down. Well, I'm all for this "opression". Maybe it'll get some sysadmins to go back to that boring old patching stuff instead of setting little booby-traps for stupid kids.
More specifically to the honeypot stuff, it's clearly entrapment being performed by private citizens. This is generally legal, but I think most people would get pretty pissed if their company started a policy of stationing fake drug dealers around the city and then turning in everybody who bought. It's the same thing here, only, like everyone,
If we've learned anything from comic books, it's that vigilante justice ends up being caried out by guys in leotards who never get laid (alright, it's implied that Batman gets laid, but he also lives with young boys). Nobody wants to see sysadmins in leotards.