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FBI Conducts Raids Over Half-Life 2 Source Theft
TheXerox writes "According to a recent weblog post, a San Francisco native had his house raided by the FBI last week, and 'lost upwards of 9 machines, and lots of misc equipment besides' in a seizure related to the theft of the Half-Life 2 source code from Valve Software." The scanned-in search warrant posted on the site indicates the FBI were looking for "...any IP addresses related to any of the Valve internal or external networks... Valve passwords and/or usernames... any and all items... related to Valve Software, Half-Life, Half-Life 2", and the Hungry Programmers page mentions that "...several Hungries were raided on January 14th by the FBI and Secret Service, and their computers seized."
It would really piss me off to lose my machines if I never did anything, I wonder how long it would be before you got them back and what kind of condition they would be in.
Just when I thought they would let it die down, due to it being a bit more personal and involved, it seems like they went in to full gear.
But I'm still a bit doubtful that ANY network admin wouldn't notice 11GB of traffic to an outside location on the network.
Slashdot is a good example of why a true democracy would be a bad idea. A person can be smart, but people are dumb.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
And you have to love the bit about whether the agents had "guns drawn" when he opened the door. There's nothing to suggest they actually did - but by tossing the reference in there, the FBI sounds much more menacing, don't they?
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
If you are found innocent...
a) What countermeasures/damages can you persue
b) If your computers are for business use, can you sue for lost revenue?
c) If they find something illegal (who doesn't have a "hack for program x" or keygen etc), but it is found that they came after you mistakenly, are your computers still lost?
d) You got no card, how can you call to find out about your stuff?
e) 9 computers, decent chance one is a server. How about if the server was hacked (cmon, if they hack valve wouldn't they redirect through dummy servers)
When did a weblog become fact? I understand they had scanned documents, but I just get very nervous about allowing blogs to become sources of fact.
Hmm. As a head programmer I'd imagine he has privledged access to Ximian's machines. Ximian may want to look into data storage if their own computers are taken...
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
And why would I, as a developer, be the least bit interested in some wannabe adding to my codebase. If you are any good and I want your help I will offer you a job. Further, What business is it of anybody in what progress I am or am not making in producing a product that I want to sell. If you can't wait what do I care. If I lose a sale because I am taking to long it's nobodys business or problem but my own.
Oh, you meant done for them, not done to them; my mistake!
I think they were trying to say that if they found any non-public Valve IP addresses saved or in the history of any FTP clients, web browsers, or VPN clients.
It would look pretty suspicious if he had a VPN client configured to connect to Valve's VPN tunnel. That is assuming they have a VPN.
See?
I Belive that now copying something is considered theft by law. I do not agree with this, but if they have now defined it as theft, they are legaly correct in that statement, even if theoricly they are not right.
In other threads, people have suggested that the Feds didn't understand how IP addresses work, and raided the wrong network. I suppose that's possible, but I think it unlikely, especially since they must know about the crack being traced to a user in Europe. It's more likely that they know or suspect that the HP guys have copies of the stolen source, and the raid is just a way to "send a message" to others who might consider downloading it.
Technically, computers get seized so the cops can gather evidence, which is supposed to lead to some kind of punishment if all the due process requirements are met. But as often as not, the seizure itself is the only punishment metted out, and is obviously meant as such. Which is pretty scary, when you consider your total lack of recourse when you are punished in this manner.
Actually, we learned after those pictures of the feds pointing their guns at the kid from Cuba that running around pointing guns at people is standard operating procedure in all home invasions.
Was that executive action or did it have to be passed partially by congress as well? In other words, there's a lot more people to blame then just Bush. (And they should all be blamed.)
You're guilty until confirmed guilty in a court of law.
There are no innocents.
Is it really working?
Is it reasonable to sieze everything (including things not on the list, if his story's true...) in sight on a mere suspicion? Sounds like unreasonable search and siezure to me. Considering that the Hungry programmers aren't the ones that were off and bragging about it, I have a very big suspicion that we're seeing another Steve Jackson Games debacle playing before our eyes. While I'm going to give the Feds some benefit of doubt- it's not a lot, as they're not all lilly-white pure followers of what the law states, including the Constitution and they've been guilty of some rather heinous acts themselves in the relatively recent past.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
You're sure as hell not going to see something like this get presented by news outlets. Not sensational and it's just some geeks getting busted for hacking, afterall... Never mind that while due process might have been done, it may still be an unreasonable search and siezure of his property by virtue of the fact that they had little real worth to go on and used PATRIOT or something similar to rush a warrant through the courts. Since I don't know the whole story, I'm not going to venture a guess either way- but to ask me to think of it as fiction just because it's a blog is a bit much as well.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
No point in doing that. They give you a receipt for anything they take, and they can't use and item as evidence in court without first proving that they gave you a receipt for that item. So everything they touched is going to be clearly itemized.
It seems like this guy's first priority was to sound an alarm...
Makes sense to me.
"Hey guys. I thought I'd let you know, there's a bunch of cops searching my apartment right now, so if I end up missing by the end of the day, you'll know what happened. In that case, could you please call a lawyer for me?"
It's the kind of thing friends tell each other, don't you think?
The comments are the amazing part to me. You'd think people savvy enough to have read this story would be bright enough to understand why they absolutely HAVE to take the computers, not sit there dicking around trying to pull hard drives out.
If Valve tries to make the claim in court that HL2 was postponed until April because of the source code theft, that will become fraud on their part. Until now it was just harmless marketing lies. The delay had little if anything to do with the code theft -- that was only a convenient excuse
How do you know it didn't affect and delay the product? Do you work for Valve? Where's your proof?
I can tell you, at my company, if there was a break-in that got all our code, we'd be up shit creek. There would be a complete overhaul of all our processes, interviews with all the personel, new security training, new procedures, a complete audit, and worst of all talented and hard working people would get fired. All of this would take time, affect everybody, and slow every project down.
I find it hard to belive that Valve didn't go through something similar internally. If you're going to make drastic claims like this, at least provide some proof or reasoning behind your logic.
Bryan
Offsite-backups though - the way these things work is that they will take anything that looks technical, and anything that looks like it could store data.
Hell in some cases they will take your VCR. (I know of some cheap backup systems that write data to video tapes; although I've never seen one in use).
Okay, points for keeping his composure I guess, but no points whatsoever for intelligence. He seriously just wandered off to take a walk while they were going through his apartment?!
Folks? If this ever happens to you? CALL YOUR LAWYER. Not the next day, not the day after, but the instant you can convince them to let you get your hands on a phone. If you don't have a lawyer, call a friend that you trust to find you a lawyer.
It's all well and good that the raiders in this case were relatively polite and friendly, but once the legal system takes notice of you in this way, Mister Policeman is no longer your friend. They have a job to do, and that job is to put your ass in jail. If being nice to you helps them to do this, they'll be nice. If scaring you senseless helps them to do this, they'll do that too. But the fact remains: they are not paid to catch someone who they know for a fact is guilty; they are being paid to catch someone they can convince a District Attorney is guilty, and those are two very, very different things.
If you are ever in this situation, the only words that come out of your mouth when speaking to the feds should be "I'd like to call my attorney." His job is to keep you out of jail.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
"Why is the secret service involved?"
And why didn't they raid the set-top box companies thought to have used GPL code without a license?
because I for one am a little pissed about the delay
The person who copied the code wasn't the cause of the delay.
The actual cause of the delay was Valve not being anywhere near finished.
reading these posts, there are two questions that have REALLY obvious answers. I'll give them anyway, since they seem to be stumping so many people.
cds: its just policy. One can make a burned cd look pressed if they really want to. Instead of wasting time inspecting each cd, just take them all. Fairly simple.
why he told friends: Some may be students, who have their school work on their systems, but won't see those systems for years if they get taken. Some may be have files of business importance - perhaps they were writing a program for a company, perhaps they have an extensive cvs repository sitting on a server. Perhaps its just business contacts, or hell - email archives.
There are a LOT of things that will screw up your life for months, if not years, if you suddenly lose it. Keep in mind that while you may make backups, those backups will be taken as well. Offsite backups even will be, if they know about them (which more and more lately, they will know).
Think about what would happen if all of your computers, backups, media, and etc all disappeared in an instant. If you're 100% innocent, it will still take a couple of years to get things back. In our tech-dependent world, that's a long time to be in hell for no reason.
Well, as other posts have noted, if /. has been approached, and a gag order been put in place, then Taco can't you ("I can not divulge..."). However, if it hasn't happened, he should be able to tell you that it has never happened. So it's more a boolean thing rather than a number-of-times thing.
--trb
but what if i "forgot" the passphrase? what if it was stored in a hardware key that they didn't find or was stored elsewhere?
would invoking the 5th amendment at this point fly? i mean, if the answer is in my head, they can't really seize that now can they?
In America, there would be no tale. It's legal to own guns.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
The key issue for search warrants related to physical (i.e. non-cyber) evidence is "plain sight." In other words, if the cops get a warrant to search your apt for drugs, and you have an illegal machine gun lying on the kitchen table, that's admissable. If they've got a warrant to search for drugs, and they find kiddie porn on your (turned-off) computer, that likely wouldn't be admissable, since there's no way that a search for packets of white powder could reasonably involve booting up the PC.
BZZZT! Wrong answer, thank you for playing.
If you haven't been paying attention, Congress has been essentially eliminating most of those checks and balances for some time now. And we've been letting them do it to us. If you don't believe me, look CLOSELY at the PATRIOT Act. Don't need probable cause for warrant or even the warrant for a search and siezure if they label you as a terrorist. The law allows the FBI that privilege, in violation of the Fourth Ammendment- and they've been using it. The law also gives the FBI the right to arrest you and treat you as a foriegn national if you're labeled a terrorist- no due process or anything inconvienient like that. And they've used those features too.
Anyone that thinks that the checks and balances are currently being acknoleged as being anything much more than toilet paper is sadly deluded.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
As if there were ever doubt any longer that America were a police state ...
You don't really have any concept of what a police state is, do you?
These people had a warrant. Issued by a (mostly) impartial judge. They were investigating an actual crime of serious magnitude commited against a company that I, for one, am very grateful for making.
In a real police state (Nazi Germany, Stalist Russia, etc...), the FBI would not have rung your doorbell at 6:30am. They would not have had a warrant, and they most certianly would not have been civilized while they hauled only some your stuff out the door. They would have kicked down your door at 3am, killed your family, and set your house on fire. All because you belived in the wrong religion, or were the member of the wrong political party.
FBI raids are not pretty, but like it or not, this is how a fair and just legal system works. When you have to balance the rights of victims and the rights of the accused, nobody comes out happy. I don't know if this guy is guilty or innocent, but he should keep his mouth shut, call a lawyer, and take advantage of every other right that he has. And he can do that because he doesn't live in a police state, he lives in a free country. That's why he's laughing about this whole thing instead of next in line to get his hand chopped off at the local prison.
According to this article Half Life 2 has been translated into Russian, compiled, and is for sale on the shelves of a Russian trader in Novosibirsk.
Sack the sigs
What else would they show him? They announced their identity as FBI agents, produced their badges, and showed him the search warrant, while standing outside his domicile. They didn't do a no-knock, they didn't force their way in, they didn't threaten him or rough him up in any way. Just what constitutes "identify[ing] themselves significantly" in your world?
2 items (though I'm not the previous poster, obviously), assuming that his account was correct:
1) They pulled him outside to let the agents get into the building. This certainly isn't rough treatment, but it's also not the way a search warrant is supposed to be carried out. They're not permitted, in any way, to remove you from your home.
2) They refused to allow him to have any form of identification from them, though he didn't try to copy down their names and badge numbers (at least he didn't state he tried to do so, he did ask for pictures of them/their badges, which seemed a rather strange thing to ask, though useful in the event that you need to report your stuff stolen by a bunch of people claiming to be agents).
Frankly, the guy also waived a number of his rights during the search, which is his own fault for not having a lawyer on the way (or someone calling a lawyer for him) the minute he saw the FBI and USSS at his door. You should never consent to a search or any part of a search just because they have a warrant. The warrant gives them specific areas they can search and specific things they can search for, any consent may expand the area and/or items they can search. You also do not have to consent to an interview with them, and do not have to answer their questions (though it's best to answer questions relevant to the search authorized by the warrant, as being too stubborn may lead to obstruction of justice). Anyway, get a lawyer, as quickly as possible, as this person should have. Leaving was definitely a bad idea beyond all else, and was his problem, not any fault of the officers and agents involved.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
ummm .... no. a police state is any country where the cops come over, refuse to let you confirm their identity, show you some papers, take all your shit ... and you let them!!!
dude just walked off, left his whole apartment to the cops, people he will probably never see again, whose identities he is not allowed to confirm.
*that* is a police state. when the populace are so apathetic on the subject, that they're willing to just bend over and take it in the ass.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
a law must be enacted where computers can not be held for a certain period of time (5 business days) unless charges are brought up against the owner. the 5 days would give the confiscator enough time to copy the hard drives on the machines. if not, why should the citizen be responsible for the time it takes the secret service / fbi to analyze the contents of a hard drive. this kind of reminds me of the ibm sco case.
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
Since when is game code that important? WTF is in the game that got the feds involved. How does Valve rate this kind of assistance? Shit gets stolen everyday and nothing like this ever happens. Anyways if this guy has half a brain he has backed up the important shit offsite like all good coders should do. As an offtopic thought, I wonder how they would do against Apple's filevault? Would they be able to crack it?
I hear there's a place called "America" where EVERYONE is presumed innocent until proven guilty! Talk about insane! It must just be a legend.
Tell that to the "unlawful combatants" in Camp Delta.
Oh, wait, your courts managed to find a legal technicality there, didn't they?
The nation's computer hacking laws are really messed up. You get ACCUSED of hacking, they take all your electronics (all of them, tv's, vcr's, etc). If you get convicted, you never seem them again. Even if it was your wife's computer, she'd be sans that computer (and all the data on the hd). If don't get convicted, all bets are off as to what happens to your data.
Let's say you get convicted. You get, let's say, 10 years in the slammer. You get out, and are not allowed to touch a computer for a while, and when you are, it's even longer before you can use internet, email, etc. You aren't allowed to make any profit (write a book, work in computer security) from computers. Your life (computers) has been taken away from you.
Now, let's say you murdered someone. It wasn't a bad murder, you got off with 20 years. You get out, you can't legally buy guns (but you can still have access to them). Other than a black mark on you record (which you have with computer crimes anyways), your life is relatively back to normal.
Computer crimes should be more civil (fines) rather than criminal. The problem is a lack of education in lawmakers about computers (in general too). They're scared to death of hackers, and want to stop hackers, but probably don't realize how little effect their laws have.
Get FileVault for OS X. Never get caught, assuming you use a big password.
I want to know why they seized his xbox controllers?
Halo LAN party in the evidence locker. Why else?
The FBI came with a blonde woman
And now from this moment in time.... thousands of script kiddies will be trying everything possible to get raided in the hope of that a real woman (other than their mom) will enter their bedroom.
Do you have any evidence to prove it? You're the one making claims. It falls upon you to prove it.
If I claim there was electricity in Elizabethean England, it's my responsibility to prove it, not yours to disprove it.
No that actually isn't a police state. In a RAID they don't have to fucking show you any ID. Thats kinda ruins the point of surprising someone. You know, in a RAID? Jesus fucking christ.
The problem is rank and file Slashdotters like you cannot seem to comprehend that hackng and stealing code is a REAL crime that needs to be investigated and prosecuted. You also believe that any law enforcement action is the indication of us all living in a police state.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
From my experience this is not true.
For example.
USA, right wing, fairly intrusive on its own people but mostly extremely biased against the rest of the world because it is able to act like a big bully with its power. It will insist on biometric passports for any foreign citizen coming in to the country - but is not immediately going around fingerprinting all of its own citizens.
U.K. left wing, no respect for its own people, treats them like the idiots that they are, nanny state attempting to control every aspect of your life, there are more spy cameras in London than any other city in the world. We have one of the most evil men in first world politics going largely undetected (David Blunkett), mainly because the blind fucker gets some sort of sympathy vote.
Its ridiculous that we have to rely on the old farts in the house of Lords to decline a lot of the proposed bills by Blunkett and Blair, if they did not stand up to the government the situation could be much, much worse.
Blunkett actually tried to do away with the right of trial by jury. The basic democratic right to be tried by your peers, was almost gone (and actually is in some circumstances). He wanted a single judge to decide "minor cases". Very fucking minor when some judge who gets out of bed the wrong side that day decides to convict you and you spend the rest of your life struggling to get a job other than flipping burgers. Add to this the attempt to remove double-jeopardy, so if they decide they don't like you they can keep trying till they find a jury that agrees with them. The list goes on with the situation with asylum seekers, the hysteria surrounding paedophilia, etc. Of course none of this goes through without Blair watching, and Blunkett is merely there so that Blair can stay one step removed from the delicate issues that Blunkett relishes trampling on. This UK Government is about grabbing power and not much else.
OK, so this is well and truly a rant now, however it should serve it purpose to show that leftie governments are terrible and respecting ivil lberties albeit in a verbose way. Hmm, I guess I just could have mentioned any one of several communist states to get the point accross.
I am seriously looking to move to another country that will let me live my life without feeling watched all the time, and without feeling that I am enjoying the good stuff because we are fucking half of the world up the ass. Unfortunately I have not found anywhere yet.
The main problem with right wing parties, which you touched on, is that they do tend to be more against the minorities for various reasons (e.g. homosexuals), this is an aspect I find very distasteful in itself. However if you drop the bigotry then that might actually be a side I could claim to lean to.
:)
I don't think you can just ignore that "bigotry". That is one the reasons conservatism rarely supports liberties. I'm not saying YOU are a bigot or that all conservatives are. However the ideology lends itself to it.
It's not as if conservatives are evil, or bad, or whatever. It's just that their beliefs lead to undesired (from a liberal point of view) effects. For example, the reason conservatives are against homosexuals is because of religion. If you are religious, you are on the right. And if you are on the right, you likely won't support equality for homosexuals since religious texts claims that homosexuals are inferior (or some such thing).
In any case, the enemy of freedom is totalitarianism. Both conservatives and liberals will oppose that to the death...
I think you are a conservative or a centrist/moderate (eg. center-right). Just for reference, I'm on the far-left. We will likely disagree on 90% of the issues but we are getting along well here
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
You know, as much as you may think life is polar, it isn't.
How do you know a crime was committed in this circumstance?
How does -he- know he's -actually- a suspect, and this wasn't
just a con job?
The cops shouldn't be able to just walk into someones house, un-chaperoned, un-watched, hand over some official documents, and charge off with his posessions while the guy just walks around in the street, in a daze, like some sheep.
Instead, the cops should bring public representation -with- them, who will observe all activity until the innocent person is able to arrange their own representation to have all details of the incident witnessed.
That public representative should be there for two reasons: one, legitimacy at face value, of the government in this action, and to provide witness of the entire event -for the innocent person, and for the investigation. Hey, why not give TV camermen a real job and require all police activity of this nature to be taped and archived to absolutely -ensure- justice?
Then, its no longer a police state, where the cops can do anything they want to any citizen under their suspicion, it is instead a public state where witness is borne, and facts are revealed and recorded every step of the way, from both the investigation and the 'protection of the innocent' perspectives.
The primary intent of those people walking into that guys house at 6:30am in the morning was to find evidence to prove him guilty of wrong-doing. That was their job, thats what they were there to do. They had gotten up bright and early in the morning, gotten their coffee at Starbucks on the way into work, and went off to interrupt that persons life on the basis of suscpicion.
There should -also- have been someone there, at the same time, to ensure justice is served to the innocent. These two roles cannot be trusted to a single person.
It is an open society which promotes the rigorous protection of the innocent more stringently than it prosecutes as completely as possible the guilty.
Incidentally, a policy of non-secrecy like this one would be good for the whole 'data records' issue too. If there is an item in a database with my name on it, it belongs to me and should be visible to me at any time I request it. Since I believe that the rights of some corporation are not greater than my individual rights, issues of 'business trade secret' are irrelevant.
Another sign of a 'police state' is 'secret files'. The fact that so many corporations have so many amazingly detailed facts about citizens, none of whom have -any- access to this information, nor recourse over its use and influence on their daily lives, leads to just a few more alarm bells about the current situaton in the US of A, Inc...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Bullshit. I live in Russia and I have friends whose grandparents were arrested in 1937-1939 by NKVD. I'll tell you about it.
These people either had a warrant or they had the legal authority to arrest people/search their homes. They were investigating an actual crime of serious magnitude commited against the country (treason, sabotage, espionage) that we (the Soviet people) loved dearly.
The NKVD would often come at night, but often in the morning or any other time of the day. They either rang or knocked, they didn't break the door. They were civilized and they didn't kill anybody. They also didn't steal any property from the house. People, who were arrested, were taken into jail, where they were treated according to the procedures and with all necessary paperwork. The house was, obviously left intact, no fire. This never happened because you believed in wrong religion (nobody cared much at that time, since a very large fraction of the population was religious) or were the member of the wrong party (there was only one party), but because you were charged with a serious crime, such as conspiring to kill our beloved leader Josef Stalin.
The point is not, whether the crimes are real or not, it doesn't really matter whether you are sent to gulag for sabotaging a power plant that you didn't or for copying a DVD that you did. What matters is that once the state becomes too powerful, it will gradually transform into a police state and a bit later into a totalitarian police state. That's what is happening in the US.
The fact that you have rights is irrelevant to whether the country is a police state - you are confusing it with a lawless dictatorship. In a police state you may have rights, but they are trumped by even greater rights of the police. This guy is laughing, but would he if he was accused of assisting terrorists?
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.