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."

Comments

Yeah ok...

[codefungus]

...remind me to never do anything with Valve!

---
stupid 20 seconds.

Re:Wording and tense..

[Mononoke]

Rather than "FBI agents, acting under a warrant issued due to probable cause having been ascertained, ..."

Thanks to Bush's raping of the Constitution: Probable cause isn't even a requirement anymore, nor is judicial oversight. In other words, some clerk in the courthouse can sign your life away now solely on the whim of someone with a badge and a gun.

Oops, pardon me. Someone's at the door...

This could have been avoided!

[Lieutenant_Dan]

Had Valve made the code Open Source, none of this would have been necessary and we would have that amazing game to play during the Xmas holidays. Including with Ogg Vorbis support to play your own personal soundtrack.

Such a pity. Hopefully ID Software will learn something from Valve's mistakes and make Doom 3 Open Source. They would be much better for it. It could become a tool of productivity, since the Doom 3 graphics engine would be able to provide a graphical interface for NETSTAT, IFCONFIG and of course, WHOIS.

Re:HL2 code theft

[Henry V .009]

I did not say that they would get charged with fraud. They won't, surely. I meant that if they claim more damages in court than exist in reality, that is fraud.

The "elves" and "leprechauns" part of you post suggests some sort of increasing impairment as you were writing.

Re:Secret Service

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

Feh. Time to denounce that us citizenship and move to canada. I do NOT want anything to do productively with this country anymore...let the slackers and beurocrats drown in their shit...

First of all, you should never run away from oppression unless your life is under threat. At least that's my philosophy. If USA sucks, you should take it upon yourself to change it. When the US govt threatens you (via CIA or Secret Service) then hop over to Canada. You are always welcome here :) ...

Having said that, Canada seems to be blindly following the path of USA. There have been several recent cases where people were sent to Syria to be tortured even though they were Canadian citizens. Canadian government got them out but only after some diplomacy, and well after these people suffered some abuse and torture.

Next, it seems the present Canadian government is "rolling back" its plans to legalize small amounts of marijuana. It is also slowing down in granting equality to homosexuals. What does all this have to do with the issue at hand? Well, the goverment is shifting to the right due to the "war" on terrorism. Right wing goverments are more prone to abuse civil liberties than left-leaning ones. Let's also not forget that Canada passed its own Patriot Act, although it was called something else (Bill xxxsomethingxxx) and wasn't as harsh.

Fortunately, Canada doesn't have a Secret Service and the bureacracy that goes with it. Canada's security issues are generally handled by the RCMP and they are more respected than the FBI. FBI is highly corrupt and at any given point in time, at least 10% of FBI officials work for organized criminals. This is why the FBI is hated by more Americans than any other police force in the developed liberal world (Russia, China, etc don't count). RCMP isn't that bad. However, I think CSIS (equivalent of CIA) went rogue. The recent cases with Syria, as well as a bunch of others imply that. Also, it seems the politicians responsible for CSIS don't know what CSIS is doing--a clear indication of how rogue the agency is.

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Re:Secret Service

[Steve Franklin]

Do you have evidence to the contrary? Or is this just your inner child refusing to believe that the decendants of Elliot Ness couldn't possibly do such a thing?

Re:Article text

[torpor]

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.

The problem with you Americans is that you think that a police force is the only way to solve your problems.

America is a corporate-fascist police state.