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What Do Court-Ordered Internet Bans Really Mean?
tcd004 writes "Chris Lamprecht, a.k.a. Minor Threat, was the first person to be banned from the internet back in 1995. Since then, the practice has gained popularity worldwide. In the last year, courts in Australia, Britain, Canada, and the United States have all banned people from the Internet. A British court recently banned a convicted pedophile specifically from entering chatrooms for 10 years. But how effective are the bans? Minor Threat contends that the rules governing his internet ban use were toothless. How much harder is it to keep people off the internet in an age when everything--from parking meters to refrigerators--comes with an IP address." (Note: the Globe and Mail story requires registration.)
With voice over IP becoming more common place with carriers like Vonage, etc., phone calls are starting to travel over the internet. Does an internet ban mean they are banned from all things internet? If it does, some people may screwed 5 or 10 years down the road when it comes to even using a telephone, as they too will use the internet.
It shouldn't be there either, because it opens the door to pure arbitrariness.
The term "internet" is a damn broad statement in and of itself. I think that has a lot to do with just exactly where to draw a line as to what's considered using the internet or not. Touchtone telephones for example. A grey area.
I'd say that the aforementioned pedophile's example was quite a bit different. He has a rule like "no chat rooms for 10 years." I'd say a chat room is fairly easy to define, and a much clearer cut case.
Also, the "toothless" threat of this is just like the "toothless" threat that is given to people on parole or probation for drug offenses. You can't be around anyone who is using drugs as part of the deal. Can they really enforce that too effectively? Its supposed to be a point. Something you're supposed to regulate yourself on, because, on the off chance they do find out, you're in a whole world of trouble.
The term "internet" is a damn broad statement in and of itself. I think that has a lot to do with just exactly where to draw a line as to what's considered using the internet or not
that's exactly the question- what is using the internet, and, how reasonable is such a punishment as internet usage becomes even more common than it is now?
10, or even 5 years ago, you could get by without an email address... you could have a normal family life, and an almost normal job, and never think about email... but now? how about 5 or 10 years down the road? not being allowed an email address would be like prohibiting someone from talking, or from using the postal system.
a generalized internet ban would essentially mean somebody couldn't work, or, employers would have to put up unreasonable work-arounds, like a special extra employee to handle all the email for the ban-ee... it would be rediculous
as other posters have mentioned, this will soon mean the ban would extend to most telephone use as well...
so, hopefully, some court somewhere, like the british court that restricted the ban to chat rooms, will realize that they have to tailor bans to specific needs
however, i think idea of these kinds of bans in general are a little dodgy anyway- take mitnik's ban, he had to put up with that after serving a prison term... well, come on here, if you've served your time you've served your time, and normal probation should follow... we don't tell jewelry thieves that they must serve their entire probation without entering jewelry stores, and imagine the uproar if a bank robber was told he had to serve his probation without entering a bank!
that said, in the case of the pedephile, that seems pretty reasonable to me- if the popularity of bans continues, hopefully, they'll be restricted to recreational activities, such as chat rooms, but not prohibit uses that are necessary for one's livelyhood... but, this is the court system we're talking about, so i'm not keeping my fingers crossed
I would think that the point of something like this is to make sentencing easier if a person is caught for the same crime. Maybe there will be a point where they think the person has commited another crime and I'll the evidence that they have is the web activity. That would be enough to bring him in for questioning. And if they did convict him for this new crime, the penelty would be that much more severe if they could also pin breaking the Internet ban on him. I doubt that they expect to actually enforce the ban.
I assume you're referring to Kevin Mitnick's case where he was refused a phone call. This one actually made some sense from the law-enforcement point of view. We just need to pretend we are the police and start with the assumption that Kevin is indeed a powerful hacker-terrorist committed to causing death and destruction. Now what would a hacker-terrorist do for a contingency plan? He would set up his most devastating hacking scripts and make them activatable by a modem listening on a dedicated phone line. And all you need to launch the attack is a phone call to a specific number. Of course, Kevin was actually a pretty different character but the authorities didn't really have any way of verifying that this was the case.
Seattle Eastside Math and Science Tutoring
On the one hand, people are quite often prohibited from normally-legal activity (such as leaving the state) during a probation or parole period. However, it would seem to me that, with the Internet taking over more and more everyday functions (VoIP, the wide use of email, IM, and videoconferencing in business, Web-based applications coming into wider use by corporations, in some companies, including the one I work for, you have to log into an online server just to punch in), this could effectively amount to a prohibition from holding any but the most menial jobs during your probation/parole period. I think that, looked at that way, that would certainly seem to be cruel, excessive punishment.
The arguments that "they can bust the hacker if he's caught again" seem somewhat specious to me. They can already bust him for committing the same crime again, and they can already punish a second offense more harshly than a first. They don't need some "violation of an internet ban" to do either.
In balance, while I can understand the reasoning behind this line of thought, I don't think it's an acceptable punishment. I can see why it might've been thought so in 1995, but this is not 1995 and it no longer is.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Ahh ToneLoc, those were the days. Here in Australia we used to have 008 freecall numbers (now we have 1800 numbers like the rest of the world). I remember I scanned a block of 10,000 numbers over the course of a week. I got a nasty little letter from the national telephone carrier Telstra warning me not to abuse the telephone system. I remember calling them up and demanding what the hell their problem was. "It's a free call, I can make as many as I wish" I said. They told me there had been a complaint. Some travel lodge claimed they had received over a hundred calls with no-one on the other end (the call would last nothing more than 1 or 2 seconds before the modem dropped the connection and moved onto the next number). I insisted that I had called each number in the block no more than once in the entire scan. Telstra sent me a list of dates and times for the calls that had been connected to the complaining travel lodge's phone. There was over 300 calls that had been connected. I correlated the times that Telstra had sent with my scan logs and found that Telstra had routed three 100 number blocks to the same telephone. Once I explained this to the technician who had been assigned the matter he immediately found and corrected the problem. These days I suppose they would have just sent the cops around to arrest me on some trumped up terrorist charge or something.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Sure do. Chris is a friend of Cerebrum and myself (tel0p). ToneLoc rocked. I even wrote a 'port' for my Commi 128 (with notification to boot ;). Fun times indeed.
After a while I was 'banned' from the 'net' as well. In fact, I had to get permission to even use a computer (for college). [ due to a conviction for computer trespass into Boeing and the USDistrict court here in Seattle ].. the high-point of the 'ban' was when my USPO came into my bedroom, got on her hands and knees under my desk, and looked for a RJ11 cable going into my computer. Bah. Incidently her name was K. Stringer. Figures.
Regardless, MT is a very cool dude and if you happen to go to the UT, check out his current doings.
Oh, I've got that TonleLoc src around here somewhere too... :D
Back in '94, a federal judge in Seattle banned me and my codefendant for a period of three years from using a modem or "network device".
Strange how I was allowed to work at a media company there, that contained the word "Networks" in it, without hassle.
Of course all good things must come to an end, and the Feds raided my office and had me fired the next day.
What irritates me is the irrational fear that keeping a "bad person" off the information highway is going to rehabilitate him. After all the net is a mixture of both public and private services, and tightly integrated into the common everyday activities that normal people use.
I suppose the Judge felt he was revoking my "privilege" to use the Net, but it was more of a first amendment ban if anything.
The question becomes, should people be qualified and licensed to use the Internet, since judges feel that it an earned privilege, not a God-given right?
But the same could easily be said for kidnappers, yet they still get their one phone-call.
Besides, Mitnick wasn't charged with murder, and facing a lifetime in jail, so it's pretty absurd to jump to the conclusion that he would even desire to launch a nuclear attack...
There's more risk someone would call in a hit on a judge/witness/prosecuter, yet criminals still get their one phone call.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
That is exactly the sort of thing he did, repeatedly.
Outlaws have always attracted support from the gullible who want to romanticize their behaviors. The fact is that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were both brutal murderers, same for Bonnie and Clyde. Mitnick didn't kill people but he did his best to make life very unpleasant for a lot of people.
The point is that a person arrested for making harassing telephone calls does not get to use their telephone call to call their victim. There is no right to a telephone call, only to have someone contacted which can be on your behalf if the police choose.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
"Of course, Kevin was actually a pretty different character but the authorities didn't really have any way of verifying that this was the case."
Nor do they have any way of varifying that my one phone call wont do the exact same, nor yours, nor anyone elses. We have the presumption of innocence in this country, and it's one of those troublesome rights given to us by our misguided founders. Of course, I'd like to make a phone call in that same situation, I'm sure you would too, but it's ok to forget about due process if it's someone else, right? I dont care if they thought the guy was Hitler reincarnate, he was an american citizen and deserved the same fair treatment as you or I.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
The idea as written will remain insane to you until its your child being molested.
If you think the idea is insane, remember we're talking about a pedophile. Wander over to NANAE sometime, and check out the posts with suggestions for dealing with spammers, an obviously lesser crime than child molestation. In particular the thinly veiled threat to firebomb the same NOC that houses my servers. There were some spammers leasing rack space in the NOC, not connected in any way to myself, and the problems had been dealth with by the hosting provider.
Come on now, think about it. I didnt mean a "knee knocking" jolt, just a tingle. But there are other variations that could be done such as sending a signal to the police, similar to the tracking ankle bracelets worn now by some home confined felons.
Maybe I'll look into patents, you never know.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
This would have been more appropriately asked to lawyers, not a bunch of IANAL's. :)
But, from the experience I have (a few law classes, and plenty of time on both sides with lawyers), a ban such as this, while to encourage the person not to do something, is more inclined to give a harsher penalty if they should do it again.
For example, if you get a DUI, you'll very likely lose your license. You may also be prohibited from drinking. It varies by the state and circumstances. Now say you go to a bar and drink. You probably won't get caught. But if you go to a bar and are involved in a bar fight, now you'll be dragged off for VOP. Judges don't generally like it when you do something directly against what they just told you, and will probably drop you in the nearest jail for the full term of your probation, or longer, depending on his mood.
I've heard judges let things go lightly, because they know it was a subtle offense. Like, the VoIP, and IP enabled appliances that I see referenced in the comments. If you were chatting up underaged girls and the judge said to stay off the Internet, but then you were caught talking to your mom on a Vonage phone, he'd probably let it go. But if you were on a PC in a Internet Cafe, trolling for underage girls, sure as hell you'd be spending time in jail.
Consider the incident with Richard Ricci in the Elizabeth Smart case (kidnapping in Utah). Ricci was told by the judge not to drink. They raided his house because they suspected he might be involved (and then it was later proven he wasn't), but arrested him for drinking a beer. If he didn't have the beer, they would have needed real evidence to arrest him. Since he had violated that prior ruling, he was screwed, even though that's the only thing he had done wrong. If they hadn't suspected him of kidnapping and murder, they would have probably let him go with a warning.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
The ban is intentionally toothless. The ban is a threshold, that if violated, can be used against the individual at some future point in time. So if a banned individual chooses to violate the ban, they must be certain that they can hide that violation from the authorities, or they must be willing to accept the risk of greater punishment in the future. It's a low cost control tactic, which actually is quite effective considering it costs nothing (next to nothing) to enforce.
And I'm even a slashdot user, since just about the time my ban ended ;)
-chrisYou almost got it right.
He would use a "dead man switch". Not calling the number for a day or two would trigger the attack.
Funny you should say that. I'm actually using stolen internet (open access point) right now. 'The Man' could tell every ISP in the nation not permit you access, but there are ways around everything.
Jeremy Logan's Website.
Yeah, but everyone, no matter how clueless, understands what it means to drive. Everyone knows what it means to harass. But an awful lot of people don't actually understand what the phrase "the internet" refers to, and don't understand how ubiquitous it really is. In 1995 it wouldn't have been a problem to live without internet. Today it is still possible, but it is a bit limiting. A few years down the road I predict it will be next to impossible to avoid the internet and still be an active member of civilization. Avoiding the internet is going to mean never using a bank, never paying for anything with any means besides cash, never using a store, never having the ability to make remote contact (have to come to your house to talk to you since telephone service will merge with internet service.)
The internet is a lot more than "that thar web thingy", and it is becoming more so with each passing year.
There is something "magic" about the internet that makes it different - it is not an end-infrastructure in itself - it's an enabling infrastructure that other infrastructures are built on top of, and more and more necessary infrastructures of society are moving onto it.
Eventually "you can't use the internet" will be like "You can't use electricity."
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
"make a phone call without intent to communicate".
That describes every telemarketing call I've ever heard.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
So wardialing is legal, as long as your modem (voice modem) first says "I am going to test for the presence of a modem on this line"? IANAL, just looking for loopholes.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
[In America...] While in custody you have the right to humane treatment, the right to remain silent and the right to contact a lawyer, a family member, or the like for help. But that is pretty much the limit.
That's bizzare. Here in Britain we have not historically had any constitutionally guaranteed rights, however a prisoner on remand retains all their rights other than those necessarily removed from them by the fact of their incarceration or specifically removed by legislation. I would have assumed that in the Land of the Free protections of the innocent would be even greater...