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Man Reportedly Jailed for Using Lynx

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the freak-outs dept.

wezzul writes "A Londoner made a tsunami-relief donation using Lynx on Sun's Solaris operating system. The site operator decided that this 'unusual' event in the system log indicated a hack attempt, and the police broke down the donor's door and arrested him." Honestly, though, aside from a BBC article about a tsunami fund hacking probe that doesn't mention user agents there's little to corroborate this. Hopefully Lynx users need not worry too much yet.

9 of 912 comments (clear)

  1. Hope he gets the sysadmin locked up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful
    for false imprisonment, and sued for slander, liable, an anything else he can think of.

  2. No, *I* am Spartacus! by cliffiecee · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We *so* need to name a 'Lynx' day in protest. Hit all your favorite sites with a text-based browser in a non-windows OS for one day.

    Of course, with all the embedded Flash around, some sites will be totally inaccessible... which would maybe teach them a lesson about accessibility.

  3. Re:governments are funny. by L.Bob.Rife · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But the real question is, did this request go through a judge to get a warrant, or was it simply some sysadmin making a claim (which could be easily refuted by an expert) and the police arresting somebody on one mans word.

    Will police arrest somebody if I claim they killed somebody, or do they still need evidence?

  4. Insightful??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Just because he eats apples doesn't mean he is not a child molester"

    Where is the connection of the two? Parent puts some claim in the room, based on a connection which doesn't exist, and is modded up?

    1. Re:Insightful??? by LarsWestergren · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I actually thought it was pretty insightful, but I'll post instead of mod.

      So far, all comments are supporting one of two hypotheses:
      a) The story is a hoax, no one was arrested.
      b) The story is true, OMG they are after us just for using Lynx!

      Grandparent pointed out a possible third alternative:
      The person was using Lynx, the bastard really tried to hack the tsunami relief site, and that's why he was arrested.

      --

      Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die

  5. We have no confimation of the Lynx bit by Kris_J · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So far there is a single, mostly unknown, source for the portions of the story pertaining to Lynx. This is notable more for how opposite the Blogsphere and mainstream media positions are on the story. Currently, only the man arrested knows the real story and I have even seen a quote from him yet. We certainly haven't been exposed to any decent journalism yet.

  6. Re:well by nametaken · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It seems the good thing is we're now getting uncorroborated news stories from sites called "Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things". The BBC article makes no mention of lynx user-agent lines as the culprit.

    Can we up the bar a LITTLE?

  7. Re:I don't believe it by dbIII · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I wouldn't put it past the police/judges in any country of being largely ignorant of what a browser agent really means
    I see it as being "the expert says this guy is a hacker, so we arrest him" - while the reality is that the "expert" isn't an expert and is not under adult supervision.

    I think we'll see a lot more of this sort of thing. Hopefully we'll get more info so the words "you got a customer arrested because you were too ignorant to do your job properly?" follow this guy around for his entire career - if justified.

    I use lynx regularly, as do many others, any sysadmin who has never heard of it is inexperienced. If someone in a workplace is browsing pr0n for eight hours a day, the only safe way (grannies doing what?) to confirm that the URLs have dodgy content is lynx or similar things, or it's the simplest way to see if your web server is up or not from a console in the cold depths of a server room.

  8. Re:I don't believe it by d_strand · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Police would never arrest someone just because of the browser he was using.

    BWAAAHAAAAAHHAAAAA!!! No wait, this is not even funny.

    1) The police arrested him because they thought he was hacking stuff, not because he was using Lynx.

    2) The police arrest people for insane reasons all the time in 99% of all countries. While I firmly believe there was no evil intent from enyones side in this particular case, you really need to wake up: The police are only human and most of them do whatever the people who pay their bills tell them to (that means the government, not the taxpayer).

    3)The fact that the guy was released in a few days shows us that the system is limping along OK. The "sysadmin" making the hacking claim OTOH, should now be arrested for criminal negligence/incompetence or something