Slashdot Mirror
Feds Arrest Private Eye at HOPE
An anonymous reader writes "FBI agents today arrested Steven Rambam, the owner of a company that bills itself as the largest privately held online investigative service in the United States, according to Washingtonpost.com's Security Fix blog. From the story: 'Rambam was arrested this afternoon by FBI agents just moments before he was to lead a panel discussion on privacy here at the HOPE hacker conference in New York City. Rambam and three other panelists were to discuss how they dug up -- in just 4.5 hours of searching private and public databases -- more than 500 pages worth of data on HOPE attendee Rick Dakan, who agreed to be the guinea pig for the project.'"
AFAIK, digging up information on a willing person and presenting isn't illegal.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
No one has any idea why he was arrested? I read the article and there wasn't any hint at a reason.
"There is no real right or wrong, just what the majority accepts at the time."
Maybe, he was being arrested on other charges, not necessarily linked to the presentation e was about to give.
How about we wait for more info before we start screaming one way or the other.
I've already noticed that about 60% of posts are conspiracy theories about shutting him up..
we know nothing about the charges, and generally in high profile arrests there is a lag time between the actual arrest and the announcement of charges to the relevant media.
Now if he just disappears after this and we hear nothing.. then ill be worried, but as of now I see absolutely no red flags here.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
And speaking of conspiracy stuff please check out this newspaper column, then realize that the columnist that wrote this had a name change, was born and grew up in Russia, and has a long association with the Cato Institute (ostensibly a "libertarian think tank" but they normally side with the neocons on almost everything.
If only more Americans had read the US Constitution....
Then it's show of force. Only the Feds are supposed to play with the "stovepipes" of Carnivore and when they pay you to do it for them you need to keep your mouth shut.
Can you say "Police State"? I voted for George Bush because he promissed me a smaller and less invasive government. This is what I got.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Oddly enough, the FBI chose to make this move in New York City, where they knew that none of the attendees would be armed.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
On the subject of Rambam check out previous talks given at HOPE conferences. He's a good speaker and quite interesting on the topic of information availability. He stated a couple of weeks ago in an interview leading up to this conference's talk that he had planed to do the same basic presentation at the last hope but the "victim" got cold feet at the last moment after he realized just how much information was available and threatened to sue. If you listen to the old presentations he does make a point that almost any information is available legally but it is more difficult to get it legally than illegally. I have to believe from hearing him speak several time that what he would have done for this presentation would at least to be best of his knowledge been legal.
Four previous presentations.
Privacy - Not What It Used To Be
http://www.the-fifth-hope.org/mp3/privacy.mp3
Databases and Privacy
http://h2k2.hope.net/media/databases.mp3
Information on the Masses with Steve Rambam.
http://h2k.hope.net/post/panels/h2kinfo.mp3
Info for Masses
ftp://ftp.2600.com/pub/oth/beyondh/nfo4mses.ra
Private Eye Arrested in the Middle of Waste Dumping Scheme
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Ramdam was charged with impersonating a mime, mopery with intent to loiter, probity, nothosonomia, and one moving violation.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
We're so screwed. People like you have effectively killed the skepticism of government actions on which freedom relies. Thanks. We really appreciate all you've done.
I can actually find out a heck of a lot about somebody with their name and Google. If you know power searching tips, and construct searches based on what you already find, you can find out a lot. If I had somebody's name who was a frequent Internet user, I could probably find out a fair amount of biographical information on them with a few variations on their name. Then I could search using those pieces of information as keywords and find out even more information.
...and you can too! A lot of the information he says he found in 4.5 hours is not that impressive. Pics of his former roommates? Easy if they're Myspace or Facebook friends. Places he lived before? Check the history for his wall. Places he worked before? If he was in IT, and you can find his favorite internet screenname, you can find his postings to internet tech forums such as Slashdot, Devshed, Sourceforge, etc, complete with the details of what he was working on.
And God help you if you have a MySpace account with a wall. Then I can learn everything about your social life, including the names of your friends. Then I can look them up too and construct a whole web of information about you.
That's just with Google. Combine that with even modest law enforcement databases and you can find out a heck of a lot about one person.
Granted, that still scares me a LOT. I value my privacy but I feel like I don't actually have it anymore. All I'm saying is his deal is not all that unique. Or maybe I'm just The Power Google Searcher From Hell!!!!!
Read the following link about how he maliciously sued Osirusoft, the maintainer of relays.osirusoft.com after having them DDOS'd. It does not shock me to see that this asshole has ended up in handcuffs at all. He has always acted above the law. For those that remember the foonet.net story will rejoyce to see that this shithead is going to PMITA prison.
Note that I did not say he was stupid, hence I post as AC.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
According to this article, he has been involved in a lawsuit against a spam blocker (his company was mistakenly placed on a spam blocklist), he has tracked Nazi war criminals, and he discovered that Elvis has Jewish ancestors.
Steve Rambam lost his law suit against the anti-spam DNSBL run by Joe Jarad. In the process Steve lost any respect I might have had for him for other things.
SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.
http://www.oretek.com/lawsuite/
If only for Rambam's suit against oretec and Joe Jared, I'd say it was fate balancing the scales.
And again, this is in advance of knowing what Rambam is charged with. If it's silly, then I'll have to (yuck!) support him. If it is legitimate AND he's guilty, then I hope he gets tossed in jail and the key thrown away.
My sense of justice doesn't allow me to not object when an injustice is done, even if it's against someone I think deserves what happens for another reason. The law must be fair and just for everyone, even if I think a particular person is a piece of human garbage.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
From TFA: Conference founder Emmanuel Goldstein said organizers were trying to figure out where the FBI had taken Rambam, and were contacting his parents and his lawyer.
What's funny is that in 1984, Emmanuel Goldstein is "the Enemy of the People" after having once been a leading Party member almost at the level of Big Brother.
If we're going to (badly) juxtapose reality with fiction, Rambam would be Winston, the guy who follows Goldstein's lead & eventually ends up arrested by agents of the Thought Police.
(I know, the FBI != Though Police. I said it was a bad juxtaposition)
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I find it ironic that the guy is arrested in front of a whole bunch of online geeks, yet nobody has managed to find the single, most pertinent bit of information: What's he been charged with?
:v)
It appears you can't access this kind of information online.
Vik
At least electronic voting booths are still insecure...
Poppycock. They promised to deliver the vote for Bush; and they did. How much more security do you want than that?
KFG
First they came for the Linux users, but I didn't care because I didn't use Linux.
Then they came for the OSX users, but I didn't care because I didn't use OSX.
Then they came for the Windows users, but by then it was too late; they were all far too stupid to help me...
Just kidding! I'm sure the FBI will offer a fair and speedy trial. After all, it's a 6th-Amendment right guaranteed to all Americans.
Well, almost all Americans...
barack to the future?
The same goes for torture. Today, if you object to torture, you have to justify your position, because Gitmo and Abu Ghraib have inoculated everyone against the idea that torture is by definition wrong. Police states don't happen overnight, and as they develop into fruition, "normal people" won't recognize the status quo as a police state--it'll just be normal, a "nothing to see here" common-sense extension of what we see every day.
I call them detainees, not suspects. Some are no doubt suspected of crimes, but many in Gitmo and Abu Ghraib were caught up in sweeps, or are held because they are thought to have information. Holding someone because you want to interrogate them for information isn't the same thing as holding them because you think they themselves have done or will do something bad. "Interrogation" does not address guilt or innocence, and in fact any of us can be interrogated, regardless of our guilt or innocence. Some of these people have been the victim of a Kafkaesque "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" imprisonment. They knew a guy who knew a guy who was at this place this other person might have passed through, and ergo they might know something, so we'll hold them for a while. Since there is very little oversight, very little accountability for abuse, coupled with high accountability for failing to get information, in short order we have waterboarding and people being beaten to death. Calling them "suspects" makes us feel better about not caring, because we're at least halfway implying that they might have done something, but in reality being held for interrogation doesn't even assert guilt, much less provide evidence for it.
Good grief, in what fascist hellhole do you live? In the United States the police can arrest you without a warrant only if they have very good reason to believe you have just committed, or or about to commit, a crime. Here and here and here are some legal references. "Very good reason" in this context means a reason that will convince a judge not only that you should have been arrested, but also that there wasn't time to get him (the judge) to sign off on it first. Judges really like to be in control, so in practise this means the police can freelance a decision to arrest in only a few well-defined situations.
For example, the police can arrest you without a warrant if an officer has just seen you do something highly suspicious, like run out of a convenience store wearing a ski mask, with a store owner yelling "Stop thief!" in hot pursuit, or a credible witness says they just saw you commit a serious crime -- for example your girlfriend accuses you of slugging her and causing the bruises that appear on her face -- or you match the description of someone wanted for jumping bail on a multiple murder charge, or even if you've been stopped for a minor infraction, like a traffic violation, but proceed to give an obviously false name, refuse to sign the citation, and aren't carrying any valid ID, so they have no way of being reasonably sure you'll appear in Court to answer the summons.
Can the police walk up to you at a public function, where you're doing absolutely nothing illegal, just minding your own business, and showing no indications of fleeing the country -- and arrest you without a warrant? Never.
And it's not only HOPE. The FBI or perhaps the NSA reads /. and regularly takes down the pages the stories link to. Probably to censor them as a few hours/days later their often back online.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I'm not saying that we should man the barricades and break out the ammo, only that we have a responsibility to not let it get to that point before we say, "hey dammit, this is wrong." This is where the battle is, for the most part--with words. Ideas and principles matter. What we are willing to tolerate changes to accomodate what we've already tolerated, because we largely can't admit that we looked the other way. If we tolerate it on the small scale, what moral argument do we make to oppose the exact same practices on the large scale?
We have to recognize wrong and raise bloody hell about it, if only via a few posts on a lame blog or in a conversation over the water cooler at work. I'm not an activist, but when I speak up, here or in real life, it may give confidence to someone else who has been quietly thinking "you know, this doesn't look right." If I'm silent, that one quiet little voice caves into the raucous majority and eventually they don't have any doubts that it's okay for Padilla or anyone else to rot away in jail without the "privelege" of a trial. A voice of dissent, one who brings up the ideals we all ostensibly believe in, is more important than you think. If I followed your lead, I'd wait until no voice was possible. What do you want me to do, wait until I'm being herded into a black van with a hood over my face to cry out "golly, this is wrong?"