FBI Raids Security Researcher's Home

Sparr0 writes, "The FBI has raided the home of Christopher Soghoian, the grad student who created the NWA boarding pass site. Details can be found on his blog including a scanned copy of the warrant. The bad news is that he really did break the law. The good news is that Senator Charles Schumer did it first, 19 months ago, on an official government website no less. The outcome of this trial should be at least academically interesting. At best, it could result in nullifying some portion of the law(s) that the TSA operates under." Read on for Sparr0's take on what laws may apply in this case.

Boiling down some of the legalese, the charges (if any are filed) will be "conspiracy to knowingly present a false and fictitious claim upon or against the United States, or any department or agency thereof in violation of USC 18 (secs. 2, 371, 1036, 1343, 2318) and USC 49 (secs. 46314 and 46316) and 49 CFR (secs. 1540.103 and 1540.105)" (edited for brevity).

Comments

Too bad it has to be this way

[Salvance]

Even faced with potential jail time, some people have a burning desire to be in the limelight. I wonder why Christopher Soghoian didn't just create a site anonymously. It would likely have the same effect, and he'd stay out of prison.

It's unfortunate that exposing holes in our security gets no press until someone actually leverages the hole to cause harm. For years before 9/11, the U.S. knew our airports were pitifully insecure, particularly Boston Logan, yet failed to do anything about it. So even though we'll be safer as a result of Christopher's work, he may be in prison. Unfortunately our society aplauds the whistleblower only well after the whistle has been blown, and the government aplauds them almost never at all.

Re:Too bad it has to be this way

[Simon Garlick]

The fact that you think Soghoian should have HIDDEN HIS IDENTITY FROM THE GOVERNMENT in order to identify a flaw in official security processes says a lot about your government.

Re:Too bad it has to be this way

[ricree]

Like others have said, it wouldn't be all that hard for him to have done it anonymously, but he shouldn't have to in the first place.

Re:Too bad it has to be this way

[psykocrime]

He didn't have to publicly supply a way to bypass security.

He didn't.

That is endangering everyone unnecessarily.

No, it's not. As plenty of others have already pointed out, it doesn't matter if Osama f'in Bin Laden is sitting
in the seat beside you on your flight... As long as he doesn't have a bomb, or any other means of creating problems
on the flight, the fact that it's Osama is irrelevant. So these fake boarding passes *might* help somebody
get on a plane who isn't allowed... big deal, they will still be searched, run through a metal detector, bomb-sniffing
crap, etc. This is completely insignificant from a security standout.

And even if it were a security flaw, people have to realize that with freedom comes danger. It's probably a little bit more
dangerous to live in a very free country, than one with a strict totalitarian regime who controls every movement everybody makes... but most
people will take that tradeoff. I know I sure will. "Give me Liberty or give me Death" is not just a cute sound bite to me.

Re:Too bad it has to be this way

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't have to publicly supply a way to bypass security. That is endangering everyone unnecessarily. First he should have contacted the airport security officials privately about it. If they did nothing, he should have then announced that he had found a way to bypass security, but not given any specifics. If they still did nothing, he should have publicly reported the problem.

He was acting towards the end of your suggested sequence of events, it has already got to the point of being publicly reported - what Soghoian did was effectivly bring it to the public's attention.

• This was such an obvious flaw - one could reasonably assume security officials knew about it
• Many others - including Senator Schume, and Slate Magagine (http://www.slate.com/id/2113157/) had drawn attention to this "vulnerability" prior to Soghoian
• Soghoian had tried to publicise the problem previously without sucess - then he had his brilliant idea of producing his PHP script to demonstrate the ease with which the vulnerability could be exploited - only by doing this did he really succeed in fulfiling his duty to publicly report the problem. He has done a better job than either the Senator or Slate Magazine or the others who knew about this flaw in bringing it to the public's attention - he should be applauded for doing that.
• The fact that he has published on anonymity Preserving in P2P Networks strongly suggests that he could have acted anonymously if he had wanted to (or felt he needed to)

I am quite shocked that if Slashdot was the Jury, and the Jury's opinions were the initial opinions of the individual Jurors and not those of the Jury acting as a committee following deliberation that we wouldn't have unaminously aquited Soghoian. I'm in the UK - and this scares me - given the state of the extridaition arrangements the UK has agreed to with the USA and the potential for indefinate imprisonment in the US for non-citizens. I've been to the US twice on business this year, reading this and the countless articles like it will certainly make me think twice before arranging another trip.

Re:What did he expect?

[illegalcortex]

Look, if my house has poor security, you're still in trouble if you start a factory to create keys for criminals to break in.

You wanna rethink that analogy there, "Reality Master"? Cause I'm pretty sure they call those places "locksmiths."

Who are the terrorists in this case?

[PhunkySchtuff]

My dictionary definition of a terrorist:
terrorist noun A person who uses terrorism in the pursuit of political aims.
terrorism noun The use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.

I quote from his blog:

I didn't sleep at home last night. It's fair to say I was rather shaken up.

I came back today, to find the glass on the front door smashed.

Inside, is a rather ransacked home, a search warrant taped to my kitchen table, a total absence of computers - and various other important things. I have no idea what time they actually performed the search, but the warrant was approved at 2AM. I'm sincerely glad I wasn't in bed when they raided the house. That would have been even more scary.

This is a case of classic police-state gestapo tactics.
This guy hasn't done anything wrong, he hasn't even hilighted a previously unknown security flaw, and now he's subject to this kind of treatment...