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EBay Hacker's Conviction Upheld
An anonymous reader writes "The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in the case of Jerome Heckenkamp, the former University of Wisconsin student convicted of federal computer crime charges in 2004 after hacking into Qualcomm, Cygnus Solutions and other companies, and defacing eBay. Heckenkamp was caught after a system administrator at the university hacked into his Linux box to gather evidence that Heckenkamp had been attacking the college mail server. The court ruled today that such counter-hacks are allowable under the 'special needs' exception to the Fourth Amendment, and upheld the warrantless search."
Except for the fact that the University of Wisconsin isn't cooperating with the RIAA in its latest efforts:
1 6
a _no_way.php
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University of Wisconsin-Madison Bucks RIAA
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/20/01512
UW to RIAA: No way
http://badgerherald.com/news/2007/03/21/uw_to_ria
It may be illegal...
http://www.doit.wisc.edu/news/story.asp?filename=
Well, one reason is that apparently this guy was connected to the university's network. He was using it to actively hack other systems, which is more clearly an "emergency" than copyright infringement (IANAL).
However, given that basically all major ISPs have user agreements such that you may not use their network for copyright infringement, they may be able to write in language that gives them the ability to not only shut down your network access but "counterhack" you at the behest of the RIAA.
Still, it's not clear that this would make their cases stronger. There might be some desire to actually have poked around in an alleged infringer's computer before they get a chance to wipe it clean, and it might reduce instances of "but someone was sharing my IP through my open wireless access point". Even so, it sounds like more trouble than it's worth, even for the RIAA.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Well, the 9th Circuit (which issued this ruling) is a very liberal court, which routinely sides with privacy, individual rights, and personal liberties, and does not err on the side of the state. So you can rest assured that any appropriate protections afforded Heckencamp were more than duly considered.
You may be interested in reading the entire ruling.
The applicable bit:
Once a court determines that the special needs doctrine
applies to a search, it must "assess the constitutionality of the
search by balancing the need to search against the intrusiveness
of the search." Henderson, 305 F.3d at 1059 (citing Ferguson,
532 U.S. at 78). The factors considered are the subject
of the search's privacy interest, the government's interests in
performing the search, and the scope of the intrusion. See id.
at 1059-60.
[...]
The district court did not err in denying the motion to
suppress the evidence obtained through the remote search of
the computer.
[...]
Here, even without the evidence gathered through the
allegedly improper search, there is sufficient information in
the affidavit to establish probable cause. The affidavit recited
evidence that the server intrusion had been tracked "to a campus
dormitory room computer belonging to Jerome T. Heckenkamp";
that "[t]he computer is in Room 107, Noyes House,
Adams Hall on the University of Wisconsin-Madison"; and
that "Heckenkamp previously had a disciplinary action in the
past for unauthorized computer access to a University of Wisconsin
system." This was sufficient evidence to obtain the
warrant to search "Room 107, Noyes House, Adams Hall."
So, the search warrant exemption applied, and even without the information in question, there was, regardless, already sufficient information for a search warrant.
The reason the 9th Circuit gets overturned is because it's a very liberal court that is often seen as out of step with prevailing views.
It also is very protective of personal and individual rights, liberty, and privacy, and does not err on the side of law enforcement or the state. It is probably statistically the most likely court to rule against the interests of the government and for the interests of the individual.
This one's not going to be overturned.
Also, you should really, really read the ruling.
hmm, got hacked eh? Maybe he should have been running OpenBSD instead? :P
Oh fuck off..........
You forgot the whole part about how even without the allegedly improperly obtained information, there was still sufficient evidence for a search warrant.
Also, at the time that this incident occurred, there wasn't an integrated capability to block MACs on the Housing network by the central IT organization, for various reasons. The most immediately available option was blackholing the IP, which was done, at which point the user simply manually assigned himself an unused IP on the DHCP network and continued malicious activity. The central IT organization does not operate the Housing network, and also didn't have immediate capability to physically disable ports in dorm rooms.
Today, we have all of those capabilities. Then, the only option for dealing with a very critical situation was taking all steps to actively ensure and verify that this computer did not come back on the network during the evolving emergency situation occurring over a very short period of time.
He did have an expectation of privacy, and the court held that.
It also held that the emergency search fell under the doctrine of the "special needs" exemption to the Fourth Amendment.
These two principles were balanced, and special needs won out.
I really wish people would read the ruling, as it speaks in great detail about the principles of privacy, expectations thereof, why the search was acceptable in these circumstances, and so on.
...I have to modify my comments, above. It appears that the sysadmin wasn't involved in "vigilantism" under the normal definition of the term.
Kythe
It's only that simple to simpletons. GTFO.
If you are a system administrator responsible for securing a network that serves 65000 people on a public research campus with a $2.1 billion annual budget, and you take actions to defend it from active a malicious attack that originating from the facility's own property and network by a person who is affiliated with your facility in violation of numerous policies of said facility, and this were nearly a decade ago and other suitable avenues for denying the attacker access weren't immediately available, then your emergency actions, too, may be considered appropriate by a court.
Does that help to answer your question?