Slashdot Mirror
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."
You forgot to add that Odds are that the 9th Circuit will get overturned...AGAIN!
Can you guarantee that the System Admin didn't plant the evidence or the evidence was otherwise compromised? Well, now here is the problem, since you said you can guarantee it, that anyone that is called a System Admin is now allowed to plant evidence and vigilantism rules the internet.
Whether there was sufficient evidence for a warrant is irrelevant -- as you yourself noted, the University is not a law enforcement entity, nor were they working in that capacity.
Additionally, whether the University had the means to sufficiently control its network is also not relevant to whether they had the right to break the law -- unless the man in question specifically allowed hacking into his computer by agreement. Did he do so?
IANAL, but I wouldn't be terribly surprised to see a lawsuit against the university over their actions. Frankly, I'm rather surprised no one has been charged with hacking the man's computer. Perhaps it's being "overlooked" due to the obviously bad actor involved -- but IMHO it shouldn't be. OKing this sort of vigilantism is a pretty dangerous thing to do, on many levels.
Kythe