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EFF To Appeal Court Order Vs. Subway Hack Demo
snydeq sends along InfoWorld coverage of the EFF's plans to appeal a US District Court order that kept three MIT students from presenting detailed flaws in the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority e-ticketing system at Defcon. And an anonymous reader points out that the MBTA, in addition to triggering the Streisand Effect, released in open court more information on vulnerabilities (PDF) than the students had any intention of presenting. See Exhibit 1 to this court filing.
If only there were some branch of the government whose job it was to ensure that people's constitutional rights were protected!
Or, even more importantly, nobody considers blaming the vendor who sold the faulty system to the city.
Why is it that every time I read about the EFF or Lesig I hear about how they are going down in flames in once case or another? Are we taking about the Washington generals here? Whats it going to take for them to actually win something for a change.
http://www.eff.org/victories
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V128/N30/subway/
Direct link to the presentation PDF:
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V128/N30/subway/Defcon_Presentation.pdf
Because; "You have the right to freedom of speech as long as your not dumb enough to use it".
Freedom of speech, like just about all our supposed freedoms, is only available to those that can afford to defend it in court. The contrapositive of this fact is of course that the ability to take away freedoms from someone is available to those that can afford to attack them in court.
Companies, etc, apply for injunctions and by Gods they get them. Do you think if you, whatever your grievance, applied for an injunction against a major company that it would be awarded? Money talks. Judges listen. It's not necessarily something as base as bribes. Just high class laywers gaming a system that puts up with being gamed.
These three hackers should not have appealed this order. They should have ignored it. Defcon should have ignored it. Why obey an order that is going to be struck down anyway? Threat of censure? The court can only censure you if it's oder was legal in the first place.
If more people stood up to, and openly defied the courts; we'd have a better court system.
May the Maths Be with you!
...Then they go and release more sensitive details in their court documents which are public record than the original presentation was to discuss.
It's not often you get to see someone step on their own pecker with both feet, while advertising the fact.
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
What bothers me about this comment isn't that you trivialize terrorism. Yes, it does exist (read on before you mod, please). It doesn't even bother me that it's modded funny.
What bothers me is the "cry wolf" tactics our media and politicians use whenever something happens they don't like. It's because of terrorism that people can't bring their own coke to a plane anymore (it's not that we want airlines to get additional revenue from selling their drinks). P2P fuels terrorism (not that we want to prop up an outdated business model). It's terrorism why we are forced to reliinquish our essential rights (not because our politicians don't want us to say things they don't want the public to know).
"Terrorism" has been abused as the catch all argument whenever something is imposed upon us that goes against the interests of our politicians and their cronies. And people start to see through the thinly veiled egoistic goals, and start to mock it. As you would mock anyone who cries wolf as soon as something happens he doesn't like.
What bothers me most is that when the terrorists strike, we'll get told "see? We told you, it's terrorism!" Instead of them learning that their wolfcrying creates nothing but contempt and ridicule, they will point at us and blame us for not taking it serious, when it has been abused time and again.
Terrorism is a real threat to the US and the "western" world. Abusing it to cry wolf about everything you want to do against your people is not going to make them take it serious. Quite the opposite.
As can be seen in the parent posting.
Daimanta, not trying to belittle you. You're just the one that speaks what everyone was thinking. "Ok, how long 'til they claim terrorism is the reason?" It's not against you, again. It's against those that abuse the terrorist card for everything that goes against their interests.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.