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College Police Think Using Linux Is Suspicious Behavior
FutureDomain writes "The Boston College Campus Police have seized the electronics of a computer science student for allegedly sending an email outing another student. The probable cause? The search warrant application states that he is 'a computer science major' and he uses 'two different operating systems for hiding his illegal activity. One is the regular B.C. operating system and the other is a black screen with white font which he uses prompt commands on.' The EFF is currently representing him."
First time I ever heard that. Does Boston College suddenly come out with their own Linux Distro?
Not to mention the fact that Boston College's Research Services runs it's own Linux cluster: http://www.bc.edu/offices/researchservices/cluster.html. zOMG TEH CRIMINALS!
True enough.
I was walking through the basement of our student union building many years ago. The building was mostly closed - we were at a gaming con and minimal stuff was open. I noticed the door to the game room was ajar. I went in and started playing video games with a few of my friends.
Turns out I tripped a silent alarm. About 15 minutes in, campus police busted in and threw us up against the wall at gunpoint. No kidding, I had a gun pressed against the base of my skull.
All that for 3 geeks who were playing video games.
We talked a bit with the cops afterwards. They bragged about how they had us "under surveillance" for over five minutes without any of us noticing. I pointed out that if that were true, did any of them notice the fact that we were *leaving* money there rather than taking it? Blank stares.
So IMHO, they're worse than regular cops. They're bored out of their minds - and have real guns. They so desperately want some crime to deal with, but there just isn't much other than the odd frat house kegger that gets out of control or the occasional parking ticket. I'd be bored to near-insanity too.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
My first day at a private college, we were explicitly told that the constitution does not apply within their property.
Not to mention the amount of damning evidence against the kid. They have DHCP leases of when the mass email went out to the school.
Roommate problems. One roommate sends out a mass-email to campus saying other roommate is 'gay' and coming out. It all sounds like a sophomoric prank using computers instead of posters, fliers, etc.
It also alleges that back when the roommates were 'friends' hacker dude put a second account on roommates computer while fixing it.
Half paranoia on some accounts, but for the most part most accusations sound plausible.
This is the kind of thing that gun owners - especially licensed dealers - have put up with for years, from the BATFE.
Coming to America near you!
What's that you say? Just a gun nut talking?
http://www.fox11az.com/news/topstories/stories/kmsb-20080229-famjc-gunsseized.b924092.html
Cavalry Arms, a store in AZ, was raided in Febuary of 2008. Their inventory was taken, along with their complete customer records, including backups. The pretense for the raid was "suspicious of violating federal firearms laws." Today, 14 months later, they have yet to be charged with a crime. Meanwhile, the items seized have been auctioned by the government, and they have not been reimbursed.
I could go on to show cases where ATF agents killed pets - in one case, stomping on a kitten on their way off the property - trashed citizens' houses and left the door busted in, and one case where the person being raided "committed suicide" - in a room that had already been searched for weapons, with an officer 5' away, and without getting gunshot residue on his hands.
Please people, I beg you. Wake up and see what's happening before this becomes more common.
Learn about Photography Basics.
Still the reason why cop abuse stories hit the news so hard is because it isn't commonplace
That, plus police are in a position of strong public trust. When a cop does wrong, people feel extra-betrayed (as well they should). That goes double when it's someone high-ranking, and triple when that person is or appears to be covering for his or her underlings' misbehavior. Police are held to a higher standard by the public; they should be held to that standard by law and practice, but often are not, which fuels discontent.
As to intelligence, what you said. Police often appear to be dumber than they are, because often they're following carefully-designed and intensely-trained procedures. Particularly when gathering evidence, police are trained to do so carefully and pedantically in a Socratic way.
A good law enforcement officer usually should appear as dumb as a box of rocks. When handling routine matters, he or she is following a routine procedure in a standard way. When gathering evidence, this helps ensure that the chain of evidence is complete (and doesn't include unwarranted logical leaps or assumptions by the police), and helps avoid the police equivalent of researcher bias (leading a suspect or witness into saying what the cop wants to hear).
The smartest cops are the ones that appear to be stupid. Stupid cops try to act smart, joking with or about suspects, making "clever" threats, and so forth.
Ummm, problem with that. It doesn't say "He says he stole laptops" it says "He has been seen with many different laptops, which he claims are either being fixed for friends, or are being tested for the university (where he works)" [both of these aren't direct quotes, they're paraphrased] and it implies that his roommate thinks they're stolen.
Right now I have... 3 notebooks in my room, only one of which belongs to me. Even at college it wasn't uncommon for me to have someone else's notebook at any given time. So to say that that represents suspicion of criminal behavior is absurd, since he's described as being an expert in computers, and even works for the university's IT department. If he has no, or few computer skills, then it'd be suspicious.
And as for the changing of grades, I suspect that's largely false, since the university did not claim to have incurred any intrusions in their network, and surely a professor would have noticed this at some point or another if this were happening often. Their only evidence is hearsay (from the guy who he has a grudge with).
One a side note, I find it interesting that the warrant is very descriptive of the items which the police are allowed to take, yet describes a computer as "a CPU." Granted it says it's "not limited to this" and that it's for "all object which store data in any form," but when was the last time your scanner stored data? Or your processor for that matter (other than when it's handling data, that is, turned on). It's not like someone's going to store all their secrets in a processor register...
If all there were were uncorroborated accusations then that would be true. However some of the harrassment accusations are backed up by substantial corroborating evidence (presumably the mail system had a copy of the harassment mass e-mail, in addition to all the DHCP and proxy logs identified in the warrant request).
The accused sounds like he fits the profile of someone with an inferiority complex who bragged to his roommate about what he could accomplish to try to impress the other guy and gain acceptance. Then later, when things didn't work out, our antihero tried to demoralize the roommate into submission by anonymously accusing him of behaviour that (unfortunately due to widespread USA puritanical attitudes) would inflict significant social and emotional stress. This behaviour constitutes cyberbullying and there may be applicable statutes in Massachusetts.
All the other accusations of copyright infringement, unauthorized use of a computer system, and academic misconduct are just gravy. However, if they find something relevant to those accusations, it makes the roommate's testimony more credible at trial for having predicted it. It also makes it less likely that the defense could challenge the search warrant as a fishing expedition if the police discovered nothing on the harassment charge but something on the other accusations instead.
Now mind you, if the guy did what he was accused of and did it under Ubuntu with encrypted partition(s), I suspect it will be beyond Sgt. Murphy's ability to deal with it. Then again, so far the student's purported "cracker skills" sound more like script-kiddie level stuff; something that may have made him 1337 in a backwater high school, but hardly Legion of Doom stuff. If the kid thought "bootleg-laptop" was a smart name for a laptop and left DHCP and proxy log footprints while harassing someone else, he may not have been smart enough to use an encryption password that would resist a dictionary attack. Really, with a laptop, I'd think he would do some WARdriving outside campus to find an open hotspot and cover his tracks better. So if the laptop gets sent to the FBI for further analysis, they may have a chance to crack it.
Now if some judge fidns him guilty and winds up giving him 10 years for this (while Scooter Libby got his sentence commuted to a 2-year probation), or they find unauthorized copies of media that lead to an RIAA/MPAA demand for a $500,000 punitive fine, I'll get upset. But if he did do what he's accused of, then he's long overdue for a reality check.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
While not disagreeing with you, I do very much disagree with the way that we keep increasing "taxes" through other means, which are not directly called "taxes".
The punishment should fit the crime. Speeding is "essentially" a thought crime; unless and until there is a collision, there is no victim (yes I understand that "people were put at risk"). Crimes without victims should be immediately removed from the books, to help improve the economy.
(This got a little confusing; what I was getting at is speeding fines tend to be much higher than they really should be based on the amount of damage that the speeder actually caused (i.e., none); and one reason for the increase in speeding fines is to pay for other, completely unrelated, political agendas. Then it morphed into my response to the evening news that Mass has a huge shortfall to recover from, and will be raising taxes, pulling over people whose "speeding" is closer to "2 or 3 mph over the limit" instead of 10, reducing services and salaries (Deval Patrick said he'd even take a pay cut); my response was a simple three words: "legalize victimless crimes" -- remove the mafia incentive to buy and sell drugs and prostitutes, and we'll all be a lot better off, just as re-legalizing alcohol drastically reduced mafia influence back in the 1920s.)
But, since that doesn't support our prison economy, or the legislative drive to impose harsher and longer sentences (see article on the added "sophistication" charge of using a proxy), it'll never happen.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.