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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."
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.
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...