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How To Seize a Laptop And Make It Stick
On May 21, Justice Margot Botsford of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ordered police to return computer equipment that they had seized from Boston College student Riccardo Calixte in March. Police had obtained a warrant and seized the computer equipment on the basis of three alleged acts committed by Calixte: (a) forging an e-mail to a Boston College mailing list purporting to be from his roommate, Jesse Bennefield, claiming to "come out" as gay and announcing his membership on a gay dating site; (b) illegally downloading movies to his computer; and (c) hacking into the school's grading system to change grades for students. Justice Botsford ruled that on the one hand, even if Calixte had sent the forged e-mail, that did not constitute a crime, and on the other hand, the documentation supporting the search warrant had made only cursory references to the downloaded movies and the grade-hacking, not enough to support the standard of evidence required for a warrant.
The EFF was right to argue on Calixte's behalf that forging an e-mail to a mailing list does not constitute "obtaining computer services by fraud or misrepresentation" and hence does not violate Massachusetts's computer crime statutes. Unfortunately for future defendants in the same situation, the judge's ruling suggests that the court might have upheld the warrant even if the police had only pretended to care more about the alleged crimes committed by Calixte -- the hacking into the school's grading system, and the downloading of movies -- and less about the sending of the forged e-mail, which the courts found not to be a crime.
A portion of the judge's decision reads:
He [Jesse Bennefield, Calixte's former roommate and the "informant" whose tip led to the issuance of the search warrant] stated, among other things, that "he has observed Mr. Calixte hack into the BC grading system that is used by professors to change grades for students"; he also told [police detective] Christopher that "Mr. Calixte has a cache of approximately 200+ illegally downloaded movies as well as music from the internet."
The affidavit does not reveal any investigatory steps taken as a result of this January 28, 2009, conversation between Bennefield and Christopher. Rather, the bulk of the affidavit is devoted to a discussion of two email messages, apparently sent from the Google and Yahoo email services...
And later:
Moreover, although Bennefield reported this allegedly criminal conduct in late January, Detective Christopher did not seek a search warrant until March 30, 2009, two months later, and the affidavit does not reveal any effort to verify or follow up on any of the complaints, even by asking Bennefield for further details. By contrast, the claim that Calixte sent false emails is supported by two pages of detailed information, listing the steps taken to determine who sent the emails, the time they were sent, and the evidence suggesting that they were sent from Calixte's computer.
In sum, the principal focus of the affidavit was on the emails. Faced with the reality that the alleged email activity was probably not illegal, the Commonwealth now seeks to justify the search warrant, post hoc, based on an affidavit that fails to indicate either the time or the place of the criminal activity its informant claims to have witnessed, and that reflects no effort or attempt to verify the sketchy information supplied...
In other words: Even if the police didn't really care about the pirated movies and the grade-hacking, it might have helped to make the warrant stick if they had made more of a passing reference to those issues in the motion for a warrant, at least according to the reasoning expressed by the judge.
Compared to the analysis that the police conducted in order to determine whether Calixte sent the e-mails (such as looking up the records to see if the IP address was registered to his user account at the time), there's probably not much that the police could have done to determine if Calixte had downloaded any movies illegally, short of seizing his computer. Even if the campus had a log of all remote sites that Calixte had connected to, there would be no way to determine what he might have downloaded over a peer-to-peer protocol that encrypts downloaded data, as most peer-to-peer programs do.
But ironically, the fact that there is so little the police could have done to follow up on that investigation, would have made it even easier for them to create the appearance that they cared about the downloaded movies, even if they didn't! All they would have to do is say, in fancier language: "We asked the campus network if they could tell us what Calixte downloaded from various IP addresses, and they couldn't tell us anything. We asked them if they had any way of knowing what files might reside currently on Calixte's laptop, and they couldn't tell us anything." Basically: "We tried. We hit a wall right away. But we tried, and that proves we care." The warrant application as it was written, might as well have said that with regard to the issue of the downloaded movies: "We didn't try at all."
From the informant's side, the judge said that there was not enough evidence to support the issuance of a warrant because Bennefield's affidavit fails
"to state Bennefield's basis of knowledge that Calixte has in fact downloaded files to his computer, or that they are 'illegal.' Contrast Commonwealth v. Beliard, 443 Mass. 79 85 (2004) (named informant's basis of knowledge established by firsthand observation, furnished with detail and specificity)."
OK, so if you're a potential "informant" planning on ratting out your roommate, and you think that your roommate has downloaded some movies illegally, just ask him point-blank if you can see a couple of seconds of his clip of Wolverine, or some other movie in current release of which the 3,000 screens it is legally playing on does not include your roommate's laptop. Then you can "furnish with detail and specificity" the accusations that you want to make later.
So maybe the police have learned their lesson and they'll know how to get around this roadblock next time. I still wouldn't call that a tragedy for civil liberties, at least with regards to the acts alleged in this case. The EFF wisely took no position on whether Calixte actually did commit any of the acts that he was accused of, only that the police had no right to seize his equipment. But if the police can ever prove that someone hacked into their school's grading system, that person should be punished; that's not a civil liberties issue. Even downloading movies, which we tend to think of as a more victimless crime, means that for every dollar saved by someone watching a movie for free in their dorm room, the shortfall has to be made up by paying ticket buyers.
And if Calixte actually did send the forged e-mail pretending to be from Jesse Bennefield, then while the courts were correct to rule that that was not a crime, Bennefield could probably sue him in civil court, especially now that the police have done all the heavy lifting of uncovering the evidence. According to the warrant affidavit, the message to the Boston College mailing lists was sent from an IP address that had been registered to a computer with the same network name as Calixte's laptop. The e-mail also included a screen shot of a fake profile for Bennefield on the www.adam4adam.com site, and the network logs showed that an IP address registered to Calixte was the only IP address in that dorm to visit the gay dating site www.adam4adam.com in the five days prior to the e-mail being sent. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but if you had to bet everything you owned on a "Yes" or "No" answer to the question of whether Calixte sent the e-mail, which would you pick?
The EFF was right to go to court for the narrowly prescribed legal principles that (a) forging an e-mail to a mailing list does not constitute "obtaining computer services by fraud or misrepresentation" or "unauthorized access to a computer system," and that (b) vague accounts of illegally downloaded movies or rumors of hacking into a school grading system, are insufficient for the issuance of a search warrant. But that doesn't mean that the police can't overcome those obstacles next time, and it doesn't mean we should hold up Riccardo Calixte as some kind of cyber-liberties hero.
...should do the trick.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
Follow the old adage: If you are going to break a law, only break one law at a time.
Don't speed and be drunk
Don't deal drugs and forge your taxes
Don't pretext to be someone else and have copyright infringing material on the same machine.
(P.S. I know, I know. he didn't break the law. I'm just sayin'.)
The first think I would do in this guy's situation is to sue the city under the premise that since the search warrant was illegal, all activities flowing from the warrant were performed outside of the city's normal police powers. Since the activities were carried out without any authorized police powers, they were also carried out without the normal protections granted police during the lawful execution of their duties.
Potential charges would be:
1) Breaking and entering.
2) Trespassing.
3) Illegal search and seizure.
4) Theft of personal property.
5) Possession of stolen property.
6) Vandalism.
7) Unlawful entry.
8) False arrest.
9) False imprisonment (note that this doesn't require actually being jailed).
10) Dereliction of duty.
The next two would also be levied against whatever organization the city hired to peruse through my files:
11) Unauthorized access to a computing device.
12) Circumvention of a copy-protection mechanism (my user and root passwords).
I'm sure I could come up with more if I did some research.
they can't get it back. Problem solved.
Just because one pathetic excuse doesn't work, try another to do an unlawful seizure. Its like saying "I *think* you might possibly have stolen goods in your house, so I'm going to take couch to make sure it isn't stolen." yeah, that doesn't go over well.
Why the heck does the law make an imessuarably small dent in a megacorporations profits more important than fraud being perpetrated against a citizen? its ridiculous and very wrong.
Here's a great warrant-free recipe for convictions:
1) Seize computers from random people on flimsy grounds that you know will be thrown out.
2) ???? (Go fishing through their hard drives for evidence of actual crimes.)
3) Prosecute!
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Depending on the amount of pr0n in its harddrive, the outcome could be pretty sticky.
Hide your shit better. Keep the laptop pristine and use a live cd + usb drive for your nefarious stuff.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Police seized a laptop on the wrong statute, and didn't actually do any investigative work on things for which the state allows someone to seize a laptop. Yes we can have a discussion about whether it's appropriate to be able to seize a laptop for copyright accusations, but this looks like a scare analysis rather than anything actually insightful.
The Police and Government don't have to play by those rules. They are only for you.
That is why we have a Secretary of the Treasury that is a Tax cheat. That is why police can do no knock searches on the wrong location without going to jail for breaking and entering. The qualified immunity of police has become an unqualified immunity in practice.
THIS is flamebait
In other words: Even if the police didn't really care about the pirated movies and the grade-hacking, it might have helped to make the warrant stick if they had made more of a passing reference to those issues in the motion for a warrant, at least according to the reasoning expressed by the judge.
I don't get it. Police use their resources at their discretion. I had a friend getting a massive speeding ticket once and in the middle of filling out the ticket, the cop's radio went apeshit. Someone had been shot nearby in DC so the cop just said, "This is your lucky day" and left. Why? Because he had better shit to do! Three times in one month my car was broken into and nothing was stolen but considerable damage was done to my vehicle. I asked cops if there was an option to dust for fingerprints ... what do you think their answer was? I was at a party in college where a bunch of people were smoking five bowls of weed when cops knocked on the door. They were there to tell us to turn the music down. They smelled/saw weed. They told everyone to shut up or go home and that's what we did. Why didn't they book everyone in the room for possession? Probably because they had more important shit to do that night.
..." What would you do in a situation like that if you were the responding officer? Calm the guy down, verify if there is an issue, resolve the issue and tell the guy he needs proof if he wants to make it stick.
... or have I missed something?
Point being, if you're complaining about your neighbor or roommate engaging in an illegal activity, stick to investigating what the source of the complaint is. His roommate wasn't upset about illegal file sharing, that was just to spite the guy. The cops requested a warrant correctly addressing the only problem anyone was having--the fact that Calixte may have been impersonating someone. Maybe changing grades bothered his roommate, I don't know.
Let me ask you this, if your neighbor had a problem with your pool parties getting too loud and he called the police and said "Oh yeah, and he also speeds when he drives in our neighborhood and I saw him with fireworks when they're illegal in our state and sometimes he has a bonfire without the notified officials being there and and and and and
Now what if police implemented a template warrant for computers that had "illegal games, illegal music, illegal movies, etc" on it so that just in case they wanted icing on the cake for whatever they were going after you for, it was there? You know, just list common things. You need to know exactly what you're getting a warrant for otherwise it's an abuse just like the government wiretappings now.
Your editorial seems to consist more so of "if you really want to screw someone in a case like this, make sure you verify all this extra illegal stuff he's doing."
My work here is dung.
Even downloading movies, which we tend to think of as a more victimless crime, means that for every dollar saved by someone watching a movie for free in their dorm room, the shortfall has to be made up by paying ticket buyers.
I find this statement to be utterly false. The movie industry releases hundreds of movies per year; some of the movies do hundreds of millions of dollars in business, some do at most a few million dollars, or even less. So how do you define "shortfall" as used above? The movie industry (and apparently the contributor) apparently assume that anyone who downloads a movie illegally would have been willing to pay $10 to see it legally, if downloading it were not an option. If you downloaded 200 movies over a month's time (or even a few months time), that's $2,000 worth of movie tickets... How many people are really willing to spend that much on movie tickets, in a month or even a few months? How many college students watching illegally downloaded movies in their dorm room have $2,000 a month/semester/whatever to spend on movie tickets? Or for that matter, time to watch them? The idea that every illegally downloaded movie represents a shortfall to the movie industry is absolutely absurd.
Looks to me as a private war between roommates, which went out of control and then to the police. Interesting that the police cared enough to seize one computer, but probably just to calm down this war a bit. Why should they actually care too much about the other stuff? And what interest may the police have to keep the laptop for a longer time?
I wonder what evidence they could have found about hacking into the school's computers to change grades. Would he be stupid enough to keep a log of all IP numbers he connected to so there would be a nice trail to follow right to the school's sever? If someone hacked a server, wouldn't you need to look at that server to find evidence that there was a connection with a particular person/IP number?
It seems ridiculous to the point of absurdity that they even put that in the warrant in the first place.
Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. But light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Can evidence illegally seized in this alleged criminal case be used in a civil case? Can MP/RIAA legal thugs use the content of this ruling as basis to sue this student for copyright infringement?
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Don't do nefarious stuff.
It is also probably worth mentioning that this might simply be a case of Sore Butt Syndrome.
The roommate obviously had plenty of motive to implicate and/or frame his roommate, because his roommate had framed him as having come out as a homosexual. Not to mention, he had plenty of time to access his roommate's computer to, perhaps, hack the school grade system and download illegal material. Or, he might not have bothered, just tormenting the guy with a false arrest was enough to make him feel better.
To summarize, both of these guys are a couple of winners.
THIS is flamebait
This is Spartaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
At least the mods are listening for once.
Open and shut case. Stiff punishment. No rebuttals.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Why is it that no one is paying attention to the fact that he was breaking into the school computer system and changing grades? Should that not have been the police's main concern? Isn't that a significantly bigger crime than the others? Shouldn't the school have been interested in this? "Hello Police, I saw this guy loitering in front of the supermarket. Oh, and he was also killing dozens of people with a machine gun." "Thank you sir, we'll get right on that loitering thing."
Red sauce on pasta?
How about Bennett stops trying to lecture me on the law, and I promise not to lecture him on programming? Why has he become slashdot's legal analyst?
Install Windows.
They sure do.
"Three times in one month my car was broken into and nothing was stolen but considerable damage was done to my vehicle. I asked cops if there was an option to dust for fingerprints ... what do you think their answer was? "
Once, my car's transmission went out. Acura had to order a replacement, but it would have been more expensive to install a new one from the factory, so they offered a rebuilt transmission, one from Japan. It would take a while, so my car was down, in the lot maybe 2 weeks or almost a month (can't recall exactly, as this was ~summer 1992). Multiple ensuing issues kept my car in the dealer's hands and i was getting antsy. I thought they were punishing me for hounding them, and my car ended up there longer.
Then, after they got all the parts replaced, they gave me a good news/bad news call. The parts were installed, the car runs great, but it's not ready. Why? Someone stole one of the wheels (i had 4 aluminum allow wheels; can't recall the tires being new, though), stole the radio, and damaged something else i can't remember.
My company president was an attorney, and told me it was bullshit, that they were responsible. Told me to press on. Acura told me that that i had signed a waiver making holding them harmless and not at fault. Then, i was livid. Shortly, the police called and told me the had a case involving my car, that it was stripped of some parts, but there were not broken windows or locks. Sounded like an inside job. I began to wonder where this was going. Was *i* being implicated? How? I don't have access to their lot, and as far as i know, they had lot security in form of doors, locks, cameras, a human, and i believe a sentry dog.
I think I asked the calling officer to dust for prints. He said they did, and that the case was suspicious. Being ex-Navy, my prints would be available to DOD and certain authorities, but i don't know if Mountain View PD would have access to them. Anyway, i was personally in the clear. The conversation ended on whether or not i was going to file a report, and that i might need one for insurance and so on. Oh, and that this particular dealership had had MULTIPLE break-ins and car parts thefts. No mention of inventory being stolen. So, it sounded like one or more persons were after specific, hard-to-order/obtain parts. So, why not take the whole car and strip it? 1989 Integra models would have sold more for parts than as a whole assembly.
I called the dealer. They tried to fall back on the disclaimer/release form. I had already had a refreshed conversation with my lawyer/boss, and i phrased my stern verbal warning to the dealership manager. Replace my parts, at no cost to me, or else i'd disclose their issues.
Another good news/bad news call. They had gotten the wheel from a central valley dealership, but it was the wrong side. They would not be able to use it because installing it in the wrong direction would cause "blue rotor", which i'd never heard of. Getting the right wheel would take another week or so. When the ordeal was over, i think i never used nor bought parts from that dealership again. Later, they relocated to a different, more accessible location (from a cul-de-sac, IIRC, to the main drag) during Mountain View's auto row remodeling spree.
Fortunately, the police seemed to already have an ongoing fraud investigation that saved MY ass shitloads of money. It seems i was at the nexus of being a pain in the ass to the dealer, my car had parts SOMEbody wanted, and there was a fraud activity going on. Fate/karma/good luck/something saved my ass. People here say the worst PD's to be on the wrong side of in the bay area are Campbell, Mountain View, Milpitas, and Daly City. Mountain View PD came to my rescue because somebody was up to no good. My car was probably the one that finally tipped the scales on likely ongoing fraud. Thankfully, fingerprints on the car didn't implicate me, and the police figured i didn't reasonably have access to commit such acts on my own car and was not involved but was yet another victim.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Well, they can prance all they wanna. They can't do diddly unless they get the passphrase from you. But, of course, you do recall how forgetful you are? Or did you forget! :-)
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
IANAL, which may be painfully obvious to those who are.
I thought that the idea of a search warrant is that the police submit evidence of a crime to a judge, and while the evidence doesn't have to be enough to convict it does have to meet a certain level of credibility.
This means, that to get a warrant to search a laptop based on copied movies, I'd think there'd have to be at least a little evidence of a crime, which would presumably be felony infringement (which is significantly more than having one unauthorized copy of a movie) and there would have to be some evidence, so one person seeing one movie on my laptop that wasn't legally available on DVD wouldn't hit the criterion. Seeing one movie on my laptop that was available on DVD would indicate nothing at all, of course, since there's no reason to think it wasn' t there legally.
Changing grades is presumably a crime in most states, but the police would have to have something beyond speculation. Presumably, also, the best means of investigation would be to check computer records against paper ones, and talk to the teachers of the classes in question.
That means that I don't understand why I should be afraid of anything based on this. So, search warrants are sometimes erroneously issued, as this one was, but that's nothing new. The police tried to make a claim based on what they might have been after, and the court ruled they hadn't gotten enough information, as in hadn't investigated enough, to meet search warrant requirements. If the police investigate, they'll have to come up with evidence. I don't see a judge issuing a search warrant without some sound evidence, and I don't think "we can't get the evidence one way or another" is going to qualify.
So, it looks to me like this is just hype.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Yes, all the correspondence you send via email could be cryptographically signed, quite possibly preventing a forgery attempt (or keeping it from being taken seriously by anyone).
"[...] means that for every dollar saved by someone watching a movie for free in their dorm room, the shortfall has to be made up by paying ticket buyers."
Because of course the student would have spent 12 days and $2000 in the theater, if he hadn't downloaded those "200+ movies".
I know I shouldn't reply, but does anybody have copies of these trolls? Does anybody do any research into them? It seems to me that they are very focused around a few thing that are terribly out of date. Fascinating, though as a view of how the troll sees the world. It might be fun to set up some kind of troll museum!
What you see IS the copies. Someone had a hilariously stupid troll in the past, some people thought it was worth keeping for the lols, and keep reposting them. The ones you see the most are the most absurd, yet not absurd enough, so people still respond to them as if they were serious.
Thankfully, fingerprints on the car didn't implicate me
It is your car. Your finger prints should be all over it with impunity. Heck, you could use your finger to write "I DID IT" in the dirty wheel well and they would have nothing on you.
In essence, you got police help because you were victim X of Y, not simply victim 1. I know you said that, but this is the Cliff's Notes version.
Assuming all movies are 100 minutes long, and you sleep 8 hours a night, then 200 movies means you're spending about 70% of your awake time, or over 11 hours a day, watching movies.
But yes, I agree with your basic point; many of the people who pirate the movie and watch it are likely to simply not watch the movie if the option of piracy is removed. Claiming people that don't watch the movie represent some kind of loss is a little strange.
IANAL, but I really don't see any crime here.
Forging an email, as long as it wasn't to sign a contract or otherwise perform a legal action, isn't illegal anymore than a prank phone call is. Repeatedly pretending to be the guy and trying to actually start a gay relationship through email would probably classify as harassment, but I highly doubt a single email would.
Downloading pirated stuff isn't illegal either unless you're selling the material. (The company that made the material can sue for infringement, but that's a civil matter, and should not involve the police at any time.)
Changing grades is incredibly stupid, and grounds for being immediately kicked out of school with all credits earned voided, but I'm pretty sure it's not a crime. (Forging a degree IS a crime, so they could maybe argue that changing grades IS effectively forging a degree, but I'm not sure if that would hold up in court.)
So, how exactly was a search warrant issued when not a single crime was committed?
So the testimony of somebody who is already extremely pissed off at you for "outing" him online should be believed with regard to other "crimes" committed with your computer? Seems to me his roommate had every reason to lie.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
We have "Miranda Warnings" due to a case involving an armed robber/kidnapper/rapist named Miranda, certainly no civil liberties hero.
So if we get this covered because of Calixte being a jackass, that is ok by me, we still win without making him a hero
Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
Ahh, it's my. My bad :(
"Blue rotor syndrome:" one part blew that way, the other part blew the other way.
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
If they were really investigating the grade changing, all they had to do was contact the profs to compare their own records/recollections of the grades to what was in the system.
This was obviously a fishing expediton.
I don't know how it works in Mass., the other 15 states where I've lived, boys call other boys "gay", "fagots" and "queer" all the time. It isn't usually a bonding experience either.
So, I could have sued someone every time I was called gay? Crap! I'd be rich!
OTOH, I would have been sued 2x more for all the times I called them fagots back.
In college, I was in a fraternity that had an openly gay president. The fraternity wasn't gay, we liked everyone. I was approached by someone who was gay to uncover whether I was interested or not. "No thanks" and that was the end of it. For the next 20+ years, these have been some of my best friends in the world.
I'm in my 40s, single, fit, and a nice dresser and no, I'm not gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
IAANAL (I Am Also Not a Lawyer)
As long as the Bill of Rights is still in effect, they can't compel the passphrase, and even if it's crackable by No Such Agency, they would never confirm they had the capability by wasting it on such a meaningless charge.
A properly encrypted laptop is just a really cool-looking battery-operated space heater.
Well, yeh, of course my prints were on the inside of the car, and any on the outside were old, compared to those all over the hood, doors, wheel area, and more from moving the car around. So, i think even if i were only victim one, the amount of time they had my car on their so-called secure/locked lot, their prints were the latest.
But, it's amazing how many dealers and repair shops will park people's cars on open lots and on the street and make people sign release forms in order to start work. All the money some dealerships make you'd think they'd have perimeter security. Some, maybe many, do, in order to preserve customer business and display good will/concern. The ones that don't are asking to be put out of business, or at least deserve to be put out of business -- at least if their quietly know they've been the subject of break-ins or fraud but never install or hire a deterrent to such costly crimes.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
They could have tried to stick him with that, but there are really no charges which would have stuck.
Downloading is simply not illegal. It cannot be. You're not infringing upon anyone's copyright.
The person who put whatever content online in the first place is doing something "illegal"
copyright infringement isn't meant to be illegal persay, it's meant to discourage counterfeiting.
They're using their grammar skills there.
If I ever find you, you piece of shit, I will pummel you within an inch of your life with magic missiles until you beg for mercy. Perhaps I will cast chromatic spray for the coup de grace. I will have you know that I am much more powerful than a lowly level 5 dwarf. Huzzah!
The affidavit says that the computer name is something he might have used, but nowhere says that he actually had anything to do with the computer. They give two different MAC addresses. One for the laptop that sent the e-mail and one for his computer. Last I checked, he only owned one computer. Anyone else thinks this sounds fishy?