Call Yourself a Hacker, Lose Your 4th Amendment Rights

An anonymous reader writes "As described on the DigitalBond blog, a security researcher was subjected to a court ordered search in which a lack of pre-notification was premised on his self description as a 'hacker.' From the court order, 'The tipping point for the Court comes from evidence that the defendants – in their own words – are hackers. By labeling themselves this way, they have essentially announced that they have the necessary computer skills and intent to simultaneously release the code publicly and conceal their role in that act.'"

Comments

Re:Stallman would have something to say about this

[RenderSeven]

Someone find out where this judge is; let's put his name here

B. Lynn Winmill
Chief Judge
United States District Court

Re:Wait, what? I'm a unicorn, arrest me?

[bws111]

Bullshit. Read the damn article.

The guy is being sued by his former employer, who claims he took their code and plans to offer it as open source (copyright infringement). The plaintiff contends that there is crucial evidence on the defendants computer. The court ordered (as is usual in such cases) that an image be made of the defendants computer in order to preserve any evidence that is there. The computer is to be returned to the defendant as soon as the image is made, in the same condition as before the computer was taken. Nobody can look at the image until further court orders allow it.

So where does 'being a hacker' enter the picture? The plaintiff asked the court for a temporary restraining order without notification to the defendant. The courts rules state that a temporary restraining order can only be granted if there are specific facts that show irreperable harm will occur before the opposing party can present his position in court. In this case, the plaintiff is claiming that the defendant will have the ability to destroy the evidence before the plaintiff can present their case. The court used the 'we are hackers' statement as evidence that the defendant probably had the means and knowledge to destroy the evidence. Thus, the restraining order was granted.

It is not a criminal case. No 4th amendment rights were violated.

Re:Stallman would have something to say about this

[Bite The Pillow]

You might have a point if that were the only basis for the decision. The basis of the restraining order was to prevent irreparable harm based on likelihood to succeed with a claim, and that case was well made.

Here's the judge's info, it's right at the bottom of the court order where someone who read it would expect to find it, next to his signature. I doubt it will have the effect you wanted, because this is a decent decision.

B. Lynn Winmill
Chief Judge
United States District Court

The only real counterargument would be to point to https://github.com/visdom/ which has the open source version, and was registered July of this year. Surely they could just look at the code and see if there was infringement? No, the evidence on the hard drive will be captured and stored pending further developments in the trial. The Court was preserving evidence which would most likely show that any copying was more than incidental.

This was the unquestionably correct decision, and the slashdot headline and summary are woefully oversimplifying in order to cash in on outrage. I hope you have disabled advertising, because Dice should be embarrassed that shit like this end up on the front page, and should certainly not profit from page views.

Direct quotes from the decision follow. Note: this guy worked at the company he is accused of copying from, so access to the original Sophia code is not in question, only whether it was used as a reference.

As for infringement, if there is no evidence of direct copying, âoeproof of infringement involves fact-based showings that the defendant had âaccessâ(TM) to the plaintiff's work and that the two works are âsubstantially similar.â(TM)â Funky Films, Inc. v.Time Warner Entmâ(TM)t Co., 462 F.3d 1072, 1076 (9th Cir. 2006) (citation omitted).

Here, Battelle has put forward adequate circumstantial evidence to permit an inference that defendants copied Sophia. Battelle says Thuen created Visdom in a time period that is impossible without copying; he described Visdom in nearly identical language as was used to describe Sophia; he used the same demonstration videos toshowscase Visdomâ(TM)s functionality as he did to showcase Sophia; he has admitted to copying parts of Sophia; and he has adopted a nearly identical name. Based on this record, the Court concludes that Battelle is likely to prevail on its copyright infringement claim.

...Additionally, the facts show that Thuen previously defied Battelleâ(TM)s instructions to refrain from widely releasing video demonstrations of Sophia on the internet.

...To support this assertion, defendants cite Battelle employee Michael Colson, who testifies as follows: I have 23 years of experience as an investigator for government and private entities and have worked many times on matters where employees have â" without authorization â" taken data from employers for their own purposes. In my experience it is very common for such individuals to simply delete the data when they are confronted with aninvestigation, rather than admit wrongdoing. This is particularly so inregards to those with technical skills to wipe the data in a way which does [not] leave digital footprints. My investigation has revealed that Thuen has (or had) an unauthorized copy of executable Sophia code on his home computer and, from my experience, there is a high risk that he might wipe his computers destroying evidence if he had advance warning.