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Police Department Accused of Updating Their Radios With Pirated Software (www.cbc.ca)
Winnipeg's police department used encrypted radios to stop the public from listening in to their conversations with police scanners. But did they pirate their software keys?
Long-time Slashdot reader Curtman shares this report from CBC News: Winnipeg police have arrested a manager with the city for allegedly updating police radios with fraudulent software he got from a person considered to be a security threat by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, CBC News has learned. Back in 2011, Ed Richardson allegedly obtained millions of dollars worth of illegal software and instructed city employees to use it, police said in a January 2018 sworn affidavit, submitted to the Provincial Court of Manitoba when officers were seeking permission to search the man's emails...
In the affidavit, police said the Motorola radios needed frequent updating, which could only be done if the city purchased a "refresh key" or licence from the company to unlock the proprietary software. Motorola charged about $94 per update per radio, the document said, and a radio shop employee told police Richardson didn't like that. "[The employee] does not believe his actions were for personal gain; he believes that Richardson likes the idea of not giving more money to Motorola," the affidavit said.
The affidavit alleges that Richardson gave one employee 65,000 refresh keys, and told him that "you don't want to know where these came from."
In the affidavit, the employee adds that they "clearly" didn't come from Motorola.
Long-time Slashdot reader Curtman shares this report from CBC News: Winnipeg police have arrested a manager with the city for allegedly updating police radios with fraudulent software he got from a person considered to be a security threat by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, CBC News has learned. Back in 2011, Ed Richardson allegedly obtained millions of dollars worth of illegal software and instructed city employees to use it, police said in a January 2018 sworn affidavit, submitted to the Provincial Court of Manitoba when officers were seeking permission to search the man's emails...
In the affidavit, police said the Motorola radios needed frequent updating, which could only be done if the city purchased a "refresh key" or licence from the company to unlock the proprietary software. Motorola charged about $94 per update per radio, the document said, and a radio shop employee told police Richardson didn't like that. "[The employee] does not believe his actions were for personal gain; he believes that Richardson likes the idea of not giving more money to Motorola," the affidavit said.
The affidavit alleges that Richardson gave one employee 65,000 refresh keys, and told him that "you don't want to know where these came from."
In the affidavit, the employee adds that they "clearly" didn't come from Motorola.
Call the police on them....
A certain company is bilking governments and the taxpayers. Hmmm.
The police, whom are paid to uphold the law, are allegedly breaking the law.
jail / prison maybe the wrong way. an government did this and the government may have to face fines.
As for this manager what pressure was put on him from higher up's?
Did they have the funds to even buy the keys?
Why is the key giver not in jail?
Will they be able to read the EULA line by line in court?
What about the government contract with Motorola what is in that and will they be able to read that line by line?
What is the real cost of the software???
1. if they can't go over both any EULA and the contract then the case should be removed from criminal court. But moved to an civil court.
>> Real transcription from an encrypted broadcast -->
After decryption -->
Seriously, why are they using encrypted transmissions?
CAP === 'scorch'
some non cop city worker is allegedly breaking the law. Not the cops.
Copyright infringement is neither theft nor a crime according to everything I read here.
In the US, copyright infringement is a civil offense, and I believe it is the same in Canada. So it doesn't make much sense that he was arrested for that.
According to TFA, the actual criminal charges are for other things, including fraud and unauthorized use of a computer. Most likely they are just piling on charges to coerce him into a plea bargain.
Is there any proof that an EULA was agreed on or even shown to any party?
If there is a contract then that is what matters.
Digital EULAs are nothing but hearsay.
The real criminals here are Motorola for charging $94 per radio per update to let them change settings on hardware the police dept already owns.
what about vendor / distributorship contract? vs the Motorola contract / EULA?
Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi. In other words, laws are for little people ...
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
If you find you are suddenly in danger of being unable to use some functionality of your device then you have leashed yourself with closed-source software. If they had invested in contributing to an open source software then they would not be leashed. The real problem is that when people think of open source software, they think that because it's free that they should not allocate money toward supporting the software. This short-term MBA style thinking has kept open source projects very weak ("Why financially support a project if there is no immediate benefit?") and thus caused so many fools to put themselves on a software leash. In the case of expiring licenses, that leash is really a noose that slowly tightens around their neck until they pay.
If businesses were smart then there would be billions of dollars invested to build/improve open source software. Instead there are peanuts because corporations are only looking out for "number one" as they cut their own face.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
I was working for a fairly large police department, and our mobile data terminals (MDTs) were not Y2K compliant. They were 386's running Windows 3, I can't remember if it was Windows for Workgroups, and Moto told us they wouldn't roll over properly and would cost on the order of $300+ per terminal to update, and we had over 1000 cars.
After researching further, we learned that when the officers logged on to our dispatch system that it downloaded the correct date/time from the Unisys mainframe, overriding the Windows clock. Y2K endrun, Motorola doesn't get a trunkfull of money from us. Everybody working 3rd shift on 31 December 1999 were instructed to log off just before midnight and sign back in just after. Everything worked just fine. The MDTs continued working properly for years until they were eventually replaced.
The only Y2K casualty that we had was the Dispatch system on the HP minis! A patch was supposed to self-deploy at midnight: it was compiled and ready to go, but someone didn't run the link/edit step, and when it deployed, crashed it crashed the whole shebang. At least our Windows network was flawless.
While I can understand the guy not wanting to pay Motorola a ridiculous amount of money to update the radios, if you sign the contract, you're obligating yourself to the licensing fees. Motorola was infamous for this, so either read the fine print and negotiate a better contract, or find a vendor that will give you a better deal - you don't have to deal with Motorola directly to buy Motorola equipment!
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
I highly doubt that there are 'software' on the iButtons, they are basically just another 'small' storage media like a diskette, or a USB flashdrive.
Are the $94 covering:
1) Are they paying a one time fee to unlock the encrypted communication feature.
2) A fee to get special trusted X509 time limited certificates to create trust between the radios.
3) A combination of 1 and 2.
For certificates to be used within an organization having its own chain of trust, getting a certificate from a third-party is less secure than a selfsigned certificate.
Once upon a time, you could just buy a scanner and listen in on what the police are up to. They didn't like that, so they went to encrypted radios, and they give access to the system to cherry-picked journalists that won't hold their feet to the fire. The whole reason they even have radios that need updating is to keep us from keeping tabs on their misdeeds.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
As I said, the contract is what matters.
If there is any claims of a digital EULA the response can be "I never saw it" or "this isn't what I agreed to" and then you have word against word.
100% no crime here.
Fuck Motorola
my pal's sister makes $69/hour on the internet.
How exactly does she 69 over the Internet? Asking for a friend...
Ezekiel 23:20
would be to dump Motorola, buy those Baofeng radios and be done with it.
If monopolyprivilege is not a crime like theft, then surely I can "buy" your worthless mere copies of that software with my worthless mere copies of money.
But, but you worked hard to make that software?
Yeah, and I worked hard to make that money!
But my money is merely a copy! It is worth nothing! You can make such a copy yourself!
Yeah, and so is your software.
But, but... a copy is not the same thing!
EXACTLY!
Then how do you make money from your software you ask? ... Because *it isn't!*
*The same way every other legitimate business in the history of mankind did!* By selling your *service* as a *service*. Not as a product.
jail / prison maybe the wrong way. an government did this and the government may have to face fines.
I agree. The government should have to pay triple now for not paying the previously advertised price. If governments don't see the damages from not following the rules then this will continue.
As for this manager what pressure was put on him from higher up's?
Did they have the funds to even buy the keys?
I'm not sure this is relevant. If they didn't have the funds for new keys then, as I understand it, they should have continued using the radios but without encryption. If this manager got pressure from above then it is still the police department that is responsible for the actions of its members, have the police department pay the fines and then let the internal investigators do their own internal investigation on who gets fired.
Why is the key giver not in jail?
The story says it was a US ham radio operator that sold the software to a Canadian police department. Depending on how the law is interpreted then he might just end up in jail.
Will they be able to read the EULA line by line in court?
I'm sure it can be read. My question is, will they finish before the heat death of the universe?
What about the government contract with Motorola what is in that and will they be able to read that line by line?
What is the real cost of the software???
1. if they can't go over both any EULA and the contract then the case should be removed from criminal court. But moved to an civil court.
Seems to me that criminal and civil laws were broken here.
Some techie grunt broke the law, do you think the pigs using the radios even know they are using pirated software? Or care?
Some slashdolt who pirates shit all of a sudden getting smart on the law. Give me a fucking break.
This is more about Motorola having made a promise to their customers which they can not keep. And as anyone involved with software knows, nobody can keep in the long term.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm sure it can be read. My question is, will they finish before the heat death of the universe?
and will they a jury that can live on $10/day that will wait that long?
Giving money to and paying for a product/service are not the same thing.
This is the bigger question - why? Do radio signals get stale?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Sorry guys, sounds like you arrested the wrong thief.
How do you know that the EULA that is shown in court is identical to the original EULA?
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
In the US, copyright infringement is a civil offense, and I believe it is the same in Canada. So it doesn't make much sense that he was arrested for that.
It doesn't make sense because you are talking out of your ass. You aren't a lawyer, stop pretending to be one.
Criminal copyright laws prohibit the unacknowledged use of another's intellectual property for the purpose of financial gain. Violation of these laws can lead to fines and jail time. Criminal copyright laws have been a part of U.S. laws since 1897, which added a misdemeanor penalty for unlawful performances if "willful and for profit".
Criminal penalties were greatly expanded in the latter half of the twentieth century, and those found guilty of criminal copyright infringement may now be imprisoned for decades, and fined hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Criminal penalties, in general, require that the offender knew that he or she was committing a crime, while civil copyright infringement is a strict liability offense, and offenders can be "innocent" (of intent to infringe), as well as an "ordinary" infringer or a "willful" infringer.
The above is for the US.
The person referenced in the story, a Canadian, knew damn well what he was doing and he evidenced it as much when he said "Don't ask where these keys came from". As Canada also has criminal penalties for copyright infringement.....
According to section 34(4) of the Copyright Act, specific penalties will be decided by the court. Section 35(1) states that an infringer is liable for the financial gain made through infringement, and "such damages to the owner of the copyright as the owner has suffered due to the infringement"......
In addition to the civil penalties described above, Section 42(1) of the Copyright Act sets out a number of criminal offences. These primarily deal with infringement that involves sale or rental of copyrighted materials, and can result in fines of up to $1,000,000 or prison sentences of up to 2 years for indictment. For a summary conviction, the maximum fine is $25,000 and prison term is limited to 6 months.
So both countries have criminal copyright law..... Try again.
100% no crime here.
I dare you to tell that to the guy in question when the government gets done ass fucking him. I think he'll disagree.
The cops are still using illegally obtained software. In possession of stolen property, as it were.
The guy who ordered it done should go to jail for millions in theft. So should the guy who approved signing contract where a "frequently needed" firmware update is $94 a pop. For longer.
In the US, copyright infringement is a civil offense
Not if you're uploading, it isn't.
Why is the key giver not in jail?
The article doesn't go into technical details, but if this guy developed an independent programmer and key generator, he may not be under contract with Motorola at all and it's not [yet] illegal to write software to mod devices.
The police department more than likely is under contract and apparently used that software to engage in theft of services (and possibly copyrighted software) from Motorola.
I'm sure they'll want to scapegoat him anyway, as cops very rarely face punishments for their misdeeds.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
oooh, I'd like one of those mounties to pirate my butthole
I think we found the lawyer who trains the police and then protects them when they f up
...but if I read the summary of the CBC report correctly, the Police, as such, did nothing wrong. The illegal actions performed by a "manager with the city".
It is not clear from the summary that the 'manager' was in fact directly employed in the police department. I am all for holding members of institutional 'authority' to the highest standards of conduct, but in this case it is not clear that there is any problem with the way that police personnel did their job.
Well, the official, licensed software lacked the ability to seamlessly delete "inconvenient" radio comms, and the cops are sick and tired of having to pay out-of-pocket for their private cellphone usage in their drive to do end-runs around transparency and open-records laws to protect themselves from being held accountable when they violate people's civil rights and break the laws they're supposed to enforce while conforming to a "blue line" code of silence like the mafia of old.
> In the US, copyright infringement is a civil offense
Under the DMCA, pirating more than $500 worth within a 6 month timeframe is a felony. It likely applies to activation codes.
> he got from a person considered to be a security threat by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security,
That's probably why.
Ask yourself, would Donald Trump do this??
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
my pal's sister makes $69/hour on the internet.
How exactly does she 69 over the Internet? Asking for a friend...
one person holds a fleshlight the other a dildo
Motorola has the PD locked in nice and tight.
The jailers become the jailed.
So she sells her body on Craigslist?
it's not [yet] illegal to write software to mod devices.
If the programmer is in the US, then it most certainly is illegal, for better or worse. If the DMCA can be used by John Deere, it can be used by Motorola. They are circumventing a digital restriction.
It always ends in a disaster.
To encrypted government communication? If the are producing the keys and update the radios, does this imply they can listen in?
Shouldn't such system be done in a way that only the government has the keys?
Why is copyright infringement relevant here? In fact I'm having trouble identifying what the seller of the keys is infringing on aside from "fraud" - misrepresenting the source of the keys (which is still a very serious crime). Unauthorized use of a computer is also a bit strange given that he probably used his own laptop or something to generate the keys so of course he had access.
Keys are just numbers and even if you claim these numeric keys are copyrightable, Motorola probably had never created those 65000 particular keys before so they would have no claim to them.
If it is possible to algorithmically create keys, wouldn't the closest thing for them to lay claim on be some sort of patent claim for the key generation algorithm... but then again that isn't for sale here, only the generated numbers.
Why is copyright infringement relevant here?
Because there is more to law than a two worded title that you looked up in a dictionary, and the practices being described have always been codified as illegal in criminal copyright legislation.
I knew what company it was without even reading the article. Motorola is real bad. They sell a police $5000 radio then want money to program it and fees to allow you to use it on your own network. I Put a lot of blame on the police agency. They agreed to these terms.. They should have written these "extra" programming fee's out of the radio purchase agreement.
IT seems silly as those Motorola encryption systems are very weak, and all you need is 1 person to stream the results to one of many sites like https://openmhz.com/systems
Not a lawyer but I know how to use Google. How you came to the conclusion that copyright is not a criminal offense is beyond me, when we all have seen warez pirates sent to prison.....
How the hell do police RADIOS even HAVE millions of dollars worth of software ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!