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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.
A certain company is bilking governments and the taxpayers. Hmmm.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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