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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.
>> Real transcription from an encrypted broadcast -->
After decryption -->
Seriously, why are they using encrypted transmissions?
CAP === 'scorch'
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.
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 $10/day that will wait that long?
Giving money to and paying for a product/service are not the same thing.
This is the bigger question - why? Do radio signals get stale?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
In the US, copyright infringement is a civil offense
Not if you're uploading, it isn't.
Why is the key giver not in jail?
The article doesn't go into technical details, but if this guy developed an independent programmer and key generator, he may not be under contract with Motorola at all and it's not [yet] illegal to write software to mod devices.
The police department more than likely is under contract and apparently used that software to engage in theft of services (and possibly copyrighted software) from Motorola.
I'm sure they'll want to scapegoat him anyway, as cops very rarely face punishments for their misdeeds.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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.
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's because of assholes like you that this is the exact direction the software industry is headed. Software as a rental.. I can't just buy Photoshop anymore..
Don't be daft. Adobe would have gone that reason regardless just to get the people who don't need the new features to give them more money anyway.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.
Maybe, maybe not. You have no proof they would have.
And you have no proof that they wouldn't have. If you get near a point, make it.
What we do know is Photoshop was one of the most widely pirated software titles out there.
So what? We also know that you're blaming people who would never have bought it anyway, who aren't reducing sales at all and who may one day purchase the software, for Adobe's corporate decisions. If you want to be upset at someone, be upset at the professionals who aren't paying for it, and are then making money with it, because they represent actual lost sales — and therefore an actual reason to implement this type of scheme. The hordes of kiddies who warez Photoshop and use it only to meme would never have given Adobe a dime to begin with.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.....