IANAL, but assuming Gobbles was able to infect 95% of P2P machines w/o machines screaming, I cannot see how the lists sent to the RIAA would be admissable in a trial; perhaps someone would like to tell me how.
Under US law (and Cdn, I believe), computer-generated logs and lists are considered hearsay; not admissable unless the owner of the list can prove that they were not tampered with. As the./ readership is aware, this is why compromised boxes must immediately be shut down and preserved when a sysadmin feels compelled to pursue a cracker. How can one prove the integrity of a list that passed to the RIAA through the Internet? Fasttracker may be encrypted, but obviously this would have been compromised in the scenario claimed by Gobbles.
Having said all that, can hearsay evidence be enough to sanction confiscation and search by law enforcement?
Of course, considering Gobbles' record (esp. in view of how quickly he was able to "exploit" the Apache vulnerability), I believe that even if he is on to something, he probably plagiarised the idea and the code from someone else, the prat.
IANAL, but I would say this is enticement, not entrapment.
The difference between enticement and entrapment is that in enticement, an agent of the gov't may advertise or encourage something illegal but may not force anyone to commit to that something (eg, for official sting operations, advertising kiddie porn for download on P2P and making it available is OK).
Entrapment is where an agent of the gov't forces someone to do something illegal, and/or plants something on them ("Yes your Honour, I told him if he didn't download the mpeg, I'd shoot his dog. Then I arrested him and confiscated his eqp't. What?").
I don't know how the rules change when it is a private company doing the entrapment... the CISSP texts have something to say about that.
Slashdot Mirror
IANAL, but assuming Gobbles was able to infect 95% of P2P machines w/o machines screaming, I cannot see how the lists sent to the RIAA would be admissable in a trial; perhaps someone would like to tell me how.
Under US law (and Cdn, I believe), computer-generated logs and lists are considered hearsay; not admissable unless the owner of the list can prove that they were not tampered with. As the ./ readership is aware, this is why compromised boxes must immediately be shut down and preserved when a sysadmin feels compelled to pursue a cracker. How can one prove the integrity of a list that passed to the RIAA through the Internet? Fasttracker may be encrypted, but obviously this would have been compromised in the scenario claimed by Gobbles.
Having said all that, can hearsay evidence be enough to sanction confiscation and search by law enforcement?
Of course, considering Gobbles' record (esp. in view of how quickly he was able to "exploit" the Apache vulnerability), I believe that even if he is on to something, he probably plagiarised the idea and the code from someone else, the prat.
IANAL, but I would say this is enticement, not entrapment.
The difference between enticement and entrapment is that in enticement, an agent of the gov't may advertise or encourage something illegal but may not force anyone to commit to that something (eg, for official sting operations, advertising kiddie porn for download on P2P and making it available is OK).
Entrapment is where an agent of the gov't forces someone to do something illegal, and/or plants something on them ("Yes your Honour, I told him if he didn't download the mpeg, I'd shoot his dog. Then I arrested him and confiscated his eqp't. What?").
I don't know how the rules change when it is a private company doing the entrapment... the CISSP texts have something to say about that.