THE STUPID ... IT BURNS

[unixronin]

You thought Mooninite panic was stupid?  Brother, you ain’t seen NOTHING yet.

Via bruce_schneier:  Boston College Campus Police: “Using Prompt Commands" May Be a Sign of Criminal Activity”

[...]  Not only is there no indication that any crime was committed, the investigating officer argued that the computer expertise of the student itself supported a finding of probable cause to seize the student’s property.

The warrant application cites the following allegedly suspicious behavior:

...

...

“Oh my g0dz0rz.  This COMPUTER SCIENCE MAJOR knows an OS that isn’t Windows.  He must be a computer criminal.”

WTF is wrong with these people?  I didn’t think even college rent-a-cops could be that stupid. 

HELLO?  UNIVERSITY?  COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT?

  Isn’t imparting computer expertise, like, the computer science department’s REASON TO EXIST?  If computer expertise is evidence of wrongdoing, better arrest the entire CS faculty, because they must be even guiltier.  And how about that NSA?

Aside from the remarkable overreach by campus and state police in trying to paint a student as suspicious in part because he can navigate a non-Windows computer environment, nothing cited in the warrant application could possibly constitute the cited criminal offenses.  There are no assertions that a commercial (i.e. for pay) commercial service was defrauded, a necessary element of any “Obtaining computer services by Fraud or Misrepresentation” allegation.  Similarly, the investigating officer doesn’t explain how sending an e-mail to a campus mailing list might constitute “unauthorized access to a computer system.”

During its March 30th search, police seized (among other things) the computer science major’s computers, storage drives, cell phone, iPod Touch, flash drives, digital camera, and Ubuntu Linux CD.  None of these items have been returned.  He has been suspended from his job pending the investigation.  His personal documents and information are in the hands of the state police who continue to examine it without probable cause, searching for evidence to support unsupportable criminal allegations.

This is ... barking insanity.  The degree of paranoia here is beyond belief.  What happened, terrorists snuck in and dumped a thousand gallons of liquid stupid into the campus’ water supply?

Comments

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

Thing is, most people still don't backup. Period. Log books with critical system information and passwords? Even more rare.

So much of our life is based on the expectation that tomorrow will be the same as today. This stuff is uncommon. I am not saying that there are no ways around it, it is just hard to comprehend when it hits that close to home. Even if we "deal with it", it still screws up our life for a while.

I remember a Gordon Dickson story done in legal correspondence memos. A guy ends up on death row because a book club sends him a book, that he never even signed up for. That was from the early seventies. (I think it was published in Creative Computing.) It is still scary stuff.