Guy Who Helped Mod Cable Modems Arrested By The FBI

Fri, Oct 16th 2009 9:58am

Filed Under:
arrest, cyberbullies, missouri

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Missouri Continues Arresting Cyberbullies: Don't Be An Online Jerk In Missouri

from the free-speech? dept

As tends to happen, it appears that Missouri has decided to overcompensate for the mess with the whole Lori Drew/Megan Meier tragedy. After realizing that Lori Drew hadn't committed any actual crime, Missouri passed a new law making it a potential felony for being a jerk online. And, of course, with that new law in place, Missouri prosecutors have wasted little time in filing charges against all sorts of people. The latest involves the arrest of a teenager for creating a mean website about another student. Now, I'm not condoning the behavior of this student, which does seem despicable -- but arresting the kid seems really extreme. Aren't there less draconian methods for dealing with this sort of thing? Kids can be mean and, yes, they do stupid things at times -- but arresting kids every time they're a jerk online is going to lead to a pretty busy judicial system.

Legal Issues

Tue, Aug 4th 2009 4:38pm

Filed Under:
arrest, copyright, dmca, game consoles, modding, video games

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No Freedom To Tinker: Arrested For Modding Legally Purchased Game Consoles

from the no-innovation-allowed dept

This is hardly a new issue, but it's still troubling every time we hear a story like this. For years, there's been a fight over whether or not it should be legal to modify a legally purchased game console. Those in favor of the right point out that if you've legally bought something, you should always be free to tinker with it. That's just common sense. Those against it say that modifying a gaming console is done mainly to play pirated games or to cheat, which can cause problems for legit players. I find the latter responses unpersuasive, as those are technological or business model issues that can be solved in other ways, rather than a legal issue. But, thanks to that good old DMCA, that's now how the law works.

Instead, we get stories about students getting arrested for "jailbreaking" a video game console. It's interesting to see the use of the word "jailbreaking" here, as that's more commonly been applied to iPhones -- where it's common. Usually, this action has been referred to as "modding" or "modchipping" when it came to consoles. But the basic fact is that the actions are effectively the same -- and both should be perfectly legal. Modifying legally purchased hardware should never be against the law. It's possible that you could then use that modified hardware to break the law -- and no one's saying that's okay. But the act itself of modifying the devices should never be against the law -- especially where it could lead to a ten-year prison sentence, as in this case.

This particular case involves a student who would modify game consoles to let people make use of backup copies of their own games on the consoles. Making a backup copy, by itself, has been well established as being perfectly legal. The problem here (once again) is the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause, which makes it illegal to circumvent any kind of DRM, even if it's for a totally legal purpose. It's difficult to see how that's constitutional. Making it illegal to do something that's perfectly legal, just because someone puts any kind of DRM in the middle doesn't make any sense at all. It's a ridiculous scenario that this kid is now facing 10 years in jail for making video game consoles more useful, allowing people to use perfectly legal backup copies of their games. But, such is the state of the DMCA and copyright laws these days.

Scams

Fri, Mar 20th 2009 8:47am

Filed Under:
arrest, changing votes, corruption, e-voting, kentucky, vote buying, voting

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Kentucky Election Officials Arrested For Changing Votes On E-Voting Machines

from the security... dept

While there have been plenty of conspiracy theories over the years concerning e-voting machines, none have been particularly compelling. The evidence looked like plenty of incompetence, with buggy machines that had huge security flaws that could be exploited -- but we hadn't heard of any cases of anyone actually being caught tampering with or trying to tamper with votes. That isn't to say it didn't happen. It's possible that it happened and the perpetrators weren't caught -- but it's a big leap from it "could" happen, to it "did" happen. So, most of our coverage here has been very much on the bugs and the flaws, rather than any of the conspiracy theories that floated around.

However, it appears that a group of Kentucky election officials, the circuit court judge and the county clerk, were arrested for changing votes in various elections between 2002 and 2006 on e-voting machines. The details suggest that there were two parts to the vote changing. First, there was traditional vote buying -- where they paid people to vote in a certain way. However, the second involved actually changing voters' votes on ES&S e-voting machines.

It didn't involve any hacking or direct security flaws -- but the elections officials made use of the confusing user interface and process of the e-voting machines to trick voters into leaving before their votes had been cast. That's because there's a "vote" button, that some people (silly them!) assumed meant they actually voted. Nope. It turns out that just gets you to a page to review your vote and then confirm it. However, these elections officials told people that once they hit vote they had voted -- and were then able to go in and change the actual votes.

Legal Issues

Thu, Feb 19th 2009 9:35am

Filed Under:
arrest, class, discipline, texting