Academic

Cartoons . . . Again

Posted on December 22, 2008
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Map Quest as a Rat

Posted on December 19, 2008
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Chain of Custody in Remote Computer Searches

Posted on December 17, 2008
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eWMDs

Posted on December 15, 2008
Maybe you?ve seen the recent Hoover Institution report which argues that botnets and malware constitute ?electronic Weapons of Mass Destruction? or eWMDs.The authors of the report say they created the eWMD term (or acronym, I guess), and I?m sure they did...

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Fantasy Crime

Posted on December 13, 2008
You can file this post under shameless self-promotion: My law review article on "fantasy crime," i.e., crime in virtual worlds like Second Life and World of Warcraft, has just been published.If you'd like to find out more about the published version of the article (and where to find it), you can do that here...

MapQuest as Hearsay

Posted on December 12, 2008
As I explained in an earlier post, the U.S. states and the federal legal system all bar the admission of hearsay, except pursuant to certain exceptions. I noted that these rules define hearsay, essentially, as ?a statement, other than one made by the declarant while testifying at the trial or hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted...

The Nigerian Defense?

Posted on December 10, 2008
A couple of years ago, I did a post on the Trojan horse defense, i.e., the claim that a Trojan horse program put the child pornography on the defendant?s hard drive. This post is about what might be called the Nigerian Defense.it was raised by Jeffrey Kelly, who was charged with forgery and theft ?after he presented two counterfeit checks to a bank in Valdez?, Alaska...

Cartoon Child Pornography?

Posted on December 08, 2008
You may have seen the story from Australia: The New South Wales Supreme Court held, essentially, that cartoons showing Bart, Lisa and Maggie Simpson (along with others?) having sex with each other was child pornography under New South Wales and Australian law...

Trojan Horse Warrant?

Posted on December 08, 2008
Maybe you saw the stories that were getting a fair amount of play a couple of days ago . . . the ones about the European Union?s new five-year plan to target cybercrime?According to the press release and some other information I found, the plan encompasses conducting ?remote searches? of computers...

Scope of Consent

Posted on December 05, 2008
As I explained in an earlier post, consent is an exception to the 4th Amendment?s requirement that law enforcement officers get a search warrant before searching your property for evidence of a crime. As an exception, consent eliminates the need to get a warrant...

"Name"

Posted on December 03, 2008
This post is about a federal identity theft case: U.S. v. Blixt, 2008 WL 5003239 (9th Circuit Court of Appeals 2008). Here, according to the Ninth Circuit, are the facts that resulted in Ms. Blixt?s being charged with identity theft:Blixt began working for Crawford and Company in 1998 in its Helena, Montana office...

Antiforensics

Posted on December 01, 2008
This is probably going to be a short post, because it?s about something I know essentially noting about: anti-forensics, or anti-computer forensics.According to Wikipedia, one definition of anti-forensics is that it consists of ?`[a]ttempts to negatively affect the existence, amount and/or quality of evidence from a crime scene, or make the analysis and examination of evidence difficult or impossible to conduct...

Attempt?

Posted on November 28, 2008
A California Court of Appeals recently decided a case that involved the difference between a completed crime and an attempt to commit that crime. The case is People v. Love, 166 Cal.App.4th 1292, 83 Cal.Rptr.3d 428 (Cal. App. 2008), and here are the facts that gave rise to the issue:[Ms...

Laptops and Borders . . . Again

Posted on November 26, 2008
I?ve done a couple of posts on the rules that govern Customs searches of laptops travelers are carrying into or out of the United States. In those posts, I explained that the rules evolved to deal with luggage and other ?containers.? As I also explained, the traditional rule ? in the U...

"Willfully"

Posted on November 23, 2008
A recent case from North Carolina highlights the role mens rea ? or intent ? plays in a criminal prosecution. The case is State v. Ramos, 2008 WL 4906318 (N.C. App. 2008), and here, according to the court, are the facts that resulted in charges against being filed against Ms...

Password-protection and the 4th Amendment

Posted on November 21, 2008
On November 3, I wrote about a decision in which a court held that the use of EnCase forensic software was a search under the 4th Amendment. This post is about a related but slightly different issue: whether the use of password-protection on computer files establishes a 4th Amendment expectation of privacy in those files...

Corporate Identity Theft Revisited

Posted on November 19, 2008
Last year I did a post in which I speculated on whether we really need corporate identity theft statutes (among other things). As you may know, most identity theft (and identity fraud) statutes make it a crime to steal a real person?s ? a human being?s ? identity...

Identity Theft or Defamation - Revisited

Posted on November 17, 2008
A few months ago I did a post on a case from Wisconsin: State v. Baron, 2008 WL 2201778 (Wisconsin Court of Appeals). As I explained in that post, the issue in the case was whether the defendant had committed defamation or identity theft. He was prosecuted for identity theft, but the facts of the case seemed more to establish defamation than identity theft...

Identity "Theft"

Posted on November 14, 2008
In a case decided last summer, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit considered the level of mens rea ? or intent ? required by the federal identity theft statute. The case is United States v. Godin, 534 F.3d 51 (1st Cir. 2008), and here are the rather unusual facts that led to Cori Godin?s being charged with identity theft: In 2006, Godin defrauded eight banks and credit unions (collectively, the `banks?)...

Not-Harassment (2)

Posted on November 12, 2008
Not long ago, I did a post (?Not-Harassment?) on a New York case in which the court threw out harassment charges against an 18-year-old boy who used MySpace to declare his love for a 14-year-old girl. This post is about a somewhat similar decision from an Ohio Court of Appeals...

Too Much Hearsay

Posted on November 10, 2008
In several recent posts, I?ve explained what hearsay is and written about how courts apply the exceptions to the rule . . . exceptions that let certain types of hearsay be admitted into evidence. This post is about a case in which the prosecution admitted too much hearsay into evidence, which led to the reversal of a murder conviction...

"Transmit"

Posted on November 07, 2008
Section 1030(a)(5)(A) of Title 18 of the U.S. Code makes it a federal crime ?knowingly" to cause the transmission of "a program, information, code, or command. and as a result" intentionally cause "damage" to a computer. (Until September 26, this provision was codified as 18 U...

PCTDD & the 4th Amendment

Posted on November 05, 2008
Last year, I did a post in which I talked about the Supreme Court?s decision in Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979).In Smith, the government put a pen register -- a device that captures the numbers dialed on a telephone -- on Smith?s home phone. They were investigating him for making harassing calls, and used the data collected by the pen register against him in a prosecution for doing so...

Hashing = 4th Amendment Search

Posted on November 03, 2008
On October 22, a federal district court issued what may be a notable opinion in U.S. v. Crist, 2008 WL 4682806 (U.S. District Court - Middle District of Pennsylvania 2008).The issues the opinion addresses were raised by Crist?s motion to suppress evidence seized from his computer...

Not-Hearsay

Posted on October 31, 2008
As I noted in an earlier post, every state and the federal system have rules of evidence that bar the use of what?s called ?hearsay.? Rule 801(c) of the Federal Rules of Evidence defines hearsay as ?a statement, other than one made by the declarant while testifying at the trial or hearing, offered in evidence to prove the truth of the matter asserted...

Unlawful Use of Encryption

Posted on October 29, 2008
I?ve written a few times about encryption issues; those posts were about legal rules that facilitate or restrict your ability to use encryption to protect your data. This post is about something different: making it a crime to use encryption.Six states ? Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada and Virginia ? have statutes that make the ?unlawful use of encryption? a crime...

Textual Child Pornography?

Posted on October 27, 2008
About a month ago, I did a post on textual obscenity, which is at least a conceptual possibility under U.S. law. This post is about something different: textual child pornography . . . which I suspect is not a crime under U.S. law. The question came up in the course of a conversation I had a couple of days ago with a reporter from Detroit...

Virtual Divorce = Virtual Murder

Posted on October 24, 2008
You?ve probably seen the news stories about the recent virtual murder in Maple Story, a Second Life-style MMORPG. According to these stories, a 43-year-old Japanese woman was ?so angry? about being divorced by her virtual Maple Story husband she murdered his avatar...

Not Cybercrime But . . .

Posted on October 23, 2008
Someone was kind enough to send me a link to a news story about a recent decision from a federal district court in Connecticut. It is not a cybercrime case, as such, but it does touch on issues I?ve written about before, so I?d like to review it here...

The Rule of Completeness

Posted on October 22, 2008
I got an email from a forensic computer analyst in which he raises some good questions about how a rule of evidence applies to instant messages, comments posted on a blot and comments made during a chat session. I?m going to take a shot at dealing with his questions, but I?d be interested in hearing what others have to say on the issues...

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