Academic

Postscript

Posted on August 01, 2008
In my last post I talked about Steven Voneida.He's the student who was convicted of violating 18 U.S. Code § 875(c), which makes it a crime to send a threat via interstate commerce.As I explained in that last post, Voneida was prosecuted for putting a poem about the Virginia Tech shooter and related materials on his MySpace page...

"True Threat"

Posted on July 30, 2008
In an earlier post, I talked about the Alkhabaz case, in which a federal court dismissed a charge of using the Internet to transmit a ?threat? to someone. The defendant in that case was charged under 18 U.S. Code § 875(c), which makes it a crime to transmit in interstate commerce ?any communication containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of another?...

Crime, War and . . . ?

Posted on July 28, 2008
I?m reading Jane Mayer?s book, The Dark Side, which is about how the U.S. went seriously off-track in its efforts to pursue Al-Qaeda. I recommend it very highly; it?s revelatory, depressing and infuriating.But this is a blog about cybercrime, not about the so far pretty unimpressive War on Terror...

Complicity

Posted on July 25, 2008
As a Chicago television station reported a little over a month ago, for two years the Cook County Sheriff?s office has been targeting the use of Craigslist to facilitate prostitution.According to the story, prostitutes advertise in the ?erotic services? section of Craigslist...

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ISP Subscriber Records Private in NJ

Posted on July 23, 2008
As I explained last fall, in two decisions issued in the 1970s the U.S. Supreme Court held that we do not have a 4th Amendment expectation of privacy in what are called third-party records. In one of the cases, the Supreme Court held that a man who made calls from his home did not have an expectation of privacy in the numbers he dialed because he ?knowingly revealed? them to the phone company and thereby assumed the risk the company would give them to the police (without the police?s having a search warrant)...

Best Evidence

Posted on July 21, 2008
As Wikipedia explains, the best evidence rule is a principle that can be traced back to common law. In an often-cited eighteenth century decision, an English judge noted that evidence was not admissible unless it was ?the best that the nature of the case will allow?...

Photoshop Crime

Posted on July 18, 2008
A year ago today, Thailand?s Computer Crime Act, B.E.2550 (2007,) went into effect. If you?re interested, you can find an unofficial translation of the Act here. Most of it is straightforward computer crimes legislation that focuses on offenses like unauthorized access and causing damage to data or computer systems...

Video Voyeurism

Posted on July 16, 2008
A New York Criminal Court judge recently dismissed charges of disseminating an unlawful surveillance image that had been filed against Angelo Morriale. According to the court?s opinion, Morriale ?used a camera phone to videotape himself having sexual intercourse with the [victim] on two separate occasions on the same date, without her knowledge, permission, or authority...

Kyllo

Posted on July 14, 2008
As I?ve explained in earlier posts, the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects citizens from ?unreasonable? searches (and seizures). As I?ve also explained, a search intrudes on a cognizable 4th Amendment expectation of privacy ? what the Supreme Court in Katz v...

Warshak: 6th Circuit Blinks

Posted on July 12, 2008
As I explained in an earlier post, last year a decision issued by three of the judges on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals held, in effect, that we have a 4th Amendment expectation of privacy in our emails, even when the emails are stored on the servers of our Internet Service Provider...

Lawyer Hacks Email Accounts

Posted on July 11, 2008
The West Virginia Supreme Court recently suspended a lawyer for hacking. While this isn?t really a cybercrime case (since he wasn?t facing criminal charges), it?s still a case about hacking. And it raises some interesting legal issues . . . as well as illustrating the various motives that can drive people to do things they know they shouldn?t...

Spam Jurisdiction

Posted on July 09, 2008
As I explained in an earlier post, jurisdiction is a court?s power to act in a given case. Law divides jurisdiction into two categories.Subject-matter jurisdiction is a court?s ability to hear and decide a particular kind of case. In the U.S., copyright law is exclusively federal law, so a state court doesn?t have subject-matter jurisdiction to decide a copyright case...

Burglar's Tools

Posted on July 07, 2008
As I?ve noted before, many U.S. states (and probably many countries) outlaw the possession of ?burglar?s tools.? Here?s New York?s possession of burglar?s tools statute:A person is guilty of possession of burglar's tools when he possesses any tool, instrument or other article adapted, designed or commonly used for committing or facilitating offenses involving forcible entry into premises...

Remote Monitoring of Sex Offenders' Computer Use

Posted on July 04, 2008
Once again, I am indebted to Magistrate Marcia Linsky of the Allen County (Indiana) Superior Court for an interesting new decision. It was issued by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana in John Doe et al. v. Prosecutor, Marion County, Indiana (Case No...

Computer-Generated Records and Hearsay

Posted on July 02, 2008
As I?m sure you know (if you?ve ever watched a fictional trial in a movie or on TV or have ever watched a real-trial on TV or in real-life), the law has rules that define the kinds of evidence that ARE admissible in court and the kind that ARE NOT admissible...

Can You Trust Your Webcam?

Posted on June 30, 2008
This is about a case the California Court of Appeals recently decided: People v. Wilkinson, 2008 WL 2441101 (California Court of Appeals, June 18, 2008). The issue in the case is a Fourth Amendment issue, which I?ll get to. Mostly, I want to explain what happened to get Joseph Wilkinson charged with ?unauthorized access and taking of computer data?...

Overreaction?

Posted on June 27, 2008
You?ve probably seen the news stories about the two Orange County teen-agers who have been charged with crimes ? lots of crimes ? for hacking into high school computer systems to change grades and cheat on exams. As the Orange County Register reported last Wednesday, one of the students, 18-year-old Omar Khan, has been charged with 69 felony counts; the charges include altering public records, unauthorized access to computers, fraud, burglary, identity theft and conspiracy...

IP Spoofing

Posted on June 25, 2008
In an opinion issued a few months ago, a federal district court in Nevada ruled on a defendant?s motion to suppress. The motion challenged whether evidence that an Internet Protocol (IP) address has allegedly been used to access and download child pornography, combined with evidence regarding the IP address subscriber's identity and residential address, is sufficient to provide probable cause to believe that evidence of child pornography will be found at the subscriber's residence...

Prosecuting Minors for Child Pornography

Posted on June 23, 2008
I recently ran across an article that raised some of the same issues I?ve been thinking about with regard to charging minors with possessing and disseminating child pornography. You can find that article here.Four years ago, a 15-year-old Pennsylvania girl who allegedly posted ?photographs of herself in various states of undress and performing a variety of sexual acts? online was charged with sexual abuse of children, possession of child pornography and distributing child pornography...

Ninth Circuit on Text-Messaging Privacy

Posted on June 21, 2008
Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decided a case that deals with the privacy, or lack of privacy, in text messages sent via a pager. Quon v. Arch Wireless Operating Co., Inc. 2008 WL 2440559 (9th Cir. 2008).The Ninth Circuit docket number is 07-55282; you can use it to find the opinion here...

Hacking Appliances

Posted on June 19, 2008
You may have seen the post Tuesday on Security Focus: Compromise by Coffee.In the post, the owner of what I understand is a very expensive coffeemaker says he?s discovered that the coffeemaker, which has the capacity ?to communicate with the Internet via a PC? can be hacked...

Trojan Horse Defense . . . Works

Posted on June 19, 2008
A while back, I wrote a post on the Trojan horse defense. It could just as easily be called the ?malware defense,? since it lays the blame for computer-facilitated activity on malicious software.As I explained in that post, the Trojan horse defense came to public notice back in 2003, when UK citizen Aaron Caffrey was prosecuted in Britain for a hack attack that shut down the Port of Houston in the U...

Searches Must Stay within the Scope of the Warrant

Posted on June 17, 2008
As I?ve noted before, the 4th Amendment prohibits ?unreasonable? searches and seizures, and a search or seizure will be ?reasonable? if it is conducted pursuant to a warrant.The 4th amendment is interpreted as incorporating a preference for searches that are conducted pursuant to a search warrant, so that?s pretty much the best way for law enforcement officers to ensure that a search is constitutional...

Insider Attacks: School as Target

Posted on June 15, 2008
As I was checking legal databases to see what?s new in cybercrime, I found an opinion involving an insider attack.In the opinion, the court rejects a defendant?s request to vacate the sentence it imposed after he pled guilty to ?unauthorized computer intrusion ...

Harassing or Threatening Text Messages

Posted on June 13, 2008
Until very recently, South Dakota had a telephone harassment/threat statute that looked pretty much like similar statutes in other states.Here is what it said:It is a Class 1 misdemeanor for a person to use a telephone for any of the following purposes:(1) To call another person with intent to terrorize, intimidate, threaten, harass or annoy such person by using obscene or lewd language or by suggesting a lewd or lascivious act;(2) To call another person with intent to threaten to inflict physical harm or injury to any person or property;(3) To call another person with intent to extort money or other things of value;(4) To call another person with intent to disturb him by repeated anonymous telephone calls or intentionally failing to replace the receiver or disengage the telephone connection...

Breathalyzer Source Code

Posted on June 11, 2008
This post isn?t about cybercrime. It?s about a kind-of digital evidence issue: a defendant?s right to obtain the source code of technology used to generate evidence against him or her.The issue can, and will, I believe, come up in a variety of contexts, including the use of particular software programs to analyze seized hard drives and otherwise locate digital evidence...

Notes on Cyberwarfare

Posted on June 09, 2008
I don?t know about you, but I often see news stories and features that talk about cyber-warfare.They seem generally to fall into two categories: (i) those that, IMHO, grossly exaggerate the likely nature and consequences of cyberwar; and (ii) those that take completely the opposite approach and essentially deny it?s possible...

CD-ROM Not a "Computer"

Posted on June 07, 2008
As I explained in an earlier post, 18 U.S. Code § 1030, which is the basic federal computer crime statute, also creates a private cause of action for people who were injured by criminal conduct in violation of § 1030. This essentially means that a victim of a federal computer crime can sue the victimizer, seeking ?compensatory damages? and/or injunctive relief (I...

Identity Theft or Defamation?

Posted on June 05, 2008
A recent Wisconsin case illustrates how identity theft can incorporate elements of defamation while remaining a separate and distinct offense.The case is State v. Baron, 2008 WL 2201778 (Wisconsin Court of Appeals). The case's docket number is 2007AP1289-CR; you can use it to find the opinion on the Court of Appeals? website, if you like...

Email and the Marital Privilege

Posted on June 03, 2008
As you may know, in the U.S., people who are married enjoy the marital privilege, an evidentiary privilege that actually has two aspects.The marital privilege encompasses (i) the marital confidences privilege and (ii) the spousal testimonial privilege...

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