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Thursday, 21 August 2008 |
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 It's the story of a multi-million dollar lawsuit that has transformed a sleepy online community of aquatic plant gardeners into a hotbed of accusations of libel, conspiracy, defamation, computer hacking, infringement on freedom of speech and even death threats.
The plaintiff in the case of Robert Novak vs. APD List Members, filed last May in a federal court in New York, seeks damages of more than $15 million. The FBI has even been notified, although there is no public evidence to date that it is conducting an investigation.
"I've been an attorney for over 20 years, and I have rarely seen anything that's as frivolous as this is," says John Benn, a lawyer and aquarist in Sheffield, Ala., who collects monies for the legal defense of the defendants named in the case. So far, says Benn, the defense fund has raised more than $14,000 from online sympathizers around the globe.
But now the defense fund itself has become a legal target -- and that raises questions of just what kind of comments are protected speech on the Internet, and how far a company can go in attempting to guard its trademarks. For Benn, the lawsuit may be frivolous, aimed at stifling criticism, but for Robert Novak, the founder and owner of PetsWarehouse.com, the reputation of a company is at stake.
The aquatic plant spat may be just another online brush fire, but the issues at the heart of the struggle reach far. The Internet makes it easy to express your opinion; anyone who's ever been caught in the cross fire of an all-out flame war knows that. But does it make it too easy? And when litigation follows flaming words, how far will an online community go to fight back?
The hot water started with a simple post to an Internet mailing list frequented by people whose idea of a good time is growing plants underwater.
The chatter on the Aquatic Plant Digest (APD) mailing list typically runs to tame fare like algae, platyphylla, nematodes, snails and African frogs. But in typical online forum fashion, the aquarists also swap information about their experiences with the companies from which they've bought plants or supplies.
On May 15, 2001, according to court documents, Dan Resler, a computer scientist at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, posted a message that made a blunt recommendation: "Thinking of buying plants from Pet Warehouse? Don't." He went on to detail his gripes about the company's customer service, based on what he said was a delayed shipment of plants he'd ordered.
Resler -- apparently realizing he'd left out an "s" in his original post -- later followed up with this amendment: "to clarify: Pet Warehouse OK, Pets Warehouse NOT."
In classic Net slambook fashion, other members of the list responded to Resler's messages by sharing their own experiences with Pets Warehouse. One post on May 22, 2001, as recorded in court documents, quotes Sean Carney of Weslaco, Texas, sloganeering: "Remember petSWEARhouse, buy their plants and you'll be swearing!"
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Thursday, 21 August 2008 |
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BOSTON (AP) - A federal judge Tuesday lifted a gag order on three MIT students who were barred from talking publicly about security flaws they discovered in the state's automated mass transit fare system, even as a lawyer for the agency acknowledged the system was "compromised."
U.S. District Judge George A. O'Toole, Jr., vacated the temporary 10-day restraining order that another judge had instituted more than a week ago against the students and which was scheduled to expire today. District Judge O'Toole also threw out a request by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) to obtain a preliminary injunction against the students to expand the restraining order beyond the original 10 days.
"It's great news for the free speech rights for these students," said Rebecca Jesche, a spokeswoman for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which represented the students. "Although it's extremely unfortunate that the students were not allowed to give their talk at DefCon."
The students had planned to give their talk last Sunday at the DefCon hacker conference in Las Vegas. The talk was based on a research project and paper that they had submitted for a class taught by their MIT professor, noted cryptographer Ron Rivest. The paper had earned them an "A."
The transit agency sued after learning of a preconference Web advertisement for the presentation by the students _ Zack Anderson, R.J. Ryan and Alessandro Chiesa _ that said "Want free subway rides for life?"
The MBTA plans to continue with its lawsuit against MIT and the three students, who are all undergraduates and did not attend the hearing Tuesday. The MBTA claims the students violated the federal Computer Fraud & Abuse Act.
But in dissolving the gag order, O'Toole found the MBTA was unlikely to succeed on that claim. He said he agreed with the students' attorney that the 1986 law is aimed at preventing the transmission of computer viruses and worms, not at preventing information from being given to an audience during a speech.
O'Toole did not rule on the students' claim that the MBTA had violated their First Amendment rights by stopping them from speaking at the hackers' convention, which ended Sunday.
Cindy Cohn, a lawyer for the students, said the students had complied with the MBTA's request to turn over slides from their presentation and a 30-page "security analysis" that outlines everything they discovered about weaknesses in the fare system.
"The MBTA ultimately is trying to silence some uncomfortable truths that these students uncovered," said Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based organization that specializes in Internet civil liberties issues. "They brought an action against three college kids rather than address the problems in their own house."
Cohn said the students never intended to reveal key details that would have helped people hack into the fare collection system and ride MBTA transit for free, despite what the online ad for the demonstration said.
Ieuan Mahony, an attorney for the MBTA, said the transit agency simply wanted the students to refrain from revealing details about the security problems until the MBTA has time to correct the flaws, which could take five months.
Mahony said that after reading the security analysis submitted by the students last week, the MBTA "has determined that the CharlieTicket system is compromised." Mahony said the MBTA still wants to get additional information from the students on how they were able to clone a CharlieTicket, one of the two primary payment cards used by the MBTA.
Some of these details are already floating around the Internet, having been released before the students' planned talk at the DefCon conference. Electronic copies of their 87-slide presentation were included on CDs handed out to conference attendees before DefCon officially began and the MBTA filed its lawsuit.
"It was definitely unfair to use that statute to silence the students," Jesche said. "We certainly hope the next time that people are allowed to present their important research instead of being silenced by bogus lawsuits."
Zack Anderson, one of the students sued in the case (and the second person from the right in the picture above), was elated by the judge's decision today.
"We're glad the court actually saw things as they should be," the 21-year-old told Threat Level. "We're glad the court read the law correctly."
Although the restraining order has gone away, it doesn't mean the students are completely in the clear. Still standing is a lawsuit the MBTA has filed against them, accusing them of hacking its system and causing damages.
Anderson said the students regret that they weren't allowed to give their presentation last Sunday but have no intention of giving the talk anymore.
"All the material we were going to talk about has been made public ... and more," he said, referring to the fact that their presentation slides as well as a confidential report describing vulnerabilities with the Boston system were posted online after the judge granted the restraining order.
Anderson maintains that the students never planned to present key information that would have allowed someone to defraud the MBTA system and says they still stand by that.
"Despite what's happened, and the animosity the MBTA has brought toward us," he said, "we don't want people to defraud them."
When asked if he and the other students ever created bogus MBTA cards and used them to get free rides on Boston's T subway, Anderson declined to respond.
"I can't really comment on the actual means that we used," he said. "It's probably not a good idea to comment on that. We certainly did not get free fare. We had to spend several hundred dollars on buying tickets to look at the data structure. Far more than we ever would have used."
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Monday, 07 July 2008 |
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10) "Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream." —LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000
9) "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family." —Greater Nashua, N.H., Jan. 27, 2000
8) "I hear there's rumors on the Internets that we're going to have a draft." —second presidential debate, St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 8, 2004
7) "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." —Saginaw, Mich., Sept. 29, 2000
6) "You work three jobs? … Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that." —to a divorced mother of three, Omaha, Nebraska, Feb. 4, 2005
5) "Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." —Poplar Bluff, Mo., Sept. 6, 2004
4) "They misunderestimated me." —Bentonville, Ark., Nov. 6, 2000
3) "Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?" —Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000
2) "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." —Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004
1) "There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." —Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002 |
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