Judges Tell Boston Cops to Go Fuck Themselves!

[WaTcHeR]

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Tosses Out Warrant in Boston College Case, Says No Probable Cause Existed

On May 21, 2009, Justice Botsford of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts granted our client Riccardo Calixte's motion to quash the illegal search warrant with which it seized Calixte's computers, phones, ipods, camera and other personal property. Not only is this an enormous victory for Calixte himself, but the ruling is also the highest state court opinion to repudiate the nascent law enforcement "trend" of charging internet users who violate websites' terms of service as criminals.

First, a quick recap. According to the warrant application, on January 27, 2009, Boston College police filed a report stating that Calixte and a roommate were having "domestic issues." During a subsequent conversation with police the next day, Calixte's roommate made a series of unsubstantiated and misleading claims about Calixte's computer expertise that the police later used in an attempt to portray him as a criminal, by alleging that Calixte was a "computer science major who is considered a master of the trade among his peers," that Calixte had a reputation as a "hacker," that it is "not uncommon for Mr. Calixte to appear with unknown laptop computers which he says are given to him by Boston College for field testing or he is 'fixing' for other students," and that he "uses two different operating systems to hide his illegal activities. One is the regular B.C. operating system and the other is a black screen with white font which he uses prompt commands on." As part of this laundry list of purportedly suspicious things Calixte allegedly did, the roommate also stated, without any explanatory detail, that he had observed Calixte somehow "hack into the B.C. grading system that is used by professors to change grades for students." Neither Boston College nor any professor apparently reported such a breach, and the police did no follow-up investigation on this or any other of the roommate's aspersions. At some unspecified later date, Calixte's former roommate was the subject of a mass e-mailing to the Boston College community in which he was reported to be gay. Based on some follow-up investigation by the police and by the Boston College IT department, police sought and obtained a search warrant for Calixte's dorm room on March 30, 2009, arguing that all of the above information amounted to probable cause that crimes had been committed.

Justice Botsford agreed with EFF that no probable cause existed and that the search was illegal.


http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/05/ma ... te-warrant

[WaTcHeR]

ay 22nd, 2009
Judge Rules Dorm Room Search for Evidence of Prank Email Illegal
Student's Computers Were Seized Under Baseless Theory of Computer Hacking

Boston - A justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has ordered police to return a laptop and other property seized from a Boston College computer science student's dorm room after finding there was no probable cause to search the room in the first place. The police were investigating whether the student sent hoax emails about another student.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Boston law firm Fish and Richardson are representing the computer science student, who was forced to complete much of the final month of the semester without his computer and phone. Boston College also shut off the student's network access in the wake of the now-rejected search.

"The judge correctly found that there was no legitimate reason to search and seize this student's property," said EFF Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick. "Our client was targeted because law enforcement was improperly suspicious of our client's computer skills and misunderstood computer crime laws. We're grateful that the court was able to see through the commonwealth's smokescreen and rectify this mistake."

In her order Thursday, Justice Margot Botsford rejected the commonwealth's theory that sending a hoax email might be unlawful under a Massachusetts computer crime statute barring the "unauthorized access" to a computer, concluding that there could be no violation of what was only a "hypothetical internet use policy." Thursday's decision now stands as the highest state court opinion to reject the dangerous theory that terms of service violations constitute computer "hacking" crimes. Justice Botsford further found that details offered by police as corroboration of other alleged offenses were insufficient and did not establish probable cause for the search.

"No one should be subjected to a search like this based on such flimsy theories and evidence," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. "The Fourth Amendment flatly bars such fishing expeditions. Computer expertise is not a crime, and it was inappropriate for the commonwealth to employ such transparent scare tactics in an attempt to hide the fact that they had no case."

EFF had appealed the case to the Massachusetts Supreme Court with Fish & Richardson attorneys Adam Kessel, Lawrence Kolodney, and Tom Brown.

http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2009/05/22