The Electronic Frontier Foundation reported over the last couple of days that a Boston College computer science student has been targeted by BC police largely on the basis of using Linux. No, really - I’m serious.
School officials allege that this student sent an email to a school list outing another student as gay. Assuming he actually did this, it’s clear that this wasn’t particularly nice, professional, or tolerant; I’ll leave it to the lawyers to judge whether it was illegal. Regardless, the real problem here is not whether the student was professional or respectful of his peers, but that Boston College police seized several items, citing his use of Linux as probable cause supporting their actions.
According to the EFF,
In his application, the investigating officer asked that he be permitted to seize the student’s computers and other personal effects because they might yield evidence of the crimes of “Obtaining computer services by Fraud or Misrepresentation” and “Unauthorized access to a computer system.”
Access to the school’s computer system would hardly have been unauthorized since the computer science major is employed by the BC IT department and even their warrant application notes that he is considered a “master of his trade among his peers.” The warrant application, though, takes on comic proportions as the investigating officer describes the young man’s computer system:
I’m not saying that Mr. Calixte didn’t do anything wrong. It’s even possible that the BC police know something we don’t. However, their seizure of, among other items, his Ubuntu CD, seems to suggest that not using “BC’s operating system”Mr. Calixte [the student in question] uses two different operating systems to hide his illegal activities. One is the regular BC operating system and the other is a black screen with white font which he uses prompt commands on.
continue reading from the SOURCE....
No comments:
Post a Comment