Campus cops treat Ubuntu use as sign of criminality

[Randy Cole]

Richard Chonak wrote:
> Bill Ricker wrote:
>
>   
>> If the police and court aren't entirely incompetent, they would have
>> heard some indication of Motive as well, like what prior history
>> existed between the victim of the emails and the victim of the search
>> warrant, but for privacy reasons that might have been omitted from
>> coverage.
>>     
>
> The warrant application goes into additional detail, but it doesn't 
> contain any information about any past contacts between the target of 
> the search warrant and the victim of the forged e-mail,  It's mainly 
> based on allegations made by the computer guy's disgruntled roommate 
> that the IT guy hacked the college grade system and downloaded pirated 
> movies.   Some of the allegations sound weak: the roommate's PC doesn't 
> work, and he suspects it's the IT guy's fault.
>
> The most substantial-looking link is that a computer in the IT guy's 
> name did a DNS lookup relevant to the harassing e-mail.   So based on 
> that, the cops are going to forensically search his PC for a few months 
> and look for evidence to strengthen the case.
>
> I was going to say "we shall see", but probably this will peter out with 
> no resolution.
>
> --RC
>   
I believe he was accused of downloading 200 movies. If the search
warrant is not suppressed, the RIA might be interested...

As for hacking the grading system, did he or didn't he? That's the most
serious accusation.

I've seen this discussion here and on hcs-discuss (harvard computer
society). They seem more upset about whether the warrant was warranted.
Here, folks are more concerned with what he did, whether police are
abusing their power, and aren't that concerned about the warrant itself.
Partly the difference is generational.

What I am most interested in is how I would respond to such an
investigation in a place I was working at, what if the police came to me
and asked me to help them gather information for the warrant application
or help them with computer forensics, how would I handle it. Or, what
would I do if someone made bogus or trumped-up accusations.

Everyone is worked up by the Linux-phobia implied in the search warrant
application "my goodness, he was dual-booting, he must be hiding
something with his sinister use of white-on-black text non-windows
thingy and having more than one computer".

--Randy