Smashed Frog

Lori Drew Walks

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 07:16 GMT

Sending a message worldwide that apparently no law exists to protect a minor from a cyberbullying adult who assumed a fake identity to harass said minor who eventually committed suicide due to said cyberbullying, Judge George Wu has overturned the conviction of Lori Drew.

Per ars technica:

Drew's story is, by now, familiar: Concerned that her daughter Sara was being badmouthed by a former friend, 13-year-old Megan Meier, Drew took protective parenting way too far. Together with Sara and an employee, Drew created a MySpace account for a fictional teen boy, "Josh Evans," who would extract evidence of Megan's trash talk. But after luring the girl in with flirtatious banter, the prank took a crueler turn, and "Josh" unleashed a barrage of vicious insults—publishing a number of Megan's intimate messages to salt the wound. The sudden betrayal proved too much for Megan, who had a history of depression: The girl hanged herself in her closet on an October afternoon in 2006.

(...)

O'Brien had a legal theory as unorthodox as his assertion of authority. MySpace may be full of bogus or pseudonymous profiles, but the site's terms of service technically require all users to provide "truthful and accurate" registration information. Since use of the site is conditional on acceptance of those terms, prosecutors argued, use in violation of those terms constituted "unauthorized access" to MySpace's computers. And "unauthorized access" violated a provision of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act intended to apply to computer hackers.

"Unauthorized access" is a mere misdemeanor—and that's all the jury was willing to find Drew guilty of. But the charge can be elevated to a felony if that access is "in furtherance" of some other illicit act, whether a crime or a civil tort. So, for instance, upload a few minutes of copyrighted video to YouTube, and you've violated the site's terms of service while simultaneously committing copyright infringement.

Congratulations, you're a felon!

The prosecution's theory brought together some strange bedfellows in opposition to the criminalization of ToS violations.
--The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed an amicus brief calling the case a threat to online free speech.

--And the conservative Heritage Foundation called the prosecution an affront to the rule of law, warning, "If Lori Drew is convicted, we all, as Americans, will have to suffer the greater consequences."

--ANew York Times analysis in the wake of the verdict opened with the rhetorical question: "Is lying about one’s identity on the Internet now a crime?"

(Any other Froggers feeling the irony here? Continue.....)

(...)
Lori drew and her cohorts testified that they hadn't read MySpace's terms of service before embarking on their harassment campaign. Most people probably don't—and there's some reason to think that's a good thing. A study published in October 2008 estimated that if everybody read the privacy policies on websites they frequented, the aggregate time lost would impose costs of up to $365 billion in lost productivity.

Judge George Wu has now concluded that Drew's behavior was not in fact a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act; his written opinion explaining that conclusion will appear next week. He appears to have concurred with the EFF, however, that "by its plain terms, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act prohibits trespass and theft, not more contractual violations of terms of use."

Because no facts are in dispute—only matters of legal interpretation—Wu has the power to override the jury's verdict in the case.

And with that, let freedom ring.

(Whatever your interpretation of said freedom might be....)

Happy 4th of July.

Credit: RunnersWorld

Note to Self. Do Not DDoS Rolling Stone.

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:23 GMT

WOW.

That's the only word I could come up with after reading Wired this morning.

Bruce Raisley--a former member of Perverted Justice and software developer--used everything within his computer "powers" to block access to "...articles written by the publications that reported embarrassing information about him. But ironically his attempt to obscure the information is now bringing even more attention to it."

Articles in question? Rolling Stone, Radar and Corrupted Justice.

Rolling Stone experienced multiple DDoS attacks between July 2007 and March 2008 in an attempt to prevent readers from gaining access to an article the magazine published in July 2007 titled “To Catch a Predator: Is NBC’s Primetime Dragnet the New American Witch Hunt?”

Another web site for a group called Corrupted Justice experienced three attacks in 2007 and 2008 that lasted several days. The site had published a copy of the Rolling Stone article as well as another article published in 2006 by Radar titled “Strange Bedfellows.” According to the complaint, Raisley had asked the site to remove the articles and when this didn’t happen, he launched attacks against it. He allegedly contacted the site’s administrator and boasted that he had “unleashed a virus that could never be stopped” and that the administrator could “kiss [his] website goodbye because nothing could protect [his] servers against this attack.”

Oh, and let's not forget Slovenia.

According to a federal complaint (.pdf) unsealed today in New Jersey and written by FBI Special Agent Susan Secco, Raisley launched the attack against nine sites using a botnet that he controlled. One of the computers in the botnet belonged to the Academic and Research Network of Slovenia, which is the base for Slovenia’s Computer Emergency Response Team. The team helped U.S. authorities trace the botnet and DDoS attacks to Raisley.

***The federal complaint .pdf was not loading at this writing.***

Per the feds.

“His actions were alarming in that he chose to attack third party web sites when he didn’t like their content,” says Assistant U.S. Attorney Erez Liebermann. “It’s one thing for him to be unhappy with a web site. It’s another thing for him to attack third parties that have not done anything, which causes damage on the side of the victim companies and on the side of any affected computer.”

(...)

When FBI agents raided his home in March 2008, they recovered a memory stick and hard drive that RaisLEYy allegedly admitted contained malware that he wrote to conduct the web site attacks.

Per the complaint, Raisley was a volunteer with Perverted Justice in 2004 but became an active opponent after falling out with the group.

And regarding this "falling out":

Perverted Justice is a group based in Oregon run by Xavier Von Erick, aka Phillip John Eide, that helped NBC create its controversial sweeps-week “To Catch a Predator” series. The group’s volunteer members posed as young minors online to lure adults into sexual conversations then, after verifying the would-be predator’s identity, would post his name and other personal details on its web site to encourage others to harass the target at home and work. After the group partnered with NBC, targets were also lured to a decoy house where NBC’s cameras would catch them in the act of meeting with the “minor,” ostensibly for sex.

According to articles about Perverted Justice written by Rolling Stone and Radar, Raisley fell out with the group after one of its members allegedly used a picture of his son to lure predators. Von Erick denied the claim to Radar in a story that no longer appears to be available on the site, but is archived at other sites, i.e. Strange Bedfellows.

Raisley became an outspoken opponent of the group after this, posting online threats against members and exposing the online handles they used to pose as minors and lure predators. In retaliation, Von Erick told Radar that he posed as a young woman named “Holly” online and lured Raisley, who is married, into a relationship. Raisley chatted with Holly via instant messaging for months and even engaged in cybersex with her. He reportedly told his wife he planned to leave her for Holly and rented an apartment for his new “lover.” But when Raisely went to meet “Holly” at the airport, Von Erick sent someone to snap a picture of him carrying flowers and waiting expectantly for his “lover.” Von Erick posted the picture online with a message mocking Raisley.

When Radar contacted Raisley’s wife she told the publication, “That was just a big old mess.” She went on to say, “He’s already lost one job over this, and he doesn’t want anybody to know about it. I’m just hoping this will just fade away.”

(Don't we all, Mrs. Raisley. Don't we all.)

The chance that the story would “fade away,” however, wasn’t likely as long as sites continued to publish it. So Raisley allegedly tried to make it go away with his DDoS attacks.
WOW.

Raisley, whom Liebermann says works for HSBC, faces a maximum of ten years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He was released on a $100,000 unsecured bond and is restricted to using his home computer for work purposes only. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for July 20.

A call to Raisley’s home in Pennsylvania was not returned.

***

Read more about Raisley's Big Old Mess over at Wired.

And the Register-London.

And ComputerWorld.

And a whole slew of others.

***

"...In direct response to the high-profile success of To Catch a Predator, laws against online predators have become increasingly hostile: Internet solicitation of a minor is now a crime in a majority of states, regardless of whether an actual minor is involved. By 2009, at least 600,000 of the country's convicted sex offenders -- including those who, like Donnelly, never met an actual minor -- will be required by a new federal law, the Adam Walsh Act, to be listed on a national registry of sex offenders. There, on easy-to-navigate maps for the entire country, their photos and home addresses will appear next to categories such as aliases, sentence and "computer used." Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch even thanked Perverted Justice for "directly impacting" the law's passage."

***

"...Even more disturbing, anti-predator stings involving decoys may actually outnumber crimes involving real victims. On an early episode of To Catch a Predator, Dateline estimated that there are 50,000 predators online at any moment -- a number the show pretty much made up out of thin air, though that didn't stop Attorney General Alberto Gonzales from citing it as fact in a speech last year. But a study conducted by the University of New Hampshire estimated that there were fewer than 2,900 arrests for online sexual offenses against minors in a single year. What's more, only 1,152 involved victims who were approached by strangers on the Internet -- and more than half this number were actually cops posing as kids."

--Rolling Stone, July 2007
“To Catch a Predator: Is NBC’s Primetime Dragnet the New American Witch Hunt?”

Assigning a Zero to Zero Tolerance

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 07:54 GMT

The Supreme Court sided with privacy rights with as evidenced by the recent ruling clarifying what common decency tells most of us.

Ya just can't strip search a 13-year-old.

Per the Ventura County Star:

In deciding a case involving the strip-search of a 13-year-old girl by school officials, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday came down on the side of common sense.

The justices, in an 8-1 ruling, said the search was not reasonable, thus violating the girl’s constitutional rights under the Fourth Amendment.

This decision also makes clear for school officials where to draw the line between a student’s privacy rights and their zeal to keep their campuses free of drugs and weapons.

California and six other states recognized this boundary by previously passing laws prohibiting strip-searches in a school setting.

Not so in Arizona, where Savana Redding, now 19, was an honors student at a middle school in a small town near the border with New Mexico. A classmate had accused Savana of supplying her prescription ibuprofen, equivalent to two Advils.

The school’s vice principal then took Savana to his office where her backpack was searched. When nothing was found, she was taken to the nurse’s office and ordered to strip down to her underwear by two female employees. They then made her move her bra to the side and stretch her underwear waistband.

Again, nothing was found and, after what Savana described as “the most humiliating experience” in her life, no apology was offered by school officials.

Savana, who will be attending college in the fall, said of the ruling: “I’m pretty excited about it because that’s what I wanted. I wanted to keep it from happening to anybody else.”

Savana’s rights were violated solely on the false word of another eighth-grade student, with no other evidence or corroboration.

As Justice David Souter wrote in the majority opinion: “What was missing from the suspected facts that pointed to Savana was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear.”

Wouldn’t it have been just as easy for school officials to have Savana remain under their watchful eye in the principal’s office, then contact her parents and wait until they arrived before any search was done?

All Americans — no matter the age — have a constitutional right not to be subjected to unreasonable searches. The court correctly ruled strip-searching Savana was a case of school officials stepping over the line.

6/27/2009

Michael Jackson

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:43 GMT

Like Elvis, Michael Jackson has left the building.

He leaves behind a musical anthology spanning his lifetime.

He takes with him a creative genius that evolved into an eccentricity few understood.

As I expected, the media wasted no time posting the darker moments of Michael's life, even before confirmation that he had indeed, passed away.

As with Elvis, whispers will shadow his legacy as long as those who choose to remember walk this earth.

But his music lives on.

And that, no one can take that away.

Thanks Michael, for showing us what you could do.

See ya.

Fraudulent Use of Canines in Police Work

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:04 GMT

As reported by Scott Maxwell over at the Orlando Sentinel, the suspect résumé of John Preston and his "magical dog" will hit the national highlight via Anderson Cooper, tonight at 10:00 PM.

Preston's claims — that his dog could track scents through water, even years after a suspect supposedly left them — were preposterous. And Preston was, ultimately, discredited in court.

Since then, three of the Brevard County men whom Preston helped convict subsequently had their convictions overturned.

Now comes word there may be a fourth: another man still in prison more than two decades after Preston and his German shepherd provided the key evidence allegedly tying him to the scene of the crime.

"There are a lot of similarities between this case and the others," said Brevard-Seminole's assistant public defender, Mike Pirolo. "I mean, it's scary how similar many of these cases are."

What's also scary is how many of these cases have yet to be scrutinized

And yet, until now, there has been no thorough check to see whether others were wrongfully convicted as well.

That, however, is starting to change.

•A national legal group has taken up the cause of the fourth person.

•The Public Defender's Office in Brevard opening a broader inquiry of its own.

•And this tale of perverted justice will get a national audience tonight when Anderson Cooper is slated to spotlight Preston and his cases during his 10 o'clock show on CNN.

Expect Anderson to feature recently released Brevard County citizen William Dillon. After serving 27 years in prison for murder, DNA testing ultimately excluded him from the evidence that resulted in his conviction

Evidence obtained through John Preston and his Wonder Dog.

All that aside, the following comment by blogger Scott Maxwell really ices my cake.

Meanwhile, as others search for justice, some of Florida's highest-placed officials — Gov. Charlie Crist, Attorney General Bill McCollum and Brevard-Seminole State Attorney Norm Wolfinger — remain uninvolved and unmoved.

How friggin' typical.

But, on the flip side, we at Smashed Frog are glad to see the mainstream press finally hanging Florida's legal dirty laundry out in the sunshine for all to see.

Laundry Froggers have repeatedly aired out for the past several years.

***

Read more from Maxwell here.

Read more about Fraudulent Use of Canines in Police Work here.

BBC (and Miami Commissioner Marc Sarnoff) Spin the Julia Tuttle

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 08:55 GMT

Voice of Reason found the way to my mailbox this morning with an update on the Julia Tuttle Causeway.

Here's a bit of the story. Be certain to visit VOR's blog (here) to read each story in entirety.

As reported by the BBC...

FL- Miami's tent city for sex offenders

A Miami law is forcing many of the city's sex offenders to sleep rough under a bridge, reports Emilio San Pedro for the BBC's Americana programme.

The area under the Julia Tuttle Causeway in downtown Miami has in recent years become the unlikely home for a growing community of about 70 convicted sex offenders.

(...)

"Welcome to American justice," said Dr Pedro Jose Greer, the Dean of Florida International University's Department of Humanities, Health and Society, as he met me under the bridge to discuss the squalid conditions at the camp.

"We have people living together with mental and physical illnesses in an environment where people can't possibly sleep because of the cars going by overhead - where you can smell the urine and see the trash mounting all around us."

Dr Greer has for decades been a leading advocate in Miami for homeless people and their right to receive adequate medical and social services.

He told me that he has become increasingly angry over the last few years at the existence of this camp and the lack of an alternative way to reintegrate these convicted sex offenders into society.

"What we're doing is we're saying 'let's take the people that we most despise, that did some of the most egregious things in society and let them all get together and not supervise them and let them wander around the community'," he tells me with a clear sense of frustration in his voice.

"This is the stupidest damn law I have ever seen and it's purely mandated by revenge without any consideration for the well-being of these people - who deserve better despite the severity of their crimes," he says.

The problem for people like Julio is that the serious nature of the crimes they committed makes it very difficult for them to get much sympathy from the local community or from local politicians - who for the most part have found the issue too sensitive and downright controversial to become involved.

However, earlier this month, one City of Miami commissioner, Marc Sarnoff, did just that.

With the backing of the city government, he wrote a letter to the state governor, Charlie Crist, asking him to shut the camp down.

He based that request on the fact that there is a small island that serves as a weekend park for boaters and their children that lies within the existing local boundaries.

I met Mr Sarnoff on a sunny morning at a local park, where some boys were playing baseball with their coach.

He told me that his top priority remained protecting these children from sex offenders like the ones who lived at the camp.

"Let me be absolutely clear. I'm not here to support or endorse anything with regard to sexual offenders. They are my least bit of concern," he tells me. "However, they are living in squalor. I don't think human beings will stay in that condition. They're going to start leaving and what we thought was a good law of 2,500 ft to keep them away from our children will eventually push them back into the population."

Mr Sarnoff hopes that the letter to Governor Crist will force the state either to find some alternative place to house the sex offenders or force some form of legal action that will get the state's courts, which are not beholden to the desires of the electorate, involved.

For the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and others like Dr Greer - who believe the offenders have already served their time in prison and deserve the right to attempt to get on with their lives - the camp's existence and the desperate conditions there serve as a troubling reflection of the values of modern-day Miami.

"The question is - have we become a society that doesn't let you die but lets you suffer? Do we just say we're living in the Middle Ages - an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth?" Dr Greer told me after we had finished touring the camp.

"I think we've gone beyond that."

Read what a Miami dad has to say here. (You might be surprised).

Be certain to take a few minutes to listen to the 2/16/2009 BBC broadcast where "Matt Frei looks at different responses to America's prison crisis."

You are Invited. Go to Town Meeting: Kiar, Ring, Sands

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 21:28 GMT

For those who wish to discuss the recent passage and signage of HB 115 into law with bill sponsors Florida state rep Martin Kiar and state senator Jeremy Ring, here's your chance.

A personal invitation to attend a town hall meeting with them both and Representative Franklin Sands, District 98 in attendance.

(HB 115 requires sexual offenders and predators to fork over their home and cell phone numbers to law enforcement authorities. Read more over at Ring Around the Kiar.)

Besides sponsoring unnecessary registration requirement legislation, Martin Kiar is also a member of the Broward Task Force, recently formed to discuss the need for Broward County to impose residency restrictions for those persons required to register as sex offenders. His office indicated the need for HB 115 "...because sex offenders were not required to provide Florida Department of Law Enforcement with a home or cellular telephone number as part of the process requiring them to register with law enforcement.

That made it difficult for law enforcement to keep track of these individuals."

Uh huh. Email address vs. home address. Hmmm. If I were in law enforcement, where would I look first?

Moving along to his cohort, per Sanders Says, state senator Jeremy Ring "...was an early stage Yahoo executive and worked for Anil Singh until about 2001. He was an operations czar and made the sales trains run on time. He had a strong point of view that people need to improve weekly, monthly and especially yearly.

At a sales offsite in 2001, he posed the following question to the young Yahoo's: Have you improved your personal resume in the last year? What is new on it?

Good advice. Ring can now update his own sales pitch by adding "selling Fear for votes".

On that note, your personal invite.

***

Good Afternoon:

I would like to extend an invitation for you to attend a Town Hall Meeting hosted by myself, Representative Kiar, and Senator Rich.

The Town Hall Meeting is meant to bring awareness to you of issues that were addressed during the 2009 Legislative Session and to allow you to ask questions and give your opinions in an open forum.

Please find below the details on the meeting that will take place on Monday June 22, 2009 at the Weston City Hall Commission Chambers.

Event: Representative Sands, Representative Kiar and Senator Rich Town Hall Meeting

Place: Weston City Hall Commission Chambers 17200 Royal Palm Blvd Weston, FL 33326

Date: Monday June 22, 2009 Time: 7:00PM

The meeting will not be used in any way as fundraising or campaign event.

If you have any questions or concerns please contact my district office at (954) 424-6800

Best Regards,

Franklin Sands

The Snowball Effect

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:45 GMT

"I'm not a monster. I don't belong on this list."

And with that said, Governor Charlie Crist delayed the decision to pardon Virgil Frank McCranie.

Married for 10 years to his wife Misty, he was 19 and she 14 when the two had sex.

The couple met through their parents, who were friends, when growing up in Jacksonville. McCranie's wife, Misty, now 28, said she became angry and jealous when he developed a relationship with another woman. She told her father she'd had sex with McCranie and they went to the police.

That's about the time McCranie's life snowballed. And rolled downhill fast.

McCranie, 34, told Gov. Charlie Crist and the Florida Cabinet, sitting Thursday as the Florida Board of Executive Clemency, that being on the sex offender list has caused him to lose at least 17 jobs in the last several years and that his four children, ages 7 to 14, have shared his stigma.
McCranie, who now has a retail sales job in Panama City Beach, asked for a pardon to lift the cloud over his life caused what's known as a "Romeo and Juliet" case.
His name, picture, address, a map showing where he lives, a description of his vehicle and tag number and other information are posted on the state's sex offender Web site for all to see.
"I just want a chance to just be a regular person again," McCranie said.
Crist delayed a decision, saying he wanted more time to think about it and study the facts.
"It's a difficult case," Crist said. "I'll make my ruling based on what I believe to be true."
To get a pardon, an applicant must receive approval from the governor and at least two of the three Cabinet members: Attorney General Bill McCollum, Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink and Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson.

With McCollum and Sink running for Florida's governor and Crist seeking the Senate I'd say McCranie has a snowball's chance in hell.

But hell, we can always hope for snow.

McCranie said he's never been accused of any other crime and has worked in a series of stores where he frequently has contact with families and children without incident. He said, though, he has been repeatedly fired after some customers and other employees have found him on the sex offender Web site and complained to his bosses.
Originally charged with rape, McCranie pleaded no contest to lewd and lascivious behavior with a child as part of a plea deal.
He was placed on probation and the judge withheld adjudication. McCranie said he later violated probation "for monetary reasons" and wound up serving about a month in jail.
"My prison's out here on this Web site," McCranie said after the meeting. "Yeah, I've done about 14-15 years of hard time, believe me. I'd been better off in prison, probably."

We believe you.

Good luck from all of us here at Smashed Frog.

Read more here.

Ring Around the Kiar

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 23:30 GMT

Our Florida Legislators reinvent the wheel and blur the distinction between predators and offenders simultaneously once again.

And Charlie Crist signs off his okay.

Per the Sun Sentinel, 6/16/09:

Gov. Charlie Crist signed a new law today that requires sexual offenders and predators to fork over their home and cell phone numbers to law enforcement authorities.

The measure was sponsored by state Rep. Martin Kiar, D-Davie, and state Sen. Jeremy Ring, D-Parkland.

Before House Bill 115 became law, sex offenders did not have to provide Florida Department of Law Enforcement with a home or cellular telephone number as part of the process requiring them to register with law enforcement.

That made it difficult for law enforcement to keep track of these individuals, Kiar’s office said.

If they don't have phones, the provision doesn't apply.

***

4. A sexual predator must register any electronic mail address or instant message name with the department prior to using such electronic mail address or instant message name on or after October 1, 2007.

775.21 The Florida Sexual Predators Act.

Email Privacy

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 18:20 GMT

Do email messages deserve the same privacy protection as telephone calls?

Civil liberty groups will get a second chance to make their case that yes, they do before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

On Wednesday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the ACLU of Ohio, and the Center for Democracy and Technology filed an amicus brief in Warshak v. USA in support of appellant Steven Warshak.

Warshak argues that a court order secretly directing his ISP to preserve his e-mail violates federal privacy laws and his expectation of privacy.

(...)
In November 2006, the EFF, the ACLU of Ohio, and the CDT filed a similar amicus brief in support of Warshak, arguing that e-mail deserves the same legal protection as telephone calls. In June 2007, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Warshak's favor. But that decision was vacated on procedural grounds. And now the case is back before the court.
In a statement, EFF senior staff attorney Kevin Bankston says that the Justice Department conducted what amounts to a "back-door wiretap" when it intercepted six months of Warshak's e-mail without a warrant. "Thankfully, this abuse has given the appeals court yet another opportunity to clarify that the Fourth Amendment protects the privacy of e-mail against secret government snooping, even when it's in the hands of an e-mail provider," he said.

Stay tuned.