Boston Police - the leader in bogus Internet prosecutions

A justice from Massachusetts's highest court has ordered police to return a laptop and other gear seized from a Boston student's dorm room after rejecting prosecutors' arguments that hoax emails he was suspected of sending might be illegal under a computer crime statute.

So what was the "crime" alleged by the police? Seems the suspect sent some emails. Emails containing exaggerations:

When police requested a warrant to search the dorm room, much of the factual basis provided that a crime had been committed were two emails sent in early March that falsely claimed the roommate was participating on a gay dating website. At least one them was suspected to have been sent by Calixte.

The police have been ordered to immediately stop the investigation and return all items to Mr. Calixte. So good. But what if the Electronic Frontier Foundation hadn't gotten involved, to help Calixte defend himself?

I've been working Internet security for a long, long time, and what's striking is how the police have never had a good handle on the law, what's allowed, and what's prohibited. Don't take my word for it, The Hacker Crackdown covers this in gory detail, and that was written fifteen years ago.

So if you get prosecuted, the chances of you being prosecuted by someone with a clue are very, very low. At the same time, the chances of being prosecuted for "hacking" are much, much higher. This isn't the only case where someone was dragged before the Bench for saying things that weren't true on the Internet. The similarities to gun laws are obvious: if you're unpopular, there are many ways to turn you into a felon.

And the PC hothouse that is today's University system guarantees that this wasn't a fluke, and that prosecutions will continue. Some Internet exaggerations are protected speech, you see, but some are Hate Speech.


UPDATE 25 May 2009 13:55: It's a twofer:

A South Carolina judge has ordered the state attorney general's office to stop pursuing criminal charges against Craigslist.com while a lawsuit related to prostitution ads on the popular classifieds site makes its way through the courts.

...

On Friday, Judge Weston Houck granted Craigslist's request for a temporary restraining order preventing McMaster and his employees from "initiating or pursuing and prosecution against craigslist or its officers and employees in relation to content posted by third parties on Craigslist's Web site" until the court rules on the merits of the site's lawsuit.

What's clear is that prosecutors are doing what prosecutors do - throw as many (sometimes idiotic) charges against a defendant in the hopes that something will stick. It's likely not overly cynical to think that it's also motivated by a desire to intimidate the defendant into copping a plea.

While it's good that the courts (sometimes) refuse to buy into it, you need deep pockets to fight The Man off. This is perhaps the most persuasive reason to oppose all new computer crime legislation.

FINAL UPDATE 25 May 2009 14:10: Everything that you need to understand how idiotic the Boston situation is, encapsulated in a comment at Slashdot:

So he used computer technology to announce that someone was gay... and he got into legal trouble. Well, the courts are going to be swamped if the police ever find out about Halo 3.

The law is now officially an ass.