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From: mnemonic@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Mike Godwin)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.news
Subject: Re: Musings on constitutionality - Result of Neidorf charges
Message-ID: <20819@well.sf.ca.us>
Date: 18 Sep 90 19:32:06 GMT
References: <1990Sep18.112039.18672@src.dec.com>
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Reply-To: mnemonic@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Mike Godwin)
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas
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In article <1990Sep18.112039.18672@src.dec.com> denning@src.dec.com (Dorothy Denning) writes:

>[in response to Tom Mellman]
>He was charged with interstate transportation of stolen property and
>wire fraud (relating to the theft).  I'm not an expert on the law,
>but it would seem that the defense did exactly the right thing by
>responding to the charges.

I hope nothing I wrote suggests that I believe the defense did
anything other than the right thing.

>The best argument I have heard is that you deprive the person of the
>right to control the distribution and use of the information.

This argument is in fact embodied in theft law at present. It is one
of the issues that was not addressed in the resolution of the
Neidorf case. Prosecution dropped its case not because there were
questions about whether what Riggs and Neidorf did was theft, but
because the valuation of the "property" in question had been
inflated by Bell South (as John Nagle's research clearly showed
it had).

Was Riggs's acquisition of the information "theft"? Under the 
"exclusive use" doctrine of theft law as it applies to 
proprietary information, it arguably was not. Riggs and Neidorf
arguably were incapable of using the document for any
purpose other than to show that someone had unauthorized access
to a Bell South computer -- which makes the content of the 
document irrelevant. Moreover, neither defendant had the requisite
intent for theft of proprietary information, so far as the
facts seem to indicate.

>In article <37287@ut-emx>, Mike Godwin wrote:
>
>I don't understand what you mean by "real legal issues".  Aren't the
>real legal issues in a case the actual charges, which is what the
>defense responded to?

Not necessarily. In the Neidorf case there were genuine issues of
what constitutes theft and what constitutes First Amendment-protected
publication. Neither was addressed. Terry Gross's amicus brief, which
I'm sure you read, Dorothy, deals almost entirely with issues that,
as it happened, never really came up at trial (so far as I've been
told).

>BellSouth said they gave a revised version of the E911 document to
>people working in the field so that they could better deal with
>installation and maintenance problems with the 911 system.  (The
>document is about installation and maintenance of the 911 system.)
>Bell employees also claimed that the document could be used to disrupt
>911 service.  They seemed particularly concerned about the document
>being used for "social engineering."  This is a legitimate concern,
>especially since their employees are trained to be helpful.

I think Bell inflated its claim again here. It's hard to see how the 
contents of the document, which I have read, could be used for
"social engineering" or for any other purpose not internal to Bell South.

>For those of you who don't know, along with John Nagle I was at the
>trial working with the defense.  John gets credit for locating the
>documents in the public domain on the 911 system.

Dorothy does not mention that she ought to get credit as the author
of an informative paper on hackers.



--Mike


 

Mike Godwin, UT Law School  |"If the doors of perception were cleansed
mnemonic@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu | every thing would appear to man as it is,
(512) 346-4190              | infinite."
                            |                 --Blake