[130278] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Judge approves TRO to stop DEFCON presentation
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Perry E. Metzger)
Sat Aug 9 17:12:09 2008
To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
Date: Sat, 09 Aug 2008 17:11:11 -0400
It seems that US judges aren't as protective of speech rights as Dutch
ones.
Las Vegas - Three students at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) were ordered this morning by a federal court
judge to cancel their scheduled presentation about vulnerabilities
in Boston's transit fare payment system, violating their First
Amendment right to discuss their important research.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) represents Zack Anderson,
RJ Ryan and Alessandro Chiesa, who were set to present their
findings Sunday at DEFCON, a security conference held in Las
Vegas. However, the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA)
sued the students and MIT in United States District Court in
Massachusetts on Friday, claiming that the students violated the
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) by delivering information to
conference attendees that could be used to defraud the MBTA of
transit fares. This morning District Judge Douglas P. Woodlock,
meeting in a special Saturday session, ordered the trio not to
disclose for ten days any information that could be used by others
to get free subway rides.
http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2008/08/09
--
Perry E. Metzger perry@piermont.com
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