Student Falsely Arrested for Violating Network Policy

[MSC_student]

Today in class we were discussing the Network Access Protection feature of Server 2008 and our professor told us about a recent happening:

Morrisville State College has recently deployed a new service on its network. I'm a little fuzzy on the details but we have no firewall protecting our campus network because of the President's wishes, but traffic can be inspected for file transfers that could be infringing on copyrights such as Limewire traffic of illegal copies of music or video. I think the service is called Audible Magic.

We were told that a student conducted an illegal download, turned off his laptop and the DHCP server released his address, and then another student acquired his IP address. When the student opened his browser, he was directed to a captive portal informing the student that his IP address was blocked from network access because of copyright infringement.

The student had no idea what this was about, called University Police and stated that he thought his laptop had been hacked. The BONEHEAD police officer raced over to where the student was located, read him his rights, and brought him over to the police station for processing (the opinion is that the police officer thought when the student said "my laptop has been hacked that that meant the student, who took the time to contact UP, was the hacker).

After this horrific mess was sorted out, the student was released and of course his parents are less than happy with the situation. I'm not certain if the original perpetrator was picked up yet but I wouldn't doubt the IT department's ability to resolve this matter. I haven't been able to find any official press releases or the police blotter but I'm still looking. I thought this was a day or so ago but someone who works in that department claimed it was at least a week ago.

Any inquiries can be directed to Morrisville State College public relations, Jessica Decerce, decercja@morrisville.edu.

[MaindotC]

Just like the police arresting people in the parking lots of starbucks for illegal use of wireless networks - how the hell do they know what they're doing?!? Idiots with a badge & a gun. Not all of them, but a lot of them are all paper & pencil and haven't really caught on to what's going on in the world. I hope his parents sue their (expletive)'s off. How embarassing it must have been to be put in handcuffs in front of the other students.

[LaRoza]

The student had no idea what this was about, called University Police and stated that he thought his laptop had been hacked. The BONEHEAD police officer raced over to where the student was located, read him his rights, and brought him over to the police station for processing (the opinion is that the police officer thought when the student said "my laptop has been hacked that that meant the student, who took the time to contact UP, was the hacker).

A few problems with that story. One is there are no sources. And two, this isn't the type of first post with embedded email addresses and multiple links to the same site.

The third is officers typically do not read rights during the arrest (in fact, they shouldn't IMO) and they are informed before questioning.

Closed for suspected spammishness....