[IP] Judge dismisses keylogger case
Begin forwarded message:
From: Peter Lowe <pgl@xxxxxxxx>
Date: November 23, 2004 3:18:14 PM EST
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Judge dismisses keylogger case
[ For IP, if you like. ]
Via Slashdot.
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/9978
SECURITYFOCUS NEWS
Judge dismisses keylogger case
By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus Nov 19 2004 6:40PM
A federal judge in Los Angeles has dismissed charges against a
California man who used a keystroke logger to spy on his
employer, ruling that use of such a device does not violate
federal wiretap law.
Larry Ropp, a former claims adjuster for a U.S. insurance
company, was caught last year using a "KEYKatcher" brand
surveillance device on a secretary's computer while secretly
helping consumer attorneys gather information against his
employer, Bristol West Insurance Group. The KEYKatcher attaches
inline with a keyboard connector, and stores every keystroke in
an internal memory for later retrieval.
Last March a grand jury in Los Angeles indicted Ropp, in what
prosecutors trumpeted as the first federal criminal prosecution
for the use of a hardware keystroke logger. The indictment
charged a violation of the federal wiretap statute, which makes
it illegal to covertly intercept electronic communications
transmitted "over a system that affects interstate or foreign
commerce."
Prosecutors maintained that the tapped PC was covered by the
statute because it was connected to Bristol West's national
computer network, and the secretary had composed electronic mail
messages on it.
But district court judge Gary Feess disagreed, and last month
granted a defense motion to dismiss the indictment. Feess ruled
that the interception of keystrokes between the keyboard and the
computer's CPU did not meet the "interstate or foreign commerce"
clause in the federal Wiretap Act, even if some of those
keystrokes were banging out e-mail. "[T]his court finds it
difficult to conclude that the acquisition of internal computer
signals that constitute part of the process of preparing a
message for transmission would violate the Act."
"The network connection is irrelevant to the transmissions,
which could have been made on a stand-alone computer that had no
link at all to the internet or any other external network,"
Feess wrote. "Thus, although defendant engaged in a gross
invasion of privacy ... his conduct did not violate the Wiretap
Act. While this may be unfortunate, only Congress can cover
bases untouched."
The court based its decision in part on a controversial ruling
by the First Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this year that
threw out wiretapping charges against Branford Councilman, a
former vice president of an online bookseller who provided
customers with free e-mail accounts, then set up a system that
made covert copies of some messages for his later perusal. Feess
found that here, as in the Councilman case, the e-mail was not
intercepted as it traveled over the network.
Electronic privacy groups have joined with government
prosecutors to try and overturn the Councilman ruling, which is
now under review by a larger panel of judges.
The court also cited a 2001 case in which a federal judge in
Newark, New Jersey ruled that the FBI did not violate the
Wiretap Act when it installed a covert keylogger on the computer
of organized crime suspect Nicodemo Scarfo. In that case the FBI
assured the court that that its keylogger had been configured to
stop recording keystrokes when Scarfo connected to the Internet.
In an interview with SecurityFocus following his indictment,
Ropp admitted to using the keylogger, which he said he'd
purchased off the Internet. But he defended his office
skullduggery as a necessary evil to expose improper
anti-consumer practices at the company, which had previously
been sanctioned for illegally canceling some customers'
automobile insurance policies. "The FBI themselves use
keyloggers quite a bit," Ropp said. "Here, I'm a whistleblower,
and I'm getting the shaft."
Prosecutors filed a motion last week asking the court to
reconsider the Ropp ruling. Ropp's attorney, federal public
defender Firdaus Dordi, said he couldn't comment on the decision
until the judge rules on that motion.
--
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Litres drunk by Czechs so far this year: 1,473,761,188.96
- http://prague.tv/toys/beer/
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