Subway agency wants to keep MIT students quiet over hack
10:30 am EDT August 15, 2008 - A federal judge has sided with the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority, ordering the students to continue to stay quiet beyond the original Tuesday expiration of their restraining order.
Presiding Judge George O'Toole, Jr. scheduled a hearing for that same Tuesday to debate the order's merits, and will decide then whether it should be modified or lifted altogether. As was reported initially early Thursday, copies of the presentation continued to be available on the Internet.
In addition, the judge also ordered the students to surrender code that was to be released as part of the presentation, along with a report that was to be submitted to their professor on the topic.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, representing the students, said it would appeal the ruling. It also argued that the judge's most recent demands ran afoul of the student's First Amendment rights.
1:27 pm EDT August 14, 2008 - Although the Defcon conference has ended, Massachusetts' transit agency is looking to prevent three student researchers who uncovered holes in its fare collection system from divulging their discoveries to anyone else.
The two sides had attempted to work things out through negotiations. The Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority offered to engage in mediation through a third-party without any preconditions. The Electronic Frontier Foundation apparently rejected that offer, but would not confirm so publicly, saying it would not disclose any discussions with the agency.
Rather, the EFF seems to be interested in the legal route. It is urging a federal court in Boston to lift what it calls "an unconstitutional gag order," and arguments are scheduled there Thursday.
Modifications to the original restraining order have been proposed by the MBTA, which is asking the courts to only prohibit "non-public information." However, the EFF said in its own motion to dismiss that no harm was meant by the presentation, and that it was aimed instead at urging the agency to improve security.
"The First Amendment does not allow people to be silenced because their speech exposes flaws, even if those flaws might someday be illegally misused by others," EFF civil liberties director Jennifer Granick said. "To protect our clients' rights, we had no choice but to ask the court to reconsider the gag order."
Continuing the gag order on the students specifically may now be pointless, as details of the presentation, including actual slides, are now available online; and complete copies of the presentation were given to all conference attendees in DEFCON's materials, during registration. This may be part of the reason why the MBTA proposed a motion to modify the restraining order.
The original ruling was set to expire on August 19. After that, the court can either extend the order in the form of a preliminary injunction, or do nothing. In the latter case, the MIT students would then be allowed to speak on the topic, or even give the presentation elsewhere.