cosell@bbn.com (Bernie Cosell) (03/04/90)
}TELECOM Digest Sat, 3 Mar 90 20:45:00 CST Special: Jolnet, Again This isn't misc.legal, and this isn't the time to be excessively picky and critical, but: }Here is how he told the tale of the '911 software': }The software showed up on his system one day, almost two years ago. It }came to him from netsys, where Len Rose was the sysadmin. According to }Andrews, when he saw this file, and realized what it was, he knew the }thing to do was to 'get it to the proper authorities as soon as }possible',... }ME> "After you passed it along to Boykin, did you then destroy the }file and get it off your site?" }RA> "Well, no... I kept a copy also." It strikes me that this is a KEY faux pas, regardless of good intentions or not. }But then, said Andrews, a funny thing happened several months later. }The folks at AT&T, instead of being grateful for the return of their }software came back to Andrews to (in his words) 'ask for it again.' }Somehow, they either never got it the first time; got it but suspected }there were still copies of it out; or were just plain confused. Just so, and if RA *supplied* another copy, I suspect they'd interpret that as pretty convincing evidence that it WAS further distributed, and with RA's knowledge. I know that they didn't actually contact him and ask/tell him to expunge all copies of the stuff, but his actions clearly demonstrated his knowledge of just what it was he was messing with, and I think they could easily show that he incurred an obligation to act prudently with it, or else [just guessing now] he could be liable to being an accessory after the fact. }So he was contacted by the feds about a year ago, and it was at that }point he decided it was in his best interest to cooperate with any }investigation going on. Perhaps his sudden cooperation was less out of pangs of conscience that it might have appeared... [not to besmirch his motives here, only to point out that a call from the FBI pointing out that while you may not have really DONE anything, your actions _could_ end up landing you in court with some serious potential badness going down (and none of this untested cheesiness about the the technicalities of bbs's and such... nice mainstream legal liability), could be pretty persuasive at converting a concerned, but out-of-the-loop, citizen into an active helper]. /Bernie\