Hacker's Lost Constitutional Rights in the US

[Atreides]

Anyone calling themselves a hacker on the Internet automatically loses rights under the American constitution. This is due to the recent ruling of the US District Court for the State of Idaho. The judge ruled in a case that an ICS product developer’s PC could be seized without him being notified or even heard from in court.
 

The ruling was that because the user in question, Corey Thuen, claimed on his website that he liked hacking things and wasn’t going to stop. What makes the case especially unpleasant is that it was being bought by an employer, Battelle Energy Alliance – the management and operating contractor for Idaho National Laboratory. The company has sued Corey Thuen and his company Southfork Security.

The Idaho National Laboratory was developing a PC program aimed at protecting the US’ critical energy infrastructure from hacker attacks. Corey Thuen helped develop the application called Sophia, which identified new communication patterns on ICS networks.

Battelle Energy Alliance was planning to license the technology in question, but the developer wanted it to be open source. As a result, Corey Thuen left Idaho National Laboratory, set up his own Southfork Security, and wrote a similar “situational awareness†program dubbed Visdom.

Now Battelle Energy Alliance claims that the developer stole the code and infringed agreements with Idaho National Laboratory. This is all right, but the company asked for a restraining order without first notifying the developer only because his website said “We like hacking things and we don't want to stopâ€. As a result, the company obtained a warrant to seize Corey’s PC because he claimed to like hacking things on the website.

Even in the United States, the courts are reluctant to allow the copying of a hard drive. However, the judge was swayed by the fact that the developer claimed publically he was a hacker and could probably wipe his hard drive.