[Infowarrior] - MIT students: Mass. agency 'misrepresents' what led to lawsuit

[Richard Forno]

MIT students: Mass. agency 'misrepresents' what led to lawsuit
Posted by Declan McCullagh 2 comments
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10016113-83.html?hhTest=1&part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Three MIT students are disputing the Massachusetts transit agency's  
version of the events that led to the state filing a lawsuit last  
week--and obtaining a restraining order against their talk on subway  
card security scheduled for Sunday.

The latest dispute originates in comments made by to CNET News by  
Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority spokesman Joe Pesaturo in  
in a report published Monday. In his e-mail to us, he said the  
students "agreed to provide the MBTA with a copy of the presentation"  
scheduled for the Defcon hacker conference on Sunday but never did.

A response posted Tuesday by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which  
is representing the students, said MBTA "misrepresents" the situation:

     After the Monday meeting, the students understood that the MBTA's  
concerns were resolved, and that the students were to provide a  
confidential vulnerability assessment by the end of the week. Contrary  
to the MBTA statement, the students did not believe that the MBTA  
wanted to see a copy of the presentation slides, and they did not  
agree to provide them to the MBTA.

(It is undisputed that the students--Zack Anderson, R.J. Ryan, and  
Alessandro Chiesa--wrote a separate analysis (PDF) for the MBTA marked  
"confidential" and presented it to the agency.)

Opposing parties in lawsuits often tell different stories. Human  
memories are imperfect. People may honestly remember the same sequence  
of events differently. So why is this particular dispute important?

One reason is that the judge in this lawsuit has until August 19 to  
renew the restraining order (by turning it into a preliminary  
injunction) or let it expire. Whoever can reasonably claim to have  
acted in good faith will have a better chance of prevailing.

It's unclear who's telling the truth; if the lawsuit continues, e- 
mails and spoken testimony will probably answer these questions. But  
it does seem likely that the MBTA requested a copy of the Defcon  
presentation--they knew it was scheduled; why would they not want to  
see it?--and never received it. The defendants would have had a very  
good reason for this; the slides are prepared with a hacker audience  
in mind and include warnings like "AND THIS IS VERY ILLEGAL!"

Oops. This is what lawyers call an "admission against interest."

Another bit of unresolved intrigue is that the MBTA told us on Monday  
that it wanted to meet with the students again. EFF has steadfastly  
refused to say whether it would consider such a meeting--making it,  
uncharacteristically, even less forthcoming than a bunch of government  
bureaucrats.