MIT students deserve 'no First Amendment protection'
Found on CNet News on Wednesday, 13 August 2008
The state of Massachusetts is showing no signs of abandoning its fight to keep a restraining order in place against three MIT students who discovered subway card vulnerabilities. In fact, the state transit agency is escalating its rhetoric.
MBTA has demanded copies of documents including correspondence with the Defcon conference, a paper prepared for an MIT class, software, physical equipment, modified MBTA farecards, notes from meetings, and so on.
MBTA has asked O'Toole to convert the temporary restraining order, which automatically expires on Tuesday, to a longer-lasting preliminary injunction.
Seems they have a hard time learning that censoring someone will not stop the distribution of information; instead, it will only draw more attention. Now that it's clear that the MBTA systems are vulnerable, others will look into this. And chances are that their findings will leak into channels which are not controllable by some gag order.