[ISN] Jury: Man hacked cop radio

From: InfoSec News (isn@private)
Date: Tue Mar 09 2004 - 00:39:47 PST

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    http://www.madison.com/captimes/news/stories/69518.php
    
    By Kevin Murphy 
    Correspondent for The Capital Times
    March 5, 2004
    
    Federal jurors deliberated more than six hours Thursday before finding
    a former University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student guilty of
    two counts of intentionally blocking police radio communications here
    last year.
    
    Rajib Mitra, 25, of Brookfield, who was taken into custody after the
    verdicts were read, faces up to 20 years in prison at his sentencing
    by District Judge John Shabaz on May 12.
    
    Mitra's attorney, Christopher Van Wagner, said the government only had
    a circumstantial case against his client, since police never recovered
    the radio Mitra built and used to disrupt the police radio system 21
    times between January and August 2003, and for three hours during a
    riotous Halloween night on State Street.
    
    However, in closing arguments Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim O'Shea said
    Mitra provided sufficient indirect evidence to find him guilty of the
    two radio interference crimes with which he was charged.
    
    The areas of interference occurred in the 500 and 600 blocks of State
    Street and near Orchard and Regent, where Mitra had lived and at the
    times he resided there, O'Shea said. Police called the areas around
    State Street where Mitra lived from January to August 2003 "a dead
    zone," O'Shea told jurors.
    
    O'Shea disputed Mitra's claim that the interference was an unintended
    consequence of trying to build a radio that would monitor emergency
    communications on the city's 800 megahertz trunking radio system.
    
    Mitra could have purchased a scanner that would allow him to listen to
    the radio talk but instead bought a radio with transmitting
    capabilities. Instead of visiting the Motorola Web site for
    information on the trunking radio system, Mitra visited Russian hacker
    Web sites, which showed an intent to disrupt communications, O'Shea
    said.
    
    The "magic radio," as O'Shea called it, didn't have one bad wire that
    caused it to transmit accidentally. Instead, Mitra targeted the
    frequencies he wanted to broadcast on and transmitted high-pitched
    tones, effectively disabling the radio system, O'Shea said.
    
    After losing a speeding ticket trial in November, Mitra tried a "new
    trick" - broadcasting pornographic sounds he downloaded from the
    Internet, O'Shea said. He broadcast 12 sex-sound files stored on his
    computer, causing police all over the city of Madison to turn down
    their radios while in contact with the public, O'Shea said.
    
    After police tracked the source of the pornographic broadcast to
    Mitra's Orchard Street apartment, Mitra threw out the radio but kept
    the power cord and interface device he built to link it to the
    computer. Discarding the radio also was proof that Mitra, who had
    accumulated a roomful of electronic gear, was guilty of the offenses,
    O'Shea said.
    
    "Why did he throw it out? Because he knew it would show he committed
    the crimes. It would be the primary evidence of his guilt," O'Shea
    said.
    
    Van Wagner argued that Mitra responsibly got rid of the radio he built
    once he heard the porn sounds, which he listened to for enjoyment,
    over a separate scanner he operated. Mitra didn't know the police were
    looking for him as the source of the interference, Van Wagner
    contended. Otherwise, Mitra also would have tossed out the power cord.
    
    The government repeatedly stretched the facts in the case to paint
    Mitra as a "dangerous computer hacker, a loner who listens to porn
    audio in the privacy of his bedroom," Van Wagner said.
    
    But every witness who knew Mitra testified that he was a respectful,
    intelligent person, Van Wagner said.
    
    
    
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