Thats crazy and it sucks that you had to waste all that time in court. At least you are going to get some money out of it.
Has anything come up in court about invasion of privacy?
The hell with waiting for their case to go through, verizon caused you emotional and social harm, severly damaging your image, as well as your credit, and background. Id sue the HELL outta them, and youll win too, they didnt have the legal cause or RIGHT to check what you were connected to. Only federal agencies have the right to apply the patriot act.
(04-08-2010, 02:43 PM)theboner Wrote: [ -> ]Well basically this is a combination of both work and home related.
About a month and a half ago I was arrested. The original charge was for identity theft(keep reading not what you think), the reason I was charged was because of the information that was going through my home computer connection to my work. The reason I was uploading and downloading was so that I can do some work through my home, I presently work at Bluecross and blueshield of Illinois, My job details include database management and security.
I have been working for them for about 2 years now and they have paid for everything including my verizon buisness connection. Well apparently verizon thought that the patriot act meant that they could monitor what I was doing. So what they saw was me accessing secure servers that are relating to alot of personal information. So them trying to do the honest thing instead of emailing me to confirm whether or not I was doing anything illegal they notify my local police department. Then my local police department notifies the FBI. Keep in mind I do not blame the police nor the fbi for what they did as they were doing there jobs.
So it was a monday morning at about 8am to be exact I get a knock on my door, my wife decides that she will be the one to get up and answer it. All of a sudden I hear search warrant and cops come barging into my bedroom. At this point I am still half asleep trying to collect what was exactly happening. They had stated that they had reasons to beleive that I was commiting cyber crimes and that I was being charged with Identity theft and also having "hacktools" on my computer. So as they were searching my house they had confiscated everything that could possibly transmit data over the net. My computers/laptops, my blackberry and my moto droid. About an hour into the search I was finally on the way to the police station where I would be questioned.
So as I was sitting in the interrogation room I was being asked questions like who do I work for, why did I do it. Still not knowing exactly why I was being charged, I played the dumb card(well not played I was still dumb to the fact on why I was arrested) At this time I was then told that it would take me 100,000 cash to be able to bond out. I told them to let me make my phone call to my boss. Who is the VP of information security for all locations of Bluecross within the USA.
So as I am waiting to finally hear some good news from the police I find out that even if I bail/bond out, I will not even be able to leave as I have a federal hold on me. Well the vp of information security lives in Vermont, so I had to wait for him to fly in to chicago. meanwhile I am getting processed to goto county jail. So about 1 in the afternoon I am finally transfered from the local police to the custody of the winnebago county corrections(sherrifs) Were I get fully processed as if I was a criminal.
I had to spend the night in jail needless to say I was unhappy. The next morning I get a meeting with the Fbi to discuss what had happened. I had a lawyer appointed to me from bluecross to handle the matter. The lawyer had explained the situation and after about 2 hours of talking to 2 people who seem like to not even know a thing about computers decide that the charges should be dropped. So here I am still with the charge of identity theft and having hacktools from my local police department. Still waiting for another bond hearing this takes 4 days.
Apparently at this point the state of Illinois thought that they could still be able to successfully convict me of the chareges that they have set fourth. So now I am going on 5 days in jail waiting for the bond to reach 10k to walk out. Well the weekend comes around and it is now the following monday. I have my final bond hearing in which the judge decides to drop it to the amount that I wanted. I post the bond and am finally out of the hell whole.
The following day I have my first actual court case relating to the case. Both me and my lawyer had stated that there is some evidence that they are not allowed to look at 1. was my buiness laptop and 2. was my corporate blackberry, we had stated that they should be released to the custody of either the lawyer or management of bluecross. Well states attorney then stated there "might" be some evidence relating to the case in those items. Judge agreed with the states attorney........
So here I am over a month and a half into the court precedings and still no word on what exactly is going to happen. charges have been lowered but I am waiting to start trial as I did nothing wrong.
Verizon had illegally monitored what I was doing. The only reason they could've pryed into my information was if they had received a warrant FIRST from the police to do so. Which they didn't so I am at the point to were after this is all said and done I am going to sue verizon for wrongful imprisonment and violating privacy laws. Bluecross is gathering the case to sue verizon for invasion of privacy breaching the security of peoples identies and a few other things.
I have received 2 letters of apology from verizon I have told them to go fudge them selves BOTH times.
I know it took a long time but lets sum things up
1. I work for bluecross doing information security
2. I transfer data between me and my work from home
3. I have hack tools on my buisness computer to check the security of bluecros
3.a) Hacktools serve a legal purpose if used for legal ways
4. I was arrested for doing my job
5. Verizon illegally monitored my internet
6. Illinois states attorneys are morons
Yea who ever thought that you could be doing something completly legal and still get arrested. Doing something that protects everyone that has bluecross insurance. Kind of makes you think
Oh and the funny part of it is that bluecross and verizon had a contract for their health insurance. Pretty much safe to say verizon kinda fudged that up.
i totally agree with u boner
(04-11-2010, 12:24 PM)Fallenour Wrote: [ -> ]The hell with waiting for their case to go through, verizon caused you emotional and social harm, severly damaging your image, as well as your credit, and background. Id sue the HELL outta them, and youll win too, they didnt have the legal cause or RIGHT to check what you were connected to. Only federal agencies have the right to apply the patriot act.
I agree with Fallenour, that's not just an invasion to privacy, but wiretapping + the grief of all this is harm to your social life and background. You should sue them closely equal to bluecross. You deserve to at least receive some sort of recovery for this mistake, and these Verizon workers that decided that it'd be smart to do illegal acts all because of "hacktools" (are they stupid? how will they explain how they found this out?) must at least be stripped of their health care and fired. Good luck with the case; I hope Verizon learns from this multimillion dollar mistake.
(04-11-2010, 12:50 PM)x3rminate Wrote: [ -> ]I agree with Fallenour, that's not just an invasion to privacy, but wiretapping + the grief of all this is harm to your social life and background. You should sue them closely equal to bluecross. You deserve to at least receive some sort of recovery for this mistake, and these Verizon workers that decided that it'd be smart to do illegal acts all because of "hacktools" (are they stupid? how will they explain how they found this out?) must at least be stripped of their health care and fired. Good luck with the case; I hope Verizon learns from this multimillion dollar mistake.
Its a multi combination of Wire-tapping/invasion of privacy/monitoring of privelledg information.
I also originally wasn't charged with hacktools when my laptop was open they seen that I did indeed have certain hacktools that would be illegal if I did not have my career. I do feel some pity for the employees at verizon as they will most likely have to find another healthcare provider.
The only thing I find funny out of all of this is the fact that they can't even access any of my computers at this point because of my encryption that I had on my drive.
(04-11-2010, 12:24 PM)Fallenour Wrote: [ -> ]The hell with waiting for their case to go through, verizon caused you emotional and social harm, severly damaging your image, as well as your credit, and background. Id sue the HELL outta them, and youll win too, they didnt have the legal cause or RIGHT to check what you were connected to. Only federal agencies have the right to apply the patriot act.
Yea see the problem is that alot of law enforcement and judicial officials can apply the laws as they interept them. Considering the fact that it was Verizon who had given the tip. So this is how they could legally arrest me in the first place as they were given the information and the police had done everything correctly with the information given to them.
But yes I will make alot of money out of this, did I ever want something like this to happen to me? No of course not it is something I thought would've never happened. Is this a learning experience? No I did nothing wrong if anything it taught me that most people in jail are idiots(well I already knew that)
But just an update I have court this wensday. Probably will tell the states attorney to kiss my ass again, well not exactly like that but a little bit more adult
Had court the other day... Another continuance for another 45 days, in the meantime Bluecross as well as I am preparing are lawsuits with Verizon. I will give more updates as my lawyer pushes the state for more evidence as they are still apparently investigating which is why I go a continuance.
Wow, an ISP that actually monitors... ??? Kinda freaks me out with the kind of activities I am involved with my ISP.. So what about all these really skid RAT users that has 1000's of IP's connecting to a single port while using a RAT.. How on hell do they escape this kind of monitoring ???
People think that VPN's and Vps's stop the what is being transfered. They fail to realize is that all the same info is going through the same gateway through your ISP and so they still can see what your doing. The only reason for Vpn(s)'s are to shield your identity from the public.
It really all depends on the type of traffic that you are creating. Yes people who use rats and hostbooters will generally get caught or bitched at from there ISP's sooner or later. The only reason I was brought in was because they thought I was commiting identity theft and also that I was hacking into a health care provider to obtain the information.
Have one of the best buisness lawyers in the country handling my case. You think a 100,000 dollar lawyer is good. You never met an insurance one.