Schneier on Security

Someone who cares • April 22, 2010 10:33 AM

@Wendy

OK, I’ll bite. Wendy, you remind me of a friend who unsuccessfully fought for justice in the courts, pro se (in her case, needing medical expert advice). It is a hard row to hoe, but in honor of her, I will take time to pass on my two cents as a computer security amateur. (I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, just friendly advice.)

Two key questions: do you have a lawyer, and do you have a copy of the original email, including email headers, for which you ended up in prison? (Do I even understand your situation correctly?)

First, it sounds like you need a lawyer as well as a computer security expert if you’re going to make any headway. The computer security expert can help direct the lawyer’s discovery efforts towards the signs that MSN-Web-TV is lying, if they are, and ensure that you get the original copy of the emails or email logs which you would need for any defense (or to overturn your conviction.)

Second, for a computer expert to get involved, they would first need to be convinced you aren’t crazy/paranoid/mistaken and that there is a real injustice here. I’m not sure how you do that, but I will circle back to that at the end of this post.

Assuming you were wronged, there are three basic technical scenarios I see that are consistent with your claims:

One, that MSN-Web-TV systems were hacked. This seems to be the route you are headed down but frankly it is the most unlikely of the three scenarios. A computer security expert could help direct a lawyer what to subpoena to prove this, but if you are doing it pro-se, I doubt passion alone will suffice to get to the bottom of this without both a good lawyer and a good security expert.

Two, and much more likely, is that someone forged an email to appear as if it were coming from you. This is pretty elementary computer security issue and any computer expert should be able to discern this if they can obtain the original email with email headers received from the police (hence your need for a lawyer.) Frankly, the prosecution should have had to show this was not the case in your original trial. No hacking of MSN is required, or really hacking of any kind. If you or your lawyer can obtain the original email, with all email headers intact, a computer expert (or even IT person) can quickly look at your email and tell you whether you have a potential case and whether it’s worth more than 10 minutes of their time. (Actually doing full forensics on the email headers would take a lot of time and professional expertise to hold up in court, particularly if your adversary is good, but simple signs of email forgery are often visible pretty easily to any skilled IT person interested in computer security, and they can tell you whether your case goes along these lines and if you can describe that, it will help a computer security expert know quickly if they can help you.)

Third, and almost as easy as number two but far more difficult for you to deal with from a defense perspective, is that someone close to you obtained your WebTV access credentials (username and password) via guessing or spying on you and used them, perhaps even from your residence (since boyfriend/x-friends are involved) to send the terroristic threats.

If someone sent terroristic messages from your WebTV account, using your name/password, from your home, it would be very hard to find evidence one way or another that you pressed the keys or that someone else did. No computer security expert I know can help prove that (unless there are somehow reliable electronic records related to some other activity you were doing that place you outside your home at the time MSN records show the messages were sent from your home, or MSN keeps such detailed logs of user activity that they could record the timing of each keystroke and an expert could show a different timing of the keystrokes.) I would be surprised if you could overturn an existing ruling even with a computer expert’s help, unless you had a really good lawyer.

Finally, if you wish to get the help of a computer security expert, particularly without paying for it, that is always a tricky thing. You will be 100x more likely to get help if A) you can obtain via lawyer or some sort of discovery or trial record, the original email INCLUDING ALL HEADERS containing the threat for which you were prosecuted and B) if that email contains signs of exoneration for you.

Also, you will be mildly more likely to get help if you can indicate you have a lawyer. Any computer security expert is going to want to make their time spent on the case very efficient, and it will be far more efficient use of their time to talk to a lawyer than to talk to you about all the particulars of your case and the legal implications, unless you find someone particularly kind and non-busy, which is fairly unlikely. If you have a lawyer, the computer security expert knows they don’t have to deal with the emotional (“cry cry cry”) side of this issue and they can focus on the expertise you need to get justice you deserve.

That said, most computer security experts, and even garden-variety IT security-interested people like myself, can take a look at the email headers and know within 5 minutes if you have an easy case or a hard case. If you have an easy case, there’s a much higher chance any well-meaning computer security expert will take it on or help you. If you have a hard case (falling into computer security categories 1 or 3 above, or trickier cases of forgery in category #2), you will have a much tougher time getting a security expert to help. So my advice is to start by pursuing getting that original email and have a clear understanding of whether that’s ruled in or out for your defense, before expecting to get much of a security expert’s time, as that’s the most likely way you can get a true security expert to believe in your cause and to help further.