Reading about the Romanian student arrested today for allegedly releasing one of the "Blaster" variants, I was struck by how easy it would be to "bring a shitstorm down" on someone by inserting comments into the virus code. --excerpt-- Second Suspect Arrested for Internet Virus Wed Sep 3, 5:54 PM ET By JIM KRANE, AP Technology Writer Police in Romania on Wednesday arrested a 24-year-old former student in connection with a computer-crippling Internet worm, according to a computer security company that aided police. ... Company analysts traced Ciobanu through some Romanian-language text inside the virus that eventually led them to a Web page containing Ciobanu's home address and telephone number, Vicol said. ... --end excerpt-- Tim again: This is not the first time an arrest has been made based on comments in virus/worm code. Sometimes the comments are about professors, sometimes about girlfriends, sometimes about local food and other trivia. It would be easy to implicate someone, for at least the initial months of house arrest (as with Parsons, the American kid also arrested for an alleged Blaster release), by scattering incriminating comments. Getting incriminating evidence onto their home or office computers is not as easy, but we can all think of ways this could be done. Absent verifiable signatures on such code (who would sign such a thing with a traceably sig?), conviction may be difficult. A charged person could claim he was "set up." Still, acquittal is months or years down the road, after great expense. I'll bet we see something along these lines soon. --Tim May "They played all kinds of games, kept the House in session all night, and it was a very complicated bill. Maybe a handful of staffers actually read it, but the bill definitely was not available to members before the vote." --Rep. Ron Paul, TX, on how few Congresscritters saw the USA-PATRIOT Bill before voting overwhelmingly to impose a police state