FBI wants worm's keycapture data

[Graham Lally]

Khoder bin Hakkin wrote:

> http://www.dailyrotten.com/articles/archive/189387.html
> 
>  December 17, 2001
> FBI wants access to worm's pilfered data


Have to reply to this - the outcome of this is great...

> Last week the FBI contacted the owner of MonkeyBrains, Rudy
> Rucker, Jr.,


[I *assume* son of, uh, Rudy Rucker, mathemtician and author. I 
thoroughly recommend "White Light".]


> Accordingly, rather than hand over the entire database to the
> FBI, MonkeyBrains has decided to open the database to the
> public. Now everyone (including the FBI) will be able query
> which accounts have been compromised and search for their
> hostnames. Password and keylogged data will not be made
> available, for obvious legal reasons. 

[commentary snipped]

Flantastic! What possible reason could the FBI have come up with (and I 
would love to see a copy of the request for MonkeyBrain's database) for 
obtaining such confidential data, even if/especially when illegally 
obtained in the first place... The only disheartening side of this is 
that 99% of the people who *should* be querying that list won't ever 
hear of it... Ah yes, the media loves to report the gory stuff, yet 
seems all too ready to ignore the /useful/ bits...

Of course, if report mails form the virus were sent to another 
dozen-and-a-half addresses too, what's the FBI doing about *those* 
accounts? Did Yahoo et al. just hand over the data as requested? I find 
it hard to believe that the FBI chased up just one avenue...

Furthermore, under the second phase of the UK Data Protection Act 
[http://www.dataprotection.gov.uk/], if the forthcoming Hague Convention 
on Jurisdiction and Foreign Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters
[http://www.hcch.net/e/workprog/jdgm.html] were to come into force, 
would I be allowed to ask the Feds for my account details if I lost them?...

.g