FW: [ISN] Jury: Man hacked cop radio

[Howell, Paul]

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Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2004 3:40 AM
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Subject: [ISN] Jury: Man hacked cop radio 


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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