Re: 2002 murder suspect located via MSN Map search

[Paul Schmehl <pauls () utdallas edu>]

--On February 4, 2006 9:57:43 AM -0500 "Richard M. Smith" <rms () bsf-llc com> 
wrote:

> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/04/technology/04privacy.html
>
> The break in the St. Louis murders came in 2002, when a reporter received
> an anonymous letter with a map generated by Microsoft's MSN service -
> marked with the location where a body could be found.
>
> The F.B.I. subpoenaed Microsoft for records of anyone who had searched for
> maps of that area in the days before the letter was sent. Microsoft
> discovered that only one user had searched for precisely that area and
> provided the user's Internet Protocol address. That address, in turn was
> provided by a unit of WorldCom, which identified the user as Maury Troy
> Travis, a 36-year-old waiter. (Mr. Travis was arrested and hanged himself
> in jail without ever admitting guilt.)
Boy, you just have to love the Times, don't you?  They're so fair and 
open-minded.

Here's the first few paragraphs of their story.  The highlighting is mine.

Who is sending threatening e-mail to a teenager? Who is saying disparaging 
things about a company on an Internet message board? Who is communicating 
online with a suspected drug dealer?

These questions, and many more like them, are asked every day of the 
companies that provide Internet service and run Web sites. And even though 
these companies promise to protect the privacy of their users, *****they 
routinely hand over the most intimate information ***** in response to 
legal demands from criminal investigators and lawyers fighting civil cases.

Such data led directly to a suspect in a school bombing threat; it has also 
been used by the authorities to track child pornographers and computer 
intruders, and has become a tool in civil cases on matters from trade 
secrets to music piracy. In St. Louis, records of a suspect's online 
searches for maps proved his undoing in a serial-killing case that had gone 
unsolved for a decade.

In short, just as technology is prompting Internet companies to collect 
more information and keep it longer than before, prosecutors and civil 
lawyers are more readily using that information.

So, even though serial murders that have "gone unsolved for a decade" are 
now solved, and even though a school bombing case may have been solved, and 
even though child pornographers and thieves stealing copyrighted material 
have been busted, there's just something eeeeevvvviiiilllll about IPSs just 
"giving away" all the "most intimate information" about you.  Even though 
we have well-established rules for obtaining that evidence, and even though 
the courts have established a system that, in my view, protects the 
criminals *too* much.

Heh.

Apparently, in the Times' world, we shouldn't be allowed to see the 
evidence of your crime unless it's laying out in plain view.

Paul Schmehl (pauls () utdallas edu)
Adjunct Information Security Officer
University of Texas at Dallas
AVIEN Founding Member
http://www.utdallas.edu/
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