FC: "Mafiaboy" hearing scheduled in Montreal on Friday

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20001205/2888098s.htm

   By Kevin Johnson
   USA TODAY

   MONTREAL -- Nearly a year after a hacker shut down some of the biggest
   names on the Internet -- causing an estimated $1.3 billion in lost
   business -- prosecutors and lawyers representing a defendant known as
   ''Mafiaboy'' are locked in a high-stakes game of chicken over whether
   the case will go to trial.

   The 16-year-old is charged with the cyber equivalent of breaking and
   entering in assaults last winter that shut down sites operated by
   Yahoo, eBay, CNN and E-Trade.

[...]

   Nevertheless, Romanowski, in a likely attempt to gain leverage in
   plea-bargain talks, is playing hardball. The lawyer plans to challenge
   the legality of wiretaps that allowed Royal Canadian Mounted Police to
   collect 40 days of telephone conversations, during which the teenager
   is alleged to have bragged about his exploits behind the keyboard.

   The wiretaps were planted after authorities traced computer
   ''fingerprints'' left on one supercomputer used in the attacks back to
   Mafiaboy. ''If that evidence is eliminated,'' Romanowski says, ''the
   whole case gets kicked.''

[...]




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