Jury: Man hacked cop radio

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

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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