by nv1962 | Agosto 19th, 2008
The case of the three MIT students who received a gag order by request of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority to, seemingly, buy more time to work on the security flaws of their CharlieCards system is by now very well known.
And the overturning of that temporary restraining order by a federal judge is good news for perfectly reasonable and legitimate free speech. Here’s a presentation of submitted documents for the case before the federal judge.
But maybe it’s somewhat lesser known that it is thanks to the involvement of the Electronic Frontier Foundation that the three students had a chance to make their case against what in my opinion amounts to egregious and abusive corporate behavior, by seeking that gag order in the first place, in spite of the students’ offering to cooperate with the MBTA to find an adequate solution for the security problems the students had unearthed.
As the EFF in its pertaining press release tells us, at the very end:
This case is part of EFF’s Coders’ Rights Project, launched two weeks ago to protect programmers and developers from legal threats hampering their cutting-edge research. EFF was assisted in this case by John Reinstein, ACLU of Massachusetts Legal Director, and Fish & Richardson attorneys Adam Kessel, Lawrence Kolodney, and Tom Brown.
So, here’s a thank-you to the EFF and its awesome work. And to the ACLU of Massachusetts, and to the good guys at Fish & Richardson, as well: no lawyer jokes today.
If you can spare a bit, please help them out:
- Donate to the EFF
- Join/support the ACLU of MA (or the ACLU nationwide, of course!)
- Hire F&R for all your traffic tickets (darn, and I said no lawyer jokes…)
Seriously - good job, team.
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