Cisco Accused of Orchestrating Engineer's Arrest 160
alphadogg writes "Cisco Systems orchestrated the arrest of Multiven founder Peter Alfred-Adekeye last year in order to force a settlement of Multiven's antitrust lawsuit against Cisco, a Multiven executive said on Wednesday. Multiven, an independent provider of service and support for networking gear, sued Cisco in 2008, alleging that the company monopolized the market for its software. Cisco countersued, charging that Alfred-Adekeye hacked into Cisco's computers and stole copyrighted software. In May 2010, Alfred-Adekeye was arrested in Vancouver, Canada, on 97 counts of intentionally accessing a protected computer system without authorization for the purposes of commercial advantage, according to his arrest warrant. He could be sentenced to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted. The arrest came to light only this week after local Vancouver press reported it."
MateWan (Score:1, Offtopic)
What's the difference nowadays with the way that major corporations treat their workers, and all in the name of serving the CEO's paycheck.
Re: (Score:2)
The difference is that this isn't the company's worker, it's a competitor they're harassing. At least if you're being treated that way by your boss, you have the option to go elsewhere.
I see this suit akin to Dell having someone arrested for changing their BIOS settings or replacing their graphics card.. granted, I've only read the summary, but I don't see how they can get away with it..
Re: (Score:3)
He was downloading IOS without a support contract. this is the same as downloading and installing windows without a licence.
Neither of which should carry a punishment of that magnitude.
Re: (Score:1)
Reading the Multiven website, it sounds as if they were also providing IOS updates to customers of their 3rd party warranty service.
Re: (Score:2)
He was downloading IOS without a support contract. this is the same as downloading and installing windows without a licence.
Neither of which should carry a punishment of that magnitude.
Reading the Multiven website, it sounds as if they were also providing IOS updates to customers of their 3rd party warranty service.
Which is commercial copyright violation and sure as hell should carry a punishment of that magnitude. They were stealing Cisco IP and selling it. That's different from downloading a couple music files and listening to them in your car.
Re: (Score:3)
Sounds more like having a valid copy of Windows, but not being allowed to connect to Windows Update without paying.
Re: (Score:2)
You're seriously comparing getting beaten to getting arrested for a crime you've committed?
The simple solution to prevent the arrest would have been to not commit a crime.
If you come after me with a lawyer, you're a rather stupid individual if you don't expect my response to be an all out assault on you with every weapon I have available.
The guy wasn't a Cisco employee.
The difference is ... no one gets beaten today. You're free to work elsewhere. The only reason you aren't free to work else where is becau
Re: (Score:3)
The only way you could know he actually did do it is if you hacked into his system and saw the evidence. Expect to be arrested on 100,000 counts of hacking into a computer system (each bit you saw counts as a separate bit of information you stole without authorization).
If you'd RTFA, he was arrested in Canada on a court order from the USA based on non-existance evidence provided by Cisco. Only Cisco denies it, they claim t
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Never quite understood the outrage over police brutality. If it's a question between a cop punching me and letting me go, or arresting me and keeping me overnight, I'll go with the punch.
The video showed Tomlinson being struck on the leg from behind by a police officer wielding a baton, then pushed to the ground by the same officer. It appeared to show no provocation on Tomlinson's partâ"he was not a protester, and at the time he was struck, the footage showed him walking along with his hands in his pockets. He walked away after the incident, but collapsed and died [wikipedia.org] moments later.
Re: (Score:2)
How about chopping off a finger? Maybe a prolonged beating? How about raping your wife? Stealing your money? Forcing you to sign over your house to him? Access to your bank accounts?
What, exactly, is your threshold for deciding that people who detain you under the threat of violence or loss of liberty -- and in
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, I'm not saying you said it wouldn't constitute police misbehavior -- I'm just completely baffled by the statement that you don't see the outrage over police brutality.
None of the things I list am I attributing to you, but I'm completely gobsmacked at the sentiment that police brutality shouldn't be a something which causes outrage. I'm more pointing out the dangers of such a line of thought. To me, it's a huge deal. And, having any threshold for it isn't a good thing.
Sorry for the vitriol, occasional
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Most of the time when a cop is punching you, you're also arrested. I honestly can't think of many situations where a cop would punch you, but not arrest you.
It's very difficult for a cop to justify using physical force on someone without also arresting them.
Re: (Score:2)
Most of the time when a cop is punching you, you're also arrested. I honestly can't think of many situations where a cop would punch you, but not arrest you.
It's very difficult for a cop to justify using physical force on someone without also arresting them.
Indeed. The usual is a charge of "resisting arrest", which is used to explain the violence. Never mind that the person had no reason to believe they were under arrest at the time the violence happened -- apparently the police can tell you that later.
Re: (Score:2)
> What's the difference nowadays with the way that major corporations treat their workers, and all in the name of serving the CEO's paycheck.
They didn't have penicillin then.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
There isn't a libertarian on the planet who doesn't believe that the government should protect against force and fraud.
Re: (Score:2)
There isn't a libertarian on the planet who doesn't believe that the government should protect against force and fraud.
Just that they should find a way to do it with no money and little power, right?
Re: (Score:2)
No money? Don't be silly. And certainly sufficient power as well.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, because brutally beating workers is such a libertarian ideal.
My goodness, when I read Mises's work on Human Action, where he talked about his experience as a young man wandering around the labor camps, beating the workers to increase productivity, I shed a tear thinking about how I wish it were me...
Except that none of the above is true, especially the parent's post.
Go read a book, and you will learn. Or keep voting for the R's and D's, and you can stay in your box.
Re: (Score:2)
And by Google, you mean Cisco?
Re: (Score:2)
Google has nothing to do with this. What headline or summary did you read?
Re:MateWan (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
TFS and TFA are speculative and needlessly inflammatory.
Welcome to Slashdot.
Re: (Score:2)
Can one read oneself?
Re: (Score:3)
Re:MateWan (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
the near slave conditions of early American workers.
If by "early" you mean "after 1865", then yes. Otherwise, the word "near" is at least partially inaccurate.
Great Firewall (Score:2)
Agree. The similarities kinda end when Cisco doesn't cause the death of people. But that isn't black and white either. It would ignore the fact that while they don't really have a large presence in totalitarian governments [facebook.com], they kinda don't care [internetnews.com] about who they do business with because indirectly oppressing people is profitable [wired.com].
I have long been annoyed by Cisco business policy (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only are Cisco devices over-priced from the beginning, they are somehow not liable for the problems they might have when vulnerabilities are discovered. Fixes are only available after Cisco is paid for them and, once again, the fixes come without guarantees as well.
Most people never get close enough to the networking hardware and infrastructure to experience this and so they remain under most people's radar. But as the article states, other vendors do not charge for updates.
By industry standards and practices, they are definitely "not usual." But is it illegal? Are they abusing monopoly power? I guess that's for a court to decide. But if it can be shown that Cisco fabricated evidence that resulted in the criminal arrest of someone who has filed legal action against Cisco, then huge problems should result for Cisco executives including but not limited to prison time. I find this to be a very interesting case indeed. I hope we can follow this case in more detail as new information comes out.
Re:I have long been annoyed by Cisco business poli (Score:4, Informative)
We dumped our Cisco gear years ago after attending a presentation on OpenBGP (in which the presenter talked about routing his Internet2 connection with a P4) and we haven't looked back since. And the equivalent Cisco machines for our border routers cost an order of magnitude more.
Re:I have long been annoyed by Cisco business poli (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't buy Cisco because of the features, you buy Cisco because of TAC. At 2:30 AM when you have 96 phone lines down, the call center opens in 3 hours, and you're getting call supervision with no voice traffic, you call TAC. I got an engineer out of their Sydney office on the phone in 14 minutes, and we had the problem resolved within an hour. (It was a telco provisioning problem.) Having someone on hand to support a problem 24 hours a day, and a supply chain that can send a part out in 4 hours is a safety net worth paying for.
Re: (Score:1)
This, and Cisco is also the IBM of networking gear (IBM as in "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM").
Imagine you're in charge of buying network gear, and you go for a smaller, unknown vendor. Later on, if there's problems, your boss (and your boss's boss) will be saying "why didn't you go with Cisco? If you did, we wouldn't have these problems!". If you DO go with Cisco, and there's problems, then even if they're not solved quickly and satisfactorily, you can still say "don't blame me, I went with Cisco".
TAC? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed, our TAC experiences have been horrible in the last 2-3 years. We are fairly small (1200 users) but worldwide, and every time we want to get something fixed or new hardware it seems to take longer to get it done.
NOT a fan.
Re: (Score:1)
Cisco is not the only network vendor with 24x7 TAC! We dumped Cisco several years ago for Foundry (now Brocade) and Juniper. Both have same level of T
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
There, fixed that for you - a lot of companies who buy Cisco products don't need that level of support, and yet are paying for it anyway because Cisco is the "enterprise" solution.
Re: (Score:2)
Some buy it because of TAC. A few of those even actually need it and can justify the cost. Others buy it used (for more than some new equipment would cost) because they can't afford it otherwise and then don't pay for any sort of Cisco support. Those are the ones to wonder about.
At one time in networking, you almost had to at least put Cisco gear out front because otherwise any problem at all would be blamed on you (even if it was likely a Cisco quirk). That's just not the case anymore. I certainly don't mi
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
People who learn on Cisco hardware tend to think of networking concepts in terms of how Cisco presents and manages them. A good example is 802.11Q. Cisco has this concept of trunking that a lot of other hardware vendors facilitate through simply tagging/non-tagging. If all you know about networking is what you learned from Cisco Press(tm), you will have a hard time getting that HP switch to pass tagged frames to your Cisco network, and ultimately give up saying "Ugh, HP switches suck, we need Cisco gear".
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps YMMV, but I have never had a moment of trouble with HP switches.
Re: (Score:2)
IEEE specified the capability and the data structure in the packet. They did not specify how to think about the capability nor the configuration language to be used in various devices.
As a result, different people will use different terminology or see things in 'odd' ways. Some configurations talk about adding and removing tags (in a sort of MPLS lite sort of way) while others talk about default vlans, trunks, and virtual interfaces. Both result in IEEE 801.2q packets.
Re: (Score:2)
It leaves them unsure of the equivalent configuration in terms of tagged, untagged, and applying a tag on ingress plus permitted and forbidden tags. The ones who actually understand 802.1q manage OK after a few moments, but the ones who viewed the Cisco trunking as a sort of magic box tend to be completely lost. Due to the psychology of "The Cisco Way", they conclude that the HP gear simply can't do it and must be junk.
Re: (Score:2)
So what you're saying is the people who are dumb suck at understanding technology? HP vs Cisco vs Foundry has no bearing on this.
And yet Cisco certifies them. That's certainly on Cisco.
Re: (Score:2)
As far as I can tell, HP, Juniperm and Foundary don't certify people at all. I suppose they might, but I never hear anyone alternating between bad advice on routing and crowing about being certified by any of them.
Re: (Score:2)
So, just no bad advice and crowing then.
Re: (Score:2)
They make decent middle of the road laptops, great switches, and over-priced servers that play shenanigans like making you pay extra to get a BIOS that doesn't disable CPU features. I have no idea about their blade hardware other than that in general blade means "willing to pay a metric assload to say I have a blade server".
Re: (Score:2)
We dumped our Cisco gear years ago after attending a presentation on OpenBGP (in which the presenter talked about routing his Internet2 connection with a P4) and we haven't looked back since. And the equivalent Cisco machines for our border routers cost an order of magnitude more.
My institution also dumped Cisco. It is USU - Utah's land-grant university. We have about 30K students/faculty/staff and about 200 buildings.) Our experience has been very positive.
Years ago, we did a cost analysis and decided that Cisco didn't make financial sense. We could do everything we needed with cheaper, commodity devices.
So, for the next couple years, all upgrades/replacements were to simpler structures. To non-proprietary protocols. And to non-Cisco equipment. We have been Cisco-Free for about 7 y
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Undoing uncorrect mod-up!
Re: (Score:2)
Sonicwall also charges for updates. If there's a vulnerability in 5.5 and you don't have a support contract with them then you can't download 5.5.1.
Its an industry problem. These companies need to offer security updates for free. If this means rolling the cost of the support contract into the device itself, then fine, but the status quo of buying something and only having 30 days of updates is terrible.
Re: (Score:3)
Are they abusing monopoly power?
Generally, in order to 'abuse monopoly power' they actually have to be a monopoly, and they are about as far from it as you can get. They are exclusive providers of nothing. They happen to be devices that people (us router flunkies) happen to approve of and use in most cases, but they aren't the only game.
Cisco fits the middle ground areas well, but you don't use them at the high end. Juniper can provide bandwidth Cisco simply can't handle. You don't use them at the low end as they are just over priced,
Re:I have long been annoyed by Cisco business poli (Score:5, Interesting)
According to what I read, the "evidence" to support his arrest has not been produced and delivered to the Canadian authorities. The claim of intrusion was made by Cisco to the US Secret Service. (The US Secret Service wouldn't just do this without a complaint or someone in high places issuing the directive after all.)
So this guy was arrested on criminal charges for which no evidence has been provided. This smells "not right" somehow.
Re: (Score:2)
In all seriousness, I get your point. But there is a major difference between "arrested" and "convicted". Arrested just means "you'll have your day in court". So this fight is far from over and any bad smells you are smelling will most likely be eliminated by the time this is all over.
Re: (Score:2)
You can't even arrest someone without a minimum of evidence, may it be completely circumstantial.
Re: (Score:2)
Until now, I would have assumed there was no possible way Cisco could count as a monopoly. To many competitors with sizable market share, and real competition from some big dogs like IBM for parts of that share, would say Cisco simply couldn't pass the monopoly test part of antitrust law.
But, having some parts of the federal judicial system available to issue warrants without probable cause is certainly an asset their competitors show no signs of having or misusing. The normal list of assets that could mak
Re: (Score:2)
The allegation is that they are the sole provider of critical fixes to bugs in Cisco products that should never have been allowed out the door in the first place.
They certainly ARE the sole provider. The idea is that they have a duty to fix factory defects for free, yet they leverage their status as sole provider to force people into support contracts in order to get those critical fixes, and so freeze out 3rd party support.
The legal concept of monopoly goes well beyond the simplistic and almost never achie
Propriety = accountability (Score:2)
Not only are Cisco devices over-priced from the beginning, they are somehow not liable for the problems they might have when vulnerabilities are discovered. Fixes are only available after Cisco is paid for them and, once again, the fixes come without guarantees as well.
But I thought the reason to go with proprietary solutions was accountability? And what does all that certification mean if it doesn't come with a guarantee?
Re: (Score:2)
In my experience any way, the certifications DO come with a guarantee. People who are Cisco certified will almost certainly come up with a "solution" that is baroque, brittle, and expensive compared to what a more generally educated network engineer would devise. They'll also swear blind that the other guy's solution can't possibly work because he didn't do it the "official Cisco way" (even while it is actively working).
Re: (Score:2)
That because cisco has leveraged hardware extensively for just that purpose. It's rare for CPU to get involved in forwarding a frame or packet on a cisco router or switch. That's in part why they're so expensive - its all done in ASICS, and even the memory is hard-wired for bitmasking searches.
Re: (Score:3)
In general, Cisco equipment seems to have better failure resilience -- their subsystems are more isolated from each other. The gear is pretty rock solid with the features that work -- all the trouble comes when trying new features which may or may not work. They also manage change relatively methodically, which is a good thing in must-be-stable environments. Though, their quality in this department has been flagging as of late.
That said, HP is now eating Cisco's lunch by offering relatively capable edge
Welcome to the free world. (Score:1, Insightful)
Government by the corporations, for the corporations.
War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength.
With slavery and injustice for all (except the CEO).
Remember that Cisco probably sold a lot of equipment to China to build its 'Great Firewall'.
Dont believe me? Check it out:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/05/leaked-cisco-do/ [wired.com]
I hope Cisco pays through the nose for this.
Re: (Score:1)
The Cisco equipment are used in Golden Shield Project. It is not the same as the Great Firewall. -- the Great Firewall was there long before Golden Shield started.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Its really messed up, but what it boils down to is that if you want to get a bug
Re: (Score:2)
In any other industry, though, they would be sued for the flaws in their product which cause it to not work as advertised by design if they failed to issue a recall and repair or refund purchase of the flawed goods.
Breaking news, someone charged with a crime (Score:2)
it will be interesting to see what evidence they do have. His claim maybe valid - but I don't find the fact he refutes it anything special.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Switzerland is not a member of the EU.
I don't understand how this is 'orchestrating' ... (Score:4, Informative)
OK, this guy is a Cisco competitor involved in some legal dispute with the company that's being resolved in a civil court. He also is suspected on reasonable grounds to have committed a bona-fide crime against the company at the same time -- Cisco asks law enforcement to investigate the crime and arrest the criminal. That's not 'orchestrating' anything, nor does his status as a competitor that's suing the company have anything to do with the matter. Lawsuit or not, no one is entitled to break into Cisco computer systems -- the law doesn't say "You cannot gain unauthorized access to a computer system unless it is owned by a douchebag corporation that overcharges and dicks over the used market".
There is no mention in TFM (which is largely sourced from unnamed "Multiven Execs" -- unlikely to be objective) that Cisco fabricated the evidence of the break-in or conspired to entrap the guy. He committed a crime, they sought his arrest which is 100% within their rights. They don't surrender protection of criminal law just because they are douchebags.
Since /. loves car analogies, suppose we got in a car accident that was totally your fault but you dispute that and want a trial. Then on the night before the responsibility hearing, I throw a brick through your windshield. Does the merits of the civil trial have anything to do with whether I can be arrested? Would it matter if you were universally considered to be a jerk that screws everyone over?
Re: (Score:2)
My guess is the lawsuit actually brought to Cisco's attention that they had been hacked because he had access to information that was only available through Cisco. It's likely that his lawsuit is how the crime was discovered so I find no reason to be sympathetic to him. If you are going to break the law then sue someone using the information you obtained breaking the law you shouldn't be surprised if you are arrested for it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Were they really broken into? Or did he download bugfixed IOS images for redistribution to his customers with cisco gear?
Why 'or' and not 'and/or'? He could have accessed their system without authorization and used that access to download IOS images.
There's still nothing about any particular content on any computer system that entitles an individual to access it without permission from the owner.
Re: (Score:2)
Because if he had a cisco login id, he didn't break in.
Re: (Score:2)
Because if he had a cisco login id, he didn't break in.
According to TFA (or linked from TFA), he is alleged to have used a login belonging to his former coworker (he used to work at Cisco).
Using someone else's credentials is fairly clearly an unauthorized use of a computer system, at least in such cases where the owner does not give that user permission to let others use his or her login.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't buy it. YOU nor does anybody else have any evidence that would convince me that it was him who hacked Cisco regardless of it it happened. Hacking isn't something that you can prove. It is something that happens and then is said to have happened by somebody. Without evidence beyond "our logs show xyz" you have no idea if or who hacked Cisco. It could just as well be fabricated.
I don't buy that either in the same sense that I don't believe that he necessarily did it. It coudl have been someone else. What I do think is that in such cases we should have a trial to figure out if there is evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that it was him (and that his action was criminal).
You cite a bunch of doubts -- those are perfectly good doubts and I would hope that they would get properly aired. What you can't say is that those doubts mean that they shouldn't even arrest him and put him on tria
Re:I don't understand how this is 'orchestrating' (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
The orchestrating part is where the evidence of the crime (required for the extradition) hasn't been sent to the Canadians yet. They've had 10 months to provide evidence of the crime, but have not been able to produce it. So, the civil case, which was getting close to going to a Jury trial, got settled because the guy got arrested. This is one heck of a coincidence.
It's not a heck of a coincidence to imagine that a party to a lawsuit might break into a protected computer system owned by their opponent for the purpose of gathering evidence to use at trial. It is not a coincidence at all, in fact, that these things would come to light at the same time either since the first Cisco might have learned about the break-in was precisely when some non-publicly available document was entered into evidence. So "10 months" might have been a few weeks from when Cisco was actually
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If there was evidence, it would have been provided to the Canadian authorities by now. 10 months is a damn long time to rot in a cell.
Reading comprehension is key -- he was bailed out and is free to go anywhere he wants in Canada.
It's routine for foreign citizens from non-extraditing countries (he is Nigerian) to be barred from foreign travel while criminal proceedings pend. The presumption of bail does mean the right to skip the country to avoid charges.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not hard to imagine that a party to a lawsuit might break into the computers of the other party.
It's also not hard to imagine that a party to a lawsuit might accuse the opposing party of having done so.
Your key question doesn't need to be refuted ... it needs to be answered by the people who asked for the arrest and extradition in the first place.
Indeed. The entire purpose of the extradition is for him to stand trial where we get to figure out if there is sufficient evidence to believe that he did the crime. I'm not short-circuiting that step, I'm saying that Cisco is well within their rights to ask for him to be arrested and tried given that there is at least a plausible case for it.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The issue here from the article is twofold:
1- Cisco had the engineer in question (a key witness in a case taking place in the united states) meet them in Canada before he had to make a statement in the united states. At the same time Cisco also identified to a US prosecutor that a hacker had broken into there computers and was fleeing to Canada- indicating that they had evidence. He was subsequently arrested in Canada, and missed his court appearance in the states. Had they just waited he could have been
Re: (Score:2)
The issue here from the article is twofold:
Where "the article" is statements from Multiven executives.
At the same time Cisco also identified to a US prosecutor that a hacker had broken into there computers and was fleeing to Canada- indicating that they had evidence.
And the DoJ and State seemed to think that the evidence had merit. Are you disputing that the evidence suggests he committed the crime or merely insinuating that?
I want to make clear that I'm not stating that I think he did it. I'm just saying there is a normal extradition/trial process that we ought to follow to figure out whether he did the crime, same as any other criminal that is accused of a crime. He does not deserve special protection merel
I don't like Cisco's bug policy, but... (Score:3)
I don't like Cisco's bugfix policy either, but that said, it is not unheard of for enterprise HW/SW vendors to only provide fixes to customers with a current contract. If you haven't paid for a warranty, you aren't entitled to HW fixes, why should you be entitled to SW fixes?
If you want to pursue anti-trust violations because you think this is unfair, fine, but the WRONG way to go about it is to violate their policies (prior to the change) and then get caught.
It sounds like this guy's entire business model (providing aftermarket service) is built around getting those fixes. If they were downloaded in the absence of a valid service contract, then I can guess this could be a valid criminal charge.
Re: (Score:2)
Very true. But this bit:
> "..buyers of used gear typically have to send the product in for inspection by Cisco before they can purchase a new contract, which can be an expensive process" ..sounds a bit anti-competitive (or something), effectively making it impossible to sell or buy used cisco hardware.
Only in America (Score:2)
Sounds like any perfectly legit multinational corporation with too much marketshare just keeping "the competetive egde". Does this make anyone else remember Major General Smedley Butler, USMC [fas.org]'s words?
This is way beyond sad. The last thing IT world needs are extraditions, even if the guy was quilty of the charges. If it takes 10 months to gather (make up) evidence, that makes me think he is innocent. I wonder how they are going to get anything posted as valid evidence, or are the separate laws for evidence a
Basic Strategy (Score:2)
Make sure your flanks are secure before you launch an attack.
How did he access the Cisco Support site? (Score:1)
once again,,, (Score:2)
time for a law saying you can hack any hardware (Score:3)
time for a law saying you can hack any hardware that you own?
Apple tried to use the unauthorized access part to lock out people from hacking the iphone and the courts said you can hack them for any network and any app.
Now what if say M$ made you pay for bug fixes and used the law to shut down 3rd party updates?
What if dell locked systems to windows and used the law to shut people makeing a run any os bios hack?
If they want go down the road of need to buy the software to run on there hardware it time for bra
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
How about arresting Apple?
I'm pretty sure that a company can't be arrested.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, this is unlikely to happen, seeing how politically well-connected Apple is, and how responsive police & prosecutors are in the presence of political connections and the absence of large public outcry.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Umm... No.
My Intel CPU has 128 64bit general purpose registers. Although I'm pretty certain that nearly every single program on my computer uses these registers, I've never given *any* of them explicit permission to use them. Most people don't even know about these registers, and therefore cannot give consent to their use, by your logic. Therefore, every single program running on our computers is accessing our computers in an unauthorized manner?
Authorization is a big grey blob, not a nice black/white su
Re: (Score:2)