Law and Order

A man who pleaded guilty to hacking into an Arkansas data company's computer system and stealing personal identification files was sentenced Wednesday to nearly four years in federal prison.

Daniel J. Baas, 26, of suburban Milford, entered his plea in December 2003, after being indicted that August.

Baas was a systems administrator for Market Intelligence Group, which had an agreement to analyze data for Acxiom Corp., of Little Rock, Ark., when he exceeded his authorized access and downloaded encrypted password files, prosecutors said.

Two men accused of taking part in a massive global software piracy ring were convicted in a British High Court this week.

Alex Bell, 32, of Grays, Essex, and Steven Dowd, 42, of Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside, were both found guilty of conspiracy to defraud. They will be sentenced in May, along with two other men who had pleaded guilty to similar charges.

Alexander Hanff had no idea Hollywood was keeping such a close eye on him. Then, last Saturday morning, a movie studio functionary arrived at his door. Hanff, still in his dressing gown and not yet full of coffee, opened the door, only to be served with a lawsuit by Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal City Studios and Warner Bros.

An Orange, California, IT manager who earlier pled guilty to hacking into his previous employer's computer network was sentenced Monday to five months in prison, the U.S. Attorney's Office said Tuesday. According to a plea agreement dated August 30, 2004, Mark Erfurt broke into the computer systems of Santa Clara, California's Manufacturing Electronic Sales Corp. (MESC) on January 23 and 24 of 2003. During that time, he deleted data, read e-mail, and downloaded a proprietary database from the network using the PC Anywhere remote control software, the agreement said.

Australia's music industry piracy investigations unit is preparing to face Internet service provider Swiftel Communications in the Federal Court on Wednesday following the raid on Swiftel's premises in Perth, Western Australia last week.

According to the outgoing chief of Music Industry Piracy Investigations, Michael Speck, both parties were given an oral order by magistrate Rolf Driver to appear in the Federal Court this Wednesday, 16 March.

While the U.S. Congress dickers over how to respond to a series of high-profile data mishaps by ChoicePoint and other companies, state legislators are wasting no time.

Legislators in more than 20 states, including New York, Washington, Illinois and Texas, have already proposed laws in response to a series of security snafus involving Bank of America, payroll provider PayMaxx and Reed Elsevier Group's LexisNexis service.

A NSW man faces extradition to the United States on internet piracy charges after an appeal was rejected in the Federal Court today.

Hew Raymond Griffiths, 42, of Bateau Bay on the Central Coast is accused in the US of being a ringleader of internet group DrinkOrDie, which illegally cracked security codes and reproduced software, games and music worth $US50 million ($71.6 million).

He has been indicted by the US District Court on two charges under US copyright laws.

Robert Lyttle, one of two hackers behind the Deceptive Duo team responsible for a number of network breaches in 2002, including a U.S. Navy database, has decided to plead guilty to the charges filed by the U.S. Attorneys' Office last year, according to documents filed in the case.

The plea agreement between federal prosecutors and Lyttle in the case U.S. v. Robert Lyttle will be entered in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, Oakland Division, Friday afternoon as part of a change of plea hearing.

Apple won the green light to subpoena amateur publishers for their confidential sources, a Californian Judge ruled today. Apple Computer, which wants to discover who leaked product information to three web sites, can now proceed with its subpoena against one of the ISPs hosting two of the websites, Santa Clara county court Judge James Kleinberg has ruled, as well as the websites themselves.

Limp Bizkit singer Fred Durst is suing 10 Web site operators who posted the rocker's homemade sex tape after it was stolen from his computer -- possibly by the same hackers who got into reality-television star Paris Hilton's cell phone.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court last week, seeks more than $70 million in damages and any profits the site operators reaped in recent weeks, when the 3-minute clip of Durst and a former girlfriend began appearing on the Internet.