MIT Students Submit 30-Page Report; Judge Lets Gag Order Stand -- UPDATED

MIT Students Submit 30-Page Report; Judge Lets Gag Order Stand -- UPDATED - Via Threat Level:

A federal judge in Boston this morning let stand for now a temporary restraining order that a separate judge had issued last Saturday against three MIT students to bar them from discussing security vulnerabilities in the Boston subway system's payment tickets and cards.

U.S. District Judge George O'Toole said he will decide next Tuesday whether to amend the restraining order as requested by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority or withdraw it entirely, as requested by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is representing the three students. The MBTA asked the court to amend the restraining order to apply only to "nonpublic" information.

The students submitted on Wednesday a 30-page sealed report, which their lawyers say constitutes the "entire universe of information" the students possess about the system and its vulnerabilities. This report is in addition to a five-page confidential vulnerability assessment report the students had submitted to the MBTA last Friday around the time the MBTA filed a motion to request the temporary restraining order. Much of the information the students planned to present at DefCon, as well as sensitive information they planned to withhold from their talk, has already been made public in court documents and in their presentation slides, which had already been distributed to conference attendees by the time the MBTA filed a motion to stop the students' talk.

According to the Boston Globe, the MBTA still wants copies of e-mails that the students sent to the organizers of the DefCon hacker conference in Las Vegas, where they had been scheduled to present their talk last Sunday. The MBTA also wants a copy of code that the students planned to distribute with their talk as well as a copy of a paper the students submitted to their MIT professor, Ron Rivest. The students had conducted their vulnerability assessment of the MBTA card system for a computer science class taught by Rivest, for which they received an "A."

When asked for comment following this morning's hearing, MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo sent Threat Level an e-mail stating, "The MBTA is pleased that a second federal judge has upheld the court's existing order. The MBTA is disappointed at the defendants' continued resistance to provide the information requested. The MBTA remains hopeful that all of the defendants will be cooperative."

UPDATE: Jennifer Granick, civil liberties director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, appeared in court this morning on behalf of the three students but did not respond to a call for comment. However, EFF spokeswoman Rebecca Jesche said the organization would be seeking relief with the U.S. 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, though she said she wouldn't characterize the EFF's intention as an appeal. She wouldn't elaborate, saying simply that EFF's lawyers were keeping their strategy under wraps for now.

Jesche called the MBTA's request for pre-publication review of the student's class paper "unconstitutional." She also said it's "irrelevant to the speech question and even adds another layer of the government agency reviewing what you want to say before you're allowed to say it."

The court has given the students until Friday afternoon to hand over the materials.

Photo: Dave Bullock (eecue)/Wired.com