Lame excuse of the day: Use of command prompt suspicious

[luluisme]

I don't even know what to do with this.

Electronic Frontier Foundation reports:
Boston College Campus Police: "Using Prompt Commands" May Be a Sign of Criminal Activity

Highlights:
* The problem? Not only is there no indication that any crime was committed, the investigating officer argued that the computer expertise of the student itself

Comments

[tennis_bear]

I forwarded this to my team, where 90% of us use "prompt commands" daily and they loved it!

(Not the poor student's plight, of course, but the fact that all of us are "suspicious" now...)

[dimers]

Being Bostonian, I'd like to clarify that the people of Boston are, by and large, not addled paranoiacs. Rather, I feel the problem is with police and security, who have to pass through some rather distinct filters and work daily in an environment where a goodly chunk of their support comes from other people who've also passed through those filters. They interact with other police and frequently with criminals ... those who don't have some strong form of communication with the larger world are natually going to come to see everyone as either a co-cop or a suspect. (Better yet: more long-standing police tend to be more enculturated, so they view newer officers' outside connections as being suspects, and will try to discourage the newbies from maintaining those connections.)

Not that I'm volunteering time at an anarchist institution headed by a prisoners'-rights activist, or anything. =)

[luluisme]

Good points.

[dimers]

Thank you! That makes me feel all thinky. =)