• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Sony: geohot is altering evidence and fleeing to South America, Geohot: No I'm not

MrPliskin

Banned
HenryGale said:
No, I'm just thinking if before the whole thing became a whole big mess why not just stop, destroy the HDDs, out in new ones and call it a day. How could they ever prove anything different.

If you do it asap before you are ordered to give anything to the courts how can you get in trouble or proven otherwise.

Yea...you do that.

It's not quite so simple :p
 
Alls I know is that he better have enough donation money left to build a studio in South America so he can bless us with more of his dope YouTube rhymes.
 
Mama Robotnik said:
-Geohot's travelled to South America for a holiday, with no evidence that he's "fled" as per the thread title, or that he used legal defense fund money to pay for said holiday. No evidence at all.

You are pretty naive, aren't you? Not as if it wasn't obvious from the earlier geohot threads but this is just silly.
 

TommyT

Member
Melchiah said:

Where does it say that when they asked he decided to leave the county?

When your mom echoes the recently chimed request that your grandma's recently filled diaper be replaced immediately, and you're too busy out there prior rubbing that shit all over yourself furiously masturbating... doesn't mean you did it because of what your mom said. You were out there doing it before then.

There's a difference.
 

lupinko

Member
Revolutionary said:
Alls I know is that he better have enough donation money left to build a studio in South America so he can bless us with more of his dope YouTube rhymes.

daverockinout.gif
 

eastmen

Banned
Zoe said:
So he removed the hardware components before he was ordered to do turn it over?

That's odd. Why would somebody do that? It'd render it completely unusable.


Its recommended by security experts to destroy old hardrives. Formating or using a magnet wont erase the data , alot of programs can still be recovered.

By law the school district I work at is required to destroy the hardrives , we do so by drilling 3 holes into it.

I personaly destroy mine in a micro wave.

If the hardrives are old and i have no need for them i will destroy them before throwing them out. Last thing i need is someone to get personal information about me and steal my identiy.

So geohot could have destroyed the hardrives for any number of reasons. Perhaps he upgraded to 2TB drives and these older drives were no longer useful to him so he destroyed them.

Who knows why. The real question is when it was done. Before or after the court order .
 

tokkun

Member
AppleSmack said:
Maybe he knew that the courts were going to ask for them? Whatever the reason, they can't charge him for tampering with evidence if they were tampered with before the courts requested them.

That is false.

It doesn't matter whether you do the "tampering" before or after the court's request. What matters is whether you had reason to believe the evidence was material in an existing investigation at the time you altered it.

If he "knew the courts were going to ask for them", then that would clearly be tampering.
 

Evlar

Banned
IchigoSharingan said:
Ummmmmmm..... if I understand the hard drive situation correctly..

then..

I don't think Geo's ever coming back. =/
Well, when I linked to that Opal article I wasn't claiming for certain that he was using one of those encrypted drives. It might have been a vanilla Western Digital SATA controller for all I know. All I meant to do was show why it was possible that the missing hard drive controller was a real technical barrier to discovery. (The other possibility is this neutral third party is being careful to avoid some legal precedent about imaging controller-less hard drives.)
 

Zoe

Member
eastmen said:
So geohot could have destroyed the hardrives for any number of reasons. Perhaps he upgraded to 2TB drives and these older drives were no longer useful to him so he destroyed them.

Then he should have submitted the new drives that replaced these.
 

Curufinwe

Member
AppleSmack said:
Maybe he knew that the courts were going to ask for them? Whatever the reason, they can't charge him for tampering with evidence if they were tampered with before the courts requested them.

There is a legal duty to preserve data that is relevant to a lawsuit that you reasonably anticipate will be filed in the future. If geohot's tampering results in the hard drives being unusable permanently rather than just temporarily, he will be utterly screwed.
 

JWong

Banned
eastmen said:
Its recommended by security experts to destroy old hardrives. Formating or using a magnet wont erase the data , alot of programs can still be recovered.

By law the school district I work at is required to destroy the hardrives , we do so by drilling 3 holes into it.

I personaly destroy mine in a micro wave.

If the hardrives are old and i have no need for them i will destroy them before throwing them out. Last thing i need is someone to get personal information about me and steal my identiy.

So geohot could have destroyed the hardrives for any number of reasons. Perhaps he upgraded to 2TB drives and these older drives were no longer useful to him so he destroyed them.

Who knows why. The real question is when it was done. Before or after the court order .
Geohot was ordered to hand over the harddrives he was using. You can't use a harddrive without the HDD controller.
 

Nairume

Banned
lifa-cobex said:
More like he betrayed the people he said would defend.
We don't know this yet.

All we know is that he's being a little immature about the harddrive thing and that he went on a vacation. I repeat: any further speculation is kind of silly at this point until we know more about what is going on.
 

Danny Dudekisser

I paid good money for this Dynex!
Curufinwe said:
There is a legal duty to preserve data that is relevant to a lawsuit that you reasonably anticipate will be filed in the future. If geohot's tampering results in the hard drives being unusable permanently rather than just temporarily, he will be utterly screwed.

This is correct. And there's no way you can argue he couldn't have reasonably anticipated these drives being requested.
 
TOAO_Cyrus said:
Its perfectly legal to release the means to modify software and thats the way it should be. If that was not the case then making mods for games would be illegal, unless specifically allowed in the license agreement. Like I said before the only way to get in hot water is to break copyright protection but companies are using 'copyright protection' to lock down whole systems and thats not right.

I see what you're saying, but the difference is that in Sony's case, it doesn't help them, in a games case (for making mods) it is advertisement by word of mouth. Sony get's no financial benefit from this. Yeah, they will sell more consoles, but most of their money is made through licensing software.
 

Curufinwe

Member
PSGames said:
Well in your second link there Sony would have to prove if was intentionally. Geohot could easily say it was an honest mistake.

Those links are about criminal law, but what's relevant here are the laws of civil procedure and the penalties for discovery violations. This is from FRCP 37.

(b) Failure to Comply with a Court Order.

(1) Sanctions in the District Where the Deposition Is Taken.

If the court where the discovery is taken orders a deponent to be sworn or to answer a question and the deponent fails to obey, the failure may be treated as contempt of court.

(2) Sanctions in the District Where the Action Is Pending.

(A) For Not Obeying a Discovery Order. If a party or a party's officer, director, or managing agent — or a witness designated under Rule 30(b)(6) or 31(a)(4) — fails to obey an order to provide or permit discovery, including an order under Rule 26(f), 35, or 37(a), the court where the action is pending may issue further just orders. They may include the following:

(i) directing that the matters embraced in the order or other designated facts be taken as established for purposes of the action, as the prevailing party claims;

(ii) prohibiting the disobedient party from supporting or opposing designated claims or defenses, or from introducing designated matters in evidence;

(iii) striking pleadings in whole or in part;

(iv) staying further proceedings until the order is obeyed;

(v) dismissing the action or proceeding in whole or in part;

(vi) rendering a default judgment against the disobedient party; or

(vii) treating as contempt of court the failure to obey any order except an order to submit to a physical or mental examination.

(B) For Not Producing a Person for Examination. If a party fails to comply with an order under Rule 35(a) requiring it to produce another person for examination, the court may issue any of the orders listed in Rule 37(b)(2)(A)(i)-(vi), unless the disobedient party shows that it cannot produce the other person.

(C) Payment of Expenses. Instead of or in addition to the orders above, the court must order the disobedient party, the attorney advising that party, or both to pay the reasonable expenses, including attorney's fees, caused by the failure, unless the failure was substantially justified or other circumstances make an award of expenses unjust.
 

Melchiah

Member
PSGames said:
Well in your second link there Sony would have to prove if was intentionally. Geohot could easily say it was an honest mistake.

You can't be that naive. The court most certainly won't be.

EDIT:
It is important to note that tampering is not the accidental destruction or modification of evidence, it is only if the individual had reason to believe the material or item was part of an investigation.

I think Mr. Hotz had a reason to believe so.
 
Evlar said:
Well, when I linked to that Opal article I wasn't claiming for certain that he was using one of those encrypted drives. It might have been a vanilla Western Digital SATA controller for all I know. All I meant to do was show why it was possible that the missing hard drive controller was a real technical barrier to discovery. (The other possibility is this neutral third party is being careful to avoid some legal precedent about imaging controller-less hard drives.)


I don't think any hacker of geo's level would use vanilla drives though. It's more likely he did this without telling his lawyer, and after the court order.
 

darkwing

Member
PSGames said:
Well in your second link there Sony would have to prove if was intentionally. Geohot could easily say it was an honest mistake.

when i removed my HDD this morning i honestly mistakenly removed the HD controller too oops
 

Angry Fork

Member
lifa-cobex said:
More like he betrayed the people he said would defend.
How does this affect anyone except the people who donated? We also simply don't know whether this was a family trip or whether he did pay for it using the donation money. Nobody knows the circumstances, and yet everyone is flying off the handle.

I understand it's fun to do this because it's a big story and it's lulz and all that, but there's a substantial group of people in this thread that seem to have their heart desired on the death of this guy or something. Like they spend every waking moment here defending Sony, calling him a criminal/pirate etc. like WHY. There is literally no reason for them to have so much animosity, especially if they never supported the homebrew stuff to begin with.

That's why he's saying a lot of the hate comes from people blindly defending Sony, because that seems like the only logical case. Not for everyone in here, but certainly the loudest of the bunch.

And I'm sure there are plenty of other hackers who are carrying on what geohot started so it's not like the 'movement' or whatever has crumpled to the ground or anything. The other guys are just doing stuff quietly until they finish whatever they're gonna finish.
 

Mithos

Member
tokkun said:
It doesn't matter whether you do the "tampering" before or after the court's request.

Of course it does, his drives might have been "tampered" with like that for months and months before the legal trouble started, then its no problem for him, if he "tampered" after the legal trouble started then it is trouble.
 

C Jones

Member
I wonder how many beats that donation $$$ can buy from SA's hottest producers. Maybe this was a business trip as one poster suggested.
 

lifa-cobex

Member
Nairume said:
We don't know this yet.

All we know is that he's being a little immature about the harddrive thing and that he went on a vacation. I repeat: any further speculation is kind of silly at this point until we know more about what is going on.

OK i can go with that.

However i would have thought he would have posted a defence stating facts by now.
BUT i do agree with you on that one.
 

Danny Dudekisser

I paid good money for this Dynex!
Mithos said:
Of course it does, his drives might have been "tampered" with like that for months and months before the legal trouble started, then its no problem for him, if he "tampered" after the legal trouble started then it is trouble.

Do you honestly buy into your own logic?
 

Curufinwe

Member
Mithos said:
Of course it does, his drives might have been "tampered" with like that for months and months before the legal trouble started, then its no problem for him, if he "tampered" after the legal trouble started then it is trouble.

He's still violating the judge's discovery order by tampering with the drives before turning them over.
 
phosphor112 said:
I'm sure his parents gave him vacation money in the light of having 10's of thousands of dollars in legal fees. :lol

You dont know how what or who paid for it, thats the point, nobody does
 

alr1ght

bish gets all the credit :)
Slavik81 said:
Who flees the country over a civil suit?

He didn't "flee" to avoid jail. Him asking for donations and then weeks later showing up on vacation is not going to make people sympathize with him. It's not illegal to do so, but it's bad form.
 
phosphor112 said:
I see what you're saying, but the difference is that in Sony's case, it doesn't help them, in a games case (for making mods) it is advertisement by word of mouth. Sony get's no financial benefit from this. Yeah, they will sell more consoles, but most of their money is made through licensing software.

Yes it helps Sony's bottom line which is why they are doing this in the first place. I am sure some publishers will try to crack down on mods in the future since they might eat into DLC sales. The best example was Apple locking down the iPhone to try to force people to buy only from the app store. The point is companies shouldn't be able to hide behind copyright law to limit consumer rights to make more money.
 
Angry Fork said:
How does this affect anyone except the people who donated? We also simply don't know whether this was a family trip or whether he did pay for it using the donation money. Nobody knows the circumstances, and yet everyone is flying off the handle.

I understand it's fun to do this because it's a big story and it's lulz and all that, but there's a substantial group of people in this thread that seem to have their heart desired on the death of this guy or something. Like they spend every waking moment here defending Sony, calling him a criminal/pirate etc. like WHY. There is literally no reason for them to have so much animosity, especially if they never supported the homebrew stuff to begin with.

That's why he's saying a lot of the hate comes from people blindly defending Sony, because that seems like the only logical case. Not for everyone in here, but certainly the loudest of the bunch.

And I'm sure there are plenty of other hackers who are carrying on what geohot started so it's not like the 'movement' or whatever has crumpled to the ground or anything. The other guys are just doing stuff quietly until they finish whatever they're gonna finish.

You do realize how much this screws up future cases against the DMCA right? If Sony wins, this case will be referenced for companies trying to enforce the DMCA legally.
 

PaperBoy_JJ

Neo Member
How is this “kid” going on vacation any different from a college “kid” accepting financial aid and then going off on spring break? If you were faced with the legal issues this “kid” is being hit with wouldn’t you want to get away if only for a moment?
 
PaperBoy_JJ said:
How is this “kid” going on vacation any different from a college “kid” accepting financial aid and then going off on spring break? If you were faced with the legal issues this “kid” is being hit with wouldn’t you want to get away if only for a moment?
Financial aid != donations from people
 
Top Bottom