United States v. Riggs
Encyclopedia
In United States v. Riggs, the government of the United States prosecuted Robert Riggs and Craig Neidorf
for obtaining unauthorized access to and subsequently disseminating a file held on BellSouth's
computers. The file, referred to as the E911 file, gave information regarding BellSouth's products implementing 911 emergency telephone services. This article focuses on the proceedings in the District Court of the Northern District of Illinois
, where Riggs and Neidorf were both indicted on numerous charges relating to the dissemination of the E911 text file. As Riggs had previously been indicted in the Northern District of Georgia
in relation to the same incident, his charges from Illinois were transferred to Georgia. Riggs ultimately pleaded guilty in Georgia and was sentenced to 21 months in prison and 2 years supervised release. Neidorf pleaded not guilty in Illinois and the government dropped all charges against Neidorf 4 days after the trial began.
Several computer break-ins in 1983 had been associated with teenagers in Wisconsin. These teenagers gained notoriety and became known as The 414s
. High profile public incidents perpetrated by groups such as The 414s combined with movies such as WarGames
to create a public stereotype of hackers as wayward youths eager to abuse computer knowledge without regard to the consequence of their actions.
's computers. As a result, Riggs was sentenced to 15 days of community service and 18 months of probation. Craig Neidorf
was a 20 year old college student studying pre-law at University of Missouri. Neidorf began publishing the hacker magazine PHRACK
at the age of 16 and published 30 issues from 1985 - 1989.
in the Northern District of Georgia on charges related to the same events. Riggs' Georgia indictment included 4 counts of wire fraud, 3 counts of access code fraud and 1 count of conspiracy. The 2 indictments in Illinois described below charged Riggs with additional crimes. The charges from Illinois were transferred to Georgia in accordance with Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 20.
voted to issue an indictment against both Robert Riggs and Craig Neidorf. The indictment alleged that Riggs and Neidorf had defrauded BellSouth by electronically stealing a text file and disseminating that file over the web in an online magazine edited by Neidorf known as PHRACK. The indictment alleged that Riggs broke into a BellSouth computer located in Atlanta, Georgia, downloaded the text file to his own computer located in Decatur, Georgia and electronically transferred the file to a bulletin board system located in Lockport, Illinois. Neidorf then allegedly downloaded the file from the bulletin board in Lockport, Illinois to his own computer in Columbia, Missouri. Neidorf then edited the file, at the request of Riggs, to remove details identifying the file as belonging to BellSouth, and uploaded the file to the same bulletin board system in Lockport, Illinois. The indictment charged both Riggs and Neidorf with 7 violations of federal statues: counts 1 and 2 alleged violations of 18 USC § 1343 (wire fraud
), counts 3 and 4 alleged violations of 18 USC § 2314 (interstate transportation of stolen property), and counts 5-7 alleged violations of 18 USC § 1030 (computer fraud and abuse
).
Neidorf responded to the indictment by issuing a series of pre-trial motions, including motions to dismiss counts 2-7 of the indictment. Judge Bua
subsequently denied all of Neidorf's motions. Neidorf's motions to dismiss counts 3 and 4 (pertaining to interstate transportation of stolen property) were noteworthy as they claim Neidorf should not be charged with violations of § 2314 as he has only caused "electronic impulses" to move over state lines and had not moved any physical property. Although the government conceded that § 2314 had never been applied in this manner before, the court held that it would allow electronic interstate transportation of proprietary business information as a violation of § 2314. In support of the decision to uphold the charge, the court cited United States v. Gilboe, in which the defendants issued wire transfers of money across state lines and were prosecuted under § 2314. The act of the wire transfer was regarded as being tantamount to physically moving the money as the effect of the wire transfer was that tangible funds becoming available in a bank where they were not previously available.
issued a superseding indictment against Riggs and Neidorf which took the place of the first indictment. The second indictment dropped charges of violating § 1030 (computer fraud and abuse) and instead charged Riggs exclusively with 1 count of violating § 1343 (wire fraud), charged Neidorf exclusively with 4 counts of violating § 1343, and charged Riggs and Neidorf jointly with 4 counts of violating § 1343 and 2 counts of violating § 2314. The second indictment also broadened the scope of alleged activities from strictly obtaining and disseminating the BellSouth text file. The second indictment alleged a broader effort to disseminate hacker tutorials with the goals solidifying the hacker community and educating hackers in a range of skills including evasion of law enforcement.
In response to the superseding indictment, Neidorf filed motions to dismiss all 10 counts of the indictment in which he was named. Neidorf incorporated arguments made by the Electronic Freedom Foundation
in support of his motions to dismiss. Neidorf's arguments included a claims that publication of PHRACK, including the BellSouth text file, was within his First Amendment freedoms and that the laws he was charged with violating were unacceptably vague. The court rejected both of these arguments, holding that criminal laws apply even if the activity in question is speech related. All of Neidorf's motions to dismiss were denied.
, a computer security expert, testified for the defense that the text file stolen from BellSouth, as published by Neidorf, actually contained nothing of value for breaking into systems. The defense was also able to demonstrate that the file which the government had alleged as both highly valuable and highly proprietary was actually neither. Nagle demonstrated that more damaging information about BellSouth's 911 system was already publicly available, and Zenner demonstrated that the exact file in question, unedited, could be obtained by calling BellSouth and ordering manuals which cost either $13 or $21. Neidorf ultimately received no conviction, although he did incur legal expense in excess of $100,000.
Riggs' proceedings continued in Georgia, where he pleaded guilty to the conspiracy charge from Georgia and the wire fraud charges from Illinois. Riggs received a prison sentence of 21 months to be followed by 2 years of supervised release. The conditions of Riggs supervised release included that he was not allowed to own or control a computer of any type for his own personal use at any point in the 2 year time period.
contesting both the length of his sentence and the conditions of his supervised release. Riggs' appeal argued that the sentence was excessive because it exceeded sentencing guidelines for his crimes and previous convictions. The court upheld the sentence, however, on the grounds that they did not feel the criminal history category in which Riggs had been placed was an accurate representation of his past criminal conduct. The terms of Riggs supervised release were also upheld.
of the Association for Computing Machinery
also published an article reviewing the events of the case and offering commentary on the proceedings and potential responses from the professional community. The case has also been cited in a number of books dealing with computers, hacking, legality and ethics.
Craig Neidorf
Craig Neidorf , aka Knight Lightning, was one of the two founding editors of Phrack Magazine, an online, text-based ezine that defined the hacker mentality of the mid 1980s....
for obtaining unauthorized access to and subsequently disseminating a file held on BellSouth's
BellSouth
BellSouth Corporation is an American telecommunications holding company based in Atlanta, Georgia. BellSouth was one of the seven original Regional Bell Operating Companies after the U.S...
computers. The file, referred to as the E911 file, gave information regarding BellSouth's products implementing 911 emergency telephone services. This article focuses on the proceedings in the District Court of the Northern District of Illinois
United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois is the trial-level court with jurisdiction over the northern counties of Illinois....
, where Riggs and Neidorf were both indicted on numerous charges relating to the dissemination of the E911 text file. As Riggs had previously been indicted in the Northern District of Georgia
United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia
The United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia is a United States District Court which serves the residents of forty-six counties...
in relation to the same incident, his charges from Illinois were transferred to Georgia. Riggs ultimately pleaded guilty in Georgia and was sentenced to 21 months in prison and 2 years supervised release. Neidorf pleaded not guilty in Illinois and the government dropped all charges against Neidorf 4 days after the trial began.
Cultural Setting
United States v. Riggs occurred during 1990. At the time, computers and the internet were not uncommon in businesses and academic institutions, but not yet common place in American homes.Several computer break-ins in 1983 had been associated with teenagers in Wisconsin. These teenagers gained notoriety and became known as The 414s
The 414s
The 414s gained notoriety in the early 1980s as a group of friends and computer hackers who broke into dozens of high-profile computer systems, including ones at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and Security Pacific Bank....
. High profile public incidents perpetrated by groups such as The 414s combined with movies such as WarGames
WarGames
WarGames is a 1983 American Cold War suspense/science-fiction film written by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes and directed by John Badham. The film stars Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy....
to create a public stereotype of hackers as wayward youths eager to abuse computer knowledge without regard to the consequence of their actions.
Defendants
Robert Riggs had a previous conviction for computer related crime in North Carolina in 1986 for unauthorized access to BellSouthBellSouth
BellSouth Corporation is an American telecommunications holding company based in Atlanta, Georgia. BellSouth was one of the seven original Regional Bell Operating Companies after the U.S...
's computers. As a result, Riggs was sentenced to 15 days of community service and 18 months of probation. Craig Neidorf
Craig Neidorf
Craig Neidorf , aka Knight Lightning, was one of the two founding editors of Phrack Magazine, an online, text-based ezine that defined the hacker mentality of the mid 1980s....
was a 20 year old college student studying pre-law at University of Missouri. Neidorf began publishing the hacker magazine PHRACK
Phrack
Phrack is an ezine written by and for hackers first published November 17, 1985. Described by Fyodor as "the best, and by far the longest running hacker zine," the magazine is open for contributions by anyone who desires to publish remarkable works or express original ideas on the topics of interest...
at the age of 16 and published 30 issues from 1985 - 1989.
Previous Indictment
Prior to the proceedings described below in the Northern District of Illinois, Riggs was indictedIndictment
An indictment , in the common-law legal system, is a formal accusation that a person has committed a crime. In jurisdictions that maintain the concept of felonies, the serious criminal offence is a felony; jurisdictions that lack the concept of felonies often use that of an indictable offence—an...
in the Northern District of Georgia on charges related to the same events. Riggs' Georgia indictment included 4 counts of wire fraud, 3 counts of access code fraud and 1 count of conspiracy. The 2 indictments in Illinois described below charged Riggs with additional crimes. The charges from Illinois were transferred to Georgia in accordance with Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 20.
First indictment
On February 1, 1990 a federal grand juryGrand jury
A grand jury is a type of jury that determines whether a criminal indictment will issue. Currently, only the United States retains grand juries, although some other common law jurisdictions formerly employed them, and most other jurisdictions employ some other type of preliminary hearing...
voted to issue an indictment against both Robert Riggs and Craig Neidorf. The indictment alleged that Riggs and Neidorf had defrauded BellSouth by electronically stealing a text file and disseminating that file over the web in an online magazine edited by Neidorf known as PHRACK. The indictment alleged that Riggs broke into a BellSouth computer located in Atlanta, Georgia, downloaded the text file to his own computer located in Decatur, Georgia and electronically transferred the file to a bulletin board system located in Lockport, Illinois. Neidorf then allegedly downloaded the file from the bulletin board in Lockport, Illinois to his own computer in Columbia, Missouri. Neidorf then edited the file, at the request of Riggs, to remove details identifying the file as belonging to BellSouth, and uploaded the file to the same bulletin board system in Lockport, Illinois. The indictment charged both Riggs and Neidorf with 7 violations of federal statues: counts 1 and 2 alleged violations of 18 USC § 1343 (wire fraud
Wire fraud
Mail and wire fraud is a federal crime in the United States. Together, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341, 1343, and 1346 reach any fraudulent scheme or artifice to intentionally deprive another of property or honest services with a nexus to mail or wire communication....
), counts 3 and 4 alleged violations of 18 USC § 2314 (interstate transportation of stolen property), and counts 5-7 alleged violations of 18 USC § 1030 (computer fraud and abuse
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is a law passed by the United States Congress in 1986, intended to reduce cracking of computer systems and to address federal computer-related offenses...
).
Neidorf responded to the indictment by issuing a series of pre-trial motions, including motions to dismiss counts 2-7 of the indictment. Judge Bua
Nicholas John Bua
Nicholas John Bua was a United States federal judge.Born in Chicago, Illinois, Bua was in the United States Army in 1943. He received a J.D. from De Paul University College of Law in 1953. He was in private practice in Chicago, Illinois from 1953 to 1963. He was a Presiding Judge, Melrose Park...
subsequently denied all of Neidorf's motions. Neidorf's motions to dismiss counts 3 and 4 (pertaining to interstate transportation of stolen property) were noteworthy as they claim Neidorf should not be charged with violations of § 2314 as he has only caused "electronic impulses" to move over state lines and had not moved any physical property. Although the government conceded that § 2314 had never been applied in this manner before, the court held that it would allow electronic interstate transportation of proprietary business information as a violation of § 2314. In support of the decision to uphold the charge, the court cited United States v. Gilboe, in which the defendants issued wire transfers of money across state lines and were prosecuted under § 2314. The act of the wire transfer was regarded as being tantamount to physically moving the money as the effect of the wire transfer was that tangible funds becoming available in a bank where they were not previously available.
Second indictment
On June 7, 1990 the grand juryGrand jury
A grand jury is a type of jury that determines whether a criminal indictment will issue. Currently, only the United States retains grand juries, although some other common law jurisdictions formerly employed them, and most other jurisdictions employ some other type of preliminary hearing...
issued a superseding indictment against Riggs and Neidorf which took the place of the first indictment. The second indictment dropped charges of violating § 1030 (computer fraud and abuse) and instead charged Riggs exclusively with 1 count of violating § 1343 (wire fraud), charged Neidorf exclusively with 4 counts of violating § 1343, and charged Riggs and Neidorf jointly with 4 counts of violating § 1343 and 2 counts of violating § 2314. The second indictment also broadened the scope of alleged activities from strictly obtaining and disseminating the BellSouth text file. The second indictment alleged a broader effort to disseminate hacker tutorials with the goals solidifying the hacker community and educating hackers in a range of skills including evasion of law enforcement.
In response to the superseding indictment, Neidorf filed motions to dismiss all 10 counts of the indictment in which he was named. Neidorf incorporated arguments made by the Electronic Freedom Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States...
in support of his motions to dismiss. Neidorf's arguments included a claims that publication of PHRACK, including the BellSouth text file, was within his First Amendment freedoms and that the laws he was charged with violating were unacceptably vague. The court rejected both of these arguments, holding that criminal laws apply even if the activity in question is speech related. All of Neidorf's motions to dismiss were denied.
District court conclusion
The trial of Neidorf in Illinois began on July 23, 1990. Neidorf was represented by Sheldon Zenner of Katten, Muchin & Zavis in Chicago. Although the trial had been scheduled to last 2 weeks, the prosecution surprisingly dropped the charges after only 4 days. No reason for dropping the charges was officially given, although the government's case was considerably weakened by expert witnesses employed by the Neidorf and Zenner. John Nagle, an independent computer scientist, and Dorothy DenningDorothy E. Denning
Dorothy Elizabeth Denning is an American information security researcher and a graduate of the University of Michigan. She has published four books and 140 articles...
, a computer security expert, testified for the defense that the text file stolen from BellSouth, as published by Neidorf, actually contained nothing of value for breaking into systems. The defense was also able to demonstrate that the file which the government had alleged as both highly valuable and highly proprietary was actually neither. Nagle demonstrated that more damaging information about BellSouth's 911 system was already publicly available, and Zenner demonstrated that the exact file in question, unedited, could be obtained by calling BellSouth and ordering manuals which cost either $13 or $21. Neidorf ultimately received no conviction, although he did incur legal expense in excess of $100,000.
Riggs' proceedings continued in Georgia, where he pleaded guilty to the conspiracy charge from Georgia and the wire fraud charges from Illinois. Riggs received a prison sentence of 21 months to be followed by 2 years of supervised release. The conditions of Riggs supervised release included that he was not allowed to own or control a computer of any type for his own personal use at any point in the 2 year time period.
Federal Appeals Court Proceedings
Riggs' issued an appeal to the United States Court of Appeals in the Eleventh CircuitUnited States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* Middle District of Alabama...
contesting both the length of his sentence and the conditions of his supervised release. Riggs' appeal argued that the sentence was excessive because it exceeded sentencing guidelines for his crimes and previous convictions. The court upheld the sentence, however, on the grounds that they did not feel the criminal history category in which Riggs had been placed was an accurate representation of his past criminal conduct. The terms of Riggs supervised release were also upheld.
Public Commentary
United States v. Riggs has been cited in public discourse on the difference between theft of electronic and physical resources, as seen in the Berkeley Technology Law Journal and Internet World (a publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation). CommunicationsCommunications of the ACM
Communications of the ACM is the flagship monthly journal of the Association for Computing Machinery . First published in 1957, CACM is sent to all ACM members, currently numbering about 80,000. The articles are intended for readers with backgrounds in all areas of computer science and information...
of the Association for Computing Machinery
Association for Computing Machinery
The Association for Computing Machinery is a learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 as the world's first scientific and educational computing society. Its membership is more than 92,000 as of 2009...
also published an article reviewing the events of the case and offering commentary on the proceedings and potential responses from the professional community. The case has also been cited in a number of books dealing with computers, hacking, legality and ethics.