EFF Urges Judge to Lift Gag Order on MIT Students

Via the EFF Deeplinks -

Boston - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged a federal judge Tuesday to lift an unconstitutional gag order issued to three students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) whose academic research uncovered vulnerabilities in Boston's transit fare payment system.

A hearing on the temporary restraining order is set for 11am Thursday at the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts in Boston.

The students -- Zack Anderson, RJ Ryan and Alessandro Chiesa -- would like to resolve this dispute amicably with the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA). However, it has been hard to find an amicable resolution when the students are the subjects of a vigorous lawsuit and under the restrictions of a temporary restraining order. This remains true even though the MBTA filed a motion earlier this week to modify the restraining order to only prohibit disclosure of "non-public" information.

"We appreciate the gesture," said EFF Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann. "But it does not resolve the dispute. Indeed, we would hope everyone acknowledges that it is impermissible under the Constitution for a court to order someone not to repeat publicly available truthful information."

"The restraining order, even if modified, remains an improper prior restraint restricting speech," said EFF Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick. "The First Amendment does not allow people to be silenced because their speech exposes flaws, even if those flaws might someday be illegally misused by others. To protect our clients' rights, we had no choice but to ask the court to reconsider the gag order."

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MBTA opened up a can of worms...and now attempts to squeeze them back into the can as they look around say "Who did this...we didn't do this! We would never...."

Not going to work guys...sorry.

Check out the "Students' response to plaintiff's motion to modify terms". I love the following paragraph...

Second, most, if not all, of the significant facts known to the students about the Fare Media System are now public, either because they are contained in the slides prepared for and distributed at DEFCON before the TRO issued, or because the MBTA filed research information provided to it by the students on the public docket in this case.

In simple terms, the cat was never in the bag...and if it were "ever" in a bag, the MBTA released it while attempting to trap it. Classic.