CLI is not a crime.

Every once in a while I see something like this:

"Mr. Calixte uses two different operating systems to hide his illegal activities.  One is the regular B.C. operating system and the other is a black screen with a white font which he uses prompt commands on."

Yes, you read that right.  The police considered the fact that this guy used a command line interface as probable cause for the seizure of all his computers, in order to investigate the "crime" of outing another student (which, as far as I'm aware, is not actually a crime, despite arguably being in bad taste).

Whenever I see something like this, I think two things.  First, I thank the heavens that the EFF exists.  If you don't know what the Electronic Frontier Foundation is, or how its history is intertwined with the gaming industry, you owe it to yourself to at least read about Steve Jackson Games vs. The United States Secret Service, the case that spawned the EFF in the first place.  If you're at all familiar with the gaming industry, Steve Jackson should be a name you're intimately familiar with, as one of the RPG industry's old guard -- the creator of GURPS and many other games.

The other thing I have to think is, how the hell can the police be so fucking stupid?  I understand that not everyone is as computer literate as I am -- but jesus, if you are investigating computer crimes (or "crimes"), you really need to know something about computers.  Of course, if you're even more cynical than I am, you could say the police do know, but the general public (and possibly judges) don't, so they use the flimsiest pretexts to get overreaching warrants and confiscate thousands of dollars in equipment from someone who can't really afford the spend tons of money fighting things in court.  I'm not sure which is more frightening.

I have immense respect for people in law enforcement -- most of them are dedicated individuals who have volunteered to risk their lives to protect the rest of us.  Unfortunately, I think they have become a victim of the same culture of fear that seems to plague a lot of the other more conservative parts of society, and that makes it easy to demonize anything new that they don't understand.  It doesn't help when people like the RIAA and MPAA start hijacking law enforcement to enforce ludicrous copyright lawsuits for doing things that, for good or ill, probably a majority of the general public does not consider a "real crime."

As the years wear on, and we get further into the Information Age, I hope to god we see the end of this kind of insane overreaching and computer stupidity, but I'm not holding my breath.  While it's true that the first generation of cops that have grown up with the internet since their childhood is going to start hitting the beat very soon now, I suspect most computer science majors or even just Linux enthusiasts aren't really going to be signing up to walk a beat.  Part of that is because being a cop is frankly a high-stress, largely thankless and underpaid profession, even compared to the sometimes hectic IT professions (where at least your life is not usually in danger), but I think another part of it is the antagonism that has existed now, for decades, between law enforcement and much of the "computer nerd" community.  That doesn't even address the problems with encroachment on civil liberties that were taken over the last decade in the name of "protecting us from terrorists," which is bigger problem.

I dunno.  I don't want to point the finger entirely at law enforcement here, because I don't think it is all their fault, but until there's a general increase in the computer literacy of the police and other law enforcement agencies (even the FBI and Secret Service have a pretty poor record with this stuff at times), this is a problem that isn't going to go away.