Friday, April 30, 2010

CSI Oshkosh

Normally we have nothing but good things to say about local law enforcement, but in this case: What they hell were they thinking?
A spokesman for the Oshkosh Police Department said a derogatory message was sent to another person from Eliasen's e-mail account. Police determined that Eliasen did not send the email.

Police spokesman Joe Nichols would not divulge the contents of the email and was unable to say why detectives interrupted the televised meeting shortly after 8 p.m.

Eliasen said he hadn't seen the message as of late Thursday morning. He said a detective told him the "very unsavory message" was sent from his account at 5:20 p.m. Wednesday to an individual he had been corresponding with about selling a car on Craigslist.

He said he suspects someone hacked into his e-mail account after he checked his messages using an iPad in a Milwaukee store on Sunday. Police told him a footnote in the suspicious email indicated it was sent using an iPad.

Eliasen said he wished police would have waited until after the meeting to talk to him and is concerned about the negative implications of having police interrupt a school board meeting, which is a public gathering and broadcast on cable TV. The meeting was Eliasen's first in which official action was taken. He was elected to the board in April.

The meeting was suspended for about 20 minutes while police spoke with Eliasen.
He said a detective told him the matter was urgent because electronic crimes can be time sensitive.
Unless the person who wrote that email claimed he was going to kill a busload of nuns and orphans as soon as he was done typing, I'm really not sure how time sensitive an email can be. Let's put it another way: if the alleged crime was so time sensitive, why didn't the police deal with the issue before the meeting?

Just judging by what little information is available to the public at the moment, I'd would imagine a pubic apology is in order.

7 comments:

blame it on a Hacker pffft! said...

okay the cops sound dumb, what you said about the busload of nuns, etc etc.

but does that overshadow the weird explanation? the guy says his iPad was hacked while in a store? really? does this sound unbelievably lame to anyone else?

you know how you said the SCOTUS folks were all ignorant of technology yada yada - well, can we get some input/discussion on how likely that is to really occur?
So he's using the unsecured network of the store, and someone there not only is able to see/utilize his info in that short space of time but also they just find it super-LOL to send an insulting email to a car selling dude?

If you think about the scenario of this "hacker", armed with that kind of tech ability yet wasting his time gleefully doing this kind lame-loser-shit. it sounds more like an explanation that a guy with moderate technical knowledge pulls outta his ass when faced with cops and hopes like hell it's technically feasible.

I might wanna here from a technician who has DEEP knowledge of how iPads work, and also the person(s) who run the "store" network, and see how possible/logical this crap all is.

"Haha dude! lets send an insulting message on this school board guy's iPad and mess up his car deal. w00t! this is soooo fun"

okay that is major boring. even for an Osh hacker who must be used to being bored. I just can't buy it.
sounds like defense cooked up by the OJ team.

(this wuz the still lazy Stewie)
oh wait! this isn't really me! this is a HACKER!!!!!
yeah that's it! anyone can sign in this way
this has been other people all along.
except the really intelligent stuff
yeah that part was all me.
yup yup yup

Jb said...

I took the explanation to mean that he was using an iPad demo at a store and either forgot to log out of his email account or didn't know how to.

As soon as I read it I thought about being 15 years old and coming across a stranger's open email account. The temptation casuse a little mischief with impunity would be almost irresistible.

I assume that the Police were involved because the the school system's email was being used. I would probably use every email account I had when experimenting with an iPad. Those things are expensive and it would suck to bring it home only to discover that you can't use it for some things.

Stewie said...

okay, gotcha.

but look at this -

http://www.scirp.org/Journal/PaperDownload.aspx?paperID=883&fileName=Psych.20090100004_39584049.pdf

Lol see if it explains the behavior of CERTAIN PERSONS on council and no I don't JUST mean Esslinger. I mean any persons who happen to be totally untrained and inexperienced in numerous facets of running a city yet act like they know-it-fucking-all.

Should there actually be any of those in Oshkosh...
XDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

still lazy Stew said...

Hey, are Dick Leinenkugel's "kids" still @ U-Osh?
Hunt 'em down, get an exclusive.
Of course you'd have to do this with a bag over yer head, y'know, to maintain anonymity. I s'pose that might scare 'em. oh well...

Anonymous said...

I didn't get from the story that he was using his school district email account. ASa matter of fact I thought just the opposite since the perpetrator sent an email to someone Eliasen had been trying to sell a car to. He wouldn't be using his school board email for that so I assumed it was a personal email account. Either way, I wouldn't have used it for checking email. They are designed for that veyr purpose so he could've done that after he bought it and got it home. And if he didn't like it he could always return it. Plenty of other things he could've checked out with the iPad without divulging his personal stuff. Let this be a lesson to all.

Jb said...

Good point ... but I think it would be weirder if the cops could link into his private yahoo/hotmail/gmail/business account.

Anonymous said...

The cops didn't link into his account at all, did they? It's my understanding from the published story that the recipient of this "unsavory" email reported it to the police and showed them the message. From there they contacted him. They could see it was sent from an iPad because when you send it from such a device, it states it at the bottom of the email, much like when an email is sent from your smartphone, it says it came from an iPhone, Blackberry or what have you.