

British Police Duped by LulzSec Into Arresting the Wrong Guy? - nextparadigms
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=22280

======
citricsquid
I read this article earlier. I don't understand the following line from the
chatlog:

> Topiary: better not hit me on April fool's day

is this a joke that has gone over my head, or are the logs indeed from March?

Edit: looks like I'm a fool, the logs are indeed from March and are unrelated
to this incident. I thought the article was using them as proof of _this_
incident being part of "duping" the police, but it's actually being used to
show Topiary from England != Lulzsec topiary. My mistake. Will leave comment
in case anyone else makes the same mistake.

~~~
wccrawford
Yeah, it was all a little unclear. I'm still not sure whether LS's Topiary
stole the name from a troll, or a troll started using Topiary's name.

Not that it matters... In the end, it looks like the real Topiary is in a
different country altogether from where the arrest was made.

Absolutely hilarious.

How long before the police discover their mistake, I wonder?

~~~
gjm11
Not quite so hilarious for the person who (if this story is right) has been
arrested for things he didn't do.

~~~
wnight
Better he learn what the system is like while young. With media attention on
his arrest he's likely to be unmolested.

There's no alternative where he was safe, just ones where the risk wasn't
realized. Now he'll know what many complacent people never realize - how
fragile his life is and how easily 'evidence' against him is created as
necessary.

------
wbhart
Wasn't topiary supposedly the guy who was doing the interview during which the
WBC got hacked? If so, they have his voice on tape. Certainly wasn't British.
At the time I thought French, but Swedish would fit.

The slightly annoying thing is that we may never know. The real topiary is not
going to reappear if they've arrested the wrong guy. The police are certainly
not going to give up their arrest. And presumably they've got this guy in
custody on something. So I assume they can make the charges stick. I'm sure
they've arrested him under his real name for something he actually did, not
topiary for being a member of Lulzsec.

The public certainly don't care. It only matters that justice appears to be
done.

So it looks to me like everyone is happy (except the guy who got arrested of
course).

~~~
astine
If he's really from Shetland he wouldn't sound British. He might sound Swedish
though.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shetlandic>

~~~
mattmanser
That's english with a few more words, they still sound scottish, not swedish.

From a bit of youtubing and googling the few clips I've heard are instantly
recognizable as scottish, with a few words you don't understand.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-
shet...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-
shetland-11111965)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij60XUvWjZY&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij60XUvWjZY&feature=player_embedded)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVxNxnXo7-c&playnext=1...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVxNxnXo7-c&playnext=1&list=PL58FDD57CFA2CD1B6)

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx5MgoL5tQ8>

The UK has a phenomenal amount of dialects, they're all British though and
even a Londoner can tell the difference between a Swedish accent and a British
one.

~~~
nini
British accent != accent from the UK. I doubt anyone from Northern Ireland
would asociate with being thier accent called British, from either side of the
political divide; and I suspect more than a few of our Scottish bretheren
would object rightly or wrongly.

But to your point - a Scottish accent and a Swedish one are distinctly
different.

~~~
mattmanser
Scotland and Shetland are both part of the British Isles, a geographic term.
Scotland itself is actually part of Great Britain, an island which contain
England, Wales and Scotland. Although admittedly Shetland is not.

The term British is rather malleable but check the first entry in wikipedia:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britain>

Yes, common usage of the term British includes the whole of the UK.

The usual problem people from Scotland and Ireland have are being called
English, not British and Scots are British anyway and I never mentioned the
Irish.

Finally riddle me this, what should I have used instead of British to refer to
the people of the UK? Which is where I'm from I might add. As there exists no
other term other than British.

------
nikhilgk
Makes one wonder if their monikers are really tightly tied to real persons.
Maybe the core group uses their names interchangeably and when one of them is
ousted with a raid, some one else from the group assumes the online identity.

~~~
r00fus
You would make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.

~~~
chopsueyar
Wesley?

------
ahi
Not all that surprising. Eventually the LulzSec people will get popped
inadvertently, but they'll run law enforcement in circles for quite a while
before it happens. LulzSec and Anonymous thrive on ambiguity and confusion so
they can keep piling on the lies and deception. They have no need to get their
story straight, just keep law enforcement in a cloud of doubt. This entire
chatlog could be bullshit, a little disinfo to muddy the waters. If Swedish
Topiary gets popped you release some logs revealing yourself to be Shetland
Topiary trolling the Swede.

------
jgrahamc
The explanation in this article seems pretty tenuous and the title could at
least do with being "British police might have been duped by LulzSec into
arresting the wrong person".

------
hello123_345
my 5 cents:

* the antilulzsec movement is missleading information created by lulzsec themselves

* chatlogs are just text. they do not prove anythinh

* i guess they raided the guys home not without reason...

~~~
SoftwareMaven
If I were betting, I'd be with you on this, even though the reason to raid may
have been deliberately planted misinformation from lulzsec.

~~~
rhizome
It might be helpful to know what ISP this guy used.

------
rektide
Going after people running Low Orbit Ion Cannon and expecting to get top brass
is... incredible wishful thinking.

~~~
rdtsc
I think they just need to get someone. Doesn't really matter who. Find some
random gullable 13 year old wanna-be-hacker kid that ran LOIC for a while.
Parade him in front of the media and judges, send him off to juvie, handshakes
and bonuses for everyone involved... Police, prosecutors, media, all get to
pat theselves on the back. That is what this is really about.

~~~
hugh3
Which itself achieves a positive outcome, by communicating to the next
gullible 13-year-old who might be thinking about doing something stupid to
someone else's computer that there might be real-world consequences to it.

~~~
yew
Assuming gullible 13-year-olds are the sort to think about the consequences
before downloading an executable and clicking "run," anyway. In my experience
(so this is really just anecdotal evidence), that's rarely the case,
especially when it comes to politics.

~~~
PotatoEngineer
The total number of script-kiddies might go down a bit. Of course there's
always going to be some gullible 13-year-olds who run scripts, but the idea is
to have _less_ of them. It's more of a statistical argument than an anecdotal
one.

------
DNeb
Sad to watch them try to send another guy to jail for what they did. "No honor
among thieves" came to mind.

~~~
delinka
I rather see it as highlighting a weakness in the system. Arresting someone on
suspicion without evidence tying the human to the twitter account and to the
actual crime is a sad state of affairs. People should be made aware that this
kind of thing cam happen with little recourse for the mistakes of the police.

~~~
GHFigs
I don't know precisely how it works in Scotland, but presumably they had
evidence sufficient to obtain a warrant for the arrest. Are you really saying
the police should have to prove guilt before arresting suspects?

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
The police (here in Scotland or pretty much anywhere) can arrest someone on
suspicion of something with pretty minimal evidence, you don't need a warrant
but once you have arrested them you then have to either charge them or release
them within a relatively short space of time (our rather draconian anti-terror
laws which mean they can be held for weeks without charge wouldn't apply
here).

It makes no sense for them to arrest him without evidence. The two options for
who arrested him are local or national police.

If it were the local police why would local police on a sparsely populated
island with little crime go and arrest someone and accuse them of being a
hacker with no evidence knowing that he'd be out in a day? It makes no sense
to do so and if you did do it you certainly wouldn't go public with the arrest
knowing you had no evidence.

On the other hand if you're national police working in cyber crime out of
London, to make the arrest you've got to convince someone to pay to fly two
officers six hundred miles north and them and the suspect back. Given that UK
police are being asked to make massive budget cuts and are under significant
scrutiny (particularly the Met who would likely be heading this) because of
the phone hacking, that trip isn't getting signed off without someone
convincing a senior officer that there was something to it.

So the chances of there being no evidence is basically nil. The evidence they
have may be misinformation, or they may have misinterpreted it, but they will
have believed that this guy was involved.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
Looking into this a bit more it was national police from the Met in London who
carried out this arrest.

------
aw3c2
Contrary to what the headline suggests, this is just speculation.

------
rmason
Or maybe Topiary's friends are trying to convince the police they got the
wrong guy and get some added publicity at the same time?

~~~
dwyer
More than likely. The conversation seems like a movie script. Too cut and dry;
everything spelled out for the audience.

> Topiary: (as you know I stole this nickname from a troll last December,
> didn't work out so well)

Give me a break.

