Litigation
On 8 August 2008, the MBTA filed suit seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent the students from presenting or otherwise discussing their findings until its vendors had sufficient time to correct defects as well as seeking monetary damages. The motion was granted on August 9 by Judge Douglas Woodlock and while the students appeared as scheduled, they did not speak or present at the convention. However, the injunction not only garnered more popular and press attention to the case, but the sensitive information in the students' presentation became even more widely disseminated afterwards since it had been both distributed to conference organizers in the weeks before the injunction as well as inadvertently posted to the district court's public website as exhibits to the MBTA's original complaint.
The MBTA retained Holland & Knight to represent them and contended that under the norm of responsible disclosure, the students did not provide sufficient information or time before the presentation for the MBTA to correct the flaw and further alleged that the students transmitted programs to cause damage to (or attempted to transmit and damage) MBTA computers in an amount in excess of $5,000 under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Furthermore, it was contended that this damage constituted a threat to public health and safety and the MBTA would suffer irreparable harm if the students were allowed to present; that the students converted and trespassed on MBTA property; that the students illegally profited from their activities; and that MIT itself was negligent in supervising the undergraduates and notifying the MBTA.
The MIT students retained the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Fish & Richardson to represent them and asserted that the term "transmission" in the CFAA cannot be broadly construed as any form of communication and the restraining order is a prior restraint infringing their First Amendment right to protected free speech about academic research. An 11 August letter published by 11 prominent computer scientists supported the defendants' assertions and claimed that the precedent of the gag order will "stifle research efforts and weaken academic computing research programs. In turn, we fear the shadow of the law's ambiguities will reduce our ability to contribute to industrial research in security technologies at the heart of our information infrastructure."
On 19 August, the judge rejected the MBTA's request to extend the restraining order and the TRO likewise expired, thus granting the students the right to discuss and present their findings.
Read more about this topic: Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority V. Anderson