Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Prosecutor says man lashed out at police- Official radio frequencies manipulated, jury told

From: Marcelrf <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 03 Mar 2004 14:14:41 -0500

Prosecutor says man lashed out at police- Official radio frequencies
manipulated, jury told
By REID J. EPSTEIN
[email-masked]
Posted: March 1, 2004

Madison - A former University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student
accused of interfering with Madison police radio frequencies did so on
one occasion because he was angry about a speeding ticket, Assistant
U.S.  Attorney Tim O'Shea told a jury Monday.

In his opening statement, O'Shea recounted how Rajib K. Mitra, 25, was
found guilty of speeding in a Madison court and assessed a $163 fine on
Nov. 11.

O'Shea said Mitra went home to his N. Orchard St. apartment and within
an hour downloaded sexually explicit audio files from the Internet and
was "piggy-backing" them over the Madison Police Department's radio
frequencies.

Madison Police Officer Matt Wentzel responded to a two-car accident in
downtown Madison. As he was interviewing one of the drivers and her
three young children, "several pornographic-type transmissions" were
broadcast on his police radio, he said.
"I advised her that we were having radio problems and I turned the
volume way down," Wentzel said.

Technicians from the Madison Emergency Radio System, which operates the
city's police, fire and emergency response communications equipment,
used frequency analyzers to trace the transmission to Mitra's apartment
and found that the strongest signals emanated from below his bedroom
window, O'Shea said.

O'Shea also said police reported an incessant tone overriding their
radio frequencies on Oct. 31, rendering hand-held radios useless and
leaving police unable to communicate with each other. Police later
traced the signals to Mitra's apartment, O'Shea said.

Mitra, a graduate of Brookfield East High School, is charged with two
counts of transmitting communications to a protected police computer. He
faces up to 20 years in prison and a $500,000 fine if convicted.

"The defendant had devices that showed a singular preoccupation with the
police and with police radios," O'Shea said. On Mitra's computer, O'Shea
said, investigators found "more than 5,500 examples of references to
police and police radios."
Witnesses testified Monday that the Madison and Wauwatosa police
departments were burdened with radio interruptions as long ago as
January 2003. The Wauwatosa radio interruptions occurred May 25 and 26.

Mitra's attorney, Chris Van Wagner, said his client did not know his
home-constructed radio transmitters were overriding Madison police
signals. He blamed police for assuming a crime - breaking into police
radio transmissions - had been committed and immediately searching for a
suspect.

"If your only tool is a hammer, you treat every problem as if it's a
nail," he said.

Van Wagner said Mitra did not become aware that the sexually explicit
files he downloaded and was playing on his computer were being broadcast
until, after playing them, he noticed two previously disconnected wires
were touching under his desk.
No 'whodunit' case, lawyer says

Once Mitra noticed that, Van Wagner said, he disconnected his Motorola
radio transmitter and receiver - the same model used by police - and
threw it in a nearby trash bin.

"This case is not a whodunit," Van Wagner told the jury of seven men and
seven women. "It's a howdunit or a why."
O'Shea said Mitra's preoccupation with law enforcement stemmed from his
two previous convictions on charges related to computer hacking.

In 1998, Mitra was convicted of hacking into the University of Iowa's
computer systems while he was a student there. Because he was on
probation for hacking into a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee computer
system, he was sentenced to 40 days in jail.

Van Wagner said Mitra learned his lesson during his jail stint, "where
he was assaulted." He said Mitra was a finalist for a computer security
position at the National Security Agency.

Mitra received a bachelor's degree in computer science from UW-Madison
in 2000 and was studying for a master's in business administration
before dropping out when he was charged in federal court in November,
Van Wagner said.
O'Shea also told the jury about a Jan. 23, 2003, Internet chat Mitra had
with his girlfriend, who lives in Stevens Point. O'Shea said Mitra
confessed in that conversation.

"The defendant admitted to his girlfriend that he had committed the
crime, that the crime was a mean thing to do, that the crime hurt
innocent people and that the crime involved police computers," O'Shea
said.

But Van Wagner said the crimes Mitra alluded to in the chat were
illegally downloading music and monitoring police scanners to know when
he would not get caught speeding on freeways.

The chat session took place a week before police began experiencing
transmission problems and 10 months before the incidents for which Mitra
is charged, Van Wagner said.

"Nowhere did they find the single piece of evidence that said Jeeb did
this knowingly," Van Wagner said, referring to Mitra's nickname.

Mitra's radio and computer prowess, Van Wagner said, dates to when he
was a child and his mother, Norma, herself a ham radio operator,
introduced him to them.

"He tinkered with radios and became a brilliant computer scientist at a
very young age," Van Wagner said.

 http://www.jsonline.com/news/wauk/mar04/211510.asp

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