Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Witness says hacker targeted drive-through- Man accused in police radio case also tracked car, woman testifies

From: Marcelrf <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 03 Mar 2004 14:09:57 -0500

Witness says hacker targeted drive-through- Man accused in police radio
case also tracked car, woman testifies

By REID J. EPSTEIN
[email-masked]
Posted: March 2, 2004

Madison - The man prosecutors say interfered with Madison police radio
frequencies had previously manipulated a Milwaukee fast-food
restaurant's drive-through transmissions and installed a tracking device
on an ex-girlfriend's car, the woman testified Tuesday in federal court.

From his car parked in a the restaurant's parking lot, Rajib K. Mitra
spoke into a radio that transmitted his voice through the speakers at
the drive-through window, said Gina Blanchette, who dated Mitra off and
on between 1998 and 2001.
"He interrupted the clerk and told the person in the car that instead of
$4, what he ordered cost $45," said Blanchette, 26, a corporate planner
at Harley-Davidson Inc. in Milwaukee.

Blanchette said that Mitra, 25, told her that he implanted a listening
device in computer speakers he installed for her and put a
location-tracking device on her car. She said she never knew whether he
actually could listen to her but he "knew where I was" and once found
her when she was on a date with another man.

Blanchette, who wrote Mitra a letter when he was arrested in November
and detained at the Dane County Jail, began crying uncontrollably as she
left the witness stand in the Madison courtroom.

Mitra, a former University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate student, is
charged with two counts of transmitting communications to a protected
police computer. The Brookfield East High School graduate faces up to 20
years in prison and a $500,000 fine if convicted. Mitra's attorney,
Chris Van Wagner, said his client would testify today.

Blanchette also said that on a trip to Washington, D.C., Mitra stood
outside the White House gates at night with his ear to a hand-held
scanner in an attempt to listen to radio transmissions.

While they were dating, Mitra, who is a licensed ham radio operator and
has a computer science degree from UW-Madison, was so involved in radio
and computer technology that it equaled his interest in her, Blanchette
said.
"It was a tie between me and his toys," Blanchette testified.

Madison police Detective Cindy Murphy testified that there is evidence
that Mitra had hacked into the computer of his roommate on N. Orchard
St. in Madison. 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 UW-Milwaukee computer
system, he was sentenced to 40 days in jail.

The Madison police radio frequencies were burdened with interruptions
beginning in late January 2003 and ending Nov. 11, witnesses said
Tuesday.  On Nov. 11, Tracy Pleus, a City of Madison communications
technician, used a spectrum analyzer to trace the disrupting signals to
Mitra's N.  Orchard St. apartment.

That night, Pleus testified, he parked a large City of Madison-labeled
van in the parking lot behind Mitra's apartment and left the vehicle's
lights on and its engine running. Before Pleus arrived, Madison police
radio frequencies had been interrupted 10 times with sexually explicit
audio files. That didn't occur during the 45 minutes he was in the
parking lot, Pleus said.
Mitra watched them, police say

Madison police Lt. Joe Balles, who met Pleus in the parking lot, said
Mitra stared at him from his balcony as he walked through the area.
Other police officers testified that Mitra turned off the lights in the
apartment and watched them through closed window blinds.

"Initially, I thought he was smoking a cigarette," Balles said. "But
then I looked back, and I could see that his hands were folded and he
was watching me."

Minutes after Pleus and Balles left the parking lot, two more audio
files were "piggy-backed" onto the end of police conversations,
witnesses said.

Murphy began investigating interruptions in the department's radio
frequencies on Nov. 1, the day after the department was hindered by an
incessant tone that overrode its radio communications. She found on
Mitra's computer audio files that matched nine of the 12 sexually
explicit Nov. 11 interruptions to police radio frequencies.

Murphy, who testified for three hours Tuesday, played recordings of the
interruptions followed by the audio files. In each case, the files from
Mitra's computer contained the same audio that was broadcast on police
radios.
Computer use, problems match

Mitra's computer records also showed that the files were last accessed
about the same time that police experienced the interruptions. Those
records also showed that Mitra had searched for "sex sounds" on the
Internet search engine Google minutes before the Nov. 11 transmission
interruptions began.

In his opening statement Monday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim O'Shea said
Mitra attacked police radio frequencies on Nov. 11 because he was upset
about losing a court case about a speeding ticket, for which he was
penalized $163.

David Kratochwill, the Dane County sheriff's deputy who issued the
speeding ticket, said Mitra appeared "frustrated with the process" when
he was in court Nov. 11. Mitra's case was adjourned that day around 4:15
p.m., Kratochwill said, less than an hour before the sexually explicit
interruptions began.

On Nov. 12, according to records stored on Mitra's computer, he
performed a Google search for Kratochwill and for David Moeser, the Dane
County judge who ruled against him. The next day, the records show, he
performed a Google search for a Madison law firm.

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 has said that Mitra is not responsible for the interruptions
between January and Nov. 1 and did not knowingly "piggy-back" the
sexually explicit sound files on Nov. 11.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/wauk/mar04/211795.asp
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