I’m glad my IT department has a clue. Note to any police: clt-Alt F3 (or any function key apart from f7 will bring up a virtual terminal. These are useful for big jobs when you don’t want a graphic interface. The term for this is a command line.

And any parent who works from home should have seperate logins for the kids and him or her: the spouse may not inadvertantly trash you data, but the kids probably will type rm -rf * at least once just to see what it does….

A bunch of folks have submitted various versions of a story in Boston, involving Boston College police being granted a warrant which they used to confiscate the computers of a student as part of an investigation over an email sent to a mailing list. The troubling part is that the warrant was given without any real reason. In fact, part of the warrant application focused on the scary fact that the student in question used a command line on his computer:

Mr. Calixte uses two different operating systems to hide his illegal activities. One is the regular B.C. operating system and the other is a black screen with white font which he uses prompt commands on.

There are other accusations in the filing, but reading through it, it seems clear that this is a pure fishing expedition by the police, rather than any real probable cause.

via Use A Command Line At Boston College… Have Your Computer Equipment Confiscated | Techdirt.