The three Massachusetts Institute of Technology students who have been barred by a court order from discussing subway card vulnerabilities are now free to say what they want...

Lawyers for the students, in a case that has generated more attention in local media concerned about problems in the transit system than it has among national media concerned about privacy issues, welcomed the judge's decision. "This was a case of shooting the messenger," said Cindy Cohn, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based advocacy group that was representing the students along with the Massachusetts affiliate of the ACLU and the Fish & Richardson law firm.

A federal judge today lifted a gag order on three MIT students who were barred from talking publicly about security flaws they discovered in the state’s automated mass transit fare system, even as a lawyer acknowledged the system was "compromised."

A new controversy is brewing in the lawsuit pitting three Massachusetts Institute of Technology students against the Massachusetts transit agency: Whether or not their unpublished research notes and other material must be handed over to the state government...

So far, O'Toole has not proven especially sympathetic to the students, who are represented by the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation. He refused to lessen the sting of the original temporary restraining order, even though the MBTA had suggested it. He also granted much of the MBTA's request for unpublished documents, which EFF says runs afoul of clear legal precedent.

A federal judge today ordered three MIT students to release more information on what they know about security flaws in the MBTA's electronic toll collection system.

In a hearing in a lawsuit brought by the MBTA, Jennifer Granick, an attorney for the students, told US District Judge George O'Toole that the students had already provided the court with the "entire universe of information" the students had developed about the system.

Why Did the federal district court gag three MIT undergraduates who apparently discovered a flaw in the MBTA's electronic fare-collection system? The reason one judge imposed the unconstitutional gag order prohibiting the students from presenting their paper Aug. 10 at the DEFCON computer "hackers" conference, and another judge refused on Aug. 14 to vacate that order even after the conference ended, is the current excuse du jour for an epidemic of censorship: national security.

The International Olympic Committee has retracted a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown request it sent to YouTube over a Tibetan protest video.

According to Corynne McSherry, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the IOC requested earlier this week that YouTube remove the video called "Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony." The video, posted by Students for a Free Tibet, is a montage of scenes from Tibet protests around the world. The Olympic rings are shown in the video briefly a couple times.

A federal judge in Boston today refused to lift a temporary restraining order preventing three MIT students from publicly discussing details of several security vulnerabilities that they found in the electronic ticketing system used by the city's mass transit authority...

At today's hearing, O'Toole also asked the MIT students to submit a copy of a class paper in which they detailed the vulnerabilities that they had found, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a high-tech civil rights group that is representing the students in the case. The MBTA requested a copy of the paper in a motion that it filed, the EFF said.

THREE MIT students claim to have identified ways of hacking the MBTA's automated fare-collection system, and they could have spared themselves some trouble had they notified the transit agency of any security flaws right away. The T found out about their work only after they made plans to describe their discoveries last Sunday at DEFCON, a conference for hackers. On Saturday, the agency persuaded US District Judge Douglas Wood-lock to issue a temporary restraining order against the undergrads.

Eleven computer scientists and researchers from institutions across the country have signed a letter in support of three MIT students who were barred from speaking at the DefCon hacker conference this last Sunday.

The letter was part of filings that the Electronic Frontier Foundation submitted to the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts asking a federal judge to reconsider his decision to gag the students with a temporary restraining order.

The state of Massachusetts plans to ask a federal judge on Thursday to keep in place a restraining order that prevents three MIT students from publicly discussing vulnerabilities they discovered in subway card security...

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is providing a legal defense to the MIT students--Zack Anderson, R.J. Ryan, and Alessandro Chiesa--plans on Thursday to ask O'Toole to dissolve the restraining order completely.