iPad hacker breaks gagging order over Apple persecution

One of the team after exposing the security flaw in AT&T's iPad data systems has broken a gagging order to protest at unlawful persecution on behalf of Apple.

Andrew 'Escher' Auernheimer, a member of the Goatse Security group, said in blog post that he and others were being hounded by police for using legitimate computer security techniques and to protest that he has apparently been denied a lawyer.

“I am being persecuted solely because my speech has angered a large corporation. I have been threatened with indictment from the Assistant US Attorney on the case,” he wrote.

“My actions and those of Goatse were not criminal; they were done using industry standard practices as a public service. Scraping data from a public web server is an extremely common practice amongst lawyers, security researchers and journalists, not to mention web developers.”

Auernheimer pointed out that other security researchers had used similar techniques in hacking Foursquare and no action had been taken. He is asking for contributions towards a legal defence fund.