Imagine that just by proclaiming yourself a hacker that you could have your hardware seized by the federal government; it seems far fetched for sure, however it has proven to be true.

The worrisome revelation was reported by the Guardian recently and it describes a US government contractor, Battelle Energy Alliance, using the fear of criminal hackers to obtain a court order to seize the computer of an open-source developer, Corey Thuen, who worked for it, despite him not being present in court.

The company used an argument of copyright infringement and the reputed ability of hackers to cover their tracks online to obtain a court order against Thuen. It argued that he was likely to destroy evidence on his hard drive.

As well as being an open-source developer for Southfork Security, Thuen is a cybersecurity professional who previously worked for the FBI among other US government agencies.

The official documents specifically state that "the court finds it significant that defendants are self-described hackers".



"This makes it likely that defendant Thuen will delete material on the hard drive of his computer that could be relevant to this case. The tipping point for the court comes from evidence that the defendants – in their own words – are hackers," the court documents continue.

The order also prevented Thuen from releasing his allegedly copyright infringing open-source software, Visdom, a network visualisation and whitelisting tool that is used by security personnel to identify issues and weaknesses within a secure network.

Thuen previously worked on a similar tool as an employee of Battelle Energy Alliance called "Sophia", which forms the basis of the alleged copyright infringement.

This is a very scary precedent to set.