Vitek Boden v 'Queen'

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1. In the beginning of October 2001 , about 2 weeks before his case started in District Court in Maroochydore , he received from police forensic unit in Brisbane a CD , containing the copy of the program from his computer which was allegedly used for ' hacking '.
   ( CD was exhibit 38 )
   On that CD he discovered that one of the crucial files in the accusation against him was created on his computer after he was arrested and after the computer was taken into police
   ' safekeeping ' . ( 7.31.50 AM on 24.04.00 and he was arrested and computer taken from him at about 10 PM on 23.04.00 )
   
   
2. With that discovery he believed that the people who set him up were caught red handed because they made a mistake when ' modifying ' information on his computer in an attempt to show his guilt .
   
   
3. He talked about it to a barrister, Jeff Hunter, who was going to represent him in court , and Jeff Hunter said that he will look into it , however Vitek Boden noticed that Jeff Hunter was not extremely happy about Vitek Boden finding .

   Therefore Vitek Boden made an appointment to see on 12th October 2001 a lawyer from, what was then called, Criminal Justice Commission. He told that person that he has the prove that members of Queensland Police have been involved in an attempt to fabricate a case against him and he wanted to show that person that CD which was material evidence.

   To his surprise , he was told that CJC are not interested in that because they can act only if instructed so by a Court , that person even refused to look at or take a copy of the CD proving police involvement .

4. When his court hearing started he talked to his barrister Jeff Hunter again and he asked him what he plans to do to expose the manipulation - in reply he was told that barrister does not know how to approach this problem .
   Vitek Boden was left with no other alternative than to sack that barrister and to represent himself in court.
   ( Later Vitek Boden found that Jeff Hunter father in law was one of two judges in District court in Maroochydore. That barrister was selected for Vitek Boden by Legal Aid . )
   
   
5. Due to his lack of knowledge of court procedures and lack of questioning skills he was only able to show or point various weaknesses in the accusations against him without achieving admission from witnesses . He was hoping that jury will see the fabrication because it was so apparent.
   
   
6. The person who modified information on his computer made vital mistake and left obvious sign that computer has been tampered with . That person created a file on the morning of 24.04.00 before or after changing information in general registry file of computer memory but forgot about file ' properties ' information - which is attached to every file.
   
   
7. Explanation given in court by policeman Kingsley from forensic unit was that when PDSCONF program was extracted 'by forensic software' - the computer to which it was extracted assumed that all the 'times' recorded in this application properties were in GMT time , therefore an external application program on Kingsley computer converted it to assumed local time by adding 10 hours and according to Kingsley that file definitely was created on the 23rd of April 2000 and not after Vitek arrest . ( page 659 of the court transcripts )

8. It is simple mathematics to figure out that if a computer file was created on the
   9th of March at 1 PM and 10 hours are added it will not make 24th of April at 7.30 AM. Because registry is secondary information as opposed to primary in ' file properties' that discrepancy also shows that registry information on Vitek computer had been manually edited.

9. All this information was coming from Kingsley, he was the author of the Forensic Report which was presented during the Court case and he made the contradicting claim in the Court about his computer adding 10 hours to the time of creation of that file.
   GMT  + 10 hours  =  EST   but      EST   + 10 hours   =  ?

10. Russell Hanson QC, representing the prosecution, was aware what was going on and he said;
    ' I suppose you could argue there`s some evidence impugning the validity of Kingsley`s findings, some evidence that somebody tampered with his computer the next day, which is the suggestion put to Stringfellow when this came into evidence . Nonetheless, Kingsley dealt with that'. ( copy of that statement is on page 882 of court transcripts )

11. Russell Hanson was almost laughing at that point - problem for the prosecution was resolved by a simple lie by a person who normally is expected to be beyond suspicion - a police officer and so called forensic expert . It also shows the arrogance of the people in the system who do not even care about apperances of fairness .

12. Obviously , someone from Maroochydore police station let this to be done on Vitek Boden computer and this police station gained some notoriety in the past in relation to drug dealing by police officers .

    In September 2002 it was in news again when 110 thousand dollars ( taken from a suspected drug dealer ) disappeared from the same police station and incredibly, the thief has not been found according to publicised in February 2003 result of investigation.

13. On appeal to Supreme Court of Queensland - the 3 wise judges chose to completely ignore the facts and although they were discussing in detail other minor matters - that major one about police officer lying in court was dealt with only by very short mention - that jury had the right to do what they did. Judges were terrified to even indicate that accusation of purgery and perversion of the course of justice was made against policeman.

14. Judges from high court of au went one step further - according to them facts are not
    the matter for the high court ( sic !) - they are only interested in ' the matters of law ' .
    If facts , truth and justice are taken away from subjects of their deliberation - what is left over?
    High court has been accused previously of talking too much about nothing in particular - mythical matters of law - which nobody understands , nobody cares and even they cannot humanly explain . If they did it as a hobby in their spare time that would be fine - but they are doing that at the cost of ignoring bread and butter of the justice system - making sure that the JUSTICE IS SERVED .

15. Vitek Boden was not allowed to read his statement in High court . One of the judges said
    ' you should not have sack your barrister ' - implying that as the ' revenge ' Vitek Boden is ignored by courts and only issues raised by one of their own breed may have some consideration . ( see hearing transcripts ) ( it is a perfidy of the system that only general points raised by judges are available on court sites on the Internet and anyone wanting to find out how judges comments relate to issues raised by appelants has to obtain paper copies )

16. It is also remarkable that the Department of Public Prosecution in Queensland choose to ignore fact of police involvement as well - in their responces to both courts there is not even one sentence queering facts or an attempt to provide an alternative explanation .

17. Not too often criminal behaviour of police can be proven in black and white by documents What is worrying greatly is that other elements of the ' justice industry ' and government bureaucracy are more interested in protection of criminals working for Queensland police , in condoning and encouraging their actions then in truth and justice . They are granting to police the privilege to commit any crime .

Blatant disregard for the principles they preach to the society is exposed .

References :

1. District court in Maroochydore - DC 340/2001 - judge Keith Dodds
   ( hard copies of transcripts )

2. Supreme court of Queensland - CA 324/2001 - judges - Davies JA, Muir, Wilson JJ
   http://www.courts.qld.gov.au/... /QCA02-164.pdf

3. High court of Australia - B55/2002 - judges -McHUGH J, KIRBY J
   http://www.hcourt.gov.au/registry/matters/Jun03/B55-2002.rt
   

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Description of the  court case

I was employed by HWT for 2.5 years as Telemetry Engineer/ Project Supervisor on  SCADA project for Maroochydore Shire Council.
My duties were to supervise installation of equipment ; commissioning the sites , the computer and radio network and liaisons with programmers , MSC , JWP and contractors .
I resigned from HWT on 3.12.1999 after installation was completed and system was workable . It was never perfect , due to problems with hardware/software , however, when I was leaving HWT, all station with telemetry installed under contract were working and all parts of the computer supervisory system were working as well . Importantly , on average , I had 5-10 problems a week requiring attention on stations due to hardware/software faults  .

Also in 2.5 years I had about 10 times computer crashes shutting down parts of the system due to software problems ( CITECT and specialized subprograms written by HWT) or computer system not being powerful enough to handle the job ( false 'savings' intended to make more money later for 'upgrade' ). As a comparison , in the same room next to SCADA computer, there was another computer used by MSC for word processing and a bit of spreadsheet work which was 2 times more powerful than SCADA computer .

On the basis of my experience on the job I can made an educated guess , that certain problems with hardware/software or supervising computer malfunctioning , are presented as a work of a
' hacker' ( however , nobody ever seen that person doing anything ) .

Such claim is especially convenient for HWT but also MSC has interest in presenting own negligence and incompetence as someone 's else fault . The  only ' evidence ' is coming from  people having vested interest in protecting themselves using lies and deception  . One of the strange things in this case is that although HWT claimed that there was an outsider sending messages on the network they never used eg. directional scanner to locate such person .
Engaging HWT by MSC to prove that their equipment is perfect and problems are ' created ' by an outsider was not only a conflict of interest but it is obvious that HWT had to prove outside interference so not to loose face . All so called ' offences ' are in fact  admissions that problems occurred with the system . Problems with SCADA did not stop occurring after I have been charged and HWT/MSC are giving misleading explanation to the nature of further problems .

MSC bought the story of a ' hacker ' because it enabled middle management to excuse themselves for incompetence and negligence before Councilors and public . It forced HWT to try to improve the system and it was hiding lack of technical expertise among MSC technical staff .
Since  the problem on 26.3.00 in Mudgimba when a council employee ignored alarms coming from the system and also ignored residents complaints – MSC panicked when faced with outrage from residents , media  and others and since that time they had common interest with HWT – to
' prove' that 'someone' is sabotaging the system .

At one stage EPA jumped on the bandwagon having own agenda as well . These people never seriously investigated problems in Maroochy created by negligence or incompetence of MSC employees being always  satisfied with the information that volume of overflow was 'unknown'.

Involvement of police in ' investigation ' is a joke . The person in charge , by his own admission , did not have a clue about issues involved , he did not use any technical advisor , it would be hard to describe him as an ' intelligent person ' and he let HWT people to interfere  with equipment taken from me claiming at the same time that he did not know about problems facing HWT ( loss of at least A$ 100 000 on the job etc. ) .
Information and claims coming from HWT/MSC were not verified by someone with expert technical knowledge and basically they are ( one witness called it a ' scenario ' ) as plausible as a story of Snow White .

If there was a hacker trying to cause a damage - this person did not have the complete knowledge of the system especially alarm system . There are about 15 people from the Council who have some knowledge , have been trained how to use laptop and manipulate PDSCONFIG to change/load configuration . Among them all maintenance people have access to spare radios , COMPACTS and keys to stations . 

With my in depth knowledge of the system ( I designed part of it , I wrote programs etc. ) I am aware that , it is pointless to cause a problem on any station only ,  because it will be detected by SCADA and an alarm will be sent through to a pager . As long as SCADA computer is operating correctly ( including paging system ) an operator will be informed about any problem or loss of communication . The only way to cause a damage is to simultaneously cause a local problem on a station and  disable CITECT or paging system . It can be done  but it appears that it never happened and I have not been charged with that .

Until March of 2001 I knew only vaguely what accusation are all about – police kept changing their story and  ' evidence ' . I received copies of some statements previously but they sounded so incredible that I thought it would not be  a problem to prove in Court that witnesses are lying .
Initially I was charged with committing number of offences ( computer hacking ) from 23.12.1999 – however after I sent a letter to Brisbane CIB and disclosed that at the time I was actually overseas , the charges for that period have been removed . I have to point out that the nature of problems MSC experienced in this period and later is identical and there is no other evidence except claim by people from MSC/HWT that they believe  I was responsible .
Another lot of accusations was pure rubbish , some are technically impossible to happen as claimed , but on 26.3.01 police removed again several of these accusations after I sent them a letter pointing out the absurdity of the claims.

It was clearly my mistake by sending them letters but at that time I still believed that police will be doing the right thing. Only much later I learned that the idea is to throw in any accusations with the hope that one of them will be impossible to disprove by the accused person therefore it will be 'proved' in court.

Since I had opportunity to look at some evidence I am certain that some cases are obvious technical problems and easy to prove . Some others can be attributed to mistakes made  by HWT/MSC employees ( at different times various people were having ' a go ' to fix up problems ) ; misreading the symptoms ; a feature in COMPACT enabling it to send automatically register read/ write messages ; editing some entries in files to appear as proving HWT/MSC claims
( almost impossible to prove or disapprove due to ease with which it can be done ) ; use of PCAnywhere to send messages remotely .
It is hard to exclude that a problem ( or a few ) were caused by ' a person ' - but it appears that the only outcome could be a minor nuisance and overtime payment for some people .

On 23.4.00 I went to North Shore of Noosa/Rainbow Beach area – but due to weather turning bad on this day I decided to go back to Brisbane . On my way back , close to Brisbane , I was stopped by police , arrested and charged .

For a period of about 2 weeks before that , I was watched by private investigators and in this period on one occasion police claim that I was ' hacking ' in Maroochydore when in fact investigators saw me in Brisbane . In that period some other ' suspect ' messages can be found in monitoring files but somehow I am not blamed  for them .

On 23.4.00, when I was stopped and technical equipment and a test kit was taken from me, police called people from HWT to ' inspect ' it  ( at 1am after midnight ) , instead of giving it to an independent expert for examination . My property did not get to Brisbane CIB until about 10 days later and  my computer has been tampered with since it was taken away from me .

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There are 2 pieces of information from Kingsley own report , which was presented in Court as Exhibit 40 , which show that he was lying :

The properties  for  files copied from my laptop by police computer expert on 13.9.01 compared with the Registry entries on my laptop .

1. Information for the Pdsconf.PIF file ( created and modified date and time ) proves that  my laptop was not really shut down last time  at 21.37 on 23.4.2000 .
   That file was actually created and modified on  24.3.00 at 7.31 AM – the next day
   after I was arrested and my laptop was in possession of Maroochy police
   (  police computer expert in Brisbane received it 10 days later ) .
   GMT  + 10 hours  =  EST   but      EST   + 10 hours   =  ?

2. The properties for both files ( created , modified , accessed ) are different than those in the Registry , indicating that the relevant entries in the Registry files have been         
   ' modified ' to create impression that those files were used on 23.4.00 .

3. The person(s) falsifying the Registry files was obviously experienced but also careless in not making sure that both sets of data are identical ; that  person  ' forgot ' to change properties  for the files in the file directory ' PDS ' .

4. On pages 5 and 6 of his report he lists 18 files created on 23rd of April 2000 on my computer, and there is no PDSCONF.PIF file anywhere to be found . If his excuse was true that file should be listed there . ( PDSCONF.PIF file is created to control execution of program in DOS environment and is 'modified' every time that executable is used )

4. Also in the same report , on page 3 paragraph 3 , he quotes the secondary information from general registry file which clearly indicates that Pdsconf.pif file was created at about 1pm on 09.03.00. (13.18.16 )
   

The Registry entries from my laptop  ( 3 different dates of creation for the file )

a. Copies of the Registry entries copied by Forensic Computer Examination Unit
( police ) on 29.01.2001 . ( page 38 of the exhibit 36 )

b. as found on Lewer computer ( HWT ) – received in March 2001 ( file -  laptopfiles )

c . from the report of police computer expert from 10.08.2001

d . properties of the same file as copied by police computer expert from my laptop
11. The Registry file on my laptop computer shows that Windows directory  had been accessed after my  arrest at least on following occasions :

/System/mstask.exe             modified on   03.12.2000 at 10.22.34       page 83                     
/system/msr2c.dll                  modified on   04.07.2000 at 13.10.46       page 83         
/system/msr2cenu.dll          modified on   04.07.2000 at 13.10.46       page 83         
/system/webcheck.dll          modified on   03.12.2000 at 10.22.42       page 93           
/system/sage.exe                 modified on   03.12.2000 at 10.22.36       page 94         
/system/map32.dll                modified on   04.11.2000 at 10.13.20       page 95
/system/SetupUtil.exe         modified on   03.05.2000 at 15.10.30       page 96
/system/nabap.dll                 modified on   02.07.2000 at 02.42.14       page 97         
/system/system.ini                created on     04.11.2000 at 10.51.56       page 98         
/system/win.ini                      modified on    04.11.2000 at 10.13.22      page 98
/inf/iereset.inf                        modified on     04.11.2000 at 10.38.56     page 104      
/inf/mstack.inf           modified on     03.12.2000 at 10.22.36     page 104      
/dosstart                     modified on     04.12.2000 at 17.38.106   page 105      

/sysbckup/pirb003.cab                    created on     04.11.2000 at 10.18.56       page 106     

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Analysis of witnesses statements