14 DAY TRIAL // Renowned iPhone and PS3 hacker geohot has lost another battle in its legal war with Sony today, as the judge refused to rescind an order that forces him to hand over his computers to the company's lawyers.
Sony managed to obtain a temporary restraining order against George "geohot" Hotz after he released the root keys used to sign all code that runs on the PlayStation 3.
In addition to removing all PS3 keys, jailbreaks and other information about circumventing the console's protection mechanisms from his website and YouTube channel, Hotz was ordered to hand over his computers and storage devices for inspection.
The hacker's attorney, Stewart Kellar, asked the judge to reconsider the decision because riffling through all of Hotz' personal files is not proportional with the goal of finding references of PS3 hacks on his computers.
According to Wired, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston told Kellar that the practice of full computer inspection is common in child pornography prosecutions, to which the attorney responded that such serious offenses are not at issue in this case.
The judge didn't back down, but she promised to make sure that Sony's lawyers only isolate the information pertaining to the company's complaint against Hotz.
"Here, I find probable cause that your client has got these things on his computer. It’s a problem when more than one thing is kept on the computer.
"I’ll make sure the order is and will be that Sony is only entitled to isolate … the information on the computer that relates to the hacking of the PlayStation," judge Illston said.
She also apologized for a request in the original order that asked Hotz to "retrieve" the information he shared with the entire Internet. She conceded that it's simply not practical and said that "it kind of got away" from her the first time.
Sony also filed complaints against a group of hackers who discovered the security weakness that led to the extraction of the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) key.
The company is now pressing Twitter for information about their identity and Google for the IP address of people who viewed geohot's video showing how to jailbreak the game console.