http://www.diamondbackonline.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2006/03/02/4406da4ad341e
Grad students detained while doing research
Police suspicious of class satellite-tracking activity
By Kate Campbell
March 02, 2006
Three international graduate students were detained and questioned for nearly four hours by Montgomery County police early Tuesday morning for using a device to track wireless communication signals for a class assignment.
The two men and a woman, all first-year graduate students from India in their early 20s, were not charged with a crime and will receive no sanctions. Neighbors had reported them to the police for suspicious activity because they had been driving through Silver Spring at about 15 miles per hour with elaborate equipment in their rental vehicle, according to the students.
Police also confiscated one student's laptop because they believed it was stolen.
The Diamondback is not naming the students because they asked to remain anonymous and because they were not officially charged for a crime by police, who said they had no information about the incident at press time.
The three students set off in a rental car at 10 p.m. Monday to complete an assignment for their interdisciplinary master's program in telecommunications, run by the electrical and computer engineering department. They planned to spend four to five hours driving a course through neighborhoods inside the Capital Beltway, tracking T-Mobile wireless signals, noting flaws in the network and the locations where each tower handed off the signal to the next.
The tracking device mounted on the roof of the car required that they maintain a speed of about 15 miles per hour, the students said. They set out a night to avoid traffic and because scheduling conflicts prevented them from going earlier. At about 2 a.m. Tuesday, driving through a residential Silver Spring neighborhood, the students noticed a police car following them and flashing its lights.
Officers detained them there for nearly two hours, questioned them, photographed them, recorded detailed descriptions of their physical appearances and inspected their visas, passports, university identifications and international driving permits.
"I wasn't frightened, but I was quite confused and couldn't understand why we were questioned so much after showing them why we were students at the University of Maryland," one of the male students said.
"We were feeling like thieves," another of the male students said. "When they took our photographs it was kind of embarrassing."
He added he is worried records of the incident may hurt his chances of finding a job in India or the United States.
The students said they were shaken by the incident but don't believe it constituted racial or national security profiling, or that it will jeopardize their positions as international students.
"I don't think it's anybody's fault, but it's maybe our bad luck," the female student said. "I don't think anything will happen because we didn't do anything wrong."
After the students answered questions about their identities, equipment and assignment, officers escorted the car back to I-495 and sent them home.
Police from Montgomery and Prince George's counties rejoined the students at their Berwyn House Road apartments, where after more questioning, an officer copied down the equipment's serial numbers and informed one of the male students his laptop appeared on a list of stolen electronics.
After showing the officer the receipt for the computer, as well as the shipping notice and the box it came in, the officer confiscated it.
"Everyone was shocked, dumbfounded, speechless," the female student said. "This has never happened before in our lives. I was very angry. I didn't appreciate the harassment."
The students were released by officers about 5 a.m. Tuesday and later informed their professor and department.
"They said they didn't want to call us in the middle of the night and wake us up," said Steve Tretter, director of the program. "I told them they were crazy and should have called us immediately."
Tretter said he and administrators were upset for the students.
Tretter said university Police Chief Ken Krouse is handling the effort to retrieve the student's laptop. The students said more than a dozen calls to police over the past two days about the computer have gone unreturned, and their next step will be contacting the international student office and enlisting more help from their program.
Senior staff writer Kevin Litten contributed to this report. Contact reporter Kate Campbell at [EMAIL PROTECTED].
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DO YOU USE WI-FI (Wireless Internet)? HELP MY RESEARCH BY TAKING A SHORT SURVEY
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Riad Lemhachheche
Mobile Technology Solution Laboratory
Dept of Ind & Mfg Engineering
Oregon State University
Corvallis,OR 97331
USA
http://www.oregonstate.edu/~lemhachr
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Corvallis,OR 97330
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