In a move that seems to happen more and more at hacking conferences these days, a presenter was arrested by the feds. The owner of Pallorium Inc., Steve Rambam, was taken into custody just before he was set to lead a panel on privacy at the HOPE conference in NYC. Apparently, the FBI quietly took him from the auditorium with his laptop.
“If you know Steve then you know he’s very flamoyant, and at first I thought it was just PR, you know?” said Kelly Riddle, a private investigator from San Antonio who was to speak alongside Rambam. “So, they asked him to step out in the hallway, placed the handcuffs on him and started to lead him off.”
Rambam was going to discuss how he dug up — in just 4.5 hours of searching private and public databases — more than 500 pages worth of data on HOPE attendee Rick Dakan, who agreed to be the guinea pig for the project.
The conference organizers were trying to discover where and exactly why Rambam was taken. Turns out that they took him into custody but, will not release any other information until Monday July 24th.
And, we wait.
[tags]HOPE, HOPE Six, Steve Rambam, FBI, FBI arrest[/tags]