Rajib Mitra, a UW-Madison graduate student, is detained in the Dane County Jail after allegedly disrupting radio communication between police and fire personnel since last spring.
Mitra faces 16 felony counts under Wisconsin's computer crime statute.
According to the police report, the problem began last spring after the Madison police and fire departments switched their radio communication systems from a 450 megahertz high-band radio system to a 800 megahertz narrow-band \trunked"" radio system.
Last spring police and fire personnel began reportedly having problems communicating on their new radio systems. Problems have been intermittent but they recurred Oct. 31.
Halloween evening, police and fire personnel began to report reception problems. The reception difficulties did not have an effect on State Street policing procedures, but they negatively interfered with normal police and fire communication throughout most of the night. Technicians later traced the source of the problems to Mitra's home in the N. Orchard Street/Regent Street neighborhood.
Problems recurred Tuesday, Nov. 11, and the reception problems were again traced to the same location.
Mitra may have broadcast pornographic audio on chosen police and fire radio frequencies the night of Nov. 11, according to police.
Probable cause for the arrest of Mitra was found, and a search warrant was also issued to uncover radio and computer equipment that was used illegally.
Mitra received his undergraduate degree in computer sciences from UW-Madison, but police have not specified how his computer training relates to this incident.
""We teach people to design software to make it hard to break into,"" said Edouard J. Desautels, professor emeritus of computer sciences. ""We have to discuss the issue of break-ins, which is popularly called hacking. But when we do that, we make it clear that people who are hacking are breaking the law.""
Even before he attended UW-Madison, Mitra accumulated a dense record of computer-related crimes, mostly relating to accessing computer programs or supporting documentation. He came to UW-Madison after serving four months in jail for hacking into the University of Iowa's computer system.
-Wisconsin State Journal and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel contributed to this report.
