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Teenager facing prison for downloading unsecured files from government website

cbc.ca

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Re: Teenager facing prison for downloading unsecured files from government website

#61

Post by gcommer »

whack wrote: post #55

This might be a controversial opinion here, but intent does matter. If I see a bunch of stuff sitting the sidewalk and I take some because I think it's free, that's a reasonable thing to do. But going into someone's house and taking their tv is not. "It's their own fault for not locking the door" isn't a valid legal defense, and I would prefer not to live in a country where victim-blaming becomes a get-out-of-jail-fr…

That analogy assumes a lot about how hard/hidden obvious id numbers in URLs are. I'd counter that this situation is more like "putting your stuff on the curb and being mad when people take it". Rather than scapegoat the kid, the government should be investigating themselves for criminal negligence.

Re: Teenager facing prison for downloading unsecured files from government website

#62

Post by colemannugent »

j32fun wrote: post #6

Since this is publicly accessible, what would be the chance that search engines indexed the files? In this case, would Google bot be charged? Or if this were, say, Equifax or Facebook. I mean, in those situations, the companies were blamed for "the leak". It seems rather convenient to cherry pick the law to apply on this poor teenager.

Yeah, what about that Cloudflare memory leak they had a while back? Are all the caches that retained the info complicit?

Re: Teenager facing prison for downloading unsecured files from government website

#63

Post by mcgarnagle »

dustingetz wrote: post #48
sbarre wrote: post #4

This reads like the beginning of The Hacker Crackdown.. As a Canadian, reading this article made me angry. If the information is not supposed to be public, it should not be reachable without authorization or authentication. Never mind a curious 19-year-old, there are tons of crawlers and indexers out there that attempt to enumerate URLs where they think there might be other content. Shame on them for building a poorl…

i can see how the older generation is thinking though, they see it like leaving a window unlocked doesn’t mean you can the laws are interpreted and applied by powerful people in a way that suits the way they think - that much i think could have been predicted (but not by a teenager) did the weev ruling surprise anybody other than hackers?

Yeah except it's a public space – So more like the library doors were unlocked.

Re: Teenager facing prison for downloading unsecured files from government website

#64

Post by eboyjr »

dustingetz wrote: post #48
sbarre wrote: post #4

This reads like the beginning of The Hacker Crackdown.. As a Canadian, reading this article made me angry. If the information is not supposed to be public, it should not be reachable without authorization or authentication. Never mind a curious 19-year-old, there are tons of crawlers and indexers out there that attempt to enumerate URLs where they think there might be other content. Shame on them for building a poorl…

i can see how the older generation is thinking though, they see it like leaving a window unlocked doesn’t mean you can the laws are interpreted and applied by powerful people in a way that suits the way they think - that much i think could have been predicted (but not by a teenager) did the weev ruling surprise anybody other than hackers?

Since it helps the older generation to think about digital content in metaphors, I'd argue that the kid was entering through an open window of a public building. Although a bit strange, no one would give this hypothetical person a third look.

Re: Teenager facing prison for downloading unsecured files from government website

#65

Post by adanto6840 »

I agree with many of the comments here, along the lines of "intent?" and "bad law", etc... How can I provide material assistance to either this kid and/or to the problem at large?

I'm looking for something other than "donate to the EFF [or equiv.]" ideally though; I'd prefer to donate directly to his legal fund, or even do some legwork myself that will help, etc.

And ideally in a way that not only helps him, but that helps prevent these situations from occurring in the future -- i.e. working towards law change, influencing prosecutorial discretion (meh), etc...

Re: Teenager facing prison for downloading unsecured files from government website

#66

Post by astrodust »

dv_dt wrote: post #40
sbarre wrote: post #4

This reads like the beginning of The Hacker Crackdown.. As a Canadian, reading this article made me angry. If the information is not supposed to be public, it should not be reachable without authorization or authentication. Never mind a curious 19-year-old, there are tons of crawlers and indexers out there that attempt to enumerate URLs where they think there might be other content. Shame on them for building a poorl…

Is there a Canadian version of the EFF, or does the EFF have an Canadian branch?

It really needs one. Cory Doctorow went to work for the EFF despite being Canadian probably because the Canadian analogues are pretty weak and disorganized by comparison.

Re: Teenager facing prison for downloading unsecured files from government website

#67

Post by tytytytytytytyt »

dustingetz wrote: post #48
sbarre wrote: post #4

This reads like the beginning of The Hacker Crackdown.. As a Canadian, reading this article made me angry. If the information is not supposed to be public, it should not be reachable without authorization or authentication. Never mind a curious 19-year-old, there are tons of crawlers and indexers out there that attempt to enumerate URLs where they think there might be other content. Shame on them for building a poorl…

i can see how the older generation is thinking though, they see it like leaving a window unlocked doesn’t mean you can the laws are interpreted and applied by powerful people in a way that suits the way they think - that much i think could have been predicted (but not by a teenager) did the weev ruling surprise anybody other than hackers?

It's more like having a 'Please take these unwanted items' bin and sending people to prison when they take something that you mistakenly put in the bin.

Re: Teenager facing prison for downloading unsecured files from government website

#68

Post by drtillberg »

czbond wrote: post #39

Cases like this make me want to attend law school. I am well versed in technology, have acted as CISO and other capacities. I bet I could decimate many prosecuting attorneys trying to make their weak cases.

Interdisciplinary skills are really undervalued in law practice. Usually (US) lawyers try to fill a room with 1 subject experts, which is uneconomical, and a government typically is not going to do it. So, in a run-of-the-mill matter like this there is no interdisciplinary skills available to stop the slow motion train wreck.

Re: Teenager facing prison for downloading unsecured files from government website

#69

Post by astrodust »

daodedickinson wrote: post #24
bowmessage wrote: post #9

Really worried about what the authorities might find in his 30TB of 4chan backups. Hoping for the best outcome for them.

Exactly. Why did this kid admit that? How astronomcally low are the odds there's nothing illegal to possess in there?

As the amount of 4chan material you've archived increases the probability of not archiving something illegal quickly diminishes to zero.

Re: Teenager facing prison for downloading unsecured files from government website

#70

Post by astrodust »

lurker456 wrote: post #15

perhaps we need an RFC that defines this type of approach (pages "secured" behind easily guessable urls) as public information.

Instead of actual security why not have a spec for /humans.txt which can say things like "Please don't read anything in the /secret directory."
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