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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

#261

Post by jstarfish »

cnniris393 wrote: post #230
munk-a wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this is a classic case of a subcontractor doing substandard work, leaving a security hole big enough to drive a truck through, and then trying to sue someone to save face... Sigh. If some of those documents weren't appropriate to be viewed by the general populace then the company was criminally negligent in their handling of the data, the "hacker" saw an open door with a sign reading "free information" on it and d…

And the cries by old geezers in charge, yet clueless of what it is they’re “in-charge of”, that he stole it are eye rolling It’s ageism but at this point I’m pretty convinced old people should be term limited from office The problems we seem to be facing are almost entirely due to their inability to move on Youth shouldn’t spend their lives kowtowing to geezers that quit thinking and are simply peddling what’s become…

> It’s ageism but at this point I’m pretty convinced old people should be term limited from office

Resource depletion from overpopulation aside, the lack of social progress we will see once we manage to extend life to the point of immortality is one of the more depressing outlooks I can imagine. Old ideas will never die.

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

#262

Post by always_good »

rayiner wrote: post #172
doomtop wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you might be thinking of an anchor element. People ask for the "link" when they mean the URI all the time.

Wikipedia disagrees: > In computing, a hyperlink, or simply a link, is a reference to data that the reader can directly follow either by clicking, tapping, or hovering. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks. The text that is linked from is called anchor text. A software system that is used for viewing and creating hypertext is a hypertext…

You're just being stubborn. Link is used to mean a URL by the layperson. For example, I don't think I've ever heard my family say "URL" in their life.

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

#263

Post by Hasz »

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.

On a differnt note, is this level of backup a common thing?

30TB is a stupid amount of anything for any one person -- I've always used wayback if I wanted to see an old page

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

#264

Post by brailsafe »

rayiner wrote: post #124
freshmint wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I already play with urls that have possible id's in them out of habit. The only difference here is the poor kid was on a gov website and they did not want the information he found to be public. ( Or like in the USA he might have to pay for each document accessed. But I feel that should not result in a raid to his house.) It is a shame the kid was their target and not a google bot like you said.

> I already play with urls that have possible id's in them out of habit Do you jiggle door handles out of habit to see if they're unlocked? It's antisocial behavior. If you were supposed to have access to that document, it would be accessible from a link or search box on the main site.

Door handles should be actively jiggled on the regs. If anything it's social behavior. Maybe you'll walk in on an orgy and get to join in!

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

#266

Post by shkkmo »

I assume it was the large number of requests over a short period from a single IP that drew their eye to it?

I wonder how many other people found the same thing and slurped this data down in a more circumspect way before this kid was kind enough to expose this privacy breach for us?

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

#267

Post by rayiner »

ShroudedNight wrote: post #242
rayiner wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At what point does the owner or their agents find themselves posessing the onus to clearly communicate their will? The law is that the onus falls on the owner or their agents at the point where a reasonable person would not be able to infer the scope of the implied license from the circumstances. I posit that a reasonable person (not an HN reader) would infer from a document being only accessible by editing a URL t…

>I posit that a reasonable person (not an HN reader) would infer from a document being only accessible by editing a URL that it was not intended to be publicly accessible. Do you view 'a HN reader' as a reasonable representation of someone skilled in the art [of creating and serving websites]? Unless I'm missing something, the only conclusion that I can see following this line of reasoning is that skill in the art is…

Except in certain limited areas (e.g. “the reasonable doctor” standard for medical malpractice), the standard is the “reasonable person,” not the “reasonable person skilled in the art.”

People on HN are not representative, because they know about computer security and HTTP access codes. We don’t live in a world where those people get to make the rules. We live in a world where the rules are set by reference to ordinary people. My mom gets to set the rules for what’s “reasonable” (what are the social norms everyone has to follow). Not you or me.

My point is that a reasonable layman would assume that if a document was not linked or indexed from a public portion of the site, it was not meant to be accessed. That makes sense, because if the document was meant to be accessed, it would be made accessible in a way a reasonable lay person would know how to access it.

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

#268

Post by jstarfish »

hnaccy wrote: post #260
Anon1096 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on the boards archived there's a pretty good chance he doesn't have CP. Only /b/ (and I hear /sp/ as well but I never go there) really ever have child porn, and then very very rarely and quickly deleted to the point that an archiver might not pick it up. Due to the sheer size and uselessness of a possible /b/ archive I kind of doubt there's anything bad.

If his archive was automated it's basically guaranteed he's saved a fair bit of loli content. Not sure of the legality in Canada, but this is seems like a case where they'd railroad you for something they normally don't enforce, e.g., Chris Handley in the states. CP would not be unlikely even if he just archived "safe" boards like /a/, /tv/, and /g/.

If he's scraping the softcore or hardcore boards (because nobody's archiving 4chan for its intellectual discussions), he's absolutely going to have more than a few under-18 subjects in there doing sexually explicit things. If the state can verify the age and identity of any of them, he's toast.

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

#269

Post by jmvoodoo »

rayiner wrote: post #192
prophesi wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an obligation to secure sensitive information of people. Obscurity is not security, and so Nova Scotia was improperly storing the data.

The fact that Nova Scotia might have violated a separate obligation to secure sensitive information doesn't make accessing that information not trespass.

This isn't even the case though. The site specifically says that the documents, all of them, are public. They just happened to have noticed they screwed up and published some they shouldn't have, and are now going after someone who downloaded the entire set. This was not prohibited in any way that was documented on the site,and the language that was on the site made it sound like it was allowed. Since the theme is analogies how about this one: someone puts a box labeled "free stuff" in front of their house. You dig through it and find something of value. You take it and go home. A few days later your house is raided because the owner of the house put in something valuable by mistake and is now claiming they never intended for anyone to take anything that wasn't visible from the street. Since you dug through the box, they are charging you with theft.

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

#270

Post by c22 »

rayiner wrote: post #259
jolmg wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A link is not someone giving you permission, it's merely telling you where something else is. I can't think of how you even came to this conclusion. It's like you have this incredibly restricted view of the internet, limited to people clicking on a browser, and think that's enough for protecting files. It's not. You don't seem to realize how bad of an idea this is. You're talking about making criminals of people. You…

I have a view of the Internet where “protecting files” has nothing to do with whether access to files is authorized or not. I shouldn’t have to lock my door, and I shouldn’t have to lock down my web server. (It may be prudent to do those things, but a trespasser shouldn’t escape penalty just because I didn’t do those things.)

I agree that you shouldn't have to lock your door, but a web server is nothing like a house. You should be expected to put a fence around your playground equipment in a grassy field if you don't intend for people to use it as a public park. Even more to the point, you should lock the utilities shed at the public park you run lest someone mistake it for the public loo.
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