What exactly was he found guilty of?
Using wget.
Andrew 'Weev' Auernheimer Faces Jail
61–70 of 71 posts
Re: Andrew 'Weev' Auernheimer Faces Jail
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's disingenuous. "Freely available" implies that AT&T desired to give this data away or advertised it knowingly. Clearly they didn't. What Auernheimer did, with intent, was to bypass AT&T's intended use of the system. What AT&T did was incompetent or perhaps even negligent by a reasonable notion of corporate coding standards. You'd need to dig a bit more to learn how systemic the incompetence/negligence was befor…
Disagreed. The facts are indeed that AT&T made this freely available... my definition of making something available is that it is readily available for the taking, whether I desired to give it away or not. If I leave my front door open due to negligence, I probably don't desire to be burglarized, but it is true to say that I have made my house contents freely available. If my house contents include a laptop full of p…
For anyone with a little knowledge about locks and basic tools, no conventional door lock prevents entry. So by your logic, nearly all house contents are freely available.
Regarding AT&T, it's not a question of responsibility - it's a question of a level of fault that is negligent. At some level, it's your responsibility because you gave AT&T your data, right? At some level, it's your responsibility because you have an email address, right?
Without a detailed assessment of many factors, just throwing out there that AT&T is negligent seems to be fairly irresponsible.
Re: Andrew 'Weev' Auernheimer Faces Jail
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
"But your honor! SHE WAS ASKING FOR IT! You can see how she dresses."
You've missed my point. If you were in a parking lot and found your car to be unlocked, this might alarm you. You might try someone else's door to see if it's similarly unlocked, and just to be sure it's not a fluke, you might try another. I'm not even going to try to adapt that to your rape scenario. I feel like there should be an equivalent of Godwin's law that I could appeal to in this context.
You paint far too innocent a picture of what happened. If we're going to use analogy, can't we make an effort to have it be accurate?
Let's roll with your scenario -- Do you systematically go through all the cars in the lot? Do you collect personal information from those cars, like names on the insurance? Do you get busted making on-the-record comments about exploiting the use of that data for your own personal gain?
Seriously, weev was hardly being a good samaritan. He was doing something he shouldn't have been doing, made some stupid/incriminating comments in a public forum, then didn't handle the data properly. Worst of all, he's facing serious jail time and is too obnoxious to even admit that what he did might have been inappropriate.
Personally, I'm all for living in a world where you can leave your car door unlocked and not be blamed when someone opens the door. Call it a Godwin-esque move if you want, but I'm just not into blaming victims.
Re: Andrew 'Weev' Auernheimer Faces Jail
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In many countries simply accessing a public server without consent is illegal 1) Set up a public server 2) Wait for google bot to show up 3) Press charges against google 4) Sue in civil court 5) Profit.
And in some countries you can only sue on the basis of an actual loss so as you haven't lost anything you have nothing to sue for...
There was a case where a search spider deleted all content from a database by following delete links. Would that count?
Re: Andrew 'Weev' Auernheimer Faces Jail
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just listed the charges, I didn't say I agreed with them. And I didn't say anything about AT&T. It seems clear that AT&T failed to protect their customer's personal details. Whether that makes them criminally liable depends on US law, about which I know almost nothing. This [1] article seems to imply that it is fairly weak compared to European data protection laws, so it may be that AT&T did nothing wrong in a stri…
"While its tempting to think that he was just made an example of for embarrassing a corporation, he did write a script to harvest 120,000 email addresses from the AT&T server. I'd say that constitutes criminal intent, even if he had no intention of using the addresses for a criminal purpose." Criminal intent...to do what exactly? Email people? Was he planning to send them spam? Why are we punishing someone who writes…
"Criminal intent...to do what exactly?"
Intent to commit a criminal act: "conspiracy to access a computer without authorization". If he'd just accessed a few accounts then that could be attributed to user error or a technical fault, if anyone ever even noticed. Put what he did shows persistent intent to do something which is illegal in the US, even if he wasn't aware of the illegality.
Look, I agree with you. Jailing this guy is manifestly absurd, stupid, and cruel. I was just trying to explain who other people, who may hold differing opinions to you and I and happen to write the law, might see things. Doesn't mean I agree.
Re: Andrew 'Weev' Auernheimer Faces Jail
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disagreed. The facts are indeed that AT&T made this freely available... my definition of making something available is that it is readily available for the taking, whether I desired to give it away or not. If I leave my front door open due to negligence, I probably don't desire to be burglarized, but it is true to say that I have made my house contents freely available. If my house contents include a laptop full of p…
For anyone with a little knowledge about locks and basic tools, no conventional door lock prevents entry. So by your logic, nearly all house contents are freely available. Regarding AT&T, it's not a question of responsibility - it's a question of a level of fault that is negligent. At some level, it's your responsibility because you gave AT&T your data, right? At some level, it's your responsibility because you have…
They're not negligent? Would you like them to handle your private data in this fashion? How about your children's data?
Re: Andrew 'Weev' Auernheimer Faces Jail
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Testing car door handles in a full parking lot is amazingly simple too. Does that mean it's okay to look through any unlocked cars' glove compartments to collect personal information of the owners? Auernheimer crossed a line. The punishment seems excessive, but then again I don't know all the details of what he tried to do with the data. The fact that he obtusely refuses to recognize that he crossed a line doesn't ex…
If you have a lot full of unlocked cars, perhaps you should bear some of the blame too? When Sony was hacked and user data was leaked, they received quite a bit of blame. At least they had some semblance of security. AT&T was wide open.
It's more akin to having a valet service and leaving people's cars unlocked, I think.
Re: Andrew 'Weev' Auernheimer Faces Jail
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
"While its tempting to think that he was just made an example of for embarrassing a corporation, he did write a script to harvest 120,000 email addresses from the AT&T server. I'd say that constitutes criminal intent, even if he had no intention of using the addresses for a criminal purpose." Criminal intent...to do what exactly? Email people? Was he planning to send them spam? Why are we punishing someone who writes…
"Criminal intent...to do what exactly?" Intent to commit a criminal act: "conspiracy to access a computer without authorization". If he'd just accessed a few accounts then that could be attributed to user error or a technical fault, if anyone ever even noticed. Put what he did shows persistent intent to do something which is illegal in the US, even if he wasn't aware of the illegality. Look, I agree with you. Jailing…
That's circular reasoning. We started with, "he accessed a computer". Then we asked, "what was his criminal intent in accessing that computer?" You can't answer, "to access that computer."
If he had sold the data to the Russians, that would have been the criminal intent we're seeking.
Re: Andrew 'Weev' Auernheimer Faces Jail
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disagreed. The facts are indeed that AT&T made this freely available... my definition of making something available is that it is readily available for the taking, whether I desired to give it away or not. If I leave my front door open due to negligence, I probably don't desire to be burglarized, but it is true to say that I have made my house contents freely available. If my house contents include a laptop full of p…
For anyone with a little knowledge about locks and basic tools, no conventional door lock prevents entry. So by your logic, nearly all house contents are freely available. Regarding AT&T, it's not a question of responsibility - it's a question of a level of fault that is negligent. At some level, it's your responsibility because you gave AT&T your data, right? At some level, it's your responsibility because you have…
Nah. If I give any website my email address, I have a reasonable expectation it won't be published on that website in a public manner ripe for harvesting. Unless of course the Ts&Cs I'm signing explicitly say it will (somewhere prominent, preferably in bold red with flashing letters).
Re: Andrew 'Weev' Auernheimer Faces Jail
#70It blows my mind that someone could get 10 years for idempotent operations on what was essentially a public API. Put in any other context than "scary computer hacking", it would be obvious to most people that the insecure system was at least as much to blame as this kid.
Firstly, the laws around this sort of thing are very stupid. But with that said...I'm not wholly sympathetic here. The disclosure was totally botched . The IRC logs that came out during the case showed that Andrew and Dan (Spitler) talked about shorting AT&T stock (they ended up not doing this, but it's not the sort of thing you talk about), and going directly to news organisations, bypassing AT&T. They also consider…
What would be wrong with shorting ATT and smearing them in the media for having shit security? Why wouldn't you talk about that?
The list was never made public.
I doubt they were joking when discussing selling the list, or spearphishing, or spamming it, or pastebinning it. Turns out, though, that that would have been harmful to innocent people - which is why it was not done.
There was no crime here. ATT said as much before the indictment.