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This hacker might seem shady, but throwing him in jail is bad for everyone

washingtonpost.com

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Re: This hacker might seem shady, but throwing him in jail is bad for everyone

#41

Post by recursive »

dopamean wrote: post #22
msandford wrote: post #12

If you visit and internet cafe and someone's forgotten to log out of their bank account and you fiddle with it, that's probably a crime. Since in nearly all cases they probably didn't intend to do such a thing. We can surmise this by observing the banking website had a password to protect the account holder. This is evident by virtue of the "log out" link that's clearly visible and that the website is served over HTT…

> You can't be unauthorized if there is no authorization. This is really the main point to me and I'm really confused as to how the law doesn't agree with this. How can you claim unauthorized access to something when there are no systems in place to grant or deny authorization? Comparing this to walking into someone's home who left the door unlocked (as someone in this thread has done) is bogus to me. Private propert…

There is a system in place. It's called HTTP status codes.

Re: This hacker might seem shady, but throwing him in jail is bad for everyone

#42

Post by msandford »

res0nat0r wrote: post #37
cortesoft wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is like walking into a private home because the door is unlocked... this is more like someone walking into a store, looking around, and then getting in trouble for looking at a specific display shelf that was in the back corner. The shelf wasn't labeled as off limits, you just were wondering around where you were supposed to and happen to see it. The store can't get mad and say "well yeah, but we put…

>This was a PUBLIC website... you are supposed to be able to visit it. If you make a request to a server without providing authentication and it returns data, that is not your fault. That is what you are SUPPOSED to do to servers. If it asks for authentication and tells you you are unauthorized, but you brute force the password or find an exploit, then THAT is a crime. There was not authentication in this case. Unfor…

If I find a $50 bill on a sidewalk I can INTEND to steal it as much as I want. But no matter how badly I WANT to steal it I cannot because at that point it's not a thing that can be stolen. There is no way to trace it back to it's former owner and as such, the first person to find it is legitimately the new owner.

Weev might have said that he "stole" the information or that he "intented" to perform an unauthorized access but ultimately that doesn't matter. There was no access control to prevent the internet's default of "everything is visible" so that's precisely what happened. It's not a hack no matter how badly he or the government want it to be. Intent matters not one iota.

Re: This hacker might seem shady, but throwing him in jail is bad for everyone

#43

Post by chris_mahan »

rpgmaker wrote: post #33
austenallred wrote: post #2

Reading this article http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/12/4693710/the-end-of-kindnes... makes me feel not too terrible that he's being thrown in jail.

Woah, I am still against his prosecution but I don't really feel sorry for him now. Some people are just sick, why would he do that to a person for no reason? FTA: "His rise as a folk hero is a sign of how desensitized to the abuse of women online people have become," Sierra said. "I get so angry at the tech press, the way they try to spin him as a trickster, a prankster. It’s like they feel they have to at least say…

From the internet, Kathy is a very nice and decent person. What happened to her is awful, and I'm glad she's still around, albeit in her reduced online presence. Shame on us all.

Re: This hacker might seem shady, but throwing him in jail is bad for everyone

#44

Post by joncfoo »

nonce42 wrote: post #30

It's worth reading the criminal complaint and indictment ( https://www.eff.org/cases/us-v-auernheimer ) to get some background. In particular: the discussions of using the email addresses for a phishing scheme, using them for spam, shorting AT&T stock and profiting off the data release, setting up WiFi routers so they can blame it on a third party, discussing how this was a federal crime, and how to spin themselves a…

The entire IRC conversation comes off as jest - nothing actionable from what I read (besides running the scripts). Even so, since when did it become a crime to talk about doing something [illegal]?

Also, Weev himself says that he is unwilling to short AT&T's stock - I think he understood the ramifications that would have.

Re: This hacker might seem shady, but throwing him in jail is bad for everyone

#45

Post by msandford »

biot wrote: post #35

Everyone throws out analogies about walking into unlocked houses and such. Those are fairly poor analogies, so let me offer one which I think is far better at conveying what really happens. Imagine you walked into a public library and struck up a conversation with the librarian: You: Can you tell me general information about this library? Librarian: Certainly, this library was built in 1990, has a million books on it…

You totally nailed it. 100% right. Distilled it down to the essentials of how the internet works and the nature of a protocol as a contract. Bravo.

Re: This hacker might seem shady, but throwing him in jail is bad for everyone

#46

Post by bcoates »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #39

So does anyone know why exactly they weren't able to get Weev on criminal harassment? I wouldn't expect the gummint to fail to bring the charge unless they thought there was no hope of victory, but it seems like such a gimme.

I'm not sure there is any relevant law. At the federal level it appears to require "obscenity" which is very hard to prove for anything short of child pornography.

Re: This hacker might seem shady, but throwing him in jail is bad for everyone

#47

Post by skwirl »

biot wrote: post #35

Everyone throws out analogies about walking into unlocked houses and such. Those are fairly poor analogies, so let me offer one which I think is far better at conveying what really happens. Imagine you walked into a public library and struck up a conversation with the librarian: You: Can you tell me general information about this library? Librarian: Certainly, this library was built in 1990, has a million books on it…

Really, you are going to give people crap for bad analogies, and then try to compare the actions of a conscious human being to an automated computer system?

Re: This hacker might seem shady, but throwing him in jail is bad for everyone

#48

Post by mhuisking »

biot wrote: post #35

Everyone throws out analogies about walking into unlocked houses and such. Those are fairly poor analogies, so let me offer one which I think is far better at conveying what really happens. Imagine you walked into a public library and struck up a conversation with the librarian: You: Can you tell me general information about this library? Librarian: Certainly, this library was built in 1990, has a million books on it…

Biot, Could you post that to the Washington Post story comments? It might be helpful to others reading the story there.

Re: This hacker might seem shady, but throwing him in jail is bad for everyone

#49

Post by hackula1 »

austenallred wrote: post #2

Reading this article http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/12/4693710/the-end-of-kindnes... makes me feel not too terrible that he's being thrown in jail.

The acts described in the article probably should have put him in jail. The latest is unrelated though.

Re: This hacker might seem shady, but throwing him in jail is bad for everyone

#50

Post by biot »

skwirl wrote: post #47
biot wrote: post #35

Everyone throws out analogies about walking into unlocked houses and such. Those are fairly poor analogies, so let me offer one which I think is far better at conveying what really happens. Imagine you walked into a public library and struck up a conversation with the librarian: You: Can you tell me general information about this library? Librarian: Certainly, this library was built in 1990, has a million books on it…

Really, you are going to give people crap for bad analogies, and then try to compare the actions of a conscious human being to an automated computer system?

Even though conscious human beings aren't able to follow a list of access rules quite as well as a computer system could, I won't hold that against them. There's nothing in my example which requires the librarian to make a judgment call. Barring mistakes caused by fatigue, laziness, corruption, and so on, the librarian should be able to perform nearly at the same level as the computer.
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