The Bitcoin Baron, a self-proclaimed vigilante responsible for DDoS attacks on civic networks in Madison, Wisc., San Marcos, Texas, and other sites in 2015, has been collared in Phoenix and sentenced to serve 20 months in prison.
The conviction and sentencing is only for the former attack, in which Randall Charles Tucker, who was 20 at the time, disabled the City of Madison’s website for six days, crippled the 911 emergency communication system and degraded the emergency service dispatch system. He went on to boast about the attacks on social media, according to the court documents, and on Skype chats in his gaming community.
The attack’s motivation is unclear, but it came shortly after a fatal shooting of a 19-year-old unarmed black man by a Madison police officer sparked outrage. Police brutality soon became a recurring theme for Tucker.
[...] The hacker pleaded guilty in April of last year to one count of intentional damage to a protected computer, in Madison.
In addition to the jail time, U.S. District Judge Douglas L. Rayes of the District of Arizona also ordered Tucker to pay $69,331.56 in restitution.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Monday June 25 2018, @09:43AM (2 children)
A "protected" computer? Armed guards? Passwords? MS security essentials on it? All the windows updates?
I want to make sure if someone DDoS my computer it's officially a "protected computer" so they get in uber doober trouble.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Monday June 25 2018, @12:48PM (1 child)
It's probably protected with boilerplate and passwords.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @04:26PM
It's protected by a sign on the server room door that reads, "Beware of Leopard".
(Score: 3, Informative) by nobu_the_bard on Monday June 25 2018, @12:07PM
Not much of a vigilante if nobody can even is sure what justice you claim to be fighting for.
(Score: 4, Touché) by LoRdTAW on Monday June 25 2018, @12:16PM (20 children)
The attack’s motivation is unclear, so lets make up some bullshit to sell the story.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Monday June 25 2018, @01:04PM (18 children)
Sounds good enough to me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @01:29PM (17 children)
Another snowflake millennial except he's going to find out the real meaning of brutality up close and personal. He's going to have to depend on those same authorities to protect him in the pen. Being an overweight, vigilante, social justice superhero isn't going to save him from his other cellmates.
(Score: 4, Touché) by khallow on Monday June 25 2018, @01:37PM (15 children)
In other words, they're going to show him just how right he was? It's like getting pushed off a bridge for complaining there's no handrails.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @02:34PM (14 children)
Not at all. You don't seem to see the difference in police apathy to your problems with police brutality. Or do you call it police brutality when you call 911 and nobody shows up until after your perpetrator has already completed his crime against you?
When someone behaves like a dick to me, they find themselves at the bottom of my priority list when they come running to me for help.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Monday June 25 2018, @03:43PM (13 children)
Only a matter of degree.
I would, if they deliberately created the situation for the crime, deliberately showed up late in order to maximize the harm of the crime, and never got around to actually doing something about the crime. That's what you are proposing with "police apathy" in prison.
Better not put you in a position of responsibility eh? I find it interesting how you can rationalize further police dereliction of duty and brutality towards someone merely because they have complain about those very things in a rude way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @06:42PM (12 children)
No. That is what you are proposing. We are talking about a dickhead who DDOSed municipal networks to get his jollies thereby blocking people who legitimately needed to contact 911 just because it suited his social justice conscience. If anyone deliberately created the situation for the crime [of prisoner on prisoner brutality since that is what I have been discussing from the beginning] it was Mr Randal Charles Tucker. He earned his ticket to lockup and all the wonderful benefits it entails..
My direct quote from my first post since you didn't read far enough:
I'd like to see where his politics fall after 20 months in lockup.
I find it interesting how you can rationalize as "complaining about those very things in a rude way" the DDOS of Madison WI municipal networks over a six day period disrupting 911 emergency service, extortion of a San Marcos TX municipal network disruption where he demanded payment for relief, DDoS attacks against Moore, Okla. network, DDOS against municipal networks in the Phoenix suburbs of Chandler and Mesa and an attack on the website for the Shriners Hospitals for Children organization, which he reportedly defaced with child pornography. Lovely guy. Personally, I think 20 months is a light sentence.
And lefties wonder why rational people have no sympathy at all for vigilante SJWs. You keep defending this asshole for just "complaining in a rude way" though.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday June 25 2018, @07:28PM (11 children)
Sorry, still sounds like enabling prison guard brutality. "Benefits" don't have to include prisoner violence. This isn't about whether or not he committed crimes or should go to prison, it's about the power prison guards have to make life hell for those under their watch. That's exactly the sort of brutality he would have been protesting.
Prison does a notoriously poor job of changing political views for the better. Look at the worst evils of the world last century. A surprising number of them did time (for example, Hitler, Lenin, and Stalin).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @08:36PM (10 children)
Once again it's NOT about "prison guards [making] life hell for those under their watch." It's about his fellow inmates. As I said in the very first post, "He's going to have to depend on those same authorities to protect him in the pen." You somehow want to equate prisoner on prisoner violence to guard brutality. Personally, I hope the irony is not lost on him that IF the guards prioritize his security below other duties, it's only the same brand of vigilante justice that he himself enjoyed engaging in.
Second, it's not "PROTESTING" if you demand payment to call off your DDOS attack. It's engaging in a criminal enterprise. I also fail to see how defacing a website for the Shriners Hospitals for Children with child pornography could ever qualify as any legitimate protest.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 26 2018, @03:45AM (6 children)
Exactly. The fellow inmates are the primary tools by which those same authorities can abuse their wards.
Whatever.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 26 2018, @01:16PM (5 children)
I'm beginning to understand why we cannot see eye to eye on what constitutes brutality. You flippantly discount extortion equating it with protesting. You ignore the scores of innocent bystander victims who could not reach 911 services during this scumbag's "protest." Your only concern lies with his treatment at the hands of his fellow convicts that you want to conflate with guard responsibility as though it were being directed by guards.
Why do you identify only with criminals? Did you do some time?
Personally, I think this guy is a piece of shit. I don't care what his alleged intentions were. His actions hurt innocent people. He felt safe on his little computer causing mayhem and now he is dependent on those same people that he claimed to oppose for his own security. He was so sure of his convictions, he was willing to harm others to prove it. That's irony. He had better hope he was wrong in his broad painting of law enforcement for his own sake.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 26 2018, @02:07PM (4 children)
No, you aren't.
No, I didn't. Words have meaning. "Protest" doesn't mean "absence of extortion". It means such things as:
Extortion can indeed be an action expressing such. I think that was the case with this story.
Because I don't want my society to devolve to the point where freedom-loving people become the criminals.
I agree. I don't agree that we should abandon our laws and freedoms merely because there are pieces of shit in our societies.
He's not. We all know that in too many cases they're just another gang, particularly in prisons. Maybe he'll end up somewhere where they take their job seriously, but odds are good that he won't.
It is directed by the guards. The general population will figure out real fast who isn't protected, assuming the guards don't tell everyone in the first place. And once again, I find your cognitive dissonance interesting. You complain of the people harmed by Mr. Baron, but not of the people harmed by prison guards every day. Well, guess what happens when laws can be broken whenever it's convenient. You get a tyranny of thugs who are above those laws.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 26 2018, @06:28PM (3 children)
Yeah, I think we're done here. If you cannot discern that extortion (for personal enrichment) is not protest, we have no common ground.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 26 2018, @10:34PM (2 children)
Sorry, the discernment problem is not on my end. Words have meaning. It's not my problem that you can't wrap your head around what "protest" means. I gave you the definition, described how acts of extortion can fit in, and you're still blathering. The same problem goes on with all the other things we've talked about. You're talking not thinking. What more should I do here?
Fortunately, stupidity is extremely varied. Sure, you have a bunch of fellow idiots who believe the same things you do. But you all are countered by other idiots with different beliefs going in different screwy directions. It's noise in the end. I think we can continue to protect our democracies of the world from you, should we desire it. Ending police brutality (in a legal way rather than a disrupt 911 way) is a big step to making that future possible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27 2018, @12:51AM (1 child)
When you chose your name, you misspelled callow.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 27 2018, @02:42AM
Third, repeatedly and boastfully milks the irony of what's going to happen to a guy who allegedly protested police brutality in prison due to criminal actions of prison guards. Somehow that prison guard brutality (sorry, allowing proxy inmates to brutalize someone on your behalf is still your brutality) is going to persuade Mr. Baron that police brutality is not a big thing? That's absurd.
At this point, I think the thread is officially over. The nutso side is reduced to hurling empty insults and I've said my piece. May you, AC, learn through good fortune rather than bad the utter folly of your present beliefs.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 26 2018, @12:33PM (2 children)
And personally, I hope any prison guard who actually does that felony ends up in jail (just like our Bitcoin Baron did!). I find it remarkable how you blissfully brag about prison guard brutality and then rationalize it away as being due to "fellow inmates".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 26 2018, @01:27PM (1 child)
No guard will ever be charged with a felony for failing to see an inmate beat another's ass. Watch the news. Guards are only criminally charged for having sex with the inmates, sneaking in contraband, helping an inmate escape, or tying them down and pepper spraying them.
I don't think you understand what constitutes bragging any more than you do guard brutality.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday June 26 2018, @01:39PM
And there we go again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 26 2018, @02:25AM
It's going to be the medical department that's most likely to kill him. Arizona has made people die of untreated cancer, repeatedly. The health situation got so bad they got sued, and have now been hit with a seven-figure contempt citation for not living up to the settlement they agreed to in order to end that lawsuit.
There are LOTS of exceptions but to a good first approximation the doughiest of inmates can simply respect others, be boring, avoid the usual sources of trouble, and be left alone. Especially so in minimum to medium security.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @07:25PM
Hasn't ISIS claimed responsibility?
(Score: 2) by OrugTor on Monday June 25 2018, @01:05PM (2 children)
The problem here is a defective legal code. "intentional damage to a protected computer" doesn't cut it There needs to be a law that defines hacking crimes explicitly and distinguishes levels of severity. The kid who finds confidential data exposed online should never be prosecuted; the kid who "crippled the 911 emergency communication system" should risk a harsh sentence. However, as Soylentils are well aware, laws are worded broadly enough to allow prosecution of anyone for anything while being just specific enough to stand examination by SCOTUS.
Mostly we see harsh sentences for trivial offences or non-offences but this time I think the perp got off lightly. Messing up 911 puts people's lives at risk. Curioiusly, the article does not mention any additional sanctions, such as a lifetime ban on touching a computing device.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by janrinok on Monday June 25 2018, @05:54PM (1 child)
Many countries now believe that internet access is an essential part of life today. I can fill in my taxes, renew my passport, purchase items, pay speeding fines, control my bank accounts, etc all by internet. Because it is cheaper for those services to be provided on-line rather than employ someone to sit at a reception desk to handle people who may, or may not, want to do any of those things in person.
Perhaps it is not yet the case where you live, but it is increasingly so elsewhere.
Would you insist that someone who made a false emergency phone call can never again touch a telephone? How about if someone is caught speeding - we might remove their licence for a period of time but there is usually no lifetime ban. And, as you rightly point out, the law is so woolly that "intentional damage to a protected computer" means everything or nothing. Perhaps the judge felt that the 20 months incarceration was a fair punishment and nothing else is necessary.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday June 25 2018, @06:49PM
What kind of softies are you, not throwing the book at bad people ? Rehabilitation, redemption, reinsertion, right ? I say destroy the life of anyone committing any crime I am not likely to get caught committing ! Let them crawl in the sewers for a few years, and they'll find their way back to jail soon enough, proving me right that they were unredeemable ! Those guys are lucky I have stock in private prisons, otherwise it'd be bullet to the head at first offense !
(address feedback to Mr Poe)