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A 19 year old teenager was charged with 'unauthorized use of a computer' after downloading over 7,000 records from the Nova Scotia Freedom-of-Information web portal. The teenager whose name has not been released, has been accused of stealing documents from the portal, with many of them being publicly accessible and redacted.
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Teenager Charged for Nova Scotia Freedom of Information Web Portal Breach
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Grelb's Reminder:
Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above
average drivers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Virindi on Monday April 23 2018, @11:10AM (18 children)
From TFA:
You've got to be kidding. At what point does extreme incompetence on the part of the admin, nonexistent damages, and no intent to harm make a "crime" not a crime? This is like if you were walking down the sidewalk and saw a penny in someone's yard and picked it up, and the SWAT team jumped out from the bushes, slammed you to the ground, and charged you with a pile of crimes.
Except, "on a computer".
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @11:23AM (8 children)
Exactly. If you want to charge somebody, charge the agency in possession of the documents.
POINTING A WEB BROWSER TO A URL IS NOT A FUCKING CRIME for crying out loud...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @11:57AM (7 children)
Crime is whatever law says is crime, or whatever judge (and jury) proclaim as crime. Whatever can be named or vaguely described, can be a crime.
If capturing rainwater from your own roof on your own house on your own land can be a crime, this can, too.
More similarly, if pointing your web browser to a video containing forbidden footage can be a crime, this isn't much different, technically, so it is only up to the arbiters of justice if it constitutes a crime.
(Score: 5, Informative) by physicsmajor on Monday April 23 2018, @02:36PM (5 children)
And yet, the law says unauthorized access. He made HTTP requests, which were authorized by the distant server and data was sent. A rather robust case can be made that, by the server's actions, his access was completely authorized.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @02:42PM
But that's what they've done with these laws! If a computer system is set up to authorize something that somebody later realizes shouldn't have been authorized, it's as if it were never authorized in the first place. The law essentially exempts administrators from responsibility for their work.
Of course, good admins know that it's still their responsibility to make damned sure the shit is secured. Bad admins, we hear about those all the time.
(A good admin is invisible, which kind of sucks for those of us who do admin-type stuff for a living, but that's life for ya. [Incidentally, the invisibility of good admins is one reason why we need to organize and collectively bargain with employers, but I can see that will never happen. Our field will become a minimum wage job for the boss' nephew--no more status than a burger-flipper, and the public has been well trained to accept shit quality when it comes to computers.])
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @08:34PM (1 child)
I agree, sounds like he needed a better lawyer. Crowdfund defense if this happened in US, and sick ton of experts who would 1) Make this case and 2) Make the authorities looks like imbeciles the longer the case went on. I guarantee that #2 would lead to dismissal of charges faster than #1.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday April 24 2018, @10:23AM
He has a GoFundMe. But, very DUMB to donate to it!
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday April 23 2018, @10:34PM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday April 24 2018, @10:28AM
Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process? We have so many hackers. In Canada, in England, in Russia, in many places. This one hasn't been convicted. I think he's guilty, but I'm not the judge.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @03:39PM
Modern laws are so fucked up that when paid enough money, a lawyer can find a law that says ANYTHING is illegal.
It is illegal to breath. Everyone must cease and desist immediately.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by laserfusion on Monday April 23 2018, @12:52PM (1 child)
He did something unusual, that average people don't do. That's already suspicious to the system.
He probably also violated the site's terms of service, such as no automated or unintended access to the site.
So why not make an example of him.
But they allow Google to index their site probably. This is just different by guessing some URL-s, based on other ones. He's not even trying to interact with or affect the site's internal state in any way, just requesting some URL-s.
What if someone had a malfunctioning browser, or a web crawler that accidentally changed some URL parameters,, it would have the same effect as what this guy did.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @03:34PM
Or what about simple typos? When re-typing a url like somelamesite.bla/crapapp/00058132 it is easy to wind up on something like somelamesite.bla/crapapp/00058123 that too often will show you something you were not supposed to see.
To idiot lawmakers the "solution" would be to make keyboards illegal.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Arik on Monday April 23 2018, @01:24PM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @02:08PM (5 children)
You should know. Had it been a woman downloading those publicly available documents, she would have been untouchable, and instead we'd have a news article calling for that (presumably male) admin's head on a platter, to be replaced by a woman asap. The movement you've claimed to be a member of have long been calling for an end to due process for men accused of crimes. Now that the elites want to start World War 3, I think it's a bit too late to backpedal. Didn't you realize what the elites were really after by getting you to adopt the position that accusations are convictions and men who know how computers work are oppressors and incels and homosexuals and all that? I just hope everything you've done for the elites was worth it. Maybe it is? Who knows.
(Score: 2) by Virindi on Monday April 23 2018, @02:17PM (4 children)
What the hell are you talking about?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @02:45PM
I think you know what I'm talking about. Elaboration would serve no purpose.
(Score: 3, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 23 2018, @03:28PM (2 children)
He's ranting about feminism and social justice warriors. Of course, he's gone off half-cocked. The mafiaa groups don't care if they nail a male or a female. I don't think that the various intel services care much either. If some chick had been caught doing the same thing this guy did, I give it at least 75% chance that she would have been charged. And, if some rich kid had been caught, the chances go down, whether male or female.
There's some kernel of truth to what he writes, but he's overstating his case, and being an obnoxious ass while doing so.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Virindi on Monday April 23 2018, @04:41PM
Yes, I get that. What I don't get is how he seems to be reading something into my views from previous post(s) which doesn't make sense.
Or he's a really crappy troll, or both. Probably both.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @09:06PM
According to Runaway1956, "white hetero males have been targeted for extinction [soylentnews.org]."