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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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And tomorrow will be like today, only more so.
-- Isaiah 56:12, New Standard Version
(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.