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from the shades-of-"Weev"-and-Aaron-Swartz dept.
Thanks in part to America’s ill-defined hacking laws, prosecutors have enormous discretion to determine a hacker defendant’s fate. But in one young Texan’s case in particular, the Department of Justice stretched prosecutorial overreach to a new extreme: about 440 years too far.
Last week, prosecutors in the Southern District of Texas reached a plea agreement with 28-year-old Fidel Salinas, in which the young hacker with alleged ties to members of Anonymous consented to plead guilty to a misdemeanor count of computer fraud and abuse and pay $10,000 in restitution. The U.S. attorney’s office omitted one fact from its press release about that plea ( http://www.justice.gov/usao/txs/1News/Releases/2014%20November/141120%20-%20Salinas.html ), however: Just months ago, Salinas had been charged with not one, but 44 felony counts of computer fraud and cyberstalking—crimes that each carry a 10-year maximum sentence; adding up to an absurd total of nearly a half a millennium of prison time.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by aristarchus on Sunday November 30 2014, @07:50AM
Or five years in Federal (**) Prison, if you dare rip a dvd for later viewing? And we are surprised that someone could be liable for a "Gazzilion years" in Federal (office space) Prison? Especially when these prisons are run by for profit companies, most likely the same ones that are giving us education by Corinthian, food by Soylent Green (not Soylent News, or course, but both _are_ people), and custody by C ..C ,,,C :: wholly f! How can a website for a despicable corporation like this not spell out their acronym? It is easier to find out:
"P.S. I Love You" Learn how a CCA program keeps incarcerated mothers connected with their children.
Holy Barfing Jesus! This is the upside? OK, we all should spend 440K year in prison before we allow this to go on.
1. There is no such thing as intellectual property. If someone steals your ideas, you should be flattered. Of course, they should give you credit.
2. If any computer system is compromised, "hacked," or subject to unauthorized access, the owners of said system should be subject to legal action, or at least public ridicule and strict liability for all client data.
3. Identity theft is the responsibility of the grantor, not the holder of the identity. If you allow a charge to me on false credentials, I should be able to whip you with a wet noodle an infinite number of times, and seize 57.5% of your publicly held stock. Why 57.5%? Why not, you let some script kid steal 100% of my net!
4. Anyone who can hack any military networks of any country should be awarded a medal, most appropriately by the nation/military that is now aware of a security vulnerability.
Feel free to add more. I get the feeling that legislators around the world are in need of guidence.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday December 01 2014, @03:27PM
There is no such thing as intellectual property. If someone steals your ideas, you should be flattered. Of course, they should give you credit.
Intellectual property covers more than just ideas. You're thinking of patents. Anyway, you're wrong: of course there's such a thing. The laws create it. Perhaps you meant to say There should be no such thing, which I would strongly disagree with.
Identity theft is the responsibility of the grantor, not the holder of the identity.
I'm inclined to agree. If some company is storing my credit-card details without having asked me if I want them to do that (and many companies seem to do this), they should absolutely be liable if they get hacked and my payment details are abused by the attackers.
(Slight aside: in my opinion, companies should be legally prohibited from this practice. Storing my credit-card details should be explicit, and opt-in, and it should be very simple for me to have the company secure delete my credit-card details from record.)
Anyone who can hack any military networks of any country should be awarded a medal, most appropriately by the nation/military that is now aware of a security vulnerability.
This stuff needs to be done properly, otherwise anyone that's caught doing it can just say Oh I was doing it to serve our country, honest! Much the same way that sneaking into a millitary base should be a serious offence, even if it does prove a point. (This is what 'tiger teams' are for: these testing techniques should be used by those in charge of the system/facility.)