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>Justice Tennent jailed Monks for 18 months, with the last 12 months of the sentence suspended on condition she be of good behaviour for three years. >She was o
by thailandstartup 15y ago
>Justice Tennent jailed Monks for 18 months, with the last 12 months of the sentence suspended on condition she be of good behaviour for three years.
>She was ordered to repay Aurora $193,187.43.
This is a horrendous miscarriage of justice. 4 months internet access = approx $80.
- monochromatic 15y agoWell then she should have used a reasonable rate plan and only spent $80, instead of using someone else's plan and racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars of their money.
- Jun8 15y agoShe is a clueless, poor person. I agree she should be punished somehow, but this is a life devastating sentence, especially the $193K. How can you be so draconian? If we want to follow the law to the letter we don't need judges, something like Watson would be more than adequate (and cheaper).
- monochromatic 15y agoIf Aurora actually paid that 193k, then she should repay them for it. But it's not clear to me from the article that they did, and I can't really imagine that they did. If Aurora never paid that bill, she ought to be liable to Telstra for whatever she can get them to reduce the bill to.
- hugh3 15y agoShe is a clueless, poor person. There's no indication that she's clueless or poor. A clueless person probably wouldn't have any use for the insane amount of data she downloaded. And a court probably wouldn't impose a $183,000 fine on a person who was both poor and disabled. She's on a disability pension, but disability pensions aren't means-tested.
- Jun8 15y agoPlease read the sentence (http://www.supremecourt.tas.gov.au/cops/monks_k_m http://www.supremecourt.tas.gov.au/cops/monks_k_m). Here's the judge's own description of her: "You are 33 years old. You have one conviction for stealing in 2002. I accept it was probably a relatively minor matter because it was dealt with by way of a fine. Your upbringing was unstable in the extreme. You lived in the streets for most of your teenage years and became involved in drinking alcohol and drug taking. You have been diagnosed with depression and bi-polar disorder. You are socially isolated and spend long periods at home alone and accessing the Internet. You have no family support being largely estranged from parents and siblings. You are in receipt of a disability pension. You have incurred debts and have difficulty managing money. It is doubtful that you will ever repay the money stolen by your use of the card." Evidently she spends a lot of time on the Internet, so she is not clueless in that sense, but from this description she doesn't sound very educated either.
- mcantelon 15y agoDid she know the Internet use was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars? It's unclear in the article.
- dspillett 15y agoShe almost certainly knew that she should not be using it. If I stole a priceless Stradivarius would I be punished any differently if in court I claimed to have thought it was just a cheap bit of wood with some strings attached? The sentence does seem harsh to me too, but generally speaking ignorance is not an acceptable defence espscially when the ignorance is not knowing/caring about the scale of the offence rather than just being ignorant that it is an offence at all.
- orangecat 15y agoIf I stole a priceless Stradivarius would I be punished any differently if in court I claimed to have thought it was just a cheap bit of wood with some strings attached? Quite possibly. Intent often matters, e.g. involuntary manslaughter vs murder.
- gcb 15y agothat. and if the priceless stradivarius was trhow into the sidewalk like any other cheap violin. i doubt the case would take much the priceless part into consideration
- dspillett 15y agoBut the SIM card was not just discarded where it could be picked up idly. To get at it a device had to be opened. OK so opening the device to get to the SIM probably wasn't difficult, but neither would be opened a violin case and you would not "accidentally" open the device and be surprised to find a SIM in there...
- gcb 15y ago
- demallien 15y agoThe judge was quite clear that the sentence wasn't about reparation, but about deterrence... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterrence_(legal) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterrence_(legal)
- philk 15y agoI'd rather someone was deterring Telstra from levying such exorbitant charges in the first place than wasting my tax dollars locking someone up for such a minor crime.
- geon 15y agoExactly. Assuming she had downloads running non-stop during the 4 months, at a maximum of 7 mbps (3g), she would have downloaded 8859 GB. With a $193000 bill, the "significant theft" was Telestra charging $22 per GB.
- Padraig 15y agoI'm getting very different numbers... I may be wrong though? (7,000,000/8) = 875,000 bytes/s = 0.834 MB/s 0.834 * 60 * 60 * 24 = 72,057 MB/day (EDIT: Tweaked numbers, had mistyped 0.834 as 0.844 — doesn't affect the point)
- Natsu 15y agoSomeone else looked up Telstra pricing and got an estimate of 90GB. http://www.telstra.com.au/mobile/plans/phone_plan.html http://www.telstra.com.au/mobile/plans/phone_plan.html They charge more like $2/MB. Sadly, Australia absolutely sucks in terms of internet access costs.
- cynicalkane 15y agoHere's the part that alarmed me: > Justice Tennent said Monks destroyed the card when she realised it did not belong to Mr Freeman. Yet she still hands down 6 months of jail, 12 months of suspended sentence, and almost $200,000 of fines. What?
- reedlaw 15y agoI don't think the judge believed her story. Besides, doesn't a jury get to decide her guilt?
- kenj0418 15y agoNot if she pleads guilty.
- AlexC04 15y agoMr. Gordon Freeman? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Freeman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Freeman First thing I thought. She was being questioned, had to make up a name on the spot and immediately came up with the main character in Half Life.
- tzs 15y agoSo she's cool being part of his obvious movie piracy operation until she finds out he doesn't own the SIM card?
- geon 15y ago$193000 / 4 months If she was downloading at max 3G speed 24-7, that's still $22 per GB.
- yason 15y agoThe SIM plan used by the electric company might come from a contract that favors small amounts of data transfer. A meter probably won't use many kilobytes or megabytes per month. If I were such a company I'd try to negotiate for expensive $/byte ratio and very low if negligible monthly fee, knowing I will only ever transfer small amounts of data.
- pyre 15y agoWhat happens when one of your systems becomes buggy and starts using lots of data transfer? Oops!
- eropple 15y agoThen you learn a painful lesson about fixing your systems. But in that case, you're at fault, and are on the hook yourself. Here? Not so much.
- pyre 15y agoTo me the lesson would be that things break, and deals like this should probably include some sort of cushion. I'd be cautious of just banking on the fact that we'd never have to pick up a huge bandwidth bill because nothing would ever go wrong.
- hugh3 15y ago4 months internet access = approx $80. If the worst possible punishment for stealing something was that you had to pay back the cost of the item then the justice system would be doing a pretty piss-poor job of deterring theft.
- pyre 15y agoThat may be, but they are claiming that $193k+ is the cost of what she took, which I doubt very much is the case. If someone steals a fake piece of art from my house worth $80, can I turn around and claim that it was the original and therefore worth millions that should be repaid to me?
- tptacek 15y agoNo, you cannot claim that. However, when a utility gets a bill from an MNO for $193k for services they contractually agreed to, and that bill is a result of a criminal action or a tort, it becomes easy to establish $193k as basis for damages in court.
- thailandstartup 15y agoIf I had a contract with a company that charged $193K to replace said $80 artwork - should I then be able to claim $193K damages?
- tptacek 15y agoNo, because that scenario isn't any different from the original scenario proposed. The utility is in this case contractually obligated to pay those fees. The basis for damages here is straightforward.
- hugh3 15y agoBesides, "eighty bucks" is a silly estimate anyway. Nobody in Australia will sell you unlimited 3G data for twenty bucks a month. If you think that's unfair compared to other countries, remember that Australia has a population density of two people per square kilometre, and that Telstra actually has a pretty darn good coverage in their 3G network (Optus and Vodafone are cheaper but can't be expected to work reliably outside major cities). Somebody mentioned $22 a gig... well, the highest-data plan on http://www.telstra.com.au/mobile/browsing_packs.html http://www.telstra.com.au/mobile/browsing_packs.html is $69 for twelve gigs a month, with excess data charged at five cents a meg, or fifty dollars a gig. That sounds like a lot, but as we've said, the 3G network really isn't designed for individual customers doing terabytes of data per day... they clearly don't want you using 3G in that way.
- bdonlan 15y agoThat is the same amount that Aurora was charged for the network access; essentially, she was ordered to make Aurora whole, which is basically the whole point of a civil action.
- tlrobinson 15y agoIt certainly didn't cost Telstra $193K, and I seriously doubt Telstra held Aurora to that charge, at least not if they wanted to keep them as a customer.
- tptacek 15y agoShe committed a crime. This wasn't a civil suit. Once again we see the phenomenon where technology makes everything easier, including criminal acts, resulting in shock and dismay when the consequences and penalties of those acts are not themselves mitigated by technology.
- JoachimSchipper 15y agoI can understand being surprised, though - I can see how one would expect $100-$1000 (in actual damages, not deterrence), not ~$200 000. Theft is still theft, of course, but technology is a surprisingly powerful lever.
- tptacek 15y agoYou're right, and I often sound like I'm blaming people for being surprised. People are right to be surprised. It's a reason, among many others, to be wary of the impact technology has on our life. "Surprisingly powerful lever for criminality" is as good a summation of my thoughts on this as any I've heard; thanks!
- Jun8 15y agoYour rational argument would better apply, I think, to a black-hat hacker (say geohot, not totally blackhat but is a recent example) rather than poor, uneducated woman with bipolar disorder with a history of abuse.
- tptacek 15y agoThat's a smokescreen. You will not find many people on HN who who think sentencing shouldn't be modified due to mitigating factors. I certainly don't think that. But the arguments on this thread aren't only about going easy on someone simply because they're poor. They're also about how it's "highway robbery" for someone to go to jail and pay six figures for stealing a SIM card.
- samwise 15y agoLet me pose this question. If the damages were $2 and not $200,000 would you still think an 18 month sentence is justified ? I would guess that most people would think not. So the true cost of the damage is a significant factor in assessing the appropriate punishment
- allwein 15y agoHere's a good analogy: NYC Cabs charge $2 per mile while their driving. So a 20 mile trip costs $40. But you're arguing that since the car gets 20 miles per gallon of gas, it should only cost $4.