15 ms·

Andrew 'Weev' Auernheimer Faces Jail

45 points by mediagearbox 14y ago

jrockway 14y ago
What exactly was he found guilty of?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
  - objclxt 14y ago
    ...but it sounds as if he did neither of those things, so surely not that smart? (the parent I replied to has been deleted, but it suggested he was found guilty of 'being smart')
    - pms 14y ago
      Didn't he? He is tackling the issue head-on, and he is verbose about it. This is the way many politicians are. Not very sophisticated, to say the least. This is his strategy, let's see how will he take the jail time though.
- andyjohnson0 14y ago
  "Andrew Auernheimer, 26, of Fayetteville, Arkansas, was found guilty in federal court in New Jersey of one count of identity fraud and one count of conspiracy to access a computer without authorization." [1] Those were the charges. Ridiculous in my opinion. [1] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/11/att-hacker-found-guilty/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/11/att-hacker-found-gu...
  - jrockway 14y ago
    What is AT&T guilty of? Is it now legal to publish personal information without any authentication?
    - andyjohnson0 14y ago
      I just listed the charges, I didn't say I agreed with them. And I didn't say anything about AT&T. It seems clear that AT&T failed to protect their customer's personal details. Whether that makes them criminally liable depends on US law, about which I know almost nothing. This [1] article seems to imply that it is fairly weak compared to European data protection laws, so it may be that AT&T did nothing wrong in a strict legal sense. While its tempting to think that he was just made an example of for embarrassing a corporation, he did write a script to harvest 120,000 email addresses from the AT&T server. I'd say that constitutes criminal intent, even if he had no intention of using the addresses for a criminal purpose. There are two problems here: 1. absent or weak data protection laws, and 2. disproportionate sentencing guidelines (up 10 years) for what in this case is basically a victimless crime. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/technology/consumer-data-protection-laws-an-ocean-apart.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/technology/consumer-data-p...
      - betterunix 14y ago
        "While its tempting to think that he was just made an example of for embarrassing a corporation, he did write a script to harvest 120,000 email addresses from the AT&T server. I'd say that constitutes criminal intent, even if he had no intention of using the addresses for a criminal purpose." Criminal intent...to do what exactly? Email people? Was he planning to send them spam? Why are we punishing someone who writes a script? Do we really want to live in a society where programming your own computer is a crime?
        andyjohnson0 14y ago
        "Criminal intent...to do what exactly?" Intent to commit a criminal act: "conspiracy to access a computer without authorization". If he'd just accessed a few accounts then that could be attributed to user error or a technical fault, if anyone ever even noticed. Put what he did shows persistent intent to do something which is illegal in the US, even if he wasn't aware of the illegality. Look, I agree with you. Jailing this guy is manifestly absurd, stupid, and cruel. I was just trying to explain who other people, who may hold differing opinions to you and I and happen to write the law, might see things. Doesn't mean I agree.
- tlrobinson 14y ago
  Using wget.
DoubleMalt 14y ago
Every piece I read about him made me like him less. But despite my deep feelings of antipathy the charges that are brought against him can NEVER warrant 10 years of prison. That's ridiculous.
- n3rdy 14y ago
  This article made me like him a lot.
- objclxt 14y ago
  In many countries simply accessing a public server without consent is illegal. Here in the UK the Computer Misuse Act contains the following gem: > It is an offense to make a computer perform a function and for that function to be deemed unauthorised by the owner of that computer This is fantastically broad. I believe it's similar in the US. It's led to convictions for things like directory traversal, XSS testing, and even people looking for vulnerabilities with good intentions. If you're doing stuff like this, be aware of the risk. Some companies are very good about it (Facebook, Google, etc). Others take a far dimmer, litigious view (AT&T?). These are not laws that are taught in a civics class. I think it's important that until the laws can be changed (and they definitely should be changed) that people in this field know the risks, and weigh them up accordingly. I agree with you that Andrew's approach is quite...antagonistic. I wouldn't, for example, go on the record saying I think "a sane society would lynch [...] Carmen Ortiz". Personally, I'm not in favour of public lynchings. This isn't going to endear you to the court, or to those who could help change the law for the better.
  - rorrr 14y ago
    > In many countries simply accessing a public server without consent is illegal 1) Set up a public server 2) Wait for google bot to show up 3) Press charges against google 4) Sue in civil court 5) Profit.
    - arethuza 14y ago
      And in some countries you can only sue on the basis of an actual loss so as you haven't lost anything you have nothing to sue for...
Nursie 14y ago
Yeah this is ludicrous. AFAICT, AT&T effectively published this information to the web, this guy just pointed out where it was. Not a crime.
- Volpe 14y ago
  Didn't he try to extort money out of them after spidering all the information?
  - sp332 14y ago
    He talked about it, but I don't think that actually happened. The chat log was used against him at the trial anyway.
    - objclxt 14y ago
      He was charged with conspiracy, so it's relevant that it was discussed. Conspiracy usually requires discussion of the intended crime, and then at least one party to commit an act that furthers that crime. It doesn't actually require the crime itself to be committed.
  - josephlord 14y ago
    From what I read in another article there were various nasty and/or more clearly criminal things that he discussed/joked about doing although from what I understand he didn't actually follow through on them and they just released the information to journalists to make AT&T look bad.
Encosia 14y ago
It blows my mind that someone could get 10 years for idempotent operations on what was essentially a public API. Put in any other context than "scary computer hacking", it would be obvious to most people that the insecure system was at least as much to blame as this kid.
- objclxt 14y ago
  Firstly, the laws around this sort of thing are very stupid. But with that said...I'm not wholly sympathetic here. The disclosure was totally botched. The IRC logs that came out during the case showed that Andrew and Dan (Spitler) talked about shorting AT&T stock (they ended up not doing this, but it's not the sort of thing you talk about), and going directly to news organisations, bypassing AT&T. They also considered (perhaps jokingly, but again, not something you joke about) selling the e-mail addresses to spammers. Andrew also initially told Gawker he'd disclosed to AT&T, when in fact he hadn't (Ars has a good summary here[1]). I am definitely not saying that a ten year sentence is warranted, or that any sort of custodial sentence is appropriate. In fact, I doubt he'll be given 10 years, more like 2-4 (since his fellow defendant, who plead guilty, got 12-18 months). But I do think the disclosure was handled really, really badly. I've found and disclosed very similar vulnerabilities - I would not leak the entire database out. That's just crazy. Again, it's the old black/grey/white hat argument again. But to go public without even informing AT&T doesn't endear him to me. [1]: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/01/goatse-security-trolls-were-after-max-lols-in-att-ipad-hack/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/01/goatse-security-trolls-...
  - edem 14y ago
    I totally agree with you. They don't hand out 10 years for nothing. It is a little harsh though.
    - yardie 14y ago
      They don't hand out 10 years for nothing. LOL. If you mean literally nothing than no. But the war on poverty, war on drugs, and 3-strikes means the US justice system is handing out long sentences for black and hispanic males 3x the rate of white criminals.
maeon3 14y ago
When everyone is a criminal all the time, with selective enforcement, it makes it easier to tax and control. When political winds shift, you can eliminate anybody you want, because you just make an excel spreadsheet of political enemies and then forward it by email to law enforcement for increased survallence, and whamo, felony convictions, how much you want? 1 year? 5 years? 10 years? The government is just trying to maintain its power over the people, when federal reserve realizes there is no other alternative except to default on the US treasury, there is going to be a lot of unrest, and the internet will be a focus point of governmental rebellion, it's important everyone who accesses the internet is a felon. Especially the coders, like this one, who will be making the rebellion possible. You got to put the fear in them. We may be the ones, like our founding fathers, who have to write up a new constitution, bill of rights, and spawn a new nation to break away from the defective one. Like the good men of old time broke away from Britain. The battlefield this time around will not be on the shores of Boston, the battlefield will be software, servers, clicks, and smart phones. As with all battlefields, the side who wins is the one who prepares the most. This is why we are cracking down on website clicking by programmers, rather than cracking down on governmental corruption.
- rwmj 14y ago
  I guess you must live in China. Here where I live, the government is made up of ordinary people who are also subject to the law, and we can vote to change the law whenever and however we want.
  - rytis 14y ago
    Just out of curiosity, where do you live?
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - rwmj 14y ago
      The UK, but my answer would equally well apply to the US or the majority of democratic nations. There's not a Big Conspiracy. There's just lots of people, often stupid and ill-informed, but nevertheless people voting for what we want.
rdl 14y ago
This sucks. weev is an asshole and troll, but he's also a friend, and he hasn't done anything a lot of other people don't do routinely. I hope he gets a suspended sentence, but I think the 50/50 is he'll get ~3 years in total, served at least 1.5y in a federal prison.
eldr 14y ago
I wonder how he would be treated if he had picked up a stack of paper printouts an AT&T employee had left on a park bench and taken it to a news outlet in order to showcase AT&T's recklessness with customer information? Would Aaron Swartz's case have been handled the same way if he'd gone into a library and photocopied a whole heap of journal articles? The powers that be seem terrified that someone might use technology in a way which they can't control. Apart from the disgusting human rights abuse that these cases illustrate, I worry about the future when people like judges and prosecutors think it's at all fair or reasonable to put people in jail for freely accessing information.
arbuge 14y ago
It seems to that the real villain is AT&T, for making this private data entrusted to its care freely available to the public. What criminal and civil liabilities will it face?
- crusso 14y ago
  That's disingenuous. "Freely available" implies that AT&T desired to give this data away or advertised it knowingly. Clearly they didn't. What Auernheimer did, with intent, was to bypass AT&T's intended use of the system. What AT&T did was incompetent or perhaps even negligent by a reasonable notion of corporate coding standards. You'd need to dig a bit more to learn how systemic the incompetence/negligence was before attempting to sign appropriate blame, though. Maybe some contractor got into the system and made the change that made that exploit possible the day before and deployed it without following AT&T release guidelines. I dunno. Knowing that kind of info matters, though. Let's not twist the facts of what happened in order to justify different outcomes.
  - arbuge 14y ago
    Disagreed. The facts are indeed that AT&T made this freely available... my definition of making something available is that it is readily available for the taking, whether I desired to give it away or not. If I leave my front door open due to negligence, I probably don't desire to be burglarized, but it is true to say that I have made my house contents freely available. If my house contents include a laptop full of people's private data, then I think it's reasonable I should face some penalties. As to your other point, AT&T is responsible for the actions of its contractors as well as for its full-time employees.
    - crusso 14y ago
      For anyone with a little knowledge about locks and basic tools, no conventional door lock prevents entry. So by your logic, nearly all house contents are freely available. Regarding AT&T, it's not a question of responsibility - it's a question of a level of fault that is negligent. At some level, it's your responsibility because you gave AT&T your data, right? At some level, it's your responsibility because you have an email address, right? Without a detailed assessment of many factors, just throwing out there that AT&T is negligent seems to be fairly irresponsible.
nwh 14y ago
This website just showed a full page advertisement, then kicked me back to their home page when I clicked the continue button. Monumentally useless.
sergiotapia 14y ago
"In 2010, Auernheimer and a compatriot, Daniel Spitler, discovered that visiting an unsecured AT&T Web server and entering a number associated with the customer's wireless account allowed him to obtain that customer's email address. By altering the number and repeatedly querying the server, Auernheimer and Spitler were able to obtain hundreds of thousands of email addresses, which they then released to Gawker." === Amazing that something as simple as that landed him 10 years. This is something even I have done with some servers for telecoms in my country. And trust me, I'm no hacker. I just know basic HTTP GET request parameters, and what asshole doesn't know about those? The laws in the US are terrible.
- crusso 14y ago
  Testing car door handles in a full parking lot is amazingly simple too. Does that mean it's okay to look through any unlocked cars' glove compartments to collect personal information of the owners? Auernheimer crossed a line. The punishment seems excessive, but then again I don't know all the details of what he tried to do with the data. The fact that he obtusely refuses to recognize that he crossed a line doesn't exactly make me feel sorry for him.
  - rcfox 14y ago
    If you have a lot full of unlocked cars, perhaps you should bear some of the blame too? When Sony was hacked and user data was leaked, they received quite a bit of blame. At least they had some semblance of security. AT&T was wide open.
    - Nrsolis 14y ago
      "But your honor! SHE WAS ASKING FOR IT! You can see how she dresses."
      - crusso 14y ago
        Ack! You beat me to the "asking for it" analogy.
rohern 14y ago
Here is a very good lecture on the state of cyber crime law. I recommend it to everyone in this community. Things are crazier than you are probably aware. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0Z_z4EHq6M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0Z_z4EHq6M
osamas_mama 14y ago
i love weev and i had a blast trolling with him back in the day but he's nothing like swartz. the biggest split being that swartz had good intentions whereas weev was having fun. i don't think he should be imprisoned for exploring at&t's god awful security but i also don't think he should be worshipped.

45 points by mediagearbox 14y ago

jrockway 14y ago

What exactly was he found guilty of?

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- objclxt 14y ago
  ...but it sounds as if he did neither of those things, so surely not that smart? (the parent I replied to has been deleted, but it suggested he was found guilty of 'being smart')
  - pms 14y ago
    Didn't he? He is tackling the issue head-on, and he is verbose about it. This is the way many politicians are. Not very sophisticated, to say the least. This is his strategy, let's see how will he take the jail time though.
andyjohnson0 14y ago
"Andrew Auernheimer, 26, of Fayetteville, Arkansas, was found guilty in federal court in New Jersey of one count of identity fraud and one count of conspiracy to access a computer without authorization." [1] Those were the charges. Ridiculous in my opinion. [1] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/11/att-hacker-found-guilty/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/11/att-hacker-found-gu...
- jrockway 14y ago
  What is AT&T guilty of? Is it now legal to publish personal information without any authentication?
  - andyjohnson0 14y ago
    I just listed the charges, I didn't say I agreed with them. And I didn't say anything about AT&T. It seems clear that AT&T failed to protect their customer's personal details. Whether that makes them criminally liable depends on US law, about which I know almost nothing. This [1] article seems to imply that it is fairly weak compared to European data protection laws, so it may be that AT&T did nothing wrong in a strict legal sense. While its tempting to think that he was just made an example of for embarrassing a corporation, he did write a script to harvest 120,000 email addresses from the AT&T server. I'd say that constitutes criminal intent, even if he had no intention of using the addresses for a criminal purpose. There are two problems here: 1. absent or weak data protection laws, and 2. disproportionate sentencing guidelines (up 10 years) for what in this case is basically a victimless crime. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/technology/consumer-data-protection-laws-an-ocean-apart.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/technology/consumer-data-p...
    - betterunix 14y ago
      "While its tempting to think that he was just made an example of for embarrassing a corporation, he did write a script to harvest 120,000 email addresses from the AT&T server. I'd say that constitutes criminal intent, even if he had no intention of using the addresses for a criminal purpose." Criminal intent...to do what exactly? Email people? Was he planning to send them spam? Why are we punishing someone who writes a script? Do we really want to live in a society where programming your own computer is a crime?
      - andyjohnson0 14y ago
        "Criminal intent...to do what exactly?" Intent to commit a criminal act: "conspiracy to access a computer without authorization". If he'd just accessed a few accounts then that could be attributed to user error or a technical fault, if anyone ever even noticed. Put what he did shows persistent intent to do something which is illegal in the US, even if he wasn't aware of the illegality. Look, I agree with you. Jailing this guy is manifestly absurd, stupid, and cruel. I was just trying to explain who other people, who may hold differing opinions to you and I and happen to write the law, might see things. Doesn't mean I agree.
tlrobinson 14y ago
Using wget.

DoubleMalt 14y ago

Every piece I read about him made me like him less. But despite my deep feelings of antipathy the charges that are brought against him can NEVER warrant 10 years of prison. That's ridiculous.

n3rdy 14y ago
This article made me like him a lot.
objclxt 14y ago
In many countries simply accessing a public server without consent is illegal. Here in the UK the Computer Misuse Act contains the following gem: > It is an offense to make a computer perform a function and for that function to be deemed unauthorised by the owner of that computer This is fantastically broad. I believe it's similar in the US. It's led to convictions for things like directory traversal, XSS testing, and even people looking for vulnerabilities with good intentions. If you're doing stuff like this, be aware of the risk. Some companies are very good about it (Facebook, Google, etc). Others take a far dimmer, litigious view (AT&T?). These are not laws that are taught in a civics class. I think it's important that until the laws can be changed (and they definitely should be changed) that people in this field know the risks, and weigh them up accordingly. I agree with you that Andrew's approach is quite...antagonistic. I wouldn't, for example, go on the record saying I think "a sane society would lynch [...] Carmen Ortiz". Personally, I'm not in favour of public lynchings. This isn't going to endear you to the court, or to those who could help change the law for the better.
- rorrr 14y ago
  > In many countries simply accessing a public server without consent is illegal 1) Set up a public server 2) Wait for google bot to show up 3) Press charges against google 4) Sue in civil court 5) Profit.
  - arethuza 14y ago
    And in some countries you can only sue on the basis of an actual loss so as you haven't lost anything you have nothing to sue for...

Nursie 14y ago

Yeah this is ludicrous. AFAICT, AT&T effectively published this information to the web, this guy just pointed out where it was. Not a crime.

Volpe 14y ago
Didn't he try to extort money out of them after spidering all the information?
- sp332 14y ago
  He talked about it, but I don't think that actually happened. The chat log was used against him at the trial anyway.
  - objclxt 14y ago
    He was charged with conspiracy, so it's relevant that it was discussed. Conspiracy usually requires discussion of the intended crime, and then at least one party to commit an act that furthers that crime. It doesn't actually require the crime itself to be committed.
- josephlord 14y ago
  From what I read in another article there were various nasty and/or more clearly criminal things that he discussed/joked about doing although from what I understand he didn't actually follow through on them and they just released the information to journalists to make AT&T look bad.

Encosia 14y ago

It blows my mind that someone could get 10 years for idempotent operations on what was essentially a public API. Put in any other context than "scary computer hacking", it would be obvious to most people that the insecure system was at least as much to blame as this kid.

objclxt 14y ago
Firstly, the laws around this sort of thing are very stupid. But with that said...I'm not wholly sympathetic here. The disclosure was totally botched. The IRC logs that came out during the case showed that Andrew and Dan (Spitler) talked about shorting AT&T stock (they ended up not doing this, but it's not the sort of thing you talk about), and going directly to news organisations, bypassing AT&T. They also considered (perhaps jokingly, but again, not something you joke about) selling the e-mail addresses to spammers. Andrew also initially told Gawker he'd disclosed to AT&T, when in fact he hadn't (Ars has a good summary here[1]). I am definitely not saying that a ten year sentence is warranted, or that any sort of custodial sentence is appropriate. In fact, I doubt he'll be given 10 years, more like 2-4 (since his fellow defendant, who plead guilty, got 12-18 months). But I do think the disclosure was handled really, really badly. I've found and disclosed very similar vulnerabilities - I would not leak the entire database out. That's just crazy. Again, it's the old black/grey/white hat argument again. But to go public without even informing AT&T doesn't endear him to me. [1]: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/01/goatse-security-trolls-were-after-max-lols-in-att-ipad-hack/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/01/goatse-security-trolls-...
- edem 14y ago
  I totally agree with you. They don't hand out 10 years for nothing. It is a little harsh though.
  - yardie 14y ago
    They don't hand out 10 years for nothing. LOL. If you mean literally nothing than no. But the war on poverty, war on drugs, and 3-strikes means the US justice system is handing out long sentences for black and hispanic males 3x the rate of white criminals.

maeon3 14y ago

When everyone is a criminal all the time, with selective enforcement, it makes it easier to tax and control. When political winds shift, you can eliminate anybody you want, because you just make an excel spreadsheet of political enemies and then forward it by email to law enforcement for increased survallence, and whamo, felony convictions, how much you want? 1 year? 5 years? 10 years? The government is just trying to maintain its power over the people, when federal reserve realizes there is no other alternative except to default on the US treasury, there is going to be a lot of unrest, and the internet will be a focus point of governmental rebellion, it's important everyone who accesses the internet is a felon. Especially the coders, like this one, who will be making the rebellion possible. You got to put the fear in them. We may be the ones, like our founding fathers, who have to write up a new constitution, bill of rights, and spawn a new nation to break away from the defective one. Like the good men of old time broke away from Britain. The battlefield this time around will not be on the shores of Boston, the battlefield will be software, servers, clicks, and smart phones. As with all battlefields, the side who wins is the one who prepares the most. This is why we are cracking down on website clicking by programmers, rather than cracking down on governmental corruption.

rwmj 14y ago
I guess you must live in China. Here where I live, the government is made up of ordinary people who are also subject to the law, and we can vote to change the law whenever and however we want.
- rytis 14y ago
  Just out of curiosity, where do you live?
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - rwmj 14y ago
    The UK, but my answer would equally well apply to the US or the majority of democratic nations. There's not a Big Conspiracy. There's just lots of people, often stupid and ill-informed, but nevertheless people voting for what we want.

rdl 14y ago

This sucks. weev is an asshole and troll, but he's also a friend, and he hasn't done anything a lot of other people don't do routinely. I hope he gets a suspended sentence, but I think the 50/50 is he'll get ~3 years in total, served at least 1.5y in a federal prison.

eldr 14y ago

I wonder how he would be treated if he had picked up a stack of paper printouts an AT&T employee had left on a park bench and taken it to a news outlet in order to showcase AT&T's recklessness with customer information? Would Aaron Swartz's case have been handled the same way if he'd gone into a library and photocopied a whole heap of journal articles? The powers that be seem terrified that someone might use technology in a way which they can't control. Apart from the disgusting human rights abuse that these cases illustrate, I worry about the future when people like judges and prosecutors think it's at all fair or reasonable to put people in jail for freely accessing information.

arbuge 14y ago

It seems to that the real villain is AT&T, for making this private data entrusted to its care freely available to the public. What criminal and civil liabilities will it face?

crusso 14y ago
That's disingenuous. "Freely available" implies that AT&T desired to give this data away or advertised it knowingly. Clearly they didn't. What Auernheimer did, with intent, was to bypass AT&T's intended use of the system. What AT&T did was incompetent or perhaps even negligent by a reasonable notion of corporate coding standards. You'd need to dig a bit more to learn how systemic the incompetence/negligence was before attempting to sign appropriate blame, though. Maybe some contractor got into the system and made the change that made that exploit possible the day before and deployed it without following AT&T release guidelines. I dunno. Knowing that kind of info matters, though. Let's not twist the facts of what happened in order to justify different outcomes.
- arbuge 14y ago
  Disagreed. The facts are indeed that AT&T made this freely available... my definition of making something available is that it is readily available for the taking, whether I desired to give it away or not. If I leave my front door open due to negligence, I probably don't desire to be burglarized, but it is true to say that I have made my house contents freely available. If my house contents include a laptop full of people's private data, then I think it's reasonable I should face some penalties. As to your other point, AT&T is responsible for the actions of its contractors as well as for its full-time employees.
  - crusso 14y ago
    For anyone with a little knowledge about locks and basic tools, no conventional door lock prevents entry. So by your logic, nearly all house contents are freely available. Regarding AT&T, it's not a question of responsibility - it's a question of a level of fault that is negligent. At some level, it's your responsibility because you gave AT&T your data, right? At some level, it's your responsibility because you have an email address, right? Without a detailed assessment of many factors, just throwing out there that AT&T is negligent seems to be fairly irresponsible.

nwh 14y ago

This website just showed a full page advertisement, then kicked me back to their home page when I clicked the continue button. Monumentally useless.

sergiotapia 14y ago

"In 2010, Auernheimer and a compatriot, Daniel Spitler, discovered that visiting an unsecured AT&T Web server and entering a number associated with the customer's wireless account allowed him to obtain that customer's email address. By altering the number and repeatedly querying the server, Auernheimer and Spitler were able to obtain hundreds of thousands of email addresses, which they then released to Gawker." === Amazing that something as simple as that landed him 10 years. This is something even I have done with some servers for telecoms in my country. And trust me, I'm no hacker. I just know basic HTTP GET request parameters, and what asshole doesn't know about those? The laws in the US are terrible.

crusso 14y ago
Testing car door handles in a full parking lot is amazingly simple too. Does that mean it's okay to look through any unlocked cars' glove compartments to collect personal information of the owners? Auernheimer crossed a line. The punishment seems excessive, but then again I don't know all the details of what he tried to do with the data. The fact that he obtusely refuses to recognize that he crossed a line doesn't exactly make me feel sorry for him.
- rcfox 14y ago
  If you have a lot full of unlocked cars, perhaps you should bear some of the blame too? When Sony was hacked and user data was leaked, they received quite a bit of blame. At least they had some semblance of security. AT&T was wide open.
  - Nrsolis 14y ago
    "But your honor! SHE WAS ASKING FOR IT! You can see how she dresses."
    - crusso 14y ago
      Ack! You beat me to the "asking for it" analogy.

rohern 14y ago

Here is a very good lecture on the state of cyber crime law. I recommend it to everyone in this community. Things are crazier than you are probably aware. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0Z_z4EHq6M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0Z_z4EHq6M

osamas_mama 14y ago

i love weev and i had a blast trolling with him back in the day but he's nothing like swartz. the biggest split being that swartz had good intentions whereas weev was having fun. i don't think he should be imprisoned for exploring at&t's god awful security but i also don't think he should be worshipped.