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Not so, because as others in this thread have stated, the key is intent.
by EliAndrewC 13y ago
Not so, because as others in this thread have stated, the key is intent.
- tankenmate 13y agoAnd we peer into the mind of a third party how?
- BryantD 13y agoThere's a fairly large body of law that hinges on the intent of the individual. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intention_(criminal_law) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intention_(criminal_law)
- nitrogen 13y agoJudging intent doesn't really work at scale. That's why we invented access controls.
- res0nat0r 13y agoAccess controls are in place, but they aren't absolute. Hence why intent is key in this case, and why he was found guilty.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- nightski 13y agoAh wonderful, so now I have to worry about how my intentions might be perceived by the government when visiting a publicly accessible web page. But the company leaking consumer information to the public without any proper security at all is not punished.
- res0nat0r 13y agoYes. If you accidentally stumble upon something you shouldn't and don't exploit it or sell it to someone when you know you clearly shouldn't be you will be fine. It is pretty straightforward. Everyone here keeps purposefully ignoring intent, but in the context of the law this is impossible. So no matter how much you hate it, this isn't something that can be a binary yes/no illegal/legal question based on some computer response to your query.
- victorf 13y agoHe didn't exploit it or sell it and he's fucked. We're ignoring intent because a crime has yet to be committed. Intent doesn't matter without a crime. If intent is the only dividing line, you are in favor of thoughtcrime.
- res0nat0r 13y agoWell...his crime actually was that he intentionally accessed data he knew he should not have been accessing. That is a crime. Thus he was found guilty. I'm not sure why this is so hard to reconcile or is being purposefully ignored just because this crime is one of many that involves a computer.
- victorf 13y agoPlease show me the section of US legal code regarding intentional access of data one knows one should not be accessing; without mentioning trespass, which he did not do, and without mentioning causing a computer to act in a manner the owner does not desire, which he also did not do.
- res0nat0r 13y agoSorry no legal code offhand, but you can surely break the law without trespassing and "causing a computer to act in a manner the owner does not desire". This shouldn't be hard to comprehend. The law involves intent. They proved he intended to act in bad faith while gathering that data and he was rightfully found guilty.