6 ms·

You vandalised property and cost the school money. You obviously don't deserve prison time, but you didn't get it either. It shouldn't have gotten as far as it

You vandalised property and cost the school money. You obviously don't deserve prison time, but you didn't get it either. It shouldn't have gotten as far as it did though. But do you think the person/IT responsible for the website was not harmed? You get they are human and 'possibly' went under an amazing amount of stress? They may have been disciplined for what happened, either officially or off the books. There would have been a lot of hours work post mortem trying to fix the problem. This is money on a possibly tight IT budget. If the people who run the website care, which many do, this also is stressful. I'm not saying don't prank or even don't do this prank. Pranks come at a cost, but they also make the world a better place. But be self aware of your own actions. You hacked and got caught it really has nothing to do with the CFAA.

AnthonyMouse 10y ago
> You obviously don't deserve prison time, but you didn't get it either. Because they decided not to press charges, not because the CFAA makes any sense. > But do you think the person/IT responsible for the website was not harmed? You get they are human and 'possibly' went under an amazing amount of stress? There is a difference between inconvenience and harm. The vast majority of the "harm" caused in cases like this is a result of ridiculous overreactions to anything that involves a computer. Imagine the analog version of this case. Some kid sitting in the main office sees the teacher enter the combination to the filing cabinet and then the kid unlocks it and sticks in a picture of Rick Astley. If that happened, would we still be hearing about a "post mortem" (as if serious level = human fatality) and the harm and stress the kid caused? Does a law allowing that kid to be prosecuted for a felony really make any sense?
- jsmeaton 10y ago
  I was thinking the analog version may be someone breaking into your house and leaving a picture of Rick Astley on your kitchen bench. You come home, find out someone has been in your home, but not what they've done in there. You don't know that it was your neighbour playing a prank or if it was some criminal that's put up little IP cameras all around your house until you do some investigation. Until you come to some conclusion you could be very worried and/or paranoid. Granted, this is the extreme version of the analogy. Jail would be an over reaction for your neighbour, but you'd want that as an option for some creep breaking in, right? It sounds like in the parent posts case everything worked out more or less OK.
  - corobo 10y ago
    Not to mention all of the doors and windows appear to be undamaged. You have no idea how they got in and now you have to dig around in case there's a tunnel been dug into the basement, a secret hatch on the roof, do they have a spare key cut somehow - how did they get access to the key?
  - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
    > I was thinking the analog version may be someone breaking into your house and leaving a picture of Rick Astley on your kitchen bench. It was a school, not a home. (It's also a notable contrast that when people are arguing for bad laws the fear is that criminals will invade your privacy, but when people are arguing for mass surveillance then it's all "nothing to hide" as if organized crime getting access to the surveillance apparatus isn't somewhere north of probable.) > You don't know that it was your neighbour playing a prank or if it was some criminal that's put up little IP cameras all around your house until you do some investigation. Until you come to some conclusion you could be very worried and/or paranoid. The criminal who is secretly trying to hide IP cameras in your house is going to leave you a picture of Rick Astley? The problem with this theory in general is that it has nothing to do with any wrongdoing. Suppose your neighbor sees what kind of locks you have on your door and proceeds to pick them in front of you in ten seconds, then advises you to use better locks. Now you're in exactly the same situation. You just learned that that person or anybody else with amateur-level lockpicking skills could have been in your house at any point after you installed those locks. If you're a paranoid person then that fact is going to distress you and you're going to search your house for IP cameras, but the source of that distress is the bad locks, not the person who brings them to your attention. > Jail would be an over reaction for your neighbour, but you'd want that as an option for some creep breaking in, right? That's the whole problem. You need to find something to distinguish those situations and codify it into law, instead of having a law so broad that it covers both and then having to rely on prosecutorial discretion. Whether you go to jail and for how long needs to depend more on what you did than how much the prosecutor likes you, or we're living in a police state where anybody can be imprisoned at will. There is a reason we don't just have a single law that says "you must do the right thing; penalty up to life in prison" and then let prosecutors decide what the right thing is.
cm2187 10y ago
If you were applying the penal systems to kids, all kids would end up in jail, they spend their time fighting each others and telling each others nasty things.

AnthonyMouse 10y ago

> You obviously don't deserve prison time, but you didn't get it either. Because they decided not to press charges, not because the CFAA makes any sense. > But do you think the person/IT responsible for the website was not harmed? You get they are human and 'possibly' went under an amazing amount of stress? There is a difference between inconvenience and harm. The vast majority of the "harm" caused in cases like this is a result of ridiculous overreactions to anything that involves a computer. Imagine the analog version of this case. Some kid sitting in the main office sees the teacher enter the combination to the filing cabinet and then the kid unlocks it and sticks in a picture of Rick Astley. If that happened, would we still be hearing about a "post mortem" (as if serious level = human fatality) and the harm and stress the kid caused? Does a law allowing that kid to be prosecuted for a felony really make any sense?

jsmeaton 10y ago
I was thinking the analog version may be someone breaking into your house and leaving a picture of Rick Astley on your kitchen bench. You come home, find out someone has been in your home, but not what they've done in there. You don't know that it was your neighbour playing a prank or if it was some criminal that's put up little IP cameras all around your house until you do some investigation. Until you come to some conclusion you could be very worried and/or paranoid. Granted, this is the extreme version of the analogy. Jail would be an over reaction for your neighbour, but you'd want that as an option for some creep breaking in, right? It sounds like in the parent posts case everything worked out more or less OK.
- corobo 10y ago
  Not to mention all of the doors and windows appear to be undamaged. You have no idea how they got in and now you have to dig around in case there's a tunnel been dug into the basement, a secret hatch on the roof, do they have a spare key cut somehow - how did they get access to the key?
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  > I was thinking the analog version may be someone breaking into your house and leaving a picture of Rick Astley on your kitchen bench. It was a school, not a home. (It's also a notable contrast that when people are arguing for bad laws the fear is that criminals will invade your privacy, but when people are arguing for mass surveillance then it's all "nothing to hide" as if organized crime getting access to the surveillance apparatus isn't somewhere north of probable.) > You don't know that it was your neighbour playing a prank or if it was some criminal that's put up little IP cameras all around your house until you do some investigation. Until you come to some conclusion you could be very worried and/or paranoid. The criminal who is secretly trying to hide IP cameras in your house is going to leave you a picture of Rick Astley? The problem with this theory in general is that it has nothing to do with any wrongdoing. Suppose your neighbor sees what kind of locks you have on your door and proceeds to pick them in front of you in ten seconds, then advises you to use better locks. Now you're in exactly the same situation. You just learned that that person or anybody else with amateur-level lockpicking skills could have been in your house at any point after you installed those locks. If you're a paranoid person then that fact is going to distress you and you're going to search your house for IP cameras, but the source of that distress is the bad locks, not the person who brings them to your attention. > Jail would be an over reaction for your neighbour, but you'd want that as an option for some creep breaking in, right? That's the whole problem. You need to find something to distinguish those situations and codify it into law, instead of having a law so broad that it covers both and then having to rely on prosecutorial discretion. Whether you go to jail and for how long needs to depend more on what you did than how much the prosecutor likes you, or we're living in a police state where anybody can be imprisoned at will. There is a reason we don't just have a single law that says "you must do the right thing; penalty up to life in prison" and then let prosecutors decide what the right thing is.

cm2187 10y ago

If you were applying the penal systems to kids, all kids would end up in jail, they spend their time fighting each others and telling each others nasty things.