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If all of that is true, then that is a very serious CFAA charge. It makes sense that they would want to downplay it as "minor" and "not relevant". It sounds l

by petcat 1y ago

If all of that is true, then that is a very serious CFAA charge. It makes sense that they would want to downplay it as "minor" and "not relevant". It sounds like the parole violations came later? In any case, thank you for researching. There is always more to the story.

ajsnigrutin 1y ago
Yep... Shutting down the server (you solely maintained) before leaving would be "minor" to me... intentionally causing damage, earning money from that, getting caught, and again causing physical damage.. that's pretty "major" to me.
nerdponx 1y ago
And yet fraudulent warrants, if they are indeed fraudulent, are still illegal and immoral and a violation of this criminal's rights.
- DannyBee 1y ago
  As far as i can discern, the warrants aren't fraudulent. Warrants (in the US anyway) require reasonable belief that the crimes listed were committed. They don't have to be right, mind you (after all, that's what trial is for), they just need reasonable belief. They also can't recklessly disregard the truth (IE deliberately write lies they know are wrong). Again, it's okay for them to be wrong about their belief. It's just not okay to know they are wrong and write it anyway. Here, reading the warrant, etc, there is nothing obviously fraudulent here. Perhaps it is, of course, but i read everything i could find and it's completely non-obvious which part of the warrant is supposed to be fraudulent. Even the sort of retaliation claim made here is strange - Arresting you when you appear to actually hvae broken the law is generally only considered retaliation if (among other things) the enforcement of the law is uneven - IE targeted at you and nobody else. Given the arrest was for a parole violation and they arrest parole violations like this all the time, .... Like if you are at a traffic stop becuase you ran a red light, call a cop an asshole, and they arrest you because you have 50kg of cocaine bricks in your back seat, it's not retaliation. Retaliation would be if you call a cop an asshole on facebook, and they come arrest you for violation of an 1825 law that hasn't been used against anyone in 200 years.
  - nerdponx 1y ago
    Totally valid. And I also didn't check into the warrants themselves. I was responding to the implication I keep seeing here that it's OK that he got arrested because he did bad things, regardless of how the arrest came about.
mothballed 1y ago
Weev 'violated' the CFAA for incrementing a GET request, with his overturned conviction only for wrong jurisdiction. So the government has put us in a position where it's hard to take the CFAA seriously. We also know from prosecutions in other statutes that the government will often prosecute a a broad crime with many separate sub-definitions of the various way you can break it, then refuse to tell you under which sub-definition you're being charged, meaning you have no way to know if the jury even were unanimously convicting for the same thing and no way to know what you're even defending against.
- ambicapter 1y ago
  What does "incrementing a GET request" mean?
  - mothballed 1y ago
    He incremented a number in the query string of a get request https://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_httpmethods.asp https://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_httpmethods.asp
    - JambalayaJimbo 1y ago
      Okay but what information did he obtain by doing that? If I break into a mistakenly locked police station, surely I cannot use the excuse "I was simply turning a door knob"
  - kayge 1y ago
    As an example: Take a look at the URL of this page (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45261163 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45261163). Add 1 to that ID value (45261164) in your address bar. Hit Enter, your browser will GET whatever exists at the next ID.
    - rirze 1y ago
      Ok, that makes sense but why is this so serious? Is this a grave crime in some context?

by petcat 1y ago

ajsnigrutin 1y ago

Yep... Shutting down the server (you solely maintained) before leaving would be "minor" to me... intentionally causing damage, earning money from that, getting caught, and again causing physical damage.. that's pretty "major" to me.

nerdponx 1y ago

And yet fraudulent warrants, if they are indeed fraudulent, are still illegal and immoral and a violation of this criminal's rights.

DannyBee 1y ago
As far as i can discern, the warrants aren't fraudulent. Warrants (in the US anyway) require reasonable belief that the crimes listed were committed. They don't have to be right, mind you (after all, that's what trial is for), they just need reasonable belief. They also can't recklessly disregard the truth (IE deliberately write lies they know are wrong). Again, it's okay for them to be wrong about their belief. It's just not okay to know they are wrong and write it anyway. Here, reading the warrant, etc, there is nothing obviously fraudulent here. Perhaps it is, of course, but i read everything i could find and it's completely non-obvious which part of the warrant is supposed to be fraudulent. Even the sort of retaliation claim made here is strange - Arresting you when you appear to actually hvae broken the law is generally only considered retaliation if (among other things) the enforcement of the law is uneven - IE targeted at you and nobody else. Given the arrest was for a parole violation and they arrest parole violations like this all the time, .... Like if you are at a traffic stop becuase you ran a red light, call a cop an asshole, and they arrest you because you have 50kg of cocaine bricks in your back seat, it's not retaliation. Retaliation would be if you call a cop an asshole on facebook, and they come arrest you for violation of an 1825 law that hasn't been used against anyone in 200 years.
- nerdponx 1y ago
  Totally valid. And I also didn't check into the warrants themselves. I was responding to the implication I keep seeing here that it's OK that he got arrested because he did bad things, regardless of how the arrest came about.

mothballed 1y ago

Weev 'violated' the CFAA for incrementing a GET request, with his overturned conviction only for wrong jurisdiction. So the government has put us in a position where it's hard to take the CFAA seriously. We also know from prosecutions in other statutes that the government will often prosecute a a broad crime with many separate sub-definitions of the various way you can break it, then refuse to tell you under which sub-definition you're being charged, meaning you have no way to know if the jury even were unanimously convicting for the same thing and no way to know what you're even defending against.

ambicapter 1y ago
What does "incrementing a GET request" mean?
- mothballed 1y ago
  He incremented a number in the query string of a get request https://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_httpmethods.asp https://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_httpmethods.asp
  - JambalayaJimbo 1y ago
    Okay but what information did he obtain by doing that? If I break into a mistakenly locked police station, surely I cannot use the excuse "I was simply turning a door knob"
- kayge 1y ago
  As an example: Take a look at the URL of this page (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45261163 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45261163). Add 1 to that ID value (45261164) in your address bar. Hit Enter, your browser will GET whatever exists at the next ID.
  - rirze 1y ago
    Ok, that makes sense but why is this so serious? Is this a grave crime in some context?