4 ms·

I find the Fed's stance a bit strange. "Just" three months incarcerated and a permanent felony record or try your luck against a 35 year sentence. Meanwhile, th

I find the Fed's stance a bit strange. "Just" three months incarcerated and a permanent felony record or try your luck against a 35 year sentence. Meanwhile, the state of Massachusetts was prepared to drop the case entirely as was JStore. Unbelievable.

fallse7en 14y ago
I think the third paragraph explained their thinking: While they offered a relatively short sentence, prosecutors were absolutely determined to get a felony plea and some kind of prison time, according to sources cited by The Huffington Post. They wanted those results because they believed it would justify their bringing charges in the first place, according to HuffPo.
- Steveism 14y ago
  If it really was just to justify the whole circus then the outrage towards the DOJ is warranted. It's silly to let pride and spite ruin someone's life.
- rayiner 14y ago
  "According to HuffPo" is not a credible citation. If we're going by rumor and innuendo, what about the claims that MIT was the one pushing for jail time?
rayiner 14y ago
You're not "trying your luck" against a 35 year sentence, not in any practical sense of the term since it's a maximum. The statutory sentence for the charges was in the couple of year range. It wouldn't have been at all surprising for him to get no jail time at all.
- jacquesm 14y ago
  You don't see spending a few hundred K to a million + as a punishment all by itself? (aside from the fact that 'it wouldn't have been surprising' are weasel words for 'there is some unspecified chance that', so in other words it also wouldn't have been surprising if he had to go to jail after all, easy to say when it isn't your life that is on the line).
  - rayiner 14y ago
    He needn't have spent a million dollars on top notch defense counsel to get a lenient sentence. By and large it looks bad to prosecute otherwise upstanding white kids for obscure crimes. If he'd played ball with MIT, JSTOR, and the DOJ from the beginning, he could've saved himself a lot of legal fees. But he didn't. As far as we can tell from the information we have, he wanted to fight it, to make a political point. Well, that sort of fighting is expensive. As for "unspecified chance"--of course there is some unspecified chance of anything happening. You don't piss off the federal government and a key piece of the military industrial complex by knowingly breaking laws and then rest easy in the knowledge that there is zero chance of your getting in serious trouble. But based on previous cases we've seen, it's highly probable that nothing serious would have happened. Other young hackers who broke into networks but didn't cause any damage mostly got probation. Kevin Mitnick got 5 years, but for his second offense after spending 2.5 years as a fugitive.
    - jacquesm 14y ago
      > He needn't have spent a million dollars on top notch defense counsel to get a lenient sentence. Sure, he could have just rolled over. After all that's much cheaper, justice is, after all, for those that can afford it.
      - rayiner 14y ago
        He broke the law. He was going to get a light punishment in response to his light infraction. Where is the injustice? He wanted to fight a political battle, arguing that there was nothing wrong using someones network without permission or distributing peoples work without permission. People here in HN treat that as a given, but that's not how the law views things, and that's not how ordinary Americans view things. My mom wouldn't have needed to know about mac address spoofing to know what he did was wrong. Hell, if I wandered into random closets like that without permission as a child I wouldve known it was wrong. He wanted to challenge the law, and argue that things we percieve to be wrong were either not wrong or otherwise justified. That's what was expensive--not getting a fair shake from the system. Yes, we make it expensive and difficult to upset the settled order. That's by design and its a hallmark of civilization.

fallse7en 14y ago

I think the third paragraph explained their thinking: While they offered a relatively short sentence, prosecutors were absolutely determined to get a felony plea and some kind of prison time, according to sources cited by The Huffington Post. They wanted those results because they believed it would justify their bringing charges in the first place, according to HuffPo.

Steveism 14y ago
If it really was just to justify the whole circus then the outrage towards the DOJ is warranted. It's silly to let pride and spite ruin someone's life.
rayiner 14y ago
"According to HuffPo" is not a credible citation. If we're going by rumor and innuendo, what about the claims that MIT was the one pushing for jail time?

rayiner 14y ago

You're not "trying your luck" against a 35 year sentence, not in any practical sense of the term since it's a maximum. The statutory sentence for the charges was in the couple of year range. It wouldn't have been at all surprising for him to get no jail time at all.

jacquesm 14y ago
You don't see spending a few hundred K to a million + as a punishment all by itself? (aside from the fact that 'it wouldn't have been surprising' are weasel words for 'there is some unspecified chance that', so in other words it also wouldn't have been surprising if he had to go to jail after all, easy to say when it isn't your life that is on the line).
- rayiner 14y ago
  He needn't have spent a million dollars on top notch defense counsel to get a lenient sentence. By and large it looks bad to prosecute otherwise upstanding white kids for obscure crimes. If he'd played ball with MIT, JSTOR, and the DOJ from the beginning, he could've saved himself a lot of legal fees. But he didn't. As far as we can tell from the information we have, he wanted to fight it, to make a political point. Well, that sort of fighting is expensive. As for "unspecified chance"--of course there is some unspecified chance of anything happening. You don't piss off the federal government and a key piece of the military industrial complex by knowingly breaking laws and then rest easy in the knowledge that there is zero chance of your getting in serious trouble. But based on previous cases we've seen, it's highly probable that nothing serious would have happened. Other young hackers who broke into networks but didn't cause any damage mostly got probation. Kevin Mitnick got 5 years, but for his second offense after spending 2.5 years as a fugitive.
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    > He needn't have spent a million dollars on top notch defense counsel to get a lenient sentence. Sure, he could have just rolled over. After all that's much cheaper, justice is, after all, for those that can afford it.
    - rayiner 14y ago
      He broke the law. He was going to get a light punishment in response to his light infraction. Where is the injustice? He wanted to fight a political battle, arguing that there was nothing wrong using someones network without permission or distributing peoples work without permission. People here in HN treat that as a given, but that's not how the law views things, and that's not how ordinary Americans view things. My mom wouldn't have needed to know about mac address spoofing to know what he did was wrong. Hell, if I wandered into random closets like that without permission as a child I wouldve known it was wrong. He wanted to challenge the law, and argue that things we percieve to be wrong were either not wrong or otherwise justified. That's what was expensive--not getting a fair shake from the system. Yes, we make it expensive and difficult to upset the settled order. That's by design and its a hallmark of civilization.