8 ms·

You are committing a crime right now (2012)

182 points by gpvos 13y ago

soora 13y ago
Most of us also commit a crime every time we drive a car by driving over the speed limit. Selective enforcement is pretty wide spread. It would be wonderful if at some point in the future the law was changed, however it is too powerful a tool for the police to give that power up without a fight.
- nsmartt 13y ago
  Driving over the speed limit isn't a felony.
  - alan_cx 13y ago
    Did you know that there are other countries and legal systems?
    - nsmartt 13y ago
      First, the law in the OP is an American law. Second, I find it difficult to believe that there are countries where driving slightly faster than a number printed on a road sign can result in prison time. If I've made an error, it's because I drew a reasonable, albeit incorrect, conclusion; it isn't because I'm an ignorant American who doesn't consider the existence of other countries. If you had a correction, you should have posted it rather than a snide comment along these lines.
      - phaus 13y ago
        Some countries take an extreme stance on driving-related offenses. A few countries are actually so worried about speeding that they have banned the sale of racing-related video-games. Hell, in Virginia a few years back they implemented insanely high fines for all sorts of minor moving violations. Some of the offenses cost several thousand dollars.
  - lsiebert 13y ago
    Sufficiently over the speed limit can be reckless endangerment, which is a misdemeanor.
    - nsmartt 13y ago
      I responded to a post about the common tendency to speed when deemed prudent.
- solistice 13y ago
  But speeding laws are pretty specific, some even with tolerances to account for radar inaccuracy. If a radar control measures you're driving over the speed limit, you get a ticket. But the point is that this isn't specific. It's like enforcing our current speeding laws on cars that behave according to Heisenbergs uncertainity principle or exhibit other weird quantum quirks. That law might have made sense in the past, but it doesn't anymore. I really don't want Surfing whilst Savy to become the new Driving whilst black.
- rayiner 13y ago
  Speeding isn't a "crime." They're civil infractions. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_infraction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_infraction.
  - rmc 13y ago
    Depends on the country. It's a crime in some countries
    - marvin 13y ago
      You can get jail time for speeding in Norway, so definitely criminal.
      - rickdale 13y ago
        Thats really interesting. I had a foreign exchange student from Norway come to the States during high school and I remember him telling me that cops had to apply to a judge to bring a gun with them for a specific task, and didn't just carry one around. Big change for him coming to a school that had cops with hand guns at the entrance. Just interesting how different systems work and what goes into making them different...
  - flagnog 13y ago
    It's a misdemeanor in the state of GA (all traffic violations are, now).
    - frankydp 13y ago
      Off topic. Can you recommend any good meetups/groups for node/js guys in Atlanta. I have looked at the meetups but would appreciate any personal opinions.
      - flagnog 13y ago
        Nope, not involved in node/js. Sorry
STRML 13y ago
Selective enforcement is the real power government and police wield over the common person. If the laws were fairly enforced, against everyone, equally, citizens and law enforcement would be on more common ground. Instead, the breadth of laws on the books is far too wide for the average person to understand, with many of them vague enough to cast any person a criminal at any time. So those who have the power to cast down these punishments make deals. And the power to make those deals is where they derive this power. Do this, they say, and we won't throw the book at you. But defy us, and we have all manner of perfectly legal tools we can use against you.
- rayiner 13y ago
  American criminal law is rooted in intent. There is a strong element of selective enforcement in the process, but it's by design. The flip side of selective enforcement to jerk someone around is being able to not punish someone whose conduct falls within the letter of the law, but who didn't have criminal intent. It's this reason that I think the book "3 felonies a day" is very weak. See some examples: http://www.threefeloniesaday.com/Youtoo/tabid/86/Default.aspx http://www.threefeloniesaday.com/Youtoo/tabid/86/Default.asp.... The examples play fast and loose with the facts and the law. In the first example, the page leaves out a lot of the facts: http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2000/November/647enrd.htm http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2000/November/647enrd.htm. The defendants imported $4m of undersized and egg-bearing lobster tails in violation of multiple state and federal laws, and took measures to conceal the action showing their criminal intent. The page makes it seem like they were convicted based on one vague statute. The second example leaves out the fact that the driver was fined only $75. The law in this case is very sensible: it's illegal to operate a motor vehicle in a Federal Wilderness Area. The driver did, even if he did only because there was a blizzard. Ironically, the page seems to have a beef here with the lack of selective enforcement!
  - mahyarm 13y ago
    Aren't there many new laws nowadays where there is strict liability, intent is not needed? And on top of that there is the entire section of negligence law, with no intent by definition, which is easier than you think to get caught in.
rayiner 13y ago
The CFAA is a shitty law, but this article apparently can't be troubled to read all of 18 USC 1030(a). All of the subsections require something more than mere access, and all require "knowing" intent. For example, subsection (1) requires knowing access to certain national security information. (4) requires a "protected" computer, knowing intent, intent to defraud, and obtaining something of value other than simple use of the computer. In the common law there is this concept of implied license. You don't need explicit permission to enter a public store, but the store owner can revoke permission and if you enter the store knowing you don't have permission, you're committing a trespass. That's why the "knowing" part can't be ignored in the CFAA. That's why 3Taps lost against Craigslist--the IP block gave them notice of the fact that they were no longer entitled to access what is otherwise a public website.
- moocowduckquack 13y ago
  "the IP block gave them notice of the fact that they were no longer entitled to access what is otherwise a public website." The same logic could presumably criminalise the behaviour of making a new account on a site after your old account has been blacklisted. This isn't so much about banning people from entering a premises, this is more like banning someone from looking at your roadside advertising signs by standing between them and a sign and then taking them to court when they glance round you.
  - tedunangst 13y ago
    Creating a new account with a fake name directly interacts with the company's server. Looking at a roadside sign requires no activity on the part of the sign.
    - pash 13y ago
      On the contrary, the sign must reflect photons into your eyes. :P
  - lawtguy 13y ago
    A billboard is bad metaphor for a website. With a billboard, you can get the information while standing in public or private space not owned or controlled by the advertiser. So a billboard is more like banner ad than a website. A website as a public store seems to be the better metaphor. That could mean that creating a new account after your old account was banned could be a crime. That's like putting on dark sunglasses and a beard and walking back into the store after you've been kicked out. It's trespassing which is a crime. The difference is in the real world, simple trespass does not result in a life-altering felony conviction with a jail sentence.
moron4hire 13y ago
“ignorance of the law is no defense” only applies to the "natural" crimes like murder or theft.
- SEMW 13y ago
  > “ignorance of the law is no defense” only applies to the "natural" crimes like murder or theft. It really doesn't (at common law, at least). If you don't believe me, try pleading ignorance of the law when you're arrested for breaching a traffic regulation. It's your responsibility to know the criminal law - however impractical that might be. There is a bit of leeway on the boundaries between mistake of law and mistake of fact -- e.g. in England, a tenant who destroyed something he'd installed himself, not knowing that under civil law it'd become the landlord's property, had his conviction for destruction of property quashed (R v Smith [1974] QB 354). And apparently in Canada there's a defence of "invincible mistake of law" in situations where it's literally impossible for the person charged with a crime to have known it was a crime at the time it was committed. But the general principle is that ignorance of the law is no defence to any crime, however 'unnatural'. IANAL.
  - lsiebert 13y ago
    Part of the licensing requirements for a driver's license is learning about traffic regulations, so that isn't a helpful example for your argument.
    - sergiosgc 13y ago
      Traffic regulations apply to everyone, not just drivers. Jaywalking, not using a seat belt are examples of infractions committed by non drivers.
  - s_q_b 13y ago
    There are similar concepts in American law. Some crimes, (it used to be almost all crimes, now it's very few) require a particular state of mind, or mens rea. Mens rea, or "guilty mind", is a classic precept that goes all the way back to Roman law, and would have been considered an ordinary requirement for all criminal laws at the time the Constitution was written. Unfortunately, the Constitution was silent on the issue of mens rea, and the Supreme Court refused to create a universal mens rea requirement for all criminal cases under the due process clause. As a result, there are now a great deal of "strict liability" crimes, which don't require any ill intent on the part of the accused at all. For example, a car accident in some states, even absent negligence, can be grounds for felony charges. Prosecutors moved for this shift during the 70s-90s, since state of mind is so difficult to prove in court. In doing so, they overturned a precedent that goes back literally two millennia. What nobody realized was that mens rea was there for a reason, that it was difficult to prove by design. As a result we see lots of prosecutions for strict liability crimes that leave the defendant at a distinct disadvantage. The second defense that comes up in this context is vagueness. Since penal laws must be strictly construed in favor of the defendant, i.e. any ambiguity in interpretation open in the statute must be resolved in favor of the defendant, vague laws can be and are struck down as being void for vagueness. The theory here is not that the defendant did not bother to learn the law, it is that even if he had, the text of the law was insufficiently clear to give adequate notice to the defendant that his actions were illegal. The real problem here, however, has nothing to do with the mens rea requirement. The real problem is that we have de facto dispensed with the presumption of innocence. In today's justice system, it is not a conviction that ruins a person's life, it is the decision to merely to bring a charge. At the moment a felony charge is filed, before any determination of guilt has been made, the defendant may be incarcerated, for as long as nine years in some jurisdictions without violating the speedy trial requirement. All of his assets may be seized, before they have been proved to be involved in a crime of any kind. He will almost certainly be expelled from educational programs, usually with little or no due process, and lose his employment. All of this happens before any proof has been shown, any arguments have been heard, any witnesses have been questioned, any evidence has been challenged, and before the defendant has had the chance to utter any words other than "not guilty." The fact is, in today's American justice system, your life is effectively over at the mere pointing of a finger. The checks that were supposed to be the last line of defense, probable cause hearings before neutral magistrates and Grand Juries, similarly failed. Local magistrates often work hand-in-glove with the police, often in the same building, and since the probable cause standard is so low there is little obstacle to charging anyone for anything. In states that use Grand Juries, jurors often meet repeatedly with the same prosecutors, month after month. The prosecutor is the only one that can call witnesses, present evidence, make argument, and even testify. He can refuse to present exculpatory evidence and witnesses, and the defendant is not even present to respond. From this fact comes the common saying among prosecutors, "I could indict a ham sandwich for the murder of a pig." Most citizens are comforted by the notion, that no matter the unfairness in the initial process, eventually they will be able to present their case to a jury of their peers. However, even juries are no longer a right in most trials. Since the federal constitution's jury trial requirement was never incorporated against the states, most local magistrates are given the power to sentence defendants for up to six months in jail per count. Because most defendants face multiple charges stemming from the same conduct, there are countless American citizens spending years in jail, never having had their case heard by a jury. We've given prosecutors the unbridled power to destroy anyone by signing a piece of paper. Our justice system is just barely hanging on. Our rights still exist, but it's becoming impossible for an average citizen to effectively assert them. It's an interesting case to me. The decline of the legal system will be slow, and it's still far preferable to virtually any other system I've studied in detail, but it's scary to see it starting to happen. The system still functions well, in some areas, especially for the rich. But the new unchecked system, (advocates would call it "streamlined"), pioneered upon inner city black and hispanic minorities is gradually moving up-market. Remember when you think about policies that seem to only apply to others, like loosening criminal law requirements, sovereign immunity, rampant disregard for the warrant requirement in poor neighborhoods, vehicle checkpoints, and stop-and-frisk: once the precedents are set, there is nothing to keep the government from applying them to you.
perlpimp 13y ago
Frankly government does not care at all for fairness of the law all they care for is control and funding. The former feeds back on latter you see, if you don't have right kinds of guards in place. As such I don't see government making any move to make for fairer laws - because they would have to work harder and incidentally they will get less clout/control of the populace. Computer Trespassing act is just that a wild card in hands of police to persecute nearly anyone who dares to cross them in the way they do their business. my 2c.
tootie 13y ago
I think there is an enormous difference between accessing a public website and what weev did. He walked into an unlocked house, copied personal documents, and published them. Just because he didn't use a crowbar doesn't make it any less intentionally criminal.
- pyre 13y ago
  If what Weev did was criminal, then why isn't AT&T guilty of some sort of criminal negligence for making it so easily accessible?
  - tootie 13y ago
    They probably should be, but I'm not aware of any law against it. Failure to secure sensitive customer data? That should at least be a fineable offense. If a customer was provably injured by this hack, they would probably have grounds for civil suit.
- phaus 13y ago
  AT&T's site wasn't an unlocked house, it was an unlocked corporation. If your personal site gets breached, it's akin to someone having walked into an unlocked house. You have a right to keep your house unlocked because the only one that's going to be hurt by your negligence is you and possibly your family. A business owner that stores massive amounts of private information is not allowed to keep his doors unlocked, because it amounts to gross negligence. It wouldn't be right for someone to walk right in and steal everything, but the business should be held accountable, because they don't have the right not to secure their customers private information.
- chimeracoder 13y ago
  > He walked into an unlocked house, He sent an HTTP GET request, and the server responded. This isn't walking into an unlocked house. It's more like walking into an unlocked storefront during business hours, asking permission to view a certain item behind the counter, and being granted said permission by the clerk, who hands it to you. > Just because he didn't use a crowbar doesn't make it any less intentionally criminal. If those documents were not supposed to be viewable, the server should reject the request. Making a request is not a crime. You are literally asking, "Can I please see the document stored at $LOCATION?" If the answer is no, the server has a means to do that: send an HTTP 403 response. The "unlocked house" analogy might hold if he tried to ssh into their server as the root user, but in this case, AT&T should have been held responsible for gross negligence for allowing people browsing[0] their open "storefront" (their website) access to personal customer information. To use another analogy, if you submitted a FOIA request for classified documents, can the government satisfy your request (by sending you the documents) and then charge you with a felony for requesting those documents? I wager that most people would say that the fault lies with the government for failing to deny your request. Publishing the documents later on is a separate matter, but the crux of weev's case focused on the fact that he obtained them, not the fact that he published them, which is maddening, because that logic would break the entire model of the web by breaking HTTP. [0] Not to get too hung up on terminology, but notice that we use the term "browsing" the web to refer to HTTP requests, but we don't talk about "browsing" an ssh login.
rtpg 13y ago
The thing about these articles that I hate is that they all try to play to the letter of the law as if we're playing word games. But in real life, in the courts( of public opinion and the judicial ones), where this stuff matters, its almost always been about the spirit of the law. People do get thrown into jail for technicality (minimum sentencing laws are moronic), but this is one of those cases where circumstance and plain common sense would prevail.
- bo1024 13y ago
  Did you not see the Auernheimer case mentioned in the article? What happened there is the exact opposite of what you describe.
ahallock 13y ago
URLs are public and modifying them should not be considered unauthorized access or hacking, especially semantic URLs. I mean, if there's a querystring parameter on the end like "page=2" and I modify it to be "page=3", I'm simply using an interface in a logical manner. The onus should be on the website owner to secure resources within their URL space, especially since there are a myriad of easy ways to do this in 2013.
chrischen 13y ago
Maybe we should grant amnesty to all crimes committed by xx% of the population? If not, we could end up where it becomes the norm everyone is a criminal to something, and the government can selectively prosecute only when it serves their purpose.
Sagat 13y ago
I'm glad I don't live in America.
greenyoda 13y ago
Lots of previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4812496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4812496

182 points by gpvos 13y ago

soora 13y ago

Most of us also commit a crime every time we drive a car by driving over the speed limit. Selective enforcement is pretty wide spread. It would be wonderful if at some point in the future the law was changed, however it is too powerful a tool for the police to give that power up without a fight.

nsmartt 13y ago
Driving over the speed limit isn't a felony.
- alan_cx 13y ago
  Did you know that there are other countries and legal systems?
  - nsmartt 13y ago
    First, the law in the OP is an American law. Second, I find it difficult to believe that there are countries where driving slightly faster than a number printed on a road sign can result in prison time. If I've made an error, it's because I drew a reasonable, albeit incorrect, conclusion; it isn't because I'm an ignorant American who doesn't consider the existence of other countries. If you had a correction, you should have posted it rather than a snide comment along these lines.
    - phaus 13y ago
      Some countries take an extreme stance on driving-related offenses. A few countries are actually so worried about speeding that they have banned the sale of racing-related video-games. Hell, in Virginia a few years back they implemented insanely high fines for all sorts of minor moving violations. Some of the offenses cost several thousand dollars.
- lsiebert 13y ago
  Sufficiently over the speed limit can be reckless endangerment, which is a misdemeanor.
  - nsmartt 13y ago
    I responded to a post about the common tendency to speed when deemed prudent.
solistice 13y ago
But speeding laws are pretty specific, some even with tolerances to account for radar inaccuracy. If a radar control measures you're driving over the speed limit, you get a ticket. But the point is that this isn't specific. It's like enforcing our current speeding laws on cars that behave according to Heisenbergs uncertainity principle or exhibit other weird quantum quirks. That law might have made sense in the past, but it doesn't anymore. I really don't want Surfing whilst Savy to become the new Driving whilst black.
rayiner 13y ago
Speeding isn't a "crime." They're civil infractions. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_infraction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_infraction.
- rmc 13y ago
  Depends on the country. It's a crime in some countries
  - marvin 13y ago
    You can get jail time for speeding in Norway, so definitely criminal.
    - rickdale 13y ago
      Thats really interesting. I had a foreign exchange student from Norway come to the States during high school and I remember him telling me that cops had to apply to a judge to bring a gun with them for a specific task, and didn't just carry one around. Big change for him coming to a school that had cops with hand guns at the entrance. Just interesting how different systems work and what goes into making them different...
- flagnog 13y ago
  It's a misdemeanor in the state of GA (all traffic violations are, now).
  - frankydp 13y ago
    Off topic. Can you recommend any good meetups/groups for node/js guys in Atlanta. I have looked at the meetups but would appreciate any personal opinions.
    - flagnog 13y ago
      Nope, not involved in node/js. Sorry

STRML 13y ago

Selective enforcement is the real power government and police wield over the common person. If the laws were fairly enforced, against everyone, equally, citizens and law enforcement would be on more common ground. Instead, the breadth of laws on the books is far too wide for the average person to understand, with many of them vague enough to cast any person a criminal at any time. So those who have the power to cast down these punishments make deals. And the power to make those deals is where they derive this power. Do this, they say, and we won't throw the book at you. But defy us, and we have all manner of perfectly legal tools we can use against you.

rayiner 13y ago
American criminal law is rooted in intent. There is a strong element of selective enforcement in the process, but it's by design. The flip side of selective enforcement to jerk someone around is being able to not punish someone whose conduct falls within the letter of the law, but who didn't have criminal intent. It's this reason that I think the book "3 felonies a day" is very weak. See some examples: http://www.threefeloniesaday.com/Youtoo/tabid/86/Default.aspx http://www.threefeloniesaday.com/Youtoo/tabid/86/Default.asp.... The examples play fast and loose with the facts and the law. In the first example, the page leaves out a lot of the facts: http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2000/November/647enrd.htm http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2000/November/647enrd.htm. The defendants imported $4m of undersized and egg-bearing lobster tails in violation of multiple state and federal laws, and took measures to conceal the action showing their criminal intent. The page makes it seem like they were convicted based on one vague statute. The second example leaves out the fact that the driver was fined only $75. The law in this case is very sensible: it's illegal to operate a motor vehicle in a Federal Wilderness Area. The driver did, even if he did only because there was a blizzard. Ironically, the page seems to have a beef here with the lack of selective enforcement!
- mahyarm 13y ago
  Aren't there many new laws nowadays where there is strict liability, intent is not needed? And on top of that there is the entire section of negligence law, with no intent by definition, which is easier than you think to get caught in.

rayiner 13y ago

The CFAA is a shitty law, but this article apparently can't be troubled to read all of 18 USC 1030(a). All of the subsections require something more than mere access, and all require "knowing" intent. For example, subsection (1) requires knowing access to certain national security information. (4) requires a "protected" computer, knowing intent, intent to defraud, and obtaining something of value other than simple use of the computer. In the common law there is this concept of implied license. You don't need explicit permission to enter a public store, but the store owner can revoke permission and if you enter the store knowing you don't have permission, you're committing a trespass. That's why the "knowing" part can't be ignored in the CFAA. That's why 3Taps lost against Craigslist--the IP block gave them notice of the fact that they were no longer entitled to access what is otherwise a public website.

moocowduckquack 13y ago
"the IP block gave them notice of the fact that they were no longer entitled to access what is otherwise a public website." The same logic could presumably criminalise the behaviour of making a new account on a site after your old account has been blacklisted. This isn't so much about banning people from entering a premises, this is more like banning someone from looking at your roadside advertising signs by standing between them and a sign and then taking them to court when they glance round you.
- tedunangst 13y ago
  Creating a new account with a fake name directly interacts with the company's server. Looking at a roadside sign requires no activity on the part of the sign.
  - pash 13y ago
    On the contrary, the sign must reflect photons into your eyes. :P
- lawtguy 13y ago
  A billboard is bad metaphor for a website. With a billboard, you can get the information while standing in public or private space not owned or controlled by the advertiser. So a billboard is more like banner ad than a website. A website as a public store seems to be the better metaphor. That could mean that creating a new account after your old account was banned could be a crime. That's like putting on dark sunglasses and a beard and walking back into the store after you've been kicked out. It's trespassing which is a crime. The difference is in the real world, simple trespass does not result in a life-altering felony conviction with a jail sentence.

moron4hire 13y ago

“ignorance of the law is no defense” only applies to the "natural" crimes like murder or theft.

SEMW 13y ago
> “ignorance of the law is no defense” only applies to the "natural" crimes like murder or theft. It really doesn't (at common law, at least). If you don't believe me, try pleading ignorance of the law when you're arrested for breaching a traffic regulation. It's your responsibility to know the criminal law - however impractical that might be. There is a bit of leeway on the boundaries between mistake of law and mistake of fact -- e.g. in England, a tenant who destroyed something he'd installed himself, not knowing that under civil law it'd become the landlord's property, had his conviction for destruction of property quashed (R v Smith [1974] QB 354). And apparently in Canada there's a defence of "invincible mistake of law" in situations where it's literally impossible for the person charged with a crime to have known it was a crime at the time it was committed. But the general principle is that ignorance of the law is no defence to any crime, however 'unnatural'. IANAL.
- lsiebert 13y ago
  Part of the licensing requirements for a driver's license is learning about traffic regulations, so that isn't a helpful example for your argument.
  - sergiosgc 13y ago
    Traffic regulations apply to everyone, not just drivers. Jaywalking, not using a seat belt are examples of infractions committed by non drivers.
- s_q_b 13y ago
  There are similar concepts in American law. Some crimes, (it used to be almost all crimes, now it's very few) require a particular state of mind, or mens rea. Mens rea, or "guilty mind", is a classic precept that goes all the way back to Roman law, and would have been considered an ordinary requirement for all criminal laws at the time the Constitution was written. Unfortunately, the Constitution was silent on the issue of mens rea, and the Supreme Court refused to create a universal mens rea requirement for all criminal cases under the due process clause. As a result, there are now a great deal of "strict liability" crimes, which don't require any ill intent on the part of the accused at all. For example, a car accident in some states, even absent negligence, can be grounds for felony charges. Prosecutors moved for this shift during the 70s-90s, since state of mind is so difficult to prove in court. In doing so, they overturned a precedent that goes back literally two millennia. What nobody realized was that mens rea was there for a reason, that it was difficult to prove by design. As a result we see lots of prosecutions for strict liability crimes that leave the defendant at a distinct disadvantage. The second defense that comes up in this context is vagueness. Since penal laws must be strictly construed in favor of the defendant, i.e. any ambiguity in interpretation open in the statute must be resolved in favor of the defendant, vague laws can be and are struck down as being void for vagueness. The theory here is not that the defendant did not bother to learn the law, it is that even if he had, the text of the law was insufficiently clear to give adequate notice to the defendant that his actions were illegal. The real problem here, however, has nothing to do with the mens rea requirement. The real problem is that we have de facto dispensed with the presumption of innocence. In today's justice system, it is not a conviction that ruins a person's life, it is the decision to merely to bring a charge. At the moment a felony charge is filed, before any determination of guilt has been made, the defendant may be incarcerated, for as long as nine years in some jurisdictions without violating the speedy trial requirement. All of his assets may be seized, before they have been proved to be involved in a crime of any kind. He will almost certainly be expelled from educational programs, usually with little or no due process, and lose his employment. All of this happens before any proof has been shown, any arguments have been heard, any witnesses have been questioned, any evidence has been challenged, and before the defendant has had the chance to utter any words other than "not guilty." The fact is, in today's American justice system, your life is effectively over at the mere pointing of a finger. The checks that were supposed to be the last line of defense, probable cause hearings before neutral magistrates and Grand Juries, similarly failed. Local magistrates often work hand-in-glove with the police, often in the same building, and since the probable cause standard is so low there is little obstacle to charging anyone for anything. In states that use Grand Juries, jurors often meet repeatedly with the same prosecutors, month after month. The prosecutor is the only one that can call witnesses, present evidence, make argument, and even testify. He can refuse to present exculpatory evidence and witnesses, and the defendant is not even present to respond. From this fact comes the common saying among prosecutors, "I could indict a ham sandwich for the murder of a pig." Most citizens are comforted by the notion, that no matter the unfairness in the initial process, eventually they will be able to present their case to a jury of their peers. However, even juries are no longer a right in most trials. Since the federal constitution's jury trial requirement was never incorporated against the states, most local magistrates are given the power to sentence defendants for up to six months in jail per count. Because most defendants face multiple charges stemming from the same conduct, there are countless American citizens spending years in jail, never having had their case heard by a jury. We've given prosecutors the unbridled power to destroy anyone by signing a piece of paper. Our justice system is just barely hanging on. Our rights still exist, but it's becoming impossible for an average citizen to effectively assert them. It's an interesting case to me. The decline of the legal system will be slow, and it's still far preferable to virtually any other system I've studied in detail, but it's scary to see it starting to happen. The system still functions well, in some areas, especially for the rich. But the new unchecked system, (advocates would call it "streamlined"), pioneered upon inner city black and hispanic minorities is gradually moving up-market. Remember when you think about policies that seem to only apply to others, like loosening criminal law requirements, sovereign immunity, rampant disregard for the warrant requirement in poor neighborhoods, vehicle checkpoints, and stop-and-frisk: once the precedents are set, there is nothing to keep the government from applying them to you.

perlpimp 13y ago

Frankly government does not care at all for fairness of the law all they care for is control and funding. The former feeds back on latter you see, if you don't have right kinds of guards in place. As such I don't see government making any move to make for fairer laws - because they would have to work harder and incidentally they will get less clout/control of the populace. Computer Trespassing act is just that a wild card in hands of police to persecute nearly anyone who dares to cross them in the way they do their business. my 2c.

tootie 13y ago

I think there is an enormous difference between accessing a public website and what weev did. He walked into an unlocked house, copied personal documents, and published them. Just because he didn't use a crowbar doesn't make it any less intentionally criminal.

pyre 13y ago
If what Weev did was criminal, then why isn't AT&T guilty of some sort of criminal negligence for making it so easily accessible?
- tootie 13y ago
  They probably should be, but I'm not aware of any law against it. Failure to secure sensitive customer data? That should at least be a fineable offense. If a customer was provably injured by this hack, they would probably have grounds for civil suit.
phaus 13y ago
AT&T's site wasn't an unlocked house, it was an unlocked corporation. If your personal site gets breached, it's akin to someone having walked into an unlocked house. You have a right to keep your house unlocked because the only one that's going to be hurt by your negligence is you and possibly your family. A business owner that stores massive amounts of private information is not allowed to keep his doors unlocked, because it amounts to gross negligence. It wouldn't be right for someone to walk right in and steal everything, but the business should be held accountable, because they don't have the right not to secure their customers private information.
chimeracoder 13y ago
> He walked into an unlocked house, He sent an HTTP GET request, and the server responded. This isn't walking into an unlocked house. It's more like walking into an unlocked storefront during business hours, asking permission to view a certain item behind the counter, and being granted said permission by the clerk, who hands it to you. > Just because he didn't use a crowbar doesn't make it any less intentionally criminal. If those documents were not supposed to be viewable, the server should reject the request. Making a request is not a crime. You are literally asking, "Can I please see the document stored at $LOCATION?" If the answer is no, the server has a means to do that: send an HTTP 403 response. The "unlocked house" analogy might hold if he tried to ssh into their server as the root user, but in this case, AT&T should have been held responsible for gross negligence for allowing people browsing[0] their open "storefront" (their website) access to personal customer information. To use another analogy, if you submitted a FOIA request for classified documents, can the government satisfy your request (by sending you the documents) and then charge you with a felony for requesting those documents? I wager that most people would say that the fault lies with the government for failing to deny your request. Publishing the documents later on is a separate matter, but the crux of weev's case focused on the fact that he obtained them, not the fact that he published them, which is maddening, because that logic would break the entire model of the web by breaking HTTP. [0] Not to get too hung up on terminology, but notice that we use the term "browsing" the web to refer to HTTP requests, but we don't talk about "browsing" an ssh login.

rtpg 13y ago

The thing about these articles that I hate is that they all try to play to the letter of the law as if we're playing word games. But in real life, in the courts( of public opinion and the judicial ones), where this stuff matters, its almost always been about the spirit of the law. People do get thrown into jail for technicality (minimum sentencing laws are moronic), but this is one of those cases where circumstance and plain common sense would prevail.

bo1024 13y ago
Did you not see the Auernheimer case mentioned in the article? What happened there is the exact opposite of what you describe.

ahallock 13y ago

URLs are public and modifying them should not be considered unauthorized access or hacking, especially semantic URLs. I mean, if there's a querystring parameter on the end like "page=2" and I modify it to be "page=3", I'm simply using an interface in a logical manner. The onus should be on the website owner to secure resources within their URL space, especially since there are a myriad of easy ways to do this in 2013.

chrischen 13y ago

Maybe we should grant amnesty to all crimes committed by xx% of the population? If not, we could end up where it becomes the norm everyone is a criminal to something, and the government can selectively prosecute only when it serves their purpose.

Sagat 13y ago

I'm glad I don't live in America.

greenyoda 13y ago

Lots of previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4812496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4812496