7 ms·

Petition Against Felony Charge for WiFi Prank

78 points by pearjuice 12y ago

brink 12y ago
When I was 17, I pranked my high school's website by replacing homepage content with a rickroll video through some creative hacking. The school turned around and hit me with a felony charge due to it being computer related. So I can definitely understand where this is coming from.
- nness 12y ago
  When I was in highschool we had the those Novell systems, including its own email client. All students and faculty had an email address. Whilst trying to be clever, I discovered that Novell will happily forward an email to everyone, including all mailing-lists, if you enter an asterisk in the "To" field. Novell happily kept the asterisk in the field when replying, so every reply was also sent to everyone. Students naturally got inquisitive and emailed back, trying to unsubscribe, asking what was going on or even trying to sell an old PlayStation. The load apparently crashed the email server. All I got was a detention — kept back half an hour after school. And had to apologise to the network admin. That to me was a suitable reaction to a kid doing something stupid.
- girvo 12y ago
  I'm lucky, I think, because over the 5 years of highschool I cracked every users password, found multiple vulnerabilities in the Novell NetWare system that allowed me to run arbitrary binaries, found out that I could use the `NET SEND` command to pop a message on every computer that was connected to the network, among other things. The IT Coordinator wanted me nailed to the wall, but the vice-principal found a lot of the things I did interesting, and instead made the IT coordinator give me access to a Suse VM with full permissions, and didn't even give me a detention. My impetus for doing all of this was so that I could run compilers and IDEs while at school, as I was running a Pentium 2 with 76Mb of RAM in 2005. It could've gone a completely different way, I think, and if my vice-principal hadn't seen something in me I could've ruined my life with all that. Scary to think about.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
nickodell 12y ago
I feel like there's something missing from this story. Brian stopped Jason from receiving emails, then Jason broke Brian's wifi for an hour, then Brian calls the FBI. Do these two have previous history? Was there some sort of escalation between the second and the third event?
- argc 12y ago
  Good question. Who calls the FBI over something like that? Granted, I haven't heard his side of the story, but with the information I have now I don't ever want to be friends with Brian.
- eridius 12y ago
  What I want to know is why the FBI even cared in the slightest that Jason broke Brian's wifi for an hour. I feel like there must be something missing to this story to explain that.
  - acdha 12y ago
    Indeed – in the past, even if you suffered actual damages the first thing the FBI would ask was whether they were over $50K because they didn't touch anything under that amount. I wonder if most of the appeal was a case where all of the participants are known & local – they're thinking a quick, easy prosecution and some press to pad someone's annual review.
    - alt2319 12y ago
      Sometimes they prosecute these cases just to gain experience in prosecuting them.
- takeda 12y ago
  Based on other comments & Occam's Razor tells me that Brian banned Jason's email account then Brian started to DDoS Brian's WiFi at which point Brian contacted FBI.
FireBeyond 12y ago
Not sure this warrants a felony charge, but not sure this petition is particularly inspiring either. Both parties behaved amazingly immaturely. But this petition is a heavily reality-distorted mealy mouthed justification of hand-waving away of what he did. Every action by the other party is blown up "many DDoS activities keeping him out of important business meetings", while the things he did are just hand waved away like so: "Jason decided to play a friendly prank on him in return and performed three twenty minute stress tests on one of Brian’s wifi hotspots" - not sure how one person's actions are a DoS, but another are not). Hyperbole abounds, too: "Conviction would guarantee the rest of his life to be spent in financial insolvency and as a third-class citizen with fewer rights and only the most unfulfilling employment prospects." Really, convicted of a felony, you're guaranteed lifetime financial insolvency? "a conviction would spell the end of his professional career and aspirations to serve the nation's Foreign Service corps as a diplomat." A little snarky, but I'd wager the State Department is looking for diplomats who'd avoid getting into petty situations like this in the first place...
- joshavant 12y ago
  IMO, you're missing the point. Is this laden with hyperbole? Perhaps. But 'how bad life REALLY is as a felon' is not so much the issue at hand, as it is the absurdity of pressing felony charges for what is, apparently, effectively, just a silly computer prank.
  - hueving 12y ago
    "just a silly computer prank" is exactly the downplaying outlined in the comment you are responding to. It was a ddos. Call it what it was.
    - AnthonyMouse 12y ago
      A small scale denial of service is "just a silly computer prank" -- it's like having a bunch of your friends stand in the street and block traffic. You're not allowed to do it, but that in no way justifies felony charges. That seems to be the entire disconnect in this debate. It isn't about whether it was right or wrong, it's about the unreasonableness of imposing disproportionately severe penalties on someone who did a relatively minor bad thing.
eli 12y ago
Felony charges are obviously ridiculous, but I don't quite see the humor in the "funny prank" of shutting down someone's internet connection. It's at least as much a "denial of service attack" as flooding someone's email account.
jsmthrowaway 12y ago
I've read this petition three times and I still have no idea what happened. Also, what in the holy fuck is the author thinking giving everyone enough information to find the "bad guy" in her story (I knew who she was talking about even without it) but keeping the identity of the person we're allegedly helping obscured? The difference between me and whoever the person advocating for this guy is, is that I know how to use PACER and am willing to pay to investigate claims like this. Honestly, I wanted to read the indictment because the horribly-written petition left me confused, but indeed, the petition leaves out quite a bit of the story. That includes the guy signing back up for Hacker Dojo under a false name after being banned, his grand total of one day being a member of Hacker Dojo, and completely omitting the attorney that he retained privately (and who quit not long after due to a "breakdown of communication"; puts perspective on raising a legal defense). By the indictment, which went before a grand jury, by the way, it sounds like he signed up as "Ad Min," got banned, signed up as "Dallas Smith," got banned again (probably), then threw a hissy a month or so later and packeted Hacker Dojo. Poor guy indeed. Who attacks Hacker Dojo? 5:14-cr-00114-EJD, United States of America v. Jason David Miller. Grand Jury Indictment: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/indictment.pdf https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/indic... Order to Seal (since lifted): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/seal.pdf https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/seal.... Continuance so Miller can retain counsel: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/subin.pdf https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/subin... Status hearing where Miller's attorney subs in: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/counsel.pdf https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/couns... Withdrawal of Miller's attorney ten days later: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/withdrawal.pdf https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/withd... Full history: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/history.png https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/histo... This is all public information. I paid $2.60 to look it up, and you can too -- sign up for PACER. Federal court is really simple if you know how to look, it's the state courts that tend to be harder and require a physical presence. EDIT: I edited out my speculation once I had the indictment, and extend apologies to the commenters who wanted to engage it.
- jjoonathan 12y ago
sudo-i 12y ago
A textbook case of 2 people who take themselves way too seriously... and it all escalated over a email address! The level of maturity of both sides is mind numbing and the whole case makes Hack Dojo (which is an amazing place) look like an immature little boys club.
- gcb0 12y ago
  hack dojo is mostly a immature little boys club for rich people.
  - sudo-i 12y ago
    Thousands of Peter Pan's living in a perpetual Neverland.
- Vendan 12y ago
  heh, if my hackerspace had emails like that, most of us would have stuff like post.master@ and web.master@ within minutes... and high five anyone that actually managed to use that to convince someone they were actually high level email addresses for the site.
staunch 12y ago
Bad things happen when idiots collide. I signed it though, because even a fool doesn't deserve to be punished so severely.
MichaelGG 12y ago
This is terribly written and comes off as extremely misleading. No useful details are given. "Kept out of important meetings?" "A prank on WiFi?" What happened, what are you trying to get people to sign their names to? Sure, we're all biased against prosecutors and a "WiFi prank" doesn't sound like anything really bad, but shit, write clearly and state the facts, don't try to snow us.
- jeffmould 12y ago
  Couldn't agree more. There is a significant amount that seems to be missing from this and leads me to a couple questions: 1. If Brian Klug is a founder of the HackerDojo as a Google search on his name confirms, why would the HackerDojo sell a "premium email address" to Jason Miller for a $100? Wouldn't Brian, as a founder, have a say in who has a particular HackerDojo email account. 2. Going out on a limb here, but a look at the MeetUp page for the Palo Alto Data Science Association, shows no entry that I could find for a Jason Miller as the founder. I am not trying to make any accusations here, but something just doesn't add up. The HackerDojo is a recognizable name and this whole thing doesn't add up to me. Lastly it is pretty standard for anyone on pretrial release to have some sort of monitoring aspect, so that part is not out of the ordinary. This could be especially true when, like Jason Miller, the individual is not a resident of the state (Jason is from Maryland and appears to be living there now according to his LinkedIn profile) where the charges were filed. Anyway, I would love to hear the real story behind this one. I can't find my PACER account information so if anyone has an account on PACER and can find/share the charging documents it may shed some light on this case.
  - jsmthrowaway 12y ago
    Membership in Hacker Dojo was $100/month at the time. He paid for a month. It's $125/month now for non-students. It's evidence of the spin, because Hacker Dojo doesn't sell "premium e-mail addresses." More spin: "Klug performed a denial of service attack on Miller’s email account" = David was banned, which is clever, because it's Miller that's charged with packeting Hacker Dojo. Also, why the hell is Anonymous on the petition?
codezero 12y ago
I'm baffled as to why this didn't stop when he was asked not to use ad.min@ – this seems like a reasonable request which most people could just accept and move on from. High five, you did a nice trick, but the real admin asked you to stop, so just move on, right? As others have mentioned, there seems to be a lot not said here, which isn't a surprise, and of course, felony charges are insane here.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  Or why didn't the real admin just rename/ban the account? Edit: Reading the indictment posted in another comment, that's exactly what they did. The indictment also says the Hacker Dojo network was DDoSed several times over a few weeks. So this petition starts to feel more like outright lying.
  - jeffmould 12y ago
    I could be wrong here, but from reading the charging documents it sounds like the "denial of service" that was actually done to Jason's email account was really his account being banned when he was kicked out of the HackerDojo for using a fake name the first time. It was not until he signed up for HackerDojo a second time using another fake name, and getting banned again, that he is accused of committing his DoS on the HackerDojo.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
I guess the lesson here is that when someone pranks you with denial email spamming you call the FBI? Sad situation folks.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
ianstallings 12y ago
GTFO of here, I don't know you and I'm not signing a petition based on hearsay. This is a legal problem. Contact a lawyer and prepare for court.
- takeda 12y ago
  Looks like even his lawyer doesn't want to have anything to do with him based on the documents posted. You are right the petition not only misleading it is straight lie.
ccvannorman 12y ago
I was a member at hacker dojo while this happened. His actions had a real financial impact, not just on hacker dojo but on members like me who couldnt get work done. While I never met him, it's difficult to feel sorry for him as he knew exactly the damage he was causing and was "addicted to pushing the button that hurt our wifi" (paraphrasing, but i do remember reading his letters that said basically this.) My personal opinion is that while i dont want a precedent for felony charges for "wifi pranks", if this kid (20s) wasn't charged witha felony my gut says he'll be back at it again harder and faster having gotten away with it.
zmanian 12y ago
I remember when this was going on at Hacker Dojo. The Internet was completely unusable for weeks. It seems likely that goal of the attack was cause Hacker Dojo to lose members. It seemed like an economic attack on a community space.

78 points by pearjuice 12y ago

brink 12y ago

When I was 17, I pranked my high school's website by replacing homepage content with a rickroll video through some creative hacking. The school turned around and hit me with a felony charge due to it being computer related. So I can definitely understand where this is coming from.

nness 12y ago
When I was in highschool we had the those Novell systems, including its own email client. All students and faculty had an email address. Whilst trying to be clever, I discovered that Novell will happily forward an email to everyone, including all mailing-lists, if you enter an asterisk in the "To" field. Novell happily kept the asterisk in the field when replying, so every reply was also sent to everyone. Students naturally got inquisitive and emailed back, trying to unsubscribe, asking what was going on or even trying to sell an old PlayStation. The load apparently crashed the email server. All I got was a detention — kept back half an hour after school. And had to apologise to the network admin. That to me was a suitable reaction to a kid doing something stupid.
girvo 12y ago
I'm lucky, I think, because over the 5 years of highschool I cracked every users password, found multiple vulnerabilities in the Novell NetWare system that allowed me to run arbitrary binaries, found out that I could use the `NET SEND` command to pop a message on every computer that was connected to the network, among other things. The IT Coordinator wanted me nailed to the wall, but the vice-principal found a lot of the things I did interesting, and instead made the IT coordinator give me access to a Suse VM with full permissions, and didn't even give me a detention. My impetus for doing all of this was so that I could run compilers and IDEs while at school, as I was running a Pentium 2 with 76Mb of RAM in 2005. It could've gone a completely different way, I think, and if my vice-principal hadn't seen something in me I could've ruined my life with all that. Scary to think about.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

nickodell 12y ago

I feel like there's something missing from this story. Brian stopped Jason from receiving emails, then Jason broke Brian's wifi for an hour, then Brian calls the FBI. Do these two have previous history? Was there some sort of escalation between the second and the third event?

argc 12y ago
Good question. Who calls the FBI over something like that? Granted, I haven't heard his side of the story, but with the information I have now I don't ever want to be friends with Brian.
eridius 12y ago
What I want to know is why the FBI even cared in the slightest that Jason broke Brian's wifi for an hour. I feel like there must be something missing to this story to explain that.
- acdha 12y ago
  Indeed – in the past, even if you suffered actual damages the first thing the FBI would ask was whether they were over $50K because they didn't touch anything under that amount. I wonder if most of the appeal was a case where all of the participants are known & local – they're thinking a quick, easy prosecution and some press to pad someone's annual review.
  - alt2319 12y ago
    Sometimes they prosecute these cases just to gain experience in prosecuting them.
takeda 12y ago
Based on other comments & Occam's Razor tells me that Brian banned Jason's email account then Brian started to DDoS Brian's WiFi at which point Brian contacted FBI.

FireBeyond 12y ago

Not sure this warrants a felony charge, but not sure this petition is particularly inspiring either. Both parties behaved amazingly immaturely. But this petition is a heavily reality-distorted mealy mouthed justification of hand-waving away of what he did. Every action by the other party is blown up "many DDoS activities keeping him out of important business meetings", while the things he did are just hand waved away like so: "Jason decided to play a friendly prank on him in return and performed three twenty minute stress tests on one of Brian’s wifi hotspots" - not sure how one person's actions are a DoS, but another are not). Hyperbole abounds, too: "Conviction would guarantee the rest of his life to be spent in financial insolvency and as a third-class citizen with fewer rights and only the most unfulfilling employment prospects." Really, convicted of a felony, you're guaranteed lifetime financial insolvency? "a conviction would spell the end of his professional career and aspirations to serve the nation's Foreign Service corps as a diplomat." A little snarky, but I'd wager the State Department is looking for diplomats who'd avoid getting into petty situations like this in the first place...

joshavant 12y ago
IMO, you're missing the point. Is this laden with hyperbole? Perhaps. But 'how bad life REALLY is as a felon' is not so much the issue at hand, as it is the absurdity of pressing felony charges for what is, apparently, effectively, just a silly computer prank.
- hueving 12y ago
  "just a silly computer prank" is exactly the downplaying outlined in the comment you are responding to. It was a ddos. Call it what it was.
  - AnthonyMouse 12y ago
    A small scale denial of service is "just a silly computer prank" -- it's like having a bunch of your friends stand in the street and block traffic. You're not allowed to do it, but that in no way justifies felony charges. That seems to be the entire disconnect in this debate. It isn't about whether it was right or wrong, it's about the unreasonableness of imposing disproportionately severe penalties on someone who did a relatively minor bad thing.

eli 12y ago

Felony charges are obviously ridiculous, but I don't quite see the humor in the "funny prank" of shutting down someone's internet connection. It's at least as much a "denial of service attack" as flooding someone's email account.

jsmthrowaway 12y ago

I've read this petition three times and I still have no idea what happened. Also, what in the holy fuck is the author thinking giving everyone enough information to find the "bad guy" in her story (I knew who she was talking about even without it) but keeping the identity of the person we're allegedly helping obscured? The difference between me and whoever the person advocating for this guy is, is that I know how to use PACER and am willing to pay to investigate claims like this. Honestly, I wanted to read the indictment because the horribly-written petition left me confused, but indeed, the petition leaves out quite a bit of the story. That includes the guy signing back up for Hacker Dojo under a false name after being banned, his grand total of one day being a member of Hacker Dojo, and completely omitting the attorney that he retained privately (and who quit not long after due to a "breakdown of communication"; puts perspective on raising a legal defense). By the indictment, which went before a grand jury, by the way, it sounds like he signed up as "Ad Min," got banned, signed up as "Dallas Smith," got banned again (probably), then threw a hissy a month or so later and packeted Hacker Dojo. Poor guy indeed. Who attacks Hacker Dojo? 5:14-cr-00114-EJD, United States of America v. Jason David Miller. Grand Jury Indictment: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/indictment.pdf https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/indic... Order to Seal (since lifted): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/seal.pdf https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/seal.... Continuance so Miller can retain counsel: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/subin.pdf https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/subin... Status hearing where Miller's attorney subs in: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/counsel.pdf https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/couns... Withdrawal of Miller's attorney ten days later: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/withdrawal.pdf https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/withd... Full history: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/history.png https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/histo... This is all public information. I paid $2.60 to look it up, and you can too -- sign up for PACER. Federal court is really simple if you know how to look, it's the state courts that tend to be harder and require a physical presence. EDIT: I edited out my speculation once I had the indictment, and extend apologies to the commenters who wanted to engage it.

jjoonathan 12y ago

sudo-i 12y ago

A textbook case of 2 people who take themselves way too seriously... and it all escalated over a email address! The level of maturity of both sides is mind numbing and the whole case makes Hack Dojo (which is an amazing place) look like an immature little boys club.

gcb0 12y ago
hack dojo is mostly a immature little boys club for rich people.
- sudo-i 12y ago
  Thousands of Peter Pan's living in a perpetual Neverland.
Vendan 12y ago
heh, if my hackerspace had emails like that, most of us would have stuff like post.master@ and web.master@ within minutes... and high five anyone that actually managed to use that to convince someone they were actually high level email addresses for the site.

staunch 12y ago

Bad things happen when idiots collide. I signed it though, because even a fool doesn't deserve to be punished so severely.

MichaelGG 12y ago

This is terribly written and comes off as extremely misleading. No useful details are given. "Kept out of important meetings?" "A prank on WiFi?" What happened, what are you trying to get people to sign their names to? Sure, we're all biased against prosecutors and a "WiFi prank" doesn't sound like anything really bad, but shit, write clearly and state the facts, don't try to snow us.

jeffmould 12y ago
Couldn't agree more. There is a significant amount that seems to be missing from this and leads me to a couple questions: 1. If Brian Klug is a founder of the HackerDojo as a Google search on his name confirms, why would the HackerDojo sell a "premium email address" to Jason Miller for a $100? Wouldn't Brian, as a founder, have a say in who has a particular HackerDojo email account. 2. Going out on a limb here, but a look at the MeetUp page for the Palo Alto Data Science Association, shows no entry that I could find for a Jason Miller as the founder. I am not trying to make any accusations here, but something just doesn't add up. The HackerDojo is a recognizable name and this whole thing doesn't add up to me. Lastly it is pretty standard for anyone on pretrial release to have some sort of monitoring aspect, so that part is not out of the ordinary. This could be especially true when, like Jason Miller, the individual is not a resident of the state (Jason is from Maryland and appears to be living there now according to his LinkedIn profile) where the charges were filed. Anyway, I would love to hear the real story behind this one. I can't find my PACER account information so if anyone has an account on PACER and can find/share the charging documents it may shed some light on this case.
- jsmthrowaway 12y ago
  Membership in Hacker Dojo was $100/month at the time. He paid for a month. It's $125/month now for non-students. It's evidence of the spin, because Hacker Dojo doesn't sell "premium e-mail addresses." More spin: "Klug performed a denial of service attack on Miller’s email account" = David was banned, which is clever, because it's Miller that's charged with packeting Hacker Dojo. Also, why the hell is Anonymous on the petition?

codezero 12y ago

I'm baffled as to why this didn't stop when he was asked not to use ad.min@ – this seems like a reasonable request which most people could just accept and move on from. High five, you did a nice trick, but the real admin asked you to stop, so just move on, right? As others have mentioned, there seems to be a lot not said here, which isn't a surprise, and of course, felony charges are insane here.

MichaelGG 12y ago
Or why didn't the real admin just rename/ban the account? Edit: Reading the indictment posted in another comment, that's exactly what they did. The indictment also says the Hacker Dojo network was DDoSed several times over a few weeks. So this petition starts to feel more like outright lying.
- jeffmould 12y ago
  I could be wrong here, but from reading the charging documents it sounds like the "denial of service" that was actually done to Jason's email account was really his account being banned when he was kicked out of the HackerDojo for using a fake name the first time. It was not until he signed up for HackerDojo a second time using another fake name, and getting banned again, that he is accused of committing his DoS on the HackerDojo.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

I guess the lesson here is that when someone pranks you with denial email spamming you call the FBI? Sad situation folks.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

ianstallings 12y ago

GTFO of here, I don't know you and I'm not signing a petition based on hearsay. This is a legal problem. Contact a lawyer and prepare for court.

takeda 12y ago
Looks like even his lawyer doesn't want to have anything to do with him based on the documents posted. You are right the petition not only misleading it is straight lie.

ccvannorman 12y ago

I was a member at hacker dojo while this happened. His actions had a real financial impact, not just on hacker dojo but on members like me who couldnt get work done. While I never met him, it's difficult to feel sorry for him as he knew exactly the damage he was causing and was "addicted to pushing the button that hurt our wifi" (paraphrasing, but i do remember reading his letters that said basically this.) My personal opinion is that while i dont want a precedent for felony charges for "wifi pranks", if this kid (20s) wasn't charged witha felony my gut says he'll be back at it again harder and faster having gotten away with it.

zmanian 12y ago

I remember when this was going on at Hacker Dojo. The Internet was completely unusable for weeks. It seems likely that goal of the attack was cause Hacker Dojo to lose members. It seemed like an economic attack on a community space.