Slashdot Mirror
Mitnick Ordered Off Lecture Circuit
jpowell writes: "CNN had a story about Kevin Mitnick being ordered off of the lecture circuits. The federal probation office has said that he can no longer write or speak about technology issues." Normally I don't post Mitnick stories here, but, well, huh?
This is not the same thing as profiting from the crimes for which he was inprisoned. If he was going around writing books, screenplays, or giving lectures on what and how he did the things he did, then yes...that would be the same. However, he's lecuring on how to IMPROVE the information infrastructures to PREVENT people from doing the things he did.
The court could/should consider that his speaking engagements are an act of attrition.
If his probation officer/panel insist that he has to get a job in an unrelated field, even though his probation is up in two years, it's wrong.
Just because most criminals don't have the skills to get a job past flipping burgers, doesn't mean that we should penalize Mitnick because he does.
Let me make it clear that I think Mitnick is a wanker, and deserved _most_ of what he got (not all,) but limiting his freedom to speak in such a fashion is wrong, and I belive, unconstitutional.
-buffy
The guy needs to make money somehow! I'd much rather see him do one of the few things he knows to do, something as generally harmless as talking to crowds, than see him leech welfare money off of the government. Almost every other job *requires* some type of computer contact, even janitorial work. If he was talking about _how_ to break intp pentagon computers, then I'd see a problem. But come on....
And no, I'm not equating Mitnick with Thomas Jefferson and MLK. I'm just pointing out that those who are convicted of crimes are not always justly convicted.
--
Wage Slave Journal
This isn't about a persons right to profit from their crime, its about free speech!
Mitnick is on the lecture circuit, and even if he were doing it for free, they would still try to shut him up.
My suggestion to Mitnick: Stay on the lecture circuit, but donate the proifits to a charity which provides for the legal defense of people charged with technology related crimes. (Or some other good cause, related to this issue).
Any attempt to shut him up then would be a clean violation of his right to free speech.
Reality has a liberal bias
By my logic, if you beat the shit out of someone, not only do you pay the medical bills, you help rehabilitate him afterwards!
Which it seems what Mitnick is doing; is this incorrect logic?
BTW, I don't believe in punishment, in the abstract sense. It's only the inflictment of pain on another, and that's just pointless. His punishment, btw, is the ban from using computers, TVs, cell phones, technology, etc. It isn't from speaking, or making a living, or making money!
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Not to be overly rude or anything, but he should've thought about that consequence before he did his cracking et al.
If i were a truck driver, and i abused my "privilege" of driving the rig (for instance, by driving through/over cars in a traffic jam, by driving into buildings, cool things like that), then i shouldn't be able to drive a truck for a LONG time.
It's more inherently 'right' to reform a criminal rather than 'throw them away' because, assuming you can come up with a way to do it, if a criminal can be reformed to a point where they will not commit the crime again and become a functioning member of society, you have one more functioning member and one less drain on the public good.
If hypothetical criminal killed my brother but was somehow reformed such that he'd never kill again, I'd have no problem with him being released back into society at large. In fact, I'd rather that than have him stay locked away for the rest of his life. Whether he's locked up, out and about, or fried in the chair my brother would still be dead.. the idea that the perpetrator should die in order to somehow make up for his crime is stupid beyond belief. It doesn't do anything but assuage your skewed sense of what's fair in the world. The dead person is dead, and giving him company doesn't do a thing. Keeping the criminal in jail all his life costs me a great deal of money and puts the criminal in an arguably much worse position than my dead brother. My brother died and was dead, all over in at most a week or two if the criminal really drew it out. He's being, most likely, mentally and physically tortured and raped all the rest of his life, the whole time knowing he can never get away from it.. that seems a bit uneven.
And if affecting a person's life negatively in any way makes a person not elligable for basic human rights, then i doubt there's a single person left on earth who can claim them. It's impossible to exist at all without messing up Someone's life.. even if you died right now you'd be negatively effecting the lives of all the people who care about you, so you can't even die without screwing someone over.
And that's not even taking into account people who are wrongly imprisoned. What happens if the guy who killed my brother gets away because the cops arrest some Other guy who looks guilty but, in reality, isn't? It's nice to think that the justice system would find him innocent if he truly is, but it doesn't work that way. Obviously 'reforming' a person who has nothing to reform isn't a perfect solution.. but if i get jailed for a murder i didn't commit, i'd expect it would be considerably easier for me to get through the reform system and get out than the current system, wherein i'm either put to death for nothing or spend the rest of my life in a living hell for not having a good defense attorney.
Dreamweaver
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
I guess Martin Luther King should not have been able to publish his letter from the Birmingham Jail, and likewise Rubin "Hurricane" Carter should have been prevented from publishing his book?
You can't have it both ways AC.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
IANAP (I Am Not A Philosopher), but according to my worldview at least, there is.
Say Joe Criminal kills your brother, and gets caught. Which is better:
- Joe rots in prison for the rest of his life or gets the death penalty.
- Joe is released but has been totally reformed and never commits a crime again.
Well, to me, scenario 2 is obviously better. Everyone should have their fundamental rights, even people who have violated the rights of others. The fact that Joe has killed your brother does not him from being a person, and every person deserves their rights. This is a natural consequence of the concept that all people are equal.IIRC, the ethical motive behind prisons is to stop criminals from committing even more crimes. Not for revenge, which you seem to imply in your post ("undo the past"). Vengeful feelings have no place in ethics.
IMHO, the real problem is that you can't be sure that the criminal has really been reformed. But yes, reforming Joe is intrinsically right.
There is a difference between these:
1) Aquiring skills, using them to commit a crime, doing time, and coming out and using those skills constructively.
2) Aquiring skills, using them to commit a crime, doing time, then coming out and making money off of the _crime itself_.
What next, he can't even THINK about technology?
Ya, but he served his friggin' time in jail, and now he should be able to live a life... think about it, car thieves and the like have been known to turn around and put their skills to good use by working for security companies and alarm installers, so why can't kevin work as security for a big company, or teach people what's behind the technology so that people actually understand how it works, instead of just being mindless drones and using it... i mean COME ON!!- ---------
-------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------
It's the clearly black and white and short sighted opinion that just seems too unreal to be someone's actual thought...
The fact of the matter is, you either believe that anyone who is a criminal should be allowed to make money off of their crimes, or you are a hypocrite. So what is it?
That's a hot-point; making a statement that judges the viewer for being a hypocrite over an issue that is not clear. Criminals are not always bad people, and criminals are not always fairly judged. There is no difference between most criminals and most people, given that both belong to the set of people called humans. Maybe there are things wrong with criminals that make them so, but that's a different philosophical argument entirely. Then there's the case of making money of his crimes; he isn't, I don't think. He isn't selling the secrets he found, or the using the market to his advantage, from breaking into the corporations he did. Those were his crimes.
BTW, crime is not wrong, crime is just public mass opinion. DeCSS is a crime. Watching DVDs under Linux is a crime. Breaking an encryption scheme is a crime. Having an mp3 is a crime. Linking to a website is a crime. Jaywalking is a crime. Driving 70mph is a crime. Changing lanes within 20 feet of a traffic signal is a crime.
You're still going to use the line a crime is still wrong, whether it is a little wrong or a big wrong? Life, crime, and people are all shades of grey, not absolutes...
And what, you're saying he's only taken seriously because he's a criminal?
No; he's being taken seriously because he has the skills. Him being a criminal and him being caught are two separate issues. His being a criminal is only a matter of judgement from the legal system, not on his skills. His being caught is a matter of him not being as good as the A-Team, and not on his skillset of security!
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Kevin made most of his "expliots" through crafty SOCIAL engineering (read: lying) rather that clever computer hacking - he could convince sys admins to give out sensitive passwordsetc (and even tried his wiles on the police who were arresting him - see his 60 Minutes interview). Given all that, I suspect we are hearing a little more of Kevin's "engieering" in this latest controversy, so I take what I hear with a grain of salt.
BUT, having the government tell you that you cannot speak publicly (or publish) smacks of the worst of South African Appartied-era Ban laws or internal exile in the old Soviet union. I find this quite ironic comming from the "home of the free."
I say let him talk - but remember the Son of Sam Laws - its illegal to profit from a crime. Therefore let hime talk but confiscate that 20k and give it to some charity.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
Ever hear of Robert Tappan Morris? He is a criminal, he was in jail for the Internet Worm.
But also, as soon as he was released, he started a company dealing with computer security, which became a multi-million startup based on first-hand experience with computer security of its staff. Then he was admitted into a graduate CS program, and as of last fall he is an MIT professor.
Could Mitnick do the same? Maybe not, but preventing him to talk is certainly unusual and perhaps unfair.
just mho.
I was thinking of how to intentionally fail my drug test... It would make a good memoir story someday.
And the women on trial for being witches in Salem "voluntarily confessed" to being witches and provided the names of several other witches. They would've done ANYTHING to abate the cruel treatment and torture of the "gov't". The Mitnick case was no different. It was and remains a WITCH HUNT. They want Mitnick's head impaled on a stick to set an example to any wannabe h4xx0rz out there. But so long as rapists and murders are getting their trial, and completing their jail time, and being release all in less time than Mitnick was merely waiting for a trial, I maintain that he... that all us... got shafted royally, wrongly, undeservingly, and unjustly. Because it sets a dangerous precedent for the "justice" system to do the same thing with impunity to any one of us for any reason. Maybe some guy in Syria ftp'd your GPL'd crypto utility from some FTP site, used it to hide assassanation plans, and Feds want to make an example of you? You didn't stand up to defend Mitnick. Who will be left to defend you... you terrorist pig.
Feds had been preparing their case and collecting evidence, hiring many lawyers, doing legal research, and coaching their "expert witnesses" for many months prior to Mitnick's actual arrest.
Then they say, you wanna be tried *now* (giving Mitnick no time to prepare his own defense) or forever waive any speedy tial date. Hmmm. Now or whatever Feds decide; maybe 20 years to trial or infinity, but Mitnick remains in jail until whenever. Yah. That's Mitnick's own fault.
When will Slashdotters realize that even trampling on the rights of SCUM like Mitnick is not at all OK and hurts us all?
You don't have to support h4xx0rin6 to support Mitnick.
Free Kevin! He's still being shafted by the gov't.
Too late! Remember the Secret Service busting into Steve Jackson Games with an open-ended unsigned warrant? Haven't noticed the Supreme Court ruling that no reason is needed to stop and search a car? The 4th is gone already. The 5th has become an admittance of guilt (why do you have to claim a right anyway?). Mitnicks case is a great example of the 6th and 7th being trampled on. His probation is iffy on 8th amendment grounds. The 9th is universally ignored and the lawyers seem to have forgotten the last phrase of the 10th. Yea, we still have the third though!
Gods I hope a bunch of these Reagan/Bush appointees die before another Republican is elected pres.... not that it matters much with the new left looking so much like the old right these days.
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
For this relatively minor crime, he served 5 years of hard time in a federal prison full of rapists and murderers, almost all of which was served prior to sentencing. His parole forbids him from using any form of computer or including cell phone, which is almost impossible in modern society. Now his right to free speech is being scaled back as an additional condition of his parole.
This news, on top of the Elian raid, the bombing of Sudanese and Afghani Asprin factories, the Waco debacle, and Ruby Ridge leaves me asking myself: Weren't we always told that it was the Republicans that ran fascist Presidential administrations?
When the BATF stormtroopers were using war tactics (sleep deprivation via loud music, etc.) against the religious nuts in Waco, the Davidians hung a bedsheet banner out their window for the press that said "Rodney King: Now we understand." The Mitnick case seems to draw certain parallels. Through the unfair treatment this "infamous" scipt kiddie, the hacker community is getting a good lesson about what it is like to be a black man in America. When powers of enforcement see you as fitting a dangerous profile, you can expect to be treated unfairly.
The loss of rights like "fair use" already had me angry, but this is the last straw for me. This week, I intend to get off the fence finally join the EFF... and while I'm at it, the ACLU, Amnesty International, and maybe even the Libertarian Party. I'm also going to write snail mail to each of my Senators, Rod Grams(R) and Paul Welstone(D) of Minnesota, expressing my concern about the need to curtail Federal power. For my next vacation, I will visit D.C. to persoanlly lobby whatever Reps are willing to talk to me. In the upcoming elections, I will loudly support any legitimate candidate (regardless of party) who shares the concerns of geeks, and fights for our rights. I will also be a noisy pest to those who back the DMCA or the various enforcement excesses of recent years. I hope that many of you will do likewise.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
B. The defendant shall not be employed in or perform services for any entity angaged in the computer, computer software, or telecommunications business and shall not be employed in any capacity wherein he has access to computers or computer related equipment or software;
And this one is even more explicit:
D. The defendant shall not acts as a consultant or advisor to individuals or groups engaged in any computer related activity;
Mitnick agreed to these terms and that is why he is out of jail. He wasn't even a good hacker, the good ones aren't the ones that get caught. Just look at mafiaboy, who was responsible for at least some of the DOS attacks, he got caught because he bragged about it on IRC. Mitnick got caught because he took stupid risks and thought he was better than the people tracing him. He was wrong. He agreed to these conditions and he should abide by them. Enigma
Enigma
Nobody thought he was innocent. Nobody claimed he was innocent. He committed a crime and deserved to be punished. What everbody was outraged about is the way his case was manipulated. The was he wasn't given access to the evidence against him. The way he spent months in solitary confinement like he was a murderer or something. The way the companies he was accused of hacking were claiming millions in damages, yet they couldn't show that any actual harm was done, nor did they report the losses on their SEC filings as they are required to do if they actually suffered the losses (so they later retracted their damage claims). Now, on top of serving five years and now probation with absolutely no access to computers, they are trying to take away his right to free speech. I'd say that this has gone well beyond punishment. It's become a vendetta against him by the government.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Greetings Mr Mitnick.
You have been living two lives in the last years. One as Prisoner #1024, and the other under an alias as Kevin Mitnick a well known cyber-terrorist.
One of these persons has a future, the other does not.
The fact of the matter is, you either believe that anyone who is a criminal should be allowed to make money off of their crimes, or you are a hypocrite. So what is it?
Nothing is ever black and white, clear cut, or so well defined.
Criminals, unfortunately, are people to. And people have every capability to become criminals. Mitnick is a criminal, fine, everyone agrees.
Mitnick can be productive to society. That's true too. It's not just about praise or fame; it's economics. If he can produce a service to our society we want, we exchange with him a fair service or amount of goods. In this case, he can speak expertly on hacking and cracking, something most are ignorant of. In this case, it seems a service worthy of being performed!
Now here's the question. If he were anyone else, people wouldn't take him seriously. Don't even try to put Mitnick in the same class as a rapist or serial killer, btw!
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
That's right, he was a criminal, pure and simple.
So? I don't see your point.
Are you arguing that whoever got convicted of a criminal offence should not have any rights forever? You know, eternal damnation? Probably easier and cheaper to shoot them after the verdict, then.
Now it is my belief that anyone who engages in any criminal acts should not be praised for what they did, and they certainly shouldn't be allowed to make any money from it.
As to the praise, you seem to have a huge amount of trust in the current law system. Whom I praise depends on my own moral value, not on what the law says. America's founding fathers, for example, clearly were criminals from the British justice system's point of view.
Speaking of money, it's reasonable to prohibit making money from the actual crime. Not that Mitnick made a lot of money (any?) from it. But you want to prohibit a person to use skills which he used in the commission of a crime. That's different, isn't it?
Are you saying that anybody ever convicted of hacking should never be allowed to come near a computer for the rest of their lives? Should thieves be prohibited from using their hands? Should we gouge out the eyes of voyers?
The fact of the matter is, you either believe that anyone who is a criminal should be allowed to make money off of their crimes, or you are a hypocrite. So what is it?
I believe that you have a long hard inflexible object stuffed up your ass. Mitnick is not making money off his crimes. He is making money off his computers skills which at some point in his life he used for criminal ends.
The problem with you is that you think that anybody who was convicted of a crime is not a person any more.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Of course, with the number of extreme, byzantine and intrusive laws in this country, anyone can be a criminal. It's all a matter of selective enforcement.
Of course, the Federal government may indeed get away with this, considering recent Supreme Court rulings on the First Amendment (the fact that this ruling came down now is suspicious, I'm guessing that when he takes them to court they'll assert "secondary effects," "Why someone who listens to his words might become a double-plus ungood crimethinking computer hacker! That means that we can forbid him to speak.")
Let's see Miranda's gone, Fair Use is gone, Free Speech is gone, the Right to Bear Arms is gone (flame away!), and I'm guessing the next thing will either be that we have to billet soldiers in our houses or that the government will be able to search whatever it wants whenever it wants.
Oh by the way, I'm sure the Mitnick haters will show up in force to say, "Way to go Feds, get 'im." I just want you people to think of something, do you really want a government in place that can sentence someone, and then after they've served their sentence can continue to persecute them outside normal legal channels?
Well, I may just have to get a government job, I'm practically working for the government as it is (the company I work for has close ties to the U.N.), so it might not be that big a step. Then I'll be able to persecute any of my subjects as I please, without fear of restraint, right? Why are people so intent on making Federal bureacrats into feudal lords?
Sigh... what the Hell is happening to the United States?
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
> When and if they are paroled, for example, the convicted Branch
> Davidian folks will probably be barred from associating with
> each other which
> certainly would hinder their ability to practice their
> religious beliefs.
Don't stupid Americans learn what they're talking about before speaking? I'm American too, but I'm tired of the rest of the world laughing at us because of stupid people like this guy. The Branch Davidians were by and large acquitted of everything. There, I said it. Let me repeat: the Branch Davidians were acquitted. As in, not guilty of the lying and made up, false and manufactured, untrue charges which Janet Reno made up. I believe a couple guys had relatively minor weapons charges, but everyone else was acquitted of everything else. They were charged, for example, with murder of the federal thugs--er, agents--who stormed their home, but a jury acquitted them, saying that they were within their rights to protect themselves. Years later, and people are still falling sway to the FUD spread by the DoJ to cover their asses. No, no one was being molested inside the Branch Davidian compound, because the Age of Consent in Texas was low and because Koresh was commonlaw-husband to some of the under-18 girls he was supposedly with since parental consent was given. But so what, since THE ATF AND FBI HAVE NO JURISDICTION OVER CHILD ABUSE ACCUSATIONS. I repeat, they were acquitted, of all but minor charges which wouldn't warrant a restrictive parole. If I recall correctly, only 2 went to federal prison. And, yes, I'm sure you weren't just referring to those 2, that you were under the mistaken impression that all the Branch Davidians went to jail for murder or one of the other misconceptions about the case. It just ticks me off since, as freedom-loving Americans, we should stand up more when something like Waco happens. Those people had their rights unlawfully infringed by agencies which had no jurisdiction (2/3 of the affidavit for search warrant was about alleged child abuse). The Treasury Department's own investigation into the causes of the debacle concluded that the ATF was there not to go after illegal weapons, but "to enforce the morals of our society." And I thought that we were supposed to be in a free country, where people could have different religions and moralities...
> It's hard to feel sympath for scum like Mitnick
It's easy. His crimes were minor. He caused no serious damage to any network--no damage at all, if you discount a little lost peace of mind on behalf of a few stupid sysadmins who should have been running a more secure environment anyway. You obviously have either never read the specifics of the case, or have zero appreciation for civil rights. His rights were violated, he was held without his right to a speedy trial, he was blackmailed by the prosecutor into accepting continuance after continuance just to be kept out of maximum security general population where he'd be beaten and raped, and now they aren't letting him make money the only way he can earn a living. I can understand the restriction against him using computers, but a restriction against him talking about technology on the lecture circuit is a clear violation of his rights--he still has a First Amendment right, that doesn't go away. That is the most sacred and fundamental right in this country, friend. "Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, nor to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better secured." -- Thomas Paine, 1791
Even convicted felons need to have basic, fundamental rights, or else you may as well keep them in prison. We are, today in this country, an evil and cruel society which tries to punish criminals instead of reform them. That's not how it's supposed to be. There's no excuse for sending a 12 year old kid to prison for life without parole; by definition a child is unable to fully understand the ramifications of his actions. Do you know why prisons in this country are traditionally called "penitentiaries"? Because the modern American prison system was founded on the Enlightenment idea that criminals could be reformed, if only you could make them penitent about their crimes. It was a great new idea that, instead of throwing people away when they "broke", you should try to "fix" them. It was a very humane and even Christian in the true sense of the word idea (remember Jesus with the stoning of the adulteress?). But now people would rather lock their fellow man up for life from the age of 12 than to try to make that person a functioning member of society again. It's a very sick and twisted paradigm, which most of the Western world is abhorred by. It's even contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As for Mitnick specifically, the only reason they want him off the lecture circuit is because he's portraying the people who kept him in jail as what they really are: the real criminals here. Personally, I wish that prosecutor and judge harm enough for them to realize what they've done. What goes around, comes around. "Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficient . . . the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." -- Justice Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
In my mind, a corporation does NOT have the same right to privacy as an individual. If Mitnick chooses to describe how he defeated the security on a particular site through his limited technical knowhow and superior social engineering skills, he's not besmirching the memory of someone's dead relative, or airing facts which will bring back horrific memories to a victim.
To me, there is a definite line between crimes committed against an individual, and crimes committed against a group. Financial damages are *not* to be equated to a violation of personal rights or freedoms, be it the right to life, freedom of speech etc etc. Human rights are *FAR* more important than the right to make, or for that matter, keep, a buck. If you don't recognize that, you can put a dollar value on a life.
All that being said, I do recognize that Mitnick's a criminal. I don't respect him, and in fact, think he's a big boob. He's a geeky loser (like a lot of my friends and I were in highschool) without the redeeming quality of even being a nice guy. What has he got going for him? He apparently is good at getting passwords out of people on the phone. That's not a whole lot in my books. But that does *NOT* in my mind excuse the improper actions of the government. Mitnick deserved to be punished, he deserved to serve some time, but this is *apparently* a violation of the concept of due process. His punishment has already been laid out. It is not the right of the gov't to extend the punishment in any way unless he commits more crimes.
Greg
2. Your restrictions while on supervised release are specified at the time of sentencing, and to amend them (technically) requires a violation hearing in front of a judge.
3. I say technically because the US Office of Probation (note that their name hasn't been updated to reflect the new laws) tends to do whatever they want. I'm speaking from experience -- i'm 6 months into a 36 month supervised release period, and I've ended up with a parole officer who's busting my balls. He's "not thrilled" that I'm sitting here at a pre-ipo internet startup coding my ass off and making more than he is, but he's got no choice because the judge specifically stated that I could continue working with computers, with certain restrictions.
So the fact that they're fucking with mitnick is no reflection on his rights, the conditions of his supervised release, or anything like that. They're probably just being petty and playing games with him because he's high-profile.
and i've never met the guy, but the way he got his ass kicked in prison makes me think he's might be obnoxious and disrespectful. that doesn't help with the feds. has anyone here met him?
circa75.com
Thank goodness the Feds have taken this step. I mean, who knows what nefarious deeds such a SuperHacker could perpetrate while speaking to a room full of computer people? I bet he could reprogram all of their Palm Pilots with his Infrared Hacker Vision!
"It's that guy!"
- - - -
The real Tetsujin 28 is a giant robot.