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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?
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)
HE HAS NOT FINISHED SERVING HIS TIME!!!
Kevin is on PAROLE. Being on parole means that he loses many of his constitutional rights. We Americans do not know how good we have it until our rights are taken away from us!
Here are some of the rights that Kevin no longer has while he is on parole:
- He can be searched by police at any time
- His apartment/house can be searched at any time
- He has to report with a parole officer who checks up on him
- He must notify his parole officer when he goes out of town.
- He is not allowed to associate with known criminals.
- He is regularly tested for drugs.
These are just a few of the conditions of Kevin's parole. I'm sure there are many other restrictiions
> 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!"
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The real Tetsujin 28 is a giant robot.