Slashdot Mirror
Brian West Update
Concerned Onlooker writes: "Remember the story about how Brian West reported a security leak to a client of a competing hosting service and then was promptly arrested by the FBI? Well, as usual there's more to the story, as shown in this release that I got today from Sheldon Sperling of the U.S. Dept. of Justice. Sorry about the Word-generated HTML. It's just nice to follow up on what outraged many of us at the time...." West has pled guilty to a misdemeanor offense.
Does that mean if you tell a competitor's client "I see you use NT" that you will go to jail ?
`"it is important that web sites are secure from unauthorized access and that intellectual property is protected. Cyberspace will be a better place for all if such privacy and property rights are respected," stated Assistant United States Attorney Jeff Gallant.'
Also from the release:
"Using MS Front Page, defendant discovered a common security flaw between MS Front Page and MS Internet Information Server (IIS), the server software being run by
PDNS."
So tell me why Microsoft is not facing misdemeanor (or felony) charges instead of the user that was clever enough to discover yet another innovative, undocumented feature in the software..
Since the DoJ is obviously committed to making sure "that web sites are secure from unauthorized access and that intellectual property is protected," they'd better throw the FBI at any average citizen that is smart enough to research the (in)security of the software that they use, instead of targeting the company that is more concerned with taking your money than making sure it actually works.
For all those that still want to defend this guy, let me ask you this: "Why did he plead GUILTY?"
If you know you didn't do anything wrong. If you know you are on the right side of the law or are trying to prove that a law is unfounded, you DO NOT plead guilty. You plead innocent until the cows come home.
He knew he was wrong and he knew he wouldn't be able to prove he was just a good samaritan.
And don't tell me he was pleading guilty for a lighter sentence. If you plead guilty at all, then you know you did something wrong. Innocent people do not plead guilty at any time.
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
I like how they used PERL's full name to make it sound important.
Yeah man, I can't believe they would go and give the public some extra helpful information like that. Why couldn't they have just left the acronym out and let people stay uninformed? Don't the realize that the ego of the nerd demands that people know as little about computers as possible, so that they can laugh at them and feel better about themselves?
Oh yeah, and on behalf of all those who were moderated down (myself not included, amazingly) in the original story for trying to explain that this guy wasn't a good samaritan, allow me to say, "We told you so." To my brothers and sisters out there, please accept my impending loss of karma points due to this post as a worthy tribute to your earlier efforts.
Ahhh, now I feel better. :)