Oregon Supreme Court Declines To Hear Schwartz Case

merlyn writes "The Oregon Supreme Court declined to hear my case, leaving standing the unfavorable decision of the Oregon Appeals Court as the final authority on this eight-year-long case, well known to many sysadmin and Perl hacker alike. Details at my fors-announce posting." If you're not sure what that means, you probably want to read at least this site which offers a straightforwardly partisan look at the complicated case of Intel vs. Schwartz as well as Schwartz's own page; it's a strange world where programmers and sysadmins can be convicted for seemingly innocent activities.

Comments

Re:What is the case about?

[rendler]

http://www.mega.nu:8080/batf/www.boogieonline.com/ revolution/science/schwartz.html:

While working as a consultant with multinational microchip manufacturer Intel Corporation, Schwartz set up two ways of checking his Intel email via the Internet, and in an attempt to verify the security of one of Intel's computers, he ran the "crack" password-guessing program on an Intel password file. Intel considered the Internet access a security breach, and the password crack to be theft of sensitive information.

In March 1994, Schwartz was indicted on three felony counts of computer crime under Oregon state law. He was convicted in July 1995, and sentenced in September 1995 to 5 years probation, 480 hours of community service, and 90 days jailtime (which may be dismissed for excellent behavior). Intel is also seeking $72,000 restitution. Schwartz has spent over $130,000 on his legal defense, most of it his own money, with additional contributions from individuals and organizations on the Internet.

Oh Please

[Laplace]

Randall Schwartz was doing some shit that Intel didn't like. It also happened to be illegal. Intel asked him to stop. They asked him nicely. He didn't, and Intel had him prosecuted. Randall Schwartz made his own bed.

Flame on.

Innocent Activites?!

[gclef]

You must be joking. He was caught cracking the passwd file for Intel and O'Reilly without their permission. His activities were anything but innocent.

Some background from the other side: an affidavit from one of the Intel folks is here:

http://www.lightlink.com/spacenka/fors/police/inte lrep.txt

Basically, he cracked more than one companies passwd file without permission...one of them was a company he'd been dismissed from earlier (he was still logging into their machines and was cracking their passwd file,too).

Personally, I'm not at all surprised that they threw the book at him.

Overview Mirror

[corby]

The hyperlink in the story to the overview of the Schwartz case is responding, "User over daily limit".

Use the mirror here.

Re:The law is too broad, but Randall should have..

[dhogaza]

Hear hear. I've been in this position and I always have asked, too.

Not because I live in the state of Oregon but because it is the right thing to do (and my knowledge of right and wrong far predate the law in question).

I think the major problem with Randal was that Intel had no idea of what he was actually doing, found out, freaked out. Freaki
ng out was a reasonable response.

The fact that the freaking out resulted in a criminal charge and conviction is unfortunate. Washington County (where Intel's Oregon facilities are located) is far, far more conservative than Multnomah County (where Portland, OR is mostly located). In Multnomah County some sort of non-criminal solution would've been the result, most likely.

The Appeals Court and Supreme Court, though, don't rule on whether or not the conviction is "reasonable" but whether or not the conviction meets the test of law.

That's not unreasonable, that's how judicial review is meant to work. The law as written is unreasonable, but not unconstitutional and therefore no constitutional grounds for overturning the conviction exist. There's no doubt about the evidence, so there's no evidenciary grounds for overturning the conviction.

So ...

1. Randal sinned in a relatively minor way, but sinned nonetheless.

2. Intel and a hard-assed Washington County prosecutor decided to go after him in a major way (makes you wonder about past interactions, doesn't it? I would think that a single well-placed manager could've derailed this train if she'd thought Randal deserved grace).

3. The law doesn't violate the Oregon or Federal Constitution (nor your state's, most likely). Therefore the Court of Appeals and Supreme Court, whatever their private view of the overreaction resulting in his conviction, have no basis for overturning it. (of course, they may actually want him to burn at the stake, but we don't know that, the Oregon Supreme Court is actually fairly liberal).