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WebTV 911 Hacker... Cyber Terrorist?
Mastab286 writes "Federal agents have arrested David Jeansonne, 43, of Louisiana on cyberterrorism charges under the USA PATRIOT Act for a malware attack against eighteen MSN TV (formerly known as WebTV) customers. As part of an online conflict in July 2002, Mr. Jeansonne wrote a script to change the dial-up number of MSN TV equipment to the 911 emergency number. He disguised the script as a tool to change the colors of the user interface, and sent it to his eighteen foes; the next time they tried to log on, they would end up calling the police instead. Several of the customers sent the tool to friends, bringing the total number of victims up to twenty-one. The script also posted the users' browser history to a website and e-mailed hardware serial numbers to a free webmail account. Prosecutors charge that the act meets the definition of cyberterrorism since it endangered public safety."
terrorism ( P ) Pronunciation Key (tr-rzm)
n.
The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.
there a kiddiess about there with hundreds of thousands of DDoS bots, kiddies out there releasing viruses costing billions.. and this guy gets arrested for making 21 people call 911 ?
._.
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"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
According to the story, he was targetting specific individuals; he wasn't trying to release it indiscriminately.
If it were blocking the use of the 911 services for a city, yeah, I think I might call that one terrorism.
"Terrorism - The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons."
Was his intention to intimidate or coerce societies or governments? Yes or No?
http://use.perl.org
He committed an attack against 911, took over peoples pc's, released a trojan, waster police time. Plenty for a judge to send him to jail. This guy sounds more like an idiot then a hardened criminal and for idiots even a week jailtime is enough.
Terrorism sounds a bit over the top. Yes the attack was potentially serious but during a recent "flood" (few centimeters of water) you had idiots on tv claiming that 112 (our 911) was unable to respond when they called to have their cellar drained. Hello? Flooded cellar ain't an emergency and all these idiots DID overload 112 and stopped real calls from getting through. Are they all terrorists? No. Deserving a night in jail with a guy called bubba sure. But not terrorists.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Can you be a terrorist through negligence to? I find that a bit hard to believe.
Yeah he's a moron, but not a terrorist.
Jeroen
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> But what if it had been 100 users? 10,000 users? 1 million users?
There is a difference between body-slamming some one once, and body-slamming someone a million times. (I've body-slammed well over 100 people in my career, but that's all legit.)
You're talking about a hyopthetical, alternate crime. In *this* instance, 21 people we involved/victimised. So: is *this guy* a terrorist?
webster:
Terrorist Ter"ror*ist, n. F. terroriste.
One who governs by terrorism or intimidation; specifically,
an agent or partisan of the revolutionary tribunal during the
Reign of Terror in France. --Burke.
Doesn't quite seem to fit the bill.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
Well, someone who deliberately abuses the 911 system should be smacked down, *hard*. But it's quite reasonable to ask whether the USA PATRIOT Act is appropriate to the case. Isn't there some law against frivolous police reports, or something, that would let us put this idiot in jail for a while?
Hey, I know! 19 false reports is a *pattern* of banned activity, so we could get him with RICO. No, wait....
Once again, a legal issue rears its head on /. and the /.'ers miss the point. Whether or not DOJ, the media, or /. attaches the "cyberterrorism" label is completely irrelevant. First because it's meaningless and second because the law says its "terrorism" for the purposes of the law. (IAAL)
The law this putz was charged with violating makes it illegal to: (1) intentionally damage (which he obviously did); (2) a "protected computer" (which the 911 system obviously was); (3) causing a threat to public health or safety (which multiple fraudulent calls to 911 obviously does). Look up 18 U.S.C. 1030 - it's online and it defines all this.
The statute never actually uses the word(s) "cyber-terrorism" anywhere. That is a stupid label attached by Congress (and subsequently the media) but it is not in the law and it's not really the point. What IS in the law (the USA Patriot Act) is an amendment to 18 USC 2332b, which defines "federal crime of terrorism." Among the things that the law treats as a federal crime of terrorism (which some here have tried to explain) are any offenses that violate, among other federal statutes, 18 USC 1030.
Being a "federal crime of terrorism" has two effects: (1) it places the investigation squarely in the jurisdiction of the federal government (primarily FBI, but in this case also Secret Service); and (2) it means the guy is eligble for a harsher sentence.
The argument about whether this is "terrorism" or not is purely semantic. The law says it is - so it is. Whether it's properly labeled "cyber-terrorism" is meaningless. That this idiot let his personal vendetta put innocent third parties at risk is the heart of the issue. Instead of debating labels, consider how utterly stupid and dangerous this stunt actually was and just how hard this yahoo ought to be slapped.
can be found at Snopes.
Not quite the case of corruption you paint it out to be.
Otherwise I agree with everything you said about the UnPatriot Act.
Approximately three out of every ten adults will be involved in an alcohol-related traffic crash at some time in their lives. (NHTSA, 1999)
You do realize that some alcohol-related traffic crashes involve more than one person, but only one drunk driver, right? You should have your statistics priviledges revoked for extracting "30% of adults are drunk drivers" from "Approximately three out of every ten adults will be involved in an alcohol-related traffic crash at some time in their lives."
Agreed. The point I was trying to make is that while definitely guilty of something, I am not sure that terrorism is the crime.
And you don't have to be. Neither am I. The courts will decide. What bothers me are the posts in this thread proclaiming with 100% certainty that this is not terrorism. They don't know all the facts, yet they're knee-jerk response is anti-anti-terrorism, for some reason.
everything in moderation
As a web tv person and knowing all the victims and the person responsible for this deed, you people are way off base. First of all it rendered the web unit useless until MSN could undue the what the script rewrote. Some boxs took 1 week ..lost revenue for MSN in wages. 2nd some of the boxs summoned the rescue squad several times, as web tv boxs are geared to update 2 times per day and the victims had thought by turning off the box it would stop...not the case. It may not have been a act of terrorism for you, but for a person in need of the rescue squad because of injury may have had to wait because they were making a visit to a call where no one was on the line..something they have to check out when no one talks after dialing 911. The person who did this is lucky he is not facing a murder charge because of his actions. He could have been responsible for the death of someone who needed help and didn't get the help in time.
Since you and the government seem to feel that doing something bad to someone else or doing something to intimidate them or influence their decision qualifies as terrorism, schoolyard bullies could be arrested, armed robbers are terrorists, stalkers, drug dealers, and anyone who threatens someone else could all come under the technical definition of terrorists. The problem is that the definition is far too vague and broad. A lot of people (i.e. Ashcroft) would say that is because terrorists don't always walk around wearing "I am a terrorist" shirts. So the vagueness is there to make sure that they can apply it to terrorists who don't necessarily have 10 pounds of TNT strapped to their waist in the obvious terrorist fashion. Sure, I could accept that if the government would stop applying terrorism laws to crap like this, to drug dealers (they charged a guy with a meth lab of terrorism), and to all kinds of other crimes so that they could have increased powers in those cases. There are reasons that they don't have increased powers in those cases. If they were meant to have it, it would have been granted to them. The FBI has a tendency to abuse the law by stretching them beyond their intended scope. I think this should be considered a terrorist act since the purpose in most cases is to intimidate the accused and influence their decision on how to handle the case. "Plead guilty and we'll drop the terrosim charge (20 years in jail) and you'll just get the 3 years that the other charges carry (the ones actually related to the crime you're charged with). If I were innocent and charged with a 3-year crime, and faced with the prospect of doing 20 years if I lose (yes, sometimes innocent people can lose) I might choose to take a guaranteed 3 years over a possible 23 years. Terrorism I tell you - terrorism. :)
If you mod me down, I shall become less powerful than you could possibly imagine.
If you look at the US Code as amended by the USA PATRIOT Act, you'll see exactly what he's being charged with:
And it seems to me the punishment prescribed in section (c) for the crime above is reasonable and fitting:
In other words, the guy broke a bunch of computers in such a way that he endangered the public safety. If convicted, he gets a fine or up to a year in prison (or both). I fail to see what the problem with this is.
There was actually a big debate on that during the Beltway Sniper trial. He could have been tried as a serial killer, but I guess people now saw it fit to charge him with Terrorism beacuse it's after 9/11.
If what he did constitutes a felony, and then he contributed to a death, he could be charged with felony murder. We have specific laws for that. Like if I rob a liquor store at gunpoint and the owner has a heart attack (and arguably might've had one anyway had I not robbed the store), I can be charged with felony murder.
However, felony murder != terrorism. We need to get away from the attitude of, what this person did was wrong, as long as he goes to jail I'm happy. He needs to be punished for a law he violated, not simply because people don't like what he did. Being hated is not a crime and being stupid is not a valid justification for calling someone a terrorist.
The program is run, then it sends the data to those email addresses. Then it changes the settings so that the next time the machine is turned on, it dials 911.