Senate Hacker Blames Boss

expriest writes "Manuel Miranda, the Republican Senate staffer under invesitgation for hacking into confidential Democratic files, has sued John Ashcroft to enjoin him against continuing the investigation. Miranda's argument consists of little more than fingerpointing. "Senators used all their official power and their influence over the press" says Miranda's complaint, "to disguise their own wrongdoing, by systematically accusing plaintiff of escalating degrees of criminality." "

Comments

Re:Still Isn't Right

[justkarl]

Even though someone told him to do something that he knew was wrong, he allegedly did it anyway. I hate when people cop-out by saying "I was just following orders."

I agree...to a point. Instead of doing something that he knew was wrong(translate=unethical/illegal) Miranda could have chosen to "tell on" his boss. But then he's at risk of losing his job(obviously) or perhaps something worse. The corruption's out there, but one has to follow the system enough to make a living. Would you sacrifice a sweet paycheck for doing something unethical? The answer may not be something we can decide so easily if we're not in a similar situation.

Politics 101, anybody?

[dacarr]

The accused seems to be well versed in the basics of politicking. Let's see how far this goes....

Re:Clarification...

[BrynM]

Don't you mean, "under investigation for reading documents posted on an open server?

I see this kind of "they're out to get me" attitude among novice computer users all the time. Somehow, evey problem is "someone hacking". Since most of the users I handle are attorneys, I find myself explaining way too often that the spam they received is not from a rival frim trying to "hack them" or that they're laptop not booting is because they dropped it rather than some clown at the court hacking into the laptop's wireless card when the laptop was in the car outside or other such nonsense. Our paranoid culture is fostering this suspicion on a lot of levels - from media to anti-virus vendors to Presidential decisions. Poor Manuel Miranda is going to get fired and his ass handed to him because people are stupid.

Re:Still Isn't Right

[lynx_user_abroad]

You [hang] three or four politicians for corruption, the political landscape will change so fast it'll make the presidential elections look like a bingo game.

Unfortunately, that's one of the problems with corruption: if a corrupt system starts hanging people it calls corrupt, can we ever be sure the correct people are being hanged?

Do we trust the inmates of the asylum to decide who is sane?

I rue the day my children will look at me and ask Dad, how could you have let this happen on your watch?

Re:Still Isn't Right

[Daniel Dvorkin]

It's kind of a special case when the person investigating you for the alleged wrongdoing is the same person who allegedly gave you the order.

Re:Clarification...

[Masker]

OK, no. It's not. Posting documents in a window would be analogous to putting them on a webserver. Having them in an unsecured share drive is like having them sitting on a table in an unlocked room: you still have to enter the room and poke around to see what they say.

It's not OK to go rifling through someone's files. Yes, the Dems shouldn't put documents they care enough about on an unsecured share drive, but that doesn't give anyone the right to copy them for themselves and to distribute them to the press.

Whether the theft was material or not doesn't matter one whit. It was unethical for Miranda to do what he did, and he should take responsibility for that. It was stupid for the Democrats to do what they did, but not unethical, and it's not their fault that some jerk came in and stole documents from their computer.

I'm all for personal responsibility: Miranda needs to be held responsible for his actions.