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

Still Isn't Right

[alatesystems]

According to Boston News, he allegedly "infiltrated Democratic Judiciary Committee computer files" and copied "thousands of memos and passing some on to the media".

He says he was "just following orders" as a previous poster has said, and that they should be in court instead of him. They should be in court WITH him.

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."

"You know, the Nazis had pieces of flare they made the Jews wear."

Chris

Clarification...

[Samrobb]

Manuel Miranda, the Republican Senate staffer under invesitgation for hacking into confidential Democratic files...

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

Re:Clarification...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, National Review tells the whole story.

It wasn't a "open server" it was an unsecured server. Big difference. It's just like using someones unsecured WiFi basestation. You aren't allowed to mess with people's stuff just because it isn't locked. We all learn that as children.

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: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.

Some HACKING

[Marxist Hacker 42]

All he did was attach to an OPEN SHARE DRIVE on the Senate LAN. I would have thought this would have been cleared up months ago- Republicans apologize to Democrats, and Democrats start password protecting your share drives!

The whole thing is proof positive to me that we need a new generation in leadership of this country. These old fogies don't even understand the technology that is on their desks- how can they ever hope to understand such complex issues as why we shouldn't be letting Taiwan build all of our hardware?