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Spyware Maker Indicted on Hacking Charges
An anonymous reader writes "The San Diego Union-Tribune is reporting that Carlos Enrique Perez Melara, the author of an investigative tool called 'Lover Spy,' has been indicted on 35 counts of federal hacking violations. This begs the question: if you develop and sell a software product, are you responsible for what your users choose to do with it?" From the article: "Perez, a native of El Salvador, probably is in the Los Angeles area, said Stewart Roberts, the second highest-ranking agent at the San Diego FBI office. Crime Stoppers has offered a $1,000 reward. Perez is charged with 35 crimes, each of which carries a potential five-year prison sentence if he is convicted. "
If you create a nuclear weapon, you should not sell it to North Korea. If you create a tank, selling it to Iran surely would not increase your merits in the western societies. If you sell guns to teenagers, you are a criminal and - as far as I am concerned - partly responsible if those teenagers start shooting their classmates.
Why of all things should you not be responsible for creating a software intended for potentially criminal purpose (here: spying on users) and giving it to people who will use it? Following this logic of non-responsibility, worm writers should not be persecuted, because the damage their creations have done was not their immediate fault.
Screw the FSM - Real geeks believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-beg1.htm
No, it doesn't, grammar nazi.
IANAL, but if a gun maker named their pistol "Felon's Favorite"(TM) or "Rob-Rite"(TM), then I'm sure they would be susceptible to either civil or criminal legal pleasantries.
Are there legitimate uses of this code? If so, then why didn't the author market it strictly for those uses and name it something a little less felonious than "Lover Spy?"
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
This begs the question: if you develop and sell a software product, are you responsible for what your users choose to do with it?
The question boils down to the intent of the author. If the program, when considered as a whole, cannot be reasonably construed to have alternative non-damaging or benign uses then it serves to demonstrate the malicious intent of the author and therefore it becomes possible to assign some responsibility for the actions of users to the original author(s). Software engineers, like other engineers, must have some code of ethics that governs the standard and intent of the programs that we produce. If you write a virus, worm, spam ware, or other "evil" type of application then you are responsible for the damage you cause to other people. You cannot demonstrate vulnerabilities or exploit code to prove a point while damaging other people's property in the process. In this case it seems that the author in question, Carlos Enrique Perez Melara, is indeed responsible for malicious intent in the collateral damage that his software caused.
Why not? Do we not treat child-porn JPGs, which are nothing but a series of numbers stored in a file, the same way we treat polariods of child-porn?
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
"Begs the question" is a term of art in logic and debate. It's also pretty simple English, meaning "demands that we ask." To insist that *only* the term of art can be used, and the plain, simple English meaning is off-limits, is just annoying -- especially when the plain English meaning makes so much sense, and the term of art is a terrible way to describe what you mean. Besides getting to make fun of people who don't know the phrase, there's just no reason to name the logical fallacy that way.
These are hacking tools. "Spyware" is a word which is used to refer to software which in addition to its known function covertly transmits information back to the software author. This is nothing of the sort; it's a surveillance tool. It may be immoral or unethical to use this surveillance tool, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea to use words like "spyware". Words have meanings.
Do works like hacking have meanings too?
I'm not in favour for what he's done, but getting 175 years in prison for writing a program?
You can get less for killing a man. No wonder the prisons are already full.
Perhaps it's time to realize that it's not always the solution to lock people up for what they have done.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
" I hate this constant use of the word "hacker" when the correct usage of the word should be "cracker"."
Hacking has been used to mean breaking into a computer system for decades. People are trying to change this term to cracker, not the other way around, as you suggest with "It is the media that is poisoning the word"
Vote for Pedro
How much do you want to bet that some high ranking official at the San Diego FBI office was caught cheating or at least had his email read by this program? :)
Rats would be more funny if they could fart.
The end users are scumbags for using the service, but it's the guy who wrote it and put it up on the website and caused victims' computers to be compromised who is the guilty party here. This has nothing to do with distributing software. Don't forget the part towards the end where it points out that the author received all the info from the program that the scumbags who paid to have it sent to someone did. The program even monitored everything typed on the keyboard. Also he spammed to advertise the software and after the feds seized his computers promptly dissapeared. They guy's not a victim here, he's getting what he deserves.
Did you even read that link? It doesn't exactly condone the modern usage.
but I because freedom can be destroyed by too much freedom.
Freedom can't be destroyed by too much freedom, rather, by the abuse of it. In the ideal world, there would be no danger in open-sourcing schematics of dangerous machinery because no one would abuse that information to try and harm others. Restrictions on freedom (laws and punishments) are only justifiable because people abuse their freedom.
A big problem with a lot of Slashdotters - and a non-negligible portion of the general public - is that they read "freedom" and think "license."
Ah, the dangers of half an education.
Your sense of "beg the question" is the result of a wretched 16th-century translation of Aristotle into English. His phrase would have been better expressed as "claiming the principle." This news item's use of the phrase is now accepted by several dictionaries and other authorities.
"But all your emitter and collector are belong to me!"
This month, the Senate passed the bill protecting gunmakers from liability for the use of their products in crimes.
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make install -not war
Ownership is not a defense if the product is sold with the understanding that it will be used for illegal purposes.
Only on /. can an article about developer responsibility turn into a debate about the correct uasage of english ;)
I believe aslong as the reader understands then its good enough use of english. thats worked for the americans for years!
Speak english proper like what i does init
Rob http://scullyshouse.tblog.com