Charges Against High School Hackers Dropped

ZosX writes "According to eSchool News Online, the 13 students from Kutztown, PA originally charged with felonies for hacking have been given a deal, dropping charges in exchange for 15 hours of community service. From the article: 'The probation department realizes this is small potatoes,' said William Bispels, an attorney representing nearly half the accused students. This is great news for the students and their families."

Comments

Not merely that it's small potatoes. . .

[kfg]

but that they really don't stand much of a chance of conviction by jury.

Not to mention how silly they look.

KFG

Small potatoes == felony?

[monstermonster]

You know, what I don't get is this - there is a reason that juvenile offenders are supposed to be treated as juveniles by the law. Their brains aren't done developing. They sometimes do juvenile things because they're, well, juvenile. It's not like they murdered someone. And if the school IT guys are idiots, as they often are (I remember explaining a floppy disk to my totally incompetent 8th grade computers teacher back in the dark ages), I don't see that we should be trying to charge kids with felonies. Especially when it's not as if they hacked into some national defense computer. The only lesson it teaches anyone is that we have overzealous prosecutors.

Give a kid something he's not supposed to get into, and he'll try to get into it. Period. Be stupid about it, and he will get into it.

Corporate IT vs Employees

[Raindeer]

What these kids did sounds like the battle happening between many corporate IT-departments and employees.

Corporate IT departments erect all kinds of barriers for users to use certain applications and generally don't explain why these barriers are there. The most common answer I have gotten was: "Security". ICT-security is in my jobtitle and I know these guys were bullshitting me. Other things you hear are maintence, complexity or my favourite one: "It is our policy" and "The department heads agreed on this".

This is a battle that has gone on ever since we started with computers in the workplace. Invariably the result was that people worked around the ivory tower that controlled IT and got what they wanted some way or another (PC's got bought on office supplies budgets in the early eighties, they were forbidden by the high priests of mainframes) Invariably after prolonged fights the users win.

I currently see the following problems around me, where corporate IT erects barries, that people go around. In most cases corporate IT should enable it in such a way it is safe, or explain very well why it is not allowed at the moment, or at all:
- Banning of Instant Messaging
- Filtering of websites beyond porn
- Banning any Palm-like device, except the corporate one.
- disabling USB ports.
- disabling Wifi
- banning alternative browsers and all kinds of utilities.
- limiting the size of mailboxes
- disallowing or crippling desktop search
- disallowing or crippling streaming media
- Creating lengthy processes for getting new software on your desktop

Re:Good news?

[Lumpy]

I hate to break this to you but after school, College has a severe mential handicap, then work, the managers have severe mential handicaps.

you never escape it. I strongly suggest becoming extremely adept at social engineering, it will get you out of many situations. Anyone who is really good with any technology today must be a really good social engineer to disguise the fact or to calm those around you.

and when you potentially run afoul of the law it works great. and officer on his way walking to you to give you crap or possibly arrest you will not do so if the first words out of your mouth are " Officer! I am so glad you are here! can you help me?" if you make the officer think that he is your savoir then he will ignore lots of things to help stroke his ego. Tresspassing? you will be politely told "you know this is a restricted area?" instead of being dragged off screaming by barney fife wanna-be.

Same goes for school admins, college admins and managers and upper managers at work. none of them will EVER understand technology and you are extremely scary because you know technology.

Is this fair? no. but it's life. Ask any minority that is persecuted and they will tell you the same thing. you are frightening to them, they see you as dangerous, and they want to keep you under control.

International view.

[Lellor]

Here in Kelowna, British Columbia, a co-worker of mine found out about this via an email sent by his relatives in the US who knew about the case, and we discussed it for quite a while at work.

The general consensus is that the authorities in the US have become too strict, especially with "intellectual property", "the war on drugs", and "computer crimes".

They are basically making themselves a laughing stock internationally - the Canadian public doesn't seem impressed by what the current US adminsitration is doing, or how they are handling these issues.

Things like this would not happen in any other industrial, civilized G7 democracy, like Canada for example.

It's quite shocking that the authorities are punishing students for using passwords - that they were given!

Re:Unfair!

[nahdude812]

Although I know your response was a joke, I think that what happened here was basically executed perfectly.

The kids repeatedly violated guidelines that were put in place by people with the authority to put those guidelines there. Regardless of whether the measures used to enforce those guidelines were sufficient to deter activity simply by the strength of the restraints or not is unimportant. I can drive my car over the dotted yellow line in the road too if I want, and I can make my car go above the speed limit; that doesn't make it the state's fault when I careen through oncoming traffic at 120 mph.

Obviously the early traditional reprimands failed to make an impact on the students. What they needed was a good scare, and I think this is what they got. Settling on 15 hours of community service each kid doesn't sound like the prosecuting attorney(ies) ever really intended to send these kids to jail, it sounds to me like they wanted to make the kids fully aware that when you choose to violate guidelines, there are consequences (at least when you're caught, especially when you're flagrant in the actions). And I doubt, when faced with the prospect of jail time, that any of these kids failed to get that message.

Further, the message was probably received by more than just the kids involved, it was probably received by many other kids in the same district, and in surrounding districts.

My letter of apology.

[wubboy]

I'm sorry. I'm very sorry that your network security is a disgrace.
I'm sorry that your network admin staff is completely braindead.
I'm sorry that the ADMIN passwords were taped to the back of the laptops by what must have been the single most stupid person on the planet.
I'm sorry that likely the only thing anyone learned out of this is that 13 kids "broke in to the schools computers".
I'm sorry that noone will ever think to FIRE the dumbass who taped the passwords to the back of the computers.

I'm sorry that I had to write this.