Slashdot Mirror
Felony For Refreshing a Web Page?
therandomw writes "An 18 year-old boy was recently arrested in Ohio for telling fellow students to refresh the schools web page in order to slow down the server. He is being charged with a felony and is currently being held in jail. According to Canton City Prosecutor Frank Forchione 'This new technology has created a whole wave of crimes, and we're just trying to find ways to solve them.'"
AFAIK this barely even brushes up against being a felony, but let the school officials have their fun! Had they just ignored this and let it go (maybe take the kid aside and dress him down a bit), this would have slipped off the radar in half a day. As it is, they've loaded, locked, and are about to fire, aiming right at their own feet.
BTW, I'm just wondering who the first brave soul in slashdot is who will actually post the schools URL. (Also, BTW, it's pretty easily found in Google: Lake High School Uniontown Ohio, duh).
Sounds like a distributed denial of service attack. He just left out the automation.
Logically, the only thing that distinguishes a DoS from the Slashdot Effect is intent. If your intent is to spread awareness of the material that appears on a server, and the server can't handle it, well, that's tough for the server, but that's how the Internet works. If your intent is to take the server down, that's illegal.
Up until now, most deliberate attacks were automated, making it easy to separate overwhelming legit traffic from attacks -- but that's only really as accurate as trying to separate legitimate city traffic from criminals by assuming that anyone on foot is a burglar.
Of course, when you get down to the level of intent, you get to his contention that "Help me crash my school's server" was a joke, and that he wasn't actually trying to get people to follow through. And things get murky.
This problem can be solved through software already -- the school didn't take necessary means to avoid such a simple "DoS" style attack.
... especially for school officials ... it could have done a tremendous amount of damage," said Canton City Prosecutor Frank Fronchione.
Judging by this quote, it sounds like they don't even really have a grasp on what kind of "attack" it was.
"It's a crime and it is important we take this seriously
Causing a tremendous amount of damage? WTF? He's not DDoSing Air Traffic Control. What a total load. This kid should sue these jackasses for libel, false arrest, and harassment.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
It's not "Canton City", it's just Canton. And, after having visited there recently, I can tell you it's a midwest town - NOT a city - where life moves just a bit slower than the rest of the country. You can tell by Mr. Fanchione's comments on the article that the police are "trying to teach this youngin' a lesson!" and think they're just so smart for arresting this kid. I agree with your sentiments about how important this really is in the face of actually dangerous stuff. There were all kinds of buildings in that town that probably need to be condemned because they're a fire and health hazard, but no, the 'authorities' are busy arresting kids smarter than they are.
This doesn't make any sense, at all.
- If a boy tells his friend to reload a webpage, he gets thrown into jail and gets felony charges.
- A lone spammer gets $11 billion in fines.
- If joe sixpack downloads a movie he gets huge fines.
Yet, if a medium to large corporation sell/delete customer records, infect consumers computers with spyware or the like, they only get a slap on the wrist?
When did corporations get more freedoms than individuals?
if i break your arm because i didn't see you standing behind me while i was moving a heavy piece of furniture, then there should be mild repercussions
if i break your arm by taking it, looking dead in your eye, and twisting it as hard as i can, then there should be severe repercussions
the whole issue is one of intent
intent matters in this world, and any opinion that ignores intent, about this kid, or a whole range of modern problems in this world, is not a useful or valid opinion
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There was a time when we made an important distinction between types of crimes. Misdemeanors were "minor crimes" annoyances that can be cleared up easily enough and are a) not worth making permanent and b) best forgotten once the problems is solved. A classic example is littering, or spraypainting something on a park bench. The former is solved by making the littebug pick up their garbage (and mabye some other peoples') and the latter by having the offendor repaint the bench brown. In both cases the offence can be "fixed" and the individual can learn form a simple dressing down. In most juristictions misdemeanors are not even recorded (or didn't used to be) and never ever became part of someone's permanent criminal record (especially a minor). Moreover misdemeanors aren't liable for jail time above and beyond "time served" (in the drunk tank).
Felonies are major or "permanent" crimes such as theft, maim, and murder. They connotate crimes that cannot be simply "cleaned up", crimes that cannot be undone in any meaningful sense and crimes that may signal permanent problems for the individual in question. Felonies attatch much stiffer penalties (for both juveniles and adults) as well as "permanence". In some states felons lose the right to vote permanently. This is politely known as "Civil Disenfranchisement". In Midevil times it was associated with the term "Civil Death". Felons are also forbidden from obtaining some jobs (in government), and have to tell all other employers of their status. They are also often forbidden from obtaining some scholarships and grants. While not all of these attatch automatically to juvenile felons many of them do. Increasing numbers of states are making no distinction between juvenile felonies and adult felonies. Unlike midsdemeanor crimes felons are truly marked for life.
The basic upshot of this is that this kid could be harmed for life for what is, in essence, a nothing crime. He encouraged people to visit a website and thereby caused a server to run slow, not stop, not crash, not burst into flames, just run slow. This is a temporary problem, a fixable problem, and one that doesn't even require two coats of paint.
This is a dangerous, vicious overreaction on the part of the city prosecutor, and the school officials. They are abusing their power and risk punishing a kid for life for something that should be handled by a stern talking to and no dessert.
Some ex convicts carry around a felony conviction that prevents them from re-entering society or impairs them in some way thus encouraging a return to crime. How much worse is that when the conviction is for something less-damaging than littering.
On another note, I wonder when the prosecutor's up for reelection?
HA! An overloaded server is damage? Tremendous?
I think this guy is trying to turn an overloaded school website (like anyone visits that anyway) into a mini-9/11.
Tremendous Damage is essentially reserved for 9/11, Oklahoma City, type damage.
IMHO that's borderline slander since it's extremely unlike for any true damage, forget about "Tremendous".
Those are just words to get in the paper, at the expense of someone else's reputation.
If I were that kids parents, I'd consider a lawsuit. Then again, nobody ever wins a lawsuit against a prosecutor.
"Michael said it was a joke," Forchione said. "We showed him how we deal with this kind of joke."
Being 18, they showed him, indeed, considering he will have a felony in the database tracking him for the rest of his life. In lieu of a job, I guess he can get a book from Loompanics on how to cook meth and be a drug dealer.
But I suppose they had to balance the ethical issues to reach a wise decision. I mean, it's hard to imagine the horror of school web sites crashing around the country. That would send a signal that we're weak on terra.
The more the idea takes hold in my mind, the easier it is to see examples of what cowardly bullies Americans are. Yup, the Canton police really showed this kid what happens when you mess with the school web site. "Take that computer-using high school kid!"
Maybe Kevin Mitnick can get him gigs speaking at the high school circuit?