Get Fired. Delete Colleague's Account. Go To Jail.

SierraPete writes "CNet reports that Thomas Millot, a former systems analyst for a major pharmaceutical company, has lost his appeal on a computer intrusion charge. Mr. Millot was convicted of unlawfully entering the system that he used to work on and deleting a colleague's account after his job was outsourced. Mr. Millot's attorneys argued that his actions did not amount to $5K in damage--the threshold for the crime he was convicted of. The court disagreed, saying that IBM had done over $20K in work to undo his handiwork." Update: 01/14 19:55 GMT by J : Typo corrected; turns out the word "not" is important...

Comments

Compare like terms, please

[Anonymous Coward]

Charging $20K != Performing $20K of value-add

Missing "Not" In Summary

[kmactane]

The summary should read: Mr. Millot's attorneys argued that his actions did not amount to $5K in damage...

It's those itsy-bitsy words that make all the difference.

Re:What difference does that make?

[Omnifarious]

First, people can make mistakes. I'd be hesitant to hire the guy again, but I might consider it.

Secondly, levels of offense, sentences and sentencing guidelines exist for a reason.

Though, maybe we should take your tack and say all crimes are punishable by death! After all, it doesn't matter how bad the offense was, the punishment should be very high no matter what. So, lets give the highest punishment possible for every crime!

Re:Or here is a better idea

[tomhudson]

Okay, I know this is slashdot and most people didn't RTFA:

A federal judge disagreed and handed down a relatively light sentence of three months of imprisonment, three months of home detention and three years of supervised release, plus a $5,000 fine and $20,350 in restitution.

So he IS going to repay them $$$, lots of it. Not just jail time.

IBM was grossly incompetent

[SHP]

Unless I'm missing something, I cannot understand how IBM needed 20K worth of incident response services to figure out what happened. SecurID systems can log all activity. A simple check of the logs would have indicated who disabled the access and when.

I would have told IBM to put that invoice where the sun don't shine if they tried to bill me for investigating such a simplisitic "compromise" of a system *they* were supposed to be managing.

-SHP (CISSP, CISA)

Lessons ?

[frost22]

I heartily dislike this verdict, mainly for the fact that damage is exaggerated where is not much.

Lessons learned ? How about those:
- when they piss you off, don't just play a little, make sure you don't get caught at all. Do whatever that takes.
- don't just fool around with someones account, kill the company outright. If they fight for their life or are dead, there is less incentive to play games with you. You have the inside knowledge, so there is plenty of shit you can do. Be hard, swift and merciless.

I'm not really sure that's what we want to teach, though.

Re:Or here is a better idea

[Nazadus]

The problem with jail time is it fucks you up too much financially.
Seriously, without _allot_ of help you can't get caught up in life and thusly will find yourself back in jail. Imagine this, after 6 months of getting out of jail, you can't really afford your own place, your wife left you, you can't afford a car, and finding food is starting to get difficult on the $5.15 / buger flipping job..
CC companies won't let you get a credit card becuase of you high debt (you lost your job when you went to jail and thusly couldn't pay your bills)...
After all this, jail probably looks allot nicer than the real world.
Thusly without serious help (like family) you can't get out of the whole.
On top of that, as soon as you can support yourself, all the help you do get from the government (they do help with _some_ stuff) gets yanked out from under you. So you go from making $5.15 / hour (plus a portion o fyour rent paid from govt and medical benefits, I think)to $8.00 / hour no benefits. So that $8.00 means squat if you can't afford that shitty house your in _and_ your past bills...

It's a fucked up situation. We don't give them a chance to survive and break out of the cycle. Yes, I know, they are criminals and deserve pain.. but when they serve their time, they are supposed to be fixed... right? If not, why the fuck are they out?

On the flip side, those found guilty need to have 1 year in jail, then put a bullet to the head. They should be given reasonable (1 year) time to appeal and find evidence that they didn't commit the crime (allot of people on death row, post death, have been found innocent after evidence shows otherwise).

back on topic, 20k is too much. Their should be some kind of reasonable limit to that. Afterall, what if IBM charge $1,000 / hour and out of spite that company accepted knowing the guy would ahve to pay him back legally? Why not make it infinity / hour?

Our legal system ladies and gentlemen. /two bits