Slashdot Mirror
Randal Schwartz's Charges Expunged
After 13 years, Randal Schwartz has had his conviction expunged. In effect, legally it never happened.
If you haven't heard about this one before, my take is that as a contractor at Intel, Randal did some over-zealous white-hat cracking free-of-charge; this embarrassed some people in management (he pointed out that their passwords were terrible) and management then chose to embarrass themselves further by having him convicted of a felony under an 'anti-hacking' law. More info can be had from the Friends of Randal Schwartz.
No. He got his record cleared. Ie. he can apply for jobs of a sensitive nature. They haven't declared him innocent. Jesus people, get a clue. He was convicted of a crime. He was punished. Now he's received a pardon after his sentence was fulfilled. It's fairly common at the state level. At the federal level, it depends on the president. Clinton was fairly liberal with his pardons. Bush is tight with his. Whoop dee do.
Expungement is the sealing of a criminal record so it is not publicly available. The consequence might be that you can deny you have a criminal record, but it is quite different from a pardon, which is forgiveness of a crime and the penalty associated with it.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
A. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, and
B. The Oregon State Police, and
C. The Oregon State Corrections Division, and
D. The Arresting Agency, Portland Police Bureau. So the FBI can't use it against him. The PDF file is a copy of the expungement order from the court.
This charming example of Perl programming appeared in the first two editions of Schwartz's book "Learning Perl", published by O'Reilly. It serves as an introduction to Mr. Schwartz as well. I kinda wished they'd left it as an appendix to the book, which is now in its fourth edition.
Whatever happened to Chip Salzenberg? He seems to have pretty much vanished since mid-2006.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
That's great. Coincidentally enough, I just became aware of Randall Schwartz the other day when I listened to the FLOSS Weekly podcast where they interviewed him. It was a good listen (as always) - he talks about this case if anyone's interested.
A lot of the time, agencies (and even the courts) don't follow expunge orders. They conviniently "forget", so you have to hire a lawyer to follow up and make sure the court order was actually followed.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
First, the amount in dispute was less than $5K. Second, the lower court just reaffirmed what they said before. In other words, no net change. So yes, I still paid roughly $68K in restitution, at the end of the day.
Wrong, I was a systems and network administrator. According to job description, that's part of the job.
Objection! Assumes facts not in evidence, your honor!
Sustained.
At Intel, the distinction doesn't even meet IRS standards. An Intel contractor answers an add by mailing their resume to an Intel address. They visit the Intel facility for their job interview. They are hired exclusively for the Intel job. They report directly to Intel personnel. Intel personnel report directly to them. They occupy Intel space and use 100% Intel facilities. Their facility badges may not differ from employee badges. They eat Intel food. They travel with their Intel coworkers on business trips, booked by Intel's agents. In many cases, the coworkers with whom they work most closely don't even realize they are not an actual Intel employee.
They differ from employees in their benefits package and the name on their paychecks.
I never lost my right to vote. Only four states do that, not Oregon.
I can probably still get out of jury duty, since I now have a bias about criminal convictions. {grin}
I can't possess firearms yet. I have to apply to the BATF separately. I plan on doing that, but it's not yet in progress.
The password was "pre$ident". Yes, president, with the s changed to a dollar sign. Which "crack" found.