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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.
The terrible thing about character assassination is that the event never had to happen. All you have to do is start a rumor about travel expenses and the victim is as good as blacklisted at big dumb companies where lip service is given to leadership but obedience and conformity are valued above all else.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
and Randall still can't get a clearance without being upfront about it.
... Good on ya, Randall!
Basically it means he can tell a police officer he's never been arrested and doesn't need to disclose it on a non-clearance employment application or any "low grade" background check like rentin an apartment.
With that out of the way, Randal has helped me out on comp.lang.perl (right before it went moderated) so
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
... if you keep fighting, eventually justice can work for "the little guy."
Well, maybe, but what I always find interesting in cases like this is: How much money did it cost?
All too often, when the "little guy" wins, he's also bankrupt.
Anyone know what the bill was for all this legal action?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I'll never claim that I wasn't stupid. It's not my job to get you to like me. The point of my case is to pay attention to the mistakes I made, because a lot of people have told me that they either have or could have made similar mistakes. Maybe some of you are so perfect that you wouldn't. Good for you. But don't be so quick to judge that nobody would be that stupid then. Please.