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Student Faces 38 Years In Prison For Hacking Grades
the brown guy writes "An 18-year-old high school student named Omar Kahn is charged with 69 felonies for hacking into a school computer and modifying his grades, among other things. He changed his C, D and F grades to As, and changed 12 other students grades as well. By installing a remote access program on the school's server, Kahn was able to also change his AP scores and distribute test answer keys, and could be looking at a lengthy prison term. Not surprisingly, his parents (who have only recently immigrated to America) have decided not to post the $50,000 bail and Kahn is in jail awaiting trial."
Is at Gizmodo
The kid is also facing burglary charges because he stole a key to the school and used it to break in several times. The first thing to remember in this case is that it's not just a simple computer crime case, and that 12 other students also had their grades changed.
Further, of course the kid faces 38 years; every one of the small crimes he committed carry a maximum penalty. If you add them all up, you get 38 years. Obviously that doesn't mean that the kid is going to serve anywhere near that amount.
Now, I'm not sitting here saying that this kid should get 38 years. Far from it. But I do think that some jail time is called for. In addition to the burglary charge and the financial hit to fix the problems he caused, he hurt a lot of students. Consider this: For every one of the 13 kids who moved into the top 10% ranking, someone who had earned their spot had to leave. That student may not have been able to get into the college of his or her choice, and - far more importantly - may have missed out on substantial scholarship money. This kid wasn't just harming his high school through the added expense to audit records and security policies, he was hurting totally innocent fellow students.
Whilst I'm really not a lawyer, it's worth pointing out that the legal use of the word "Conspiracy" doesn't necessarily imply that it was a Government/Anarchic/Terrorism related thing.
As ever, Wikipedia has something to say on the matter:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(crime)
"In the criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between natural persons to break the law at some time in the future, and, in some cases, with at least one overt act in furtherance of that agreement."
This is one of the comments on the newspaper story:
He's NOT a hacker!
Jun 19, 2008 08:21
He's just lazy and stupid.
First off, this idiot goes to the same high-school as me - Tesoro High School. The guy is a total loser who just wastes his time trying to act cool and trying to "party it up" cause his family is relatively well off.
The "38 years in prison" is just a tagline. He *faces* that much time in prison because of the 69 seperate counts of felony charges, but he'll probably get a fine and probation and that's about it. (Well, that and getting blacklisted from the major schools that he had no shot of getting into.)
Secondly, since when has installing a keylogger program on a computer been considered hacking? In which case, we're all "hackers" cause we installed software on our PC. He doesn't know the first thing about programming. He asked me to fix his spyware infested computer on repeated occasions. The guy would get others to do his work for him and pay them off. He even asked people to take the SATs for him! jeez!
Lastly, he's a lazy idiot. He got caught AFTER he was denied admission to the UCs (yes, he still got rejected with his modified transcripts), when he tried to appeal the decision and have more transcripts sent out - that's when the counselor noticed the discrepency. If he had taken the time to study for the SATs instead, he'd be in by now, even with his terrible GPA.
What a ridiculous world we live in.
Amit
He didn't get caught because he bragged. Evidently, he was caught after he requested an official school transcript for a university he was applying for.
Of course, if you read the article, you'd know that.
But hey, who reads articles? This is slashdot.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Yes you do, the 38 years quoted in the article is particularly inflammatory as its the maximum he could get for all of his charges back to back. He won't get the maximum on any convictions (people rarely do), and he almost certainly won't get back-to-back sentencing, his terms will be concurrent. If convicted, he will most likely get anything from a suspended sentence to a couple of years.