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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."
Even being a security researcher I might find some of those tasks non-trivial. In highschool I'm pretty sure that kind of action was out of my league. He has certainly learned something.
Summary is unnecessarily sensational.
I'm willing to bet the 38 years is if he gets convicted for all the charges, and doesn't get any concurrent sentencing - very unlikely.
Beetle B.
Sure the kid is an idiot, but does he deserve 38 years? That's insane.
Kick him out of school. Hold him back a year. Put him to work in community service.
People who think he deserves 38 years in prison for being a teenage idiot probably deserve to be in prison themselves.
I don't know what so unsurprising about that. No parent wants their kid to spend time in freakin' lockup. Further, they can leverage $5,000 of real dollars with a bail bondsman to post $50k, so they just need to sell the kid's computer and scrape together a few thousand more to spare him potentially weeks behind bars.
Heck, banks will loan the money for bail, and I seriously doubt they get the loan-shark like interest the bail bondsman would.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I mean...what the kid did was dumb, granted. But should his ENTIRE life really be completely ruined because he tried to cheat and boost his test scores in fucking high school? Seriously? There are rapists that face less jail time. Murderers who face less jail time. Corrupt politicians who start wars with other nations, unprovoked...that face no jail time. And you're going to hop on the "he's getting what he deserves" bandwagon? Shit, I *DO* support that kid. And yes, he's just a kid. A dumb, arrogant kid that made a stupid mistake. But in the end, no ones been harmed except himself. Expell him from school. Make him repeat the 12th grade. Let him stand on his own two at a community college until he can prove that he's ready for a 4 year program. I just don't think this is worth destroying a life over......
They didn't "turn him" into anything. He's a criminal. Period. I could write it off as misguided teenage mischief if he had changed his own grades. Maybe even a grade or two for a girl he was attempting to woo, but he changed grades for twelve people, stole tests and answers and distributed them, and burglarized his school to cover up the fact that - even after proving he could steal test and answers - he was still cheating.
Where's the "talent?" The only thing he did was read someone's password to initially "hack" the system, and I'll bet $20 that the "remote access program" was something he downloaded from some site with a name like "Teh Supar-3v1L Bl4ck Haxx0rZ La1r!" Giving him a pass because it's a nonviolent crime makes as much sense as letting off anybody who tunnels into a bank because they were clever. He's not talented, he's a sociopath. He should be expelled from school and they should staple a copy of the police report to any transcript they send to a college.
This kid isn't a genius. He's not talented. He isn't some sort of super child that did this because he was bored in school. He's a stupid script kiddie. He downloaded a keylogger from the internet then broke into the school office and installed it. What a computer wiz. The kid's a douche and this sentence probably just saves the court some time down the road. And he won't even get 38 years anyway so quit whining about how long that is.
He is facing "up to" 38 years. That means that if you take all of the charges against him, and he gets the max prison term for all of them, he will be in jail for 38 years. The chances of that happening are zero. What is going to happen is that if the evidence against him is good enough where he (his lawyers) think that he can't win, he will just make a plea deal with the prosecutors. If he serves any time after pleading guilty and making a plea deal, it will likely be under a year. In all likelihood he will just get put on probation for a few years. Probation sucks, but it beats prison... and well, it is supposed to suck. It is a punishment, and punishments tend to suck.
More accurately--the kid just ruined his own life completely. Taking responsibility for choices we make is all part of growing up.
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
Criminals are not caught this way, amateurs are. This guy is clearly not a seasoned criminal and he should not be treated like one. I hope he does not get jail time from this. This is obviously just a kid making a mistake.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep