Slashdot Mirror
Adult Website Use At Work Leads To Hacker Conviction
safesorry notes that several sources are talking about a recent tale of woe about Richard Wolf, a lonely guy looking for love in all the wrong places. Wolf used his work computer to visit the Adult Friend Finder website and upload personal nudes to prospective "friends." Now he's been convicted under a "hacker" law targeted at employees who steal data or access information they shouldn't. "Richard Wolf acknowledged that his behavior was inappropriate when he used his work computer to upload nude photos of himself to an adult web site and view other photos on porn sites, but he didn't think he should be convicted of hacking for doing so."
Should be a 'W' not an 'H'
Dual Opteron < $600
The idea that if someone does something you don't like, they have to be punished, even if you can't find a law that exactly names the thing you didn't like as a crime, is moronic.
This is ten steps worse than I thought from the summary, though. The court decided that any use the company decided was felony 'hacking', at the companies discretion through the application of its internal policy, without requiring the company to actually install blocks against the usage!
Let's let businesses come up with new felonies on the fly! Woo!
I think losing your job would be punishment enough in this case.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Every geek worth his geek-badge has bypassed the company web-filter. According to this law, that's hacking. That whole "theft of services from office" part was overturned but only because they couldn't show his work had actually suffered from his actions.. whereas if all you do at work is post on Slashdot and your work suffers, you could be charged with a crime.
So yeah, basically, if you have an employer who is a big enough dick, most of us are criminals.
How we know is more important than what we know.
He added that the city had never actually disseminated a policy regarding internet usage to tell workers what was inappropriate.
"They had crafted one but they hadn't published it," he said. "So there was in effect no policy and no protections on the computer -- no password protection or filtering of any kind -- so basically anybody could access anything on the internet through the city's computer."
And the statue he was convicted under:
"No person, in any manner and by any means, including, but not limited to, computer hacking, shall knowingly gain access to, attempt to gain access to, or cause access to be gained to any computer, . . . without the consent of, or beyond the scope of the express or implied consent of, the owner of the computer, . . . or other person authorized to give consent."
Righto.
We don't live in a world where news organizations do follow-up.
There's the sound bite. The 2 minute outrage. Then everyone forgets about it.
Delivering the news is only profitable while the news is still new. Follow-up is just too boring to be profitable apparently.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Delivering the news is only profitable while the news is still new. Follow-up is just too boring to be profitable apparently.
Then I hereby declare the formation of the 'Olds', which will only do pieces following up on old 'News'.
The case began when Larry Wise, the Superintendent of the Shelby City Wastewater Treatment Plant, where Wolf was employed, was deleting old files from a work computer and found a nude photograph of Wolf.
and
Initially he was suspended while police investigated the case, but was promoted after he returned to work. He lost his job, however, when he was convicted of the charges.
The important question would be why his employer even phoned the police in the first place. This is one of those bizarre situations where it is obvious that the person was persecuted for a lifestyle choice and not for what he did or didn't do at work. As stated in the article, he would not have been prosecuted if he would have looked at horticultural Web sites [and uploaded pictures of flowers].
Remember- jury nullification is a right our founding fathers supported.
The appropriate answer to questions about jury nullification belief is "No" (because they really shouldn't be asking you that question in the first place and answering "Yes" would remove your right of nullifcation.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
This is a classic example of an overly-broadly-worded law that is now being used to prosecute people to whom the law was never intended to apply.
WHENEVER your Congresscritters -- or eve City Council -- want to pass a law that is too broadly worded, oppose it. I did once, and was told "It will never be enforced that way." My reply was, "If it is not intended to be enforced that way, why was it written that way?"
When you give the government power to do something, eventually it will... even if that was not your intent. So make sure the intent is clear, and just do not give them powers that you do not intend them to use.
The problem wasn't that he was fired, it was that he was charged with a hacking felony for something that wasn't related to hacking.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I worked at a company of about 40 men and 2 women. One of the women was the owner's wife, the other was the receptionist.
The receptionist was a "geek girl" and hung out on some overclocker forums, and so did a bunch of the guys. This girl decides it would be fun to post naked pictures of herself on this forum. The guys totally fell for the bait and started inviting guys who were not on this forum to come over to their computer and have a look. This went on for a few days and eventually my supervisor happened to get invited to take a peek.
No-one really considered that my supervisor was a part owner in the company. I mean, they knew, but they never really thought that he would be more interested in protecting his stake in the company than being "one of the boys". He was shocked that these idiots were passing around naked pictures of a fellow employee (they weren't but hey, close enough) so he went straight to the boss. The forum was blocked.
Everyone who had looked at the pictures was suspended for a week without pay. One of them complained about this, saying that they didn't put the pictures on the site, that this girl did, and why wasn't she being suspended? He was told to drop it, wouldn't, so he was fired.
Later, they had a quiet word with the girl and recommended she not come back after xmas.. and she agreed.
Thankfully the courts were not involved.
Sexual harassment laws make hostile workplaces.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Clearly you don't understand the difference between a professional dominatrix and a prostitute who simply dresses up and gives a light spanking.
Windows is a bonfire, Linux is the sun. Linux only looks smaller if you lack perspective.
This is particularly true for anyone that finds themselves in the media spotlight for months and is hyped as being guilty. Even if mountains of evidence ends up being used to exonerate them the damage has already been done. The media isn't going to bother to spend months clearing their name. They get a 15 second update, "John Doe was innocent." Most people never even hear it. I feel the same way about the tiny section dedicated to corrections in printed publications.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
I can't think of the word for this, but in the Middle Ages, pretty much any offense past blowing a nose in public was death, and the forms of death got worse and worse. The problem this created was the fact that because something small had such a heavy penalty, might as well be put to death for murder, so this resulted in people feeling they had nothing to lose by going to extremes.
That is a lesson that countries have seem to have forgotten with all these anti-hacker and anti-terrorism laws.