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Botnet Spammer Gets Just 18 Months For Being Odd
itwbennett writes "Thirty-three-year old Scottsman Matthew Anderson was sentenced this week to 18 months in prison for orchestrating a malicious Trojan campaign in 2006. The reason for his relatively light sentence? He apparently wasn't seeking to maximize profit like any normal, red-blooded hacker. Also, his timing was good. His arrest in June 2006 predated by a matter of months the Police and Justice Act, which would likely have resulted in a harsher sentence. By comparison, David Kernell, who snooped in Sarah Palin's email, got a year in prison."
There's nary a court in the world that can outsmart a greased Scotsman!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
How long does a year last in your world?
Who says the media isn't biased.
I'd hardly call a year + 1 day in a halfway house PRISON.
In fact, if Kernell had 6 months, he'd have to serve it in Jail, which (by all accounts) is worse than a year in Prison, and a hell of a lot worse than a year & a day in a halfway house.
Puhleeze!
Questioning the suspect only cost $5
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Sounds like a way too harsh sentence to me. Anyway, I personally like spam (and get lots of it). My email program filters out all of it, but sometimes I read it for entertainment. I don't know what's wrong with those annoying anti-spam fascists, perhaps they need to get laid more often.
Take a look at his crimes without the veil of judgment. He did some pretty neato stuff.
He found a way to run his code on a huge number of computers without the owners knowing at all.
He learned how to control the PC cameras of those computers and had "eyes" everywhere.
He ran this all from his mom's tiny little living room.
He's a modern-day phracker. He's doing stuff that is way out there, taking over peoples' PCs, controlling their systems, and he did it all for the love of technology. If he was alive 30 years ago, he'd have been whistling into the handset receivers of payphones to get free long distance from Ma Bell.
Yes, we need to condemn him because he crossed the line. Genius should be tempered with good sense, and it looks like he got carried away with what he *could* do and didn't contemplate hard enough on what he *shouldn't* do. However, let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. His heart is in the right place. What he needs is better guidance.
Who took down numerous big name websites, was sentenced to eight months of "open custody," one year of probation, restricted use of the Internet, and a small fine.
Lets face it, you can't properly gauge the sentence with the crime - too many other factors come into play that the judges are supposed to try and account for. Intent, remorse, etc etc - all play factors.
He carried out the crimes from a PC in his mother's living room
Basement living room?
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
Thirty-three-year old Scottsman Matthew Anderson was sentenced this week to 18 months in prison for orchestrating a malicious Trojan campaign in 2006.... By comparison, David Kernell, who snooped in Sarah Palin's email, got a year in prison.
Matthew Anderson and David Kernell live, committed their offences and were tried in different countries to one another. Why on earth would you expect their sentences to be comparable?
Next.. libel laws in England harsher than in the US! Owners of internet gambling sites that are lawful in other countries face imprisonment in US! Producing the same drug can get you anywhere from a governement contract to a stern warning to imprisonment to execution depending on which country you pick. Hello, welcome to the world.
It's spelled 'Scotsman', not 'Scottsman'.
A little proof-reading wouldn't go amiss.
Free Kernell!
"Thirty-three-year (1) old Scottsman (2) Matthew Anderson was sentenced this week (3) to 18 months in prison for orchestrating a malicious Trojan (4) campaign in 2006. The reason for his relatively light sentence? He apparently wasn't seeking to maximize profit like any normal, red-blooded hacker. Also, his timing was good (5). His arrest in June 2006 predated (6) by a matter of months the Police and Justice Act, which would likely have resulted in a harsher sentence. By comparison, David Kernell, who snooped in Sarah Palin's email, got a year in prison."
Let's play match the errors to the numbers, kids!
* Imaginary country
* Split infinitive
* Partial sentence
* Missing hyphen, implications of being a predator
* Oh, look! That hyphen reappeared
And my personal favourite:
* Hilarious capitalisation making it sound as though protagonist is leading an actual historical faction
Spammer Gets Just 18 Months For Being Odd
In Scotland, you can go to jail for being odd?
I guess an odd Scotsman would be one who doesn't wear a skirt, throw telephone poles for no particular reason, pick drunken fights with cows and trees or eat stuff that most people would rather throw away.
is that the profit motive is evil.
Commit some act to maximize profit, get a harsh sentence. Commit exactly the same act without profit motive, get a light sentence.
If the profit motive adds N months to a sentence for some act, then by the most straightforward, linear morality arithmetic, this means that simply having a profit motive in the absence of committing any act is in and of itself a crime punishable by N months.
Nice communist values there.
"As this case shows, criminals can't hide online and are being held to account for their actions. A complex investigation like this demonstrates what international cooperation can achieve," said Detective Constable Bob Burls of the UK Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU), neatly ignoring the fact that few online criminals are ever caught and it has taken over four years to sentence Anderson.
What you've described is a normal Scotsman. An odd Scotsman wouldn't wear anything below the waist at all-not even trousers, be on the receiving end of a tossed telephone pole for no particular reason, deliver Glaswegian kisses to cows and trees while sober, and not only would refuse to eat anything that didn't already have sheep, potatoes, turnips, or sod in it, he'd also refrain from alcohol in all its forms. Nor would he know how to play golf.
In retrospect, it's probably the total abstainment from alcohol that would mark a Scotsman as being 'odd'. Everything else would probably get overlooked or forgiven.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Kernell was the victim of a political hit job, this guy ran a botnet that resulted in no profit.
Wide difference.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002054.html
Matthew ANDERSON between the 1st day of September 2005 and the 27th day of June 2006, together with Artturi Alm and other persons, caused unauthorised modifications to the contents of computers, with intent to cause such modifications, and by so doing to impair their operation and/or to impair the operation of any computer programs or the reliability of computer data.
+ Counts of acquiring criminal property and money laundering were left to lie on file.
He will be sentenced on 22 November.
Two other men were previously arrested as part of the investigation. One was released with no further action. The other Artturi Alm pleaded guilty in Finland in 2008 and received a custodial sentence (18 days) and a community service order.
Criminals and incompetent managers* do. Hackers are in it for the knowledge, the skill, the achievement. People who claim otherwise are posers and other deluded people, like the media. There's a lot of deluded people around. No sense to helping that along then.
* Competent managers know not to maximize profit because it minimizes utility for their customers, so they instead focus on earning enough to get by and pay for the R&D for the next round of innovation. Good management isn't about getting filthy rich, but about creating wealth for everybody. Source: Peter Drucker. Yes, there's hack value in understanding management too.
Is he from Scottland? Oh dear, Google maps tells me there's no such place!
My web domain.
.. he replied "I dinna come forward because in this country, it makes you look like a pervert -- but _every_ single Scottish person does it!"
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
They have this view that, when it comes to computers, if they CAN do something, as in it is technically possible for them to do it, that makes it ok to do and means it ought to be legal. Breaking in to a system that has a weak password or lacks a security fix is fine in their view because that person is "stupid" and "deserves it". Of course none of them would be ok with someone breaking in to their house, even though like basically everyone they live in houses with known security vulnerabilities.
Hence why they are ok with a guy like this. They are ok with someone who breaks in to others' systems and abuses them because their ego says that only stupid people can be victims and the victims deserve it.
It is a sadly common view on this site.
I know the spammer got off lightly by comparison because he attacked more than one and a half computers and accounts... still, in the summary it would be honest to use consistent units - 18 months, 12 months.