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Former Student Gets Year In Prison For College President Election Fraud
Gunkerty Jeb writes, quoting Threatpost: "A former Cal State San Marcos student was sentenced to a year in prison this week for election tampering by using keystroke loggers to grab student credentials and then vote for himself. Matthew Weaver, 22, of Huntington Beach, Calif., stole almost 750 students' identities to try and become president of the San Diego County college's student government. His plan went awry when the school's computer technicians noticed an anomaly in activity and caught Weaver with keystroke loggers as he sat in front of the suspicious computer."
in national politics. But who will get him, the Dems or the Republicans?
He did receive a job offer from the NSA afterwards however.
A year in prison for the crime of fixing a vote while not being a professional political operative. At least the kid knows he's got a shot at a good job when he gets out. Better prospects than if he had finished his program at Cal State San Marcos.
all he needed to do was use a keystroke logger to work his keystroke logger.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
He's small time, he cheated, he got caught and made an example of. If only we could have this sort of efficiency and insight into real politicians.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
I did something similar at "Canada's Premiere Undergraduate Experience"
Long story short, one of the people running for Student Union President won my House election the year before. He did so by getting the competition kicked out on technicalities. No, I wasn't running, and No, I wasn't friends with anyone who did. Since every day a poster is up is a "violation" they racked up fast. This guy was going out with the person who's job it is to notify people of potential violations, and they were never warned.
Fast forward two years, and I logged in as every. single. student. from a MacDonalds down the road. Didn't actually vote, just logged in, logged right back out. Then repeated 8k times. Once a student logged in, they had an hour to finish. Since everyone's hour was up at 9AM, almost no one voted.
Somehow, there was still a landslide win. Not only did he have 90% of the votes, he had more votes than there were students in the entire university.
The whole election should have been thrown out. People complained on official forums, topics were deleted as fast as they went up.
It pays to play dirty apparently.
On the one hand, fraud is bad. On the other, student government is usually a joke that deserves to be pranked. At the college level it is, AFAIK, not much better than HS. Our Class President gave a friggin' 15 minute speech at commencement. Holy Crap! That was the only real debacle at graduation. I'll never forget it. That's all I remember about the class president.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I think this kid's ready for the big time! Future statesman, you heard about him first on Slashdot!
I'm not sure mentioned on slashdot is any kind of endorsement. You don't see Wil Wheaton in the DC, do you?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
He could work for either voting board and do well!
This is why everyone needs to be able to verify that their vote was counted the way they voted. They got lucky and caught the guy this time, but I'm sure this has been done before at larger scales by people with more resources.
Dumbfuck ... talentless dumbfuck
Choose wisely where you go to school
When I was in college my roommate and friends successfully ran a campaign to get Gumby elected student President, highlighting how useless student government really is.
Aside from his 15 minutes of fame, I don't really see how the reward justified the risks he took, although encore proved a significant lack of common sense.
What's wrong with Hwil Hweaton?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
I think this kid's ready for the big time! Future statesman, you heard about him first on Slashdot!
I'm not sure mentioned on slashdot is any kind of endorsement. You don't see Wil Wheaton in the DC, do you?
Nope. Because Wil Wheaton :
UPS Sucks
Too bad he played his ace card now, when he could have waited for US presidential (digital) election and rig that instead... even though, NSA is well placed to do that.
I'm sure he'll be a perfect candidate for a Republican or Democrat governor, congressman, or even Presidential candidate. His future looks very bright indeed!
FTFY
prove it
If he had gotten away with it, then yes, he would have had a successful future in politics. However, he got caught. That makes him useless to all politically-interested parties.
DC is not a freeway, therefore you cannot call it "the DC".
sudo make me a sandwich
Upstart young activist punks like this with their improvised guerilla techniques run the risk of democratising vote rigging.
Yet another American deprived of his right to a trial. No doubt they would have tried to send him to prison for a decade or more if he decided to exercise his rights.
A year in prison is probably a fair outcome if the story is as described. But he deserves to have a jury decide that, and not face absurd amounts of time in prison if he wants a jury trial.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
You only go to jail for election fraud when the election officials do not get paid by the elected office of which you have just stolen.
sudo make me a sandwich
if you cheat and lose you are a loser
if you cheat and win you are savvy
if there is a chance you might get caught you cheat twice as hard
this guy got caught because he made the cardinal criminal mistake of laziness, for his laziness he will have his life ruined
http://abcnews.go.com/US/cal-state-student-year-prison-rigging-campus-election/story?id=19682401
In a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office, U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy said, "If privacy is to mean anything in a digital age, it has to be protected. A 12-month sentence adequately warns men and women like Weaver that they cannot hide from the consequences of their actions behind youth or privilege."
But I guess you can hide from the consequences of your actions if they are hidden behind secret rulings on secret laws by a secret court.
If only they would take the real elections half as seriously, maybe then we'd regain a (small) measure of confidence in the election process.
He's probably going to prison for accessing the students accounts, not for the election fraud itself.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Not really, but many ignorant people who have been tricked by their own superstitions and insular worldview into voting Republican think so.
What a waste.
The sheeple are allowed to choose between John Jackson (with his 2-cent tax that "goes too far") and Jack Johnson (with his 2-cent tax that "doesn't go far enough"). This is what the sheeple are taught in school that democracy means.
Lower down, and the voting system MUST be rigged so no grass-root changes start to emerge that might eventually challenge the status quo. Therefore we see the increasing use of electronic voting machines whose main property is how easily they may be tampered with in essentially untraceable ways. Because each voter is fundamentally unaware of how others vote, those in charge of the voting system can trivially create the outcome they desire.
Actually, there is a way to notice when vote-rigging occurs- by observing discrepancies between high quality sample polling of the voting population days before the election and the actual election result itself. However, polling organisations are now entirely bent (dishonest, crooked) in every nation they are found. The public never gets an independent, statistically correct sample poll (although such polls are constantly created in secret to monitor the likely voting patterns of the sheeple).
In the UK, USA, Canada, Germany, Australia, France and many other nations, whoever seems to be elected to run the country continues and accelerates the same policies as their seeming political opponents that previously had control. For instance, whether Americans vote the second Clinton or the third Bush for president next time, America will continue and accelerate its war mongering across the planet, and will continue and accelerate the police state at home.
Matthew Weaver is 'fried gold' for those that really control the USA. His attitude and mindset could not be more perfect. Amoral, win at all costs and identify the easily exploited weakness in the system.
"The reason academic politics are so bitter is that so little is at stake." -- Henry Kissinger
Stupid joke.
If you're being serious "The District of Columbia" makes more sense with the "the."
Why did he think 750 people logging in from the same computer wouldn't be noticed?
The last couple of guys who did the election fraud thing... Got to be president.
And this one goes to jail?
Talk about double standards...
I guess his mistake was he was smalltime.. You have to go HUGE if you're going into crime. Then you're too big to fail!
that is to bribe the IT people first to look the other way.
Never underestimate the power of an IT nerd
Then the original should say "the D.C."
sudo make me a sandwich
No, it is quite conventional to omit periods in full caps. Most people would accept "guns are common in the USA" and not require it to be "guns are common in the U.S.A." or "guns are common in USA".
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
I'm guessing that you have never served on a jury in the USA. I have twice and it just left me completely cynical about the entire US justice system and the use of juries in general. Literally anything can happen on a jury. A lot of ugly horse trading goes on like "OK, that guy over there wants a conviction on all counts, that woman over there wants him found innocent on all counts but she admits he may be guilty on one count... can we just agree on a guilty verdict on that one count and call it a day?" As the joke goes, juries are made up of people too stupid to get out of serving. The last time I served, I sat in stunned silence in the jury room before we went into court as 3 male members of the jury got onto a contest and tried to top each other as each insisted in turn that he was far stupider about technology than the other 2 and each provided examples to support his contention. The case we heard was a criminal case involving a black defendant and what I could basically describe as property damage and we had a black guy on the jury who was a reverse racist and was very strongly prejudiced against the defendant simply because he was black. It took some smooth talking and pleading by the white foreman to get this guy to agree to our verdict of guilty on 2 counts, innocent on 1 count, as I think the black guy would literally have voted for the death penalty if he could against the defendant. These are the kinds of people in the USA who serve on juries. Do you honestly think that any sane person would roll the dice on that when maybe facing 10+ years if the jury convicts? Plus, a lot of people in juries are obsessive about punishing "evil doers" as they see them and they want the most severe punishment possible given, sometimes arguing for punishment way beyond what the crime should involve, like 10 years for stealing $5 worth of merchandise. The only thing I took away from my service as a juror is that juries are made up mostly of idiots who aren't fit to judge whether the sun will come up tomorrow or not, let alone someone's life or freedom.
What! He used a computer to commit a crime and didn't get the death penalty? Seriously, a year in prison is gross overkill for this stunt. A hefty fine would be much more appropriate assuming that he only rigged a meaningless election. The feds have much more important things to do like run guns across the border, spy on citizens and close down marijuana dispensaries. . tiocfaidh ár lá
and did it like a raving N00b. Even hackers want this idiot to go to jail
LOL! They're taking points off for style!
Had he been an undocumented "illegal" immigrant that stole identities the government would have granted him amnesty... Just sayin...
Yet another American deprived of his right to a trial. No doubt they would have tried to send him to prison for a decade or more if he decided to exercise his rights.
A year in prison is probably a fair outcome if the story is as described. But he deserves to have a jury decide that, and not face absurd amounts of time in prison if he wants a jury trial.
There was an $8000 stipend for the winner. This wasn't just a simple resume builder. He committed fraud to attempt to win a monetary prize due to the fair winner. Something he'd planned out the year before with four of his fraternity brothers running for the vice-president slot and it's $7000 stipend. This was planned for monetary benefit. Hell, his attorney's statement that wasn't even planning on staying at the school is even more damning in that light.
Worse, after he was caught, he set up Facebook pages with the names of real students to manufacture evidence that they were conspiring to frame him and sent it to various news stations. This is what the judge referred to when he said, "Heâ(TM)s on fire for this crime, and then he pours gasoline on it to try to cover it up,â
Frankly, a year in prison is a little light considering all the facts. Based on the facts, I wouldn't disagree with the prosecutor's description of him as being an "incredibly entitled" kid. The kid sounds like a budding narcissist to me. If it had just been rigging an election as a protest, maybe a year would be fair. But planning ahead with financial motivation and then attempting to frame others for his crime shows someone society needs to deal with more harshly. I'd have given him 5-10. God forbid this guy get a job where he could do some real damage to people.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Was doing it himself. No Politician today woudl do that, they woulrd hire someone else to do it and pay them under the table with tax payer money.
Wow...just wow.
I can understand him getting kicked out of school, but freaking federal prison for a year for just messing with a STUDENT school election?!?!
[...]
This is a freaking school election...not a federal / city/state election..it is college, it means NOTHING....
Read the full article (especially the utsandiego.com link). He committed wire fraud -- the winner of the presidential election gets a $8000 stipend, and the vice-president gets $7000. He planned ahead (even putting together a PowerPoint presentation the year before for his frat brothers to run for the #2 slot) to "win" these prizes. Fraud over wire for financial gain is a serious federal crime with a maximum of 20 years in prison.
He also attempted to cover up his crime once caught *red-handed* at the machine he was entering the votes from in a computer lab by later creating Facebook profiles in other real people's names and generating a lot of fake comments intended to make it look like those people had conspired to frame him, and he sent it to local media outlets. It was stupid in way that shows how much smarter he thinks he is than the people around him.
This kid is a budding con artist. He was acting for financial motive to defraud the school, and he was willing to trash the lives of others to try to get out of paying the penalty for something he did. This kid has displayed blatant, selfish disregard for others and a willingness to hurt or exploit them for profit.
This isn't a harmless prank. These are the actions of a malicious liar with an inflated sense of his own capabilities who doesn't seem to grasp the idea that consequences should apply to him for his actions. They should have thrown the book at him. Imagine the harm he could have done if he'd waited a few more years to "ripen" as a criminal and landed himself in management somewhere.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
If you took out the word "Republican" you probably would have gotten +5 Funny. But since you decided to make it partisan, it just looks sad because you think that only Republicans cheat.
Exactly. This is hardly a case of a kid doing something stupid without thinking it through. This guy had plenty of time to examine his actions, he had plenty of opportunity to back out, and he was repeatedly shown that his actions had consequences. And yet, at every step of the way, he chose to proceed. Even after he was caught he chose to perpetrate a cover-up! These are not the actions of a silly kid, they are the actions of a criminal. This kid deserves the punishment he received.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Its likely this they charge him with identify theft and fraud .then they tell him to plea out to like one count and he will serve a year and a day.
Or he can plea not guilty and they charge his ass with 700+ counts and the fed work on a point system more counts enhance the time
Google federal sentencing guide lines
And find out what he was charge with and how many counts and you'll see it add up fast
They force you to take the plea the DA gives or you suffer badly for it in sentencing ,making apologies to the court, taking responsibility for your actions, these thing take point off which lower your points.
Plus you get points off for cooperating with the government
This is the sentencing table.
http://www.ussc.gov/Guidelines/2012_Guidelines/Manual_HTML/5a_SenTab.htm
This is the manual
http://www.ussc.gov/Guidelines/2012_Guidelines/index.cfm
When I as charged and sentenced the guidelines were mandatory sentencing the judge did not have any leeway to interpret. the sentencing is now discretionary
Wikipedia
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Federal_Sentencing_Guidelines
BTW the year and a day is the only way they send you to jail unless you violate federal probation they don't really send you to jail for 6 month though they may send ya to a halfway house or maybe a boot camp
Note to self: When rigging an Internet voting election stealing student ID's, use Tor...
...in bed
The Republicans and keep screaming that voter is so easy, but since making those claims they keep getting caught doing it.
I can only guess that either they're making false claims about it being easy indicating that Democrats don't cheat the way they do.
Or Democrats are just smarter.
Weaver, 22, of Huntington Beach was a third-year business student ...
Well, that explains it. I wonder if he'll sue the school for prosecuting him for using what it taught him?
... A Joke of a College Election.
He stands no chance in a real election.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Sparty is a ridiculous pedant, but 'the DC' does sound a little odd to my ears. DC just sounds better. Not calling it wrong, but ...
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
He HAS A SOUL
No he doesn't. He lied to Sheldon to win the Magic competition then manipulated Penny into leaving Leonard then used his stardom(?) to jump the line in front of everyone else who was waiting for the re-release of the movie.
Sorry, that's just soulless on many levels and borders on sociopathic.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
He's an idiot really. And because of that he screwed up his life. I think the school should be ashamed of itself, for producing such poor quality students. No, really!
I mean, what he actually did, was to cast the votes of the other students. When they couldn't vote, they would have complained and checks would have been made.
The single most important difference in his plan should have been to steal login data from someone very high up the hierarchy, the chances of getting caught would have been smaller, and if he was indeed caught, then the incident embarassing enough not to be publicized, or even turned over to the police.
Third year in business and that's all he had? Damn, no wonder people start saying MBA's are worthless.
A hefty fine would be much more appropriate assuming that he only rigged a meaningless election.
Then you assume much by not actually reading the fine article. The wire fraud charges are appropriate (since he stood to win an $8000 stipend), and he also tried (poorly) to frame others for his crimes after being caught red-handed. (That what the judge meant when he said, "He's on fire for this crime, and then he pours gasoline on it to try to cover it up.")
If anything, he got off too lightly.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
You may have missed that be there the Felon in question happened to be a member of the Republican party.
So of course he would be a Republican candidate,
You've also apparently missed the bit where the Republicans have been making a lot of noise about how easy it is to get away with cheating in elections.
I'm sure he'll be a perfect candidate for a Republican or Democrat governor, congressman, or even Presidential candidate. His future looks very bright indeed!
FTFY
You seem to have missed the fact that the perp. was a Republican, not a Democrat; So he would be running as a Republican candidate.
This is hardly a case of a kid doing something stupid without thinking it through.
Well, technically it was. Committing fraud is stupid (as is getting caught), whether or not you use a computer to do so, and he didn't seem to think through the consequences of getting caught. If his actions don't prove a certain level of stupidity, I don't know what does (did he think he'd be able to spend that money freely on whatever he wanted, no questions? Stupid! Stupid!). The only open question is whether you consider him a kid or not. To be pedantically correct about it all, of course.
He certainly qualifies as scum though. It's not mutually exclusive with being stupid, a kid or an adult, or generally lacking in the ability to plan things through properly. I suppose we can hope that he will learn his lesson and become an upstanding member of the community in future. (Hey, I'm sometimes an optimist!)
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Kindergarten student sent to Hague Tribunal for pretending to use chemical weapons while playing soldiers.
But who will get him, the Dems or the Republicans?
Yes.
Okay, it seems I really did misread the intent behind your words, and I apologize for that and for unfairly maligning your position.
Every single dollar or man hour of effort spent trying to catch a hacker, is infinitely better spent improving security to make hacking more difficult. ...
Legislators, law enforcement, lawyers and courts are expensive. Rather than putting a few hackers in jail, we could use that money to research security holes and fix them for billions of people.
I'm not entirely sure I agree with that, but I can't quite get up on my high horse about that one. :-)
I don't think the legal costs of sending hackers to jail is more expensive than the costs of subsidizing security, nor do I think the government should be in the business of subsidizing the costs of fixing sloppy programming. Writing solid, secure code is hard and expensive. It seems like any such policy would be nothing more than a trough for companies to feed off the public dime without provably improving their products like so many other subsidies.
And really, I do think the government should be in the business of discouraging bad actors; nothing makes computers all that special. Simply making the "game" more challenging without any penalties for failure would just encourage people to try harder when what we really want is for people *not* to break into systems with malicious intent.
At risk of hyperbole due to dipping into analogies again, you could make the same argument that we shouldn't be penalizing burglars when we could instead be spending money on making houses more secure. At some point the economics and the incentives for good/bad behavior fall apart.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
LA is. A great big one, or so the say.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So whats the problem, why is this news. I don't care why he did what he did,...he stole identities and now get gets to pay for what he did. Sounds like there is some justice left in the world after all.
and you lock him up
In the Ohio Republican Party Headquarters.
(used to be Florida, but Florida is getting a tad to brown for the GOP.)
see subject line