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Florida Teen Charged With Felony Hacking For Changing Desktop Wallpaper
colinneagle writes: A 14-year-old middle school student in Holiday, Florida, was arrested this week and charged with "an offense against a computer system and unauthorized access," which is a felony. The student reportedly used an administrator password to log into a teacher's computer and change the background image to a photo of two men kissing.
The student also revealed his secrets after he was caught – the password was the teacher's last name, and the teacher had typed it in in full view of the students. The student said many other students used these administrators' passwords (their teachers' last names) so they can screen-share and video chat with other students. The student was briefly held in a nearby detention center, and the county Sheriff warned that other teenagers caught doing the same thing will "face the same consequences."
The student also revealed his secrets after he was caught – the password was the teacher's last name, and the teacher had typed it in in full view of the students. The student said many other students used these administrators' passwords (their teachers' last names) so they can screen-share and video chat with other students. The student was briefly held in a nearby detention center, and the county Sheriff warned that other teenagers caught doing the same thing will "face the same consequences."
Twart future terrorists in their tracks must.
when I was a kid
the things I might have done....
picking the mimeograph of the test out of the trash if its in public isn't even a criminal offense...
Can we just give Florida back to Spain or something?
The question every person in authority should be in the habit of asking is: "Am I using the least amount of my authority possible to accomplish my immediate goals?"
To get a peace officer badge, A Clockwork Orange should be mandatory viewing with a discussion to follow, and an arrest for not understanding it. I think peace officers who don't understand the point of that movie are at least as likely to commit serious crimes as 8th graders who tamper with screen savers. I'm willing to be proven wrong.
Hah. On the Windows 3.1 systems at my high school I would change the screensaver message to something like "FUCK THA POLICE" or whatever and then use the ATTRIB command to mark WIN.INI as read-only, meaning it was impossible to change the message back using the UI.
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
It's rare that a jury should exercise "jury nullification" but cases like these, where the punishment does not fit the crime, are one of them.
Acquitting a guilty person when the charge is over-the-top for the circumstances sends a loud message to prosecutors to dial-it-back to something sane the next time around.
If there wasn't a history of other students doing the same thing, filing misdemeanor criminal charges in juvenile court with a pre-arranged deal where they charges would be dismissed and the arrest expunged within 1-2 years would not be inappropriate.
Because there is such a history, even this is too much. This should have been handled as an internal disciplinary and/or re-training matter for the student and, in parallel, for the faculty so this kind of thing doesn't happen again.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Obviously, he should have set it to a photo of two women kissing. Then the teacher wouldn't have been so mad!
More serious than misdemeanor manslaughter.
Finally, we are teaching our children that justice is truly blind. It cannot see that we are charging the child, a 14 year-old, with a felony that will last the rest of his life. Never mind any jobs that the kid may try to get in the future. He is now a felon and shall be treated as such.
Seriously though. He is just a child. I believe in making sure it is shown that what he did was wrong, but treating him as a full blown felon? Disgraceful.
One time, I used a command prompt instruction to circumvent the 'security' our high school computer lab teacher had used to prevent students from accessing the Control Panel in Windows 3.1. The mouse tracking speed had been set too high, and the computer was difficult to use, so I fixed it. The teacher accused me of "hacking" and I was kicked out of the computer lab for the rest of the school year. That teacher probably still runs a computer lab; I grew up and went to work for Microsoft. I hope this kid is as lucky.
Most acceptable use policies would require the teacher to understand that actions taken with his credentials are his responsibility. As the teachers own password was used, he or she should bear the responsibilities of the action.
But really, there are some pretty loud crickets when the state gets a hardon for arresting/harrassing children.
If you obviously don't understand what the kid did, they how do you expect people to believe that your judgment is fair?
Its clear in this situation the kid is the only one who knows that a computer isn't a magic box with pretty lights.
Its not my fault, someone put a wall in my way.
Sometimes you have to look at how these laws are being applied, and fight back the overwhelming urge to slap the stupid from the people who pursue these charges. And it might take a lot of slapping.
This is a high school prank, nothing more.
Honestly, the people who are filing felony charges of complete morons.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The student observed the teacher's keyboard while the password was typed in. The student then used that observed password to unlawfully gain access to the system in question.
This has nothing to do with the wallpaper. The student leveraged unauthorized access to a system to do something.
I think I'd have been put away for life, if I was younger and in the US, or possibly tasered, charged with assulting a cop's fist with my face then shot.
When I were a lad and the school computers ran Windows 95 (all spiffy and shiny and new they were), I created a trojan floppy which renamed and overwrote some key executables which autoexec.bat with my own ones. My ones passed on the arguments to the true ones so the boot process worked as usual and it was very hard to see that it was trojaned.
Of course they were set to "go off" on a certain date as a prank on a teacher who was being a dick and who many people had complained about and nothing changed.
All you had to do was slip in the floppy, reboot and it would install the trojan. Of course once word got around everyone wanted in on the act so I had to do very little of the legwork to trojan the entire computer lab.
I got a "yeah very funny (snigger) don't do that again mmmmkay?" talk.
And that was it.
Come to think of it I was always pissing around and hacking.
What is school if not a safe environment for kids to learn stuff and learn where the boundaries are?
Everyone involved in this charge should be hounded out of office and publicly shamed for being reprehensible humans.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Since states are now legalizing POT, the numbers are starting to Drop. So they've made the bar way lower on computer mucking!
We gotta do something to keep the damn prisons filled!
I take no responsibility for what I say. Even though I'm never wrong
I did this to a friend, on his Christmas computer. Him, his father and his Marine buddies all seriously contemplated killing me. They were utterly furious and I didn't return for a long time. Of course, the gentleman featured on the desktop were unclothed in addition, but aren't we all, in a sense? Good fun, indeed.
Reminds me of a friend who was tired of his neighbor using his wifi so rather than putting a password on it, like a normal person, he instead used mac filtering to redirect all requests originating from unrecognized mac's to lemon party.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
As a sysadmin this brings me to tears of anger because this isnt the kids fault and instead of learning about the system or security, theyre just learning what it feels like to be incarcerated without due process.
a competent IT department for the education system has likely determined a best-practices for passwords but been overruled by administrators and staff citing computers, their difficulty, and their ironic unwillingness to themselves learn. Result: easy passwords. Instead of paperwork, meetings with staff, meetings with IT, and a documented record of a potential lapse in workplace best practises the educators have decided to railroad some poor kid into a trial offer of the prison pipeline and continue with school, business as usual.
Good people go to bed earlier.
At least he didn't just take 8 bullets to the back.
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
First they pressed you. Then they re-pressed you. Now you are flat.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Was a simple, after-school detention not an option for some reason? I mean, really? You called the police? Did da big bad hacker scare you wif his eweet skills? Jumping Jesus on a pogostick! They're kids, mischievous by nature. Give the kid a detention, and institute a sane fucking password policy!
If I were a parent of a child in this school, I'd be outraged. I'm outraged right now, and I don't live anywhere near Florida!
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
Kids need to learn the consequences of embarrassing powerful people. That is one of the golden rules of modern society; thou shalt not embarrass thy superiors. Snowden forgot that, and this little punk forgot that.
You respect your betters, or you get tossed in a cage. That's the law. Ingrain that into your kid's brains before puberty hits, or they will wind up in a cage too.
Yes, and trespassing (in the real world) is a misdemeanor, generally speaking. Not a felony, a misdemeanor. Why should the equivalent on a computer be any different?
That said, I doubt most prosecutors would bother if someone reported that someone else had trespassed to leave a photo. They'd probably tell you to lock your door.
I'm sure there is a "life hack" for that...
One of my pet peeves is the overuse of the word "hacking" or "hack" in contexts that doesn't make sense or are just incorrect.
In this case, there was no hacking involved. He knew the password and used it. Unauthorized access isn't hacking. Then again people with a bias or agenda will use terms for impact, just like "theft" and "stealing" when used in context of copyright infringement.
To me, when people do that with words, they are just explaining to people either A) how biased they are, or B) how little they understand the subject at hand. Either way, not worth reading or listening to.