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Ex Cardinal's Scouting Director Chris Correa Sentenced To 46 Months For Hacking Astros' Computer System (go.com)
New submitter yzf750 quotes a report from ESPN: A federal judge sentenced the former scouting director of the St. Louis Cardinals [Christopher Correa] to nearly four years in prison Monday for hacking the Houston Astros' player personnel database and email system in an unusual case of high-tech cheating involving two Major League Baseball clubs. "The data breach was reported in June 2014 when Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow told reporters the team had been the victim of hackers who accessed servers and proceeded to publish online months of internal trade talks," reports ESPN. "Luhnow had previously worked for the Cardinals. The FBI said Correa was able to gain access using a password similar to that used by a Cardinals employee who 'had to turn over his Cardinals-owned laptop to Correa along with the laptop's password' when he was leaving for a job with the Astros in 2011. Prosecutors have said Correa in 2013 improperly downloaded a file of the Astros' scouting list of every eligible player for that year's draft. They say he also improperly viewed notes of trade discussions as well as a page that listed information such as potential bonus details, statistics and notes on recent performances and injuries by team prospects. Authorities say that after the Astros took security precautions involving [a database called Ground Control] following a Houston Chronicle story about the database, Correa was able to still get into it. Authorities say he hacked the email system and was able to view 118 pages of confidential information, including notes of trade discussions, player evaluations and a 2014 team draft board that had not yet been completed. Federal prosecutors say the hacking cost the Astros about $1.7 million, taking into account how Correa used the Astros' data to draft players. Christopher Correa had pleaded guilty in January to five counts of unauthorized access of a protected computer from 2013 to at least 2014, the same year he was promoted to director of baseball development in St. Louis. He was fired last summer and now faces 46 months behind bars and a court order to pay $279,038 in restitution. He had faced up to five years in prison on each count."
Cheaters never prosper.
But he didn't MEAN to do it. That should have been enough to get him off.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
It's not a TEAM SPORT much anymore, but a group of INDIVIDUALS.
My maxim is that Sport is something you do, while Entertainment is something you watch
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First, Jeff Luhnow wasn't particularly well-liked in the Cardinals front office. There was a well-documented rift between people who were loyal to the long-time general manager, Walt Jocketty, and people who were loyal to Luhnow, who was perceived as very arrogant. Luhnow also favored more emphasis on the draft and player development. Eventually this led to the firing of Jocketty. Luhnow gained some power and, in fairness, did quite a bit of good by having several good drafts that restocked the minor league teams. That said, Luhnow was never particularly well-liked or trusted.
When Luhnow left to become the general manager of the Astros, he took a lot of the staff with him to Houston. A lot of knowledge and skill left with those people who followed Luhnow. People with the Cardinals were concerned that Luhnow and other employees had also taken private information with them to Houston. That work was owned by the Cardinals, and Luhnow and his staff had no right to it. As I understand it, the motivation for "hacking" the Astron was to check if proprietary information was taken by Luhnow or other staff.
It's worth noting that this action wasn't sanctioned by the highest levels of the Cardinals front office. The current general manager, John Mozeliak, isn't being charged or disciplined by MLB. I'd also point out that Luhnow's attempts to raid the Cardinals front office weren't particularly ethical.
Let me put this in perspective. Let's say there's a team of developers at Google who develop a really good product. The leader of that team gets hired away by Microsoft to work on essentially the same project. He then proceeds to hire away most of his staff from Google to help duplicate the project. This would be the equivalent of the new team leader at Google hacking a Microsoft server to check for source code owned by Google. The hacking is wrong, but it generally wouldn't be acceptable to hire away nearly an entire development team to work on the same project at a new company, either.
In a fair economic situation every company would have total access to a competitor's data. That way they can price compete while both having all the information. In an unfair system what does it mean to cheat? Is it to the players' benefit that all the data is kept secret? After all if all know the truth the pay might be much higher.
Baseball has always been something of an individual sport. It's a battle between a pitcher and hitter, with the fielders and runners being important mostly after the ball is put into play. Sure, there are defensive alignments like the shift, pickoff attempts, and stolen bases, but most of the action with runners and fielders happens after the ball is in play. Yes, there's more emphasis on extra base hits and less on moving runners over with sacrifices. But that's because most of the time it's more advantageous to play for the extra base hit. Maybe it makes it less of a team sport, but it also means more hitting and runs. More likely, you stopped watching because of the strike and never came back.
I think the NBA is far more deserving of your criticism about sports no longer being about the team. With the exception of the Spurs, there's a lot of one-on-one plays. Even a good team like Cleveland, with multiple good offensive threats, doesn't really play as a team. There's too much of LeBron dribbling while other guys stand around. He did the same stuff in Miami. When Shaq around Kobe were winning in LA, it was still incredibly frustrating to watch. I think Kobe would have been much more effective if Shaq had gotten more touches. Shaq was around tremendous mismatch inside, and even if the double or triple team came, it would open up passing to someone like Kobe or Robert Horry for an open shot outside. The NBA is frustrating to watch.
As for the NFL, it's been poisoned by greed. I am a Cardinals fan, which means I was also a Rams fan. I strongly disliked how Stan Kroenke was allowed to destroy fan support in St. Louis by putting a historically awful product on the field while making his intentions to relocate the team to LA blatantly clear. The NFL misled St. Louis, who offered hundreds of millions of dollars in public money for a new stadium with the belief that it would be enough to ensure keeping the Rams. Then the NFL went back on their word while Kroenke and his lawyer verbally trashed St. Louis on the way out. Two teams, the Chargers and Raiders, still have unresolved stadium issues while the one city that offered lots of public money lost its team. The NFL is still a team sport, but the greed will bring down the NFL.
Given the tech-oriented and international audience of this side, I'm not sure that one can assume that I am alone in being confused by the wording of the title. A better one would be to simply refer to the person as "sports executive".
Even a good team like Cleveland, with multiple good offensive threats, doesn't really play as a team. There's too much of LeBron dribbling while other guys stand around. He did the same stuff in Miami.
Have you actually watched Lebron play? The guy passes the ball a ton. He's in the top 10 in the league for assists every year and is in the top 20 all time already. I agree with your point that much of the NBA doesn't play like a team. But I don't think that is actually a fair assessment of Lebron James specifically. He actually does quite a lot to distribute the ball, sometimes to a fault. In a lot of ways he plays a lot like Magic Johnson. Amazing scorer but possibly even better at passing the ball.
It took me quite a bit of reading to understand what a "Cardinal scouting director" is. In fact, I'm still not entirely sure what such a person actually does.
He managed talent scouting for the St Louis Cardinals baseball franchise. Basically he was in charge of the staff that tried to identify up and coming talent in development leagues, high schools and colleges. 20 seconds on google should have clarified the matter for you so I'm thinking you didn't actually read very much. Personally I think you might be engaging in a bit of equivocation by intentionally pretending to be unable to parse the sentence.
Given the tech-oriented and international audience of this side, I'm not sure that one can assume that I am alone in being confused by the wording of the title.
Most of the readers of slashdot are in the US and just because someone likes technology doesn't mean they are ignorant about sports. I was a D1 college athlete myself at one point and I still coach several teams.
A better one would be to simply refer to the person as "sports executive".
That's like calling someone at GE an "engineer". It's technically accurate but it doesn't tell you much about what they actually do.
Is it just me, or does it sound like the employee who left used the same password at his new job as the one he gave to Correa for the laptop? As someone who works in InfoSec, I think I've heard something before about reusing passwords and/or sharing them with others before. (look away Bruce Schneier, look away...)
What!? You mean baseball players might not be getting paid enough? Oh the humanity!!!!
FYI, the average salary for a player is $4 million.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.