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19-Year-Old Archivist Charged For Downloading Freedom-of-Information Releases (www.cbc.ca)
Ichijo writes: According to CBC News, a Canadian teen "has been charged with 'unauthorized use of a computer,' which carries a possible 10-year prison sentence, for downloading approximately 7,000 freedom-of-information releases. The provincial government says about 250 of those contain Nova Scotians' sensitive personal information."
"When he was around eight [...] his Grade 3 class adopted an animal at a shelter, receiving an electronic adoption certificate," reports CBC. "That lead to a discovery on the classroom computer. 'The website had a number at the end, and I was able to change the last digit of the number to a different number and was able to see a certificate for someone else's animal that they adopted,' he said. 'I thought that was interesting.' The teenager's current troubles arose because he used the same trick on Nova Scotia's freedom-of-information portal, downloading about 7,000 freedom-of-information requests." The teen is estimated to have around 30 terabytes of online data on his hard drives, which equates to "millions" of webpages. "He usually copies online forums such as 4chan and Reddit, where posts are either quickly erased or can become difficult to locate."
"When he was around eight [...] his Grade 3 class adopted an animal at a shelter, receiving an electronic adoption certificate," reports CBC. "That lead to a discovery on the classroom computer. 'The website had a number at the end, and I was able to change the last digit of the number to a different number and was able to see a certificate for someone else's animal that they adopted,' he said. 'I thought that was interesting.' The teenager's current troubles arose because he used the same trick on Nova Scotia's freedom-of-information portal, downloading about 7,000 freedom-of-information requests." The teen is estimated to have around 30 terabytes of online data on his hard drives, which equates to "millions" of webpages. "He usually copies online forums such as 4chan and Reddit, where posts are either quickly erased or can become difficult to locate."
Tell that to Aaron Swartz.
At a minimum, this "archivist" was doing something very stupid and ill-advised.
Trudeau does not accept freedom, it might be offensive to someone.
L'Idiot
Just because the government is guilty of criminal stupidity doesn't make every other party more correct. Because (hear me out) sometimes everyone involved in a situation is pretty stupid all at once.
The government was criminally negligent in not securing resources.
The kid was criminally stupid in not reporting the vulnerability through the responsible disclosure contact
The government was probably criminally negligent in not publicizing the security contact
The kid was criminally stupid in archiving the data instead of working towards fixing the problem
Stupidity isn't finite, one party having more of it doesn't make the rest have less. It's an infinitely renewable resource.