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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."
...of criminal stupidity.
I'm from Luxembourg and my chamber of representatives used the same 'security system' (people can't possibly guess numbers) and was also breached, obviously, since this 'problem' is known since 1991 or so, when the worldwide web was invented.
Lets be clear, editing the address line is not hacking, not in any way, shape or form. A user name and password request and getting past that is. Editing your address line on your computer and the distant server allowing it, is a fault of that distant server. A request for access was made and it as legally given, the government is screwed and a penalty should be applied for false prosecution. Strictly their fuckup, they made that information publicly accesible without any restriction and they are fucking liars and fraudsters trying to pin their incompetance on someone else. It is not a crime to edit you address bar, it is strictly their fuck up that caused it. No user name, password request and your web site is public facing, that data is free to download, you just gave it away free from all encumbrances. No different to randomly running IP addresses to download what ever you want. No layer of security, no fucking crime, they are cunts blaming someone else for their incompetence and the victim should sue the crap out of them after this is over.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I am trying to understand what he did that was illegal?
He downloaded documents that the government posted on the internet, by simply "guessing" the URL, which incrementally increased from the URL that he was given by the government?
Yup, looks like a case of the government trying to offset blame to me!
It sounds as though he found information published on the web. If I had a book with a custom made index and I was not told that there were pages that were not indexed, is it unauthorised access to leaf it open it to one of them?
Yeah, sure. Blame the kid. Don't talk about how you fucked up your security so bad that even a kid can bypass it. No, focus on how you were done wrong.
Seriously, if a small kid can bypass your security, you deserve to be 'hacked'. No mercy for incompetence!
It doesn't have to be like this. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
Items placed on an open server without a login are made available for public download. Whether you meant to offer them for public download isn't relevant - you did.
He went to the server and asked politely, "Can I take one of these?" The server said, "Sure, here it is", and then tossed it to him.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
If I seek information under 'Freedom of Information' legislation, I am getting data that the government holds about the world in general.
If I carry out a 'data access request', I am asking for the data that the government owns on me.
It appears that Nova Scotia operated a 'data access request' system that held the personal resulting from data access requests on a poorly protected server, which our guy proceeded to access. As such this isn't a freedom of information issue, though it will probably be used as such to allow governments to wind down their commitment to freedom of information.
Yes, but now add a septuagenarian judge who knows nothing about computers, a court appointed defender who may be well meaning but isn't all that up to speed on the matter, and is pretty damn overworked, and a hysterical manager who really needs to cover his ass, and realises that the easiest way to do that is deflect blame onto some teenager.
I'm old a cynical and I hope justice prevails, but all to often it doesn't.
We appear to have a classic example of government ineptitude in an obscure part of Canada, where it will be very hard to find competent IT staff. We should not be surprised at the cockup...
When the IT department of the province goes to the assembly, it will be able to use this to demand a big rise in their budget. Hog heaven for top managers who can avoid the blame!!
If he was backing up deleted 4Chan posts he may have bigger legal problems than 'hacking'!
It gets really boring there in small town newfoundland... :(
[($)]
Except he did not walk in the door.
What he did is the equivalent of walking up to the public documents window (just dream that such a thing exists..) as saying 'could I please have the FOI request number 1' then saying 'could I please have the FOI request number 2'.... until he had 7000 of them.
The fault in that case, and quite obviously in this, would be in the person (or server) that GAVE HIM THE DOCUMENTS WITHOUT ANY ATTEMPT TO VERIFY THAT HE WAS AUTHORISED TO RECEIVE THEM.
Remember, he didnt falsify ANY information, he didnt impersonate anyone, he didnt do anything else but ask the server if it would kindly send him this document, which it did.
So, your position is that asking for a document is breaking the law? Oh dear.
It's basically like going to a library and pulling your book. And then there's another whole row of books right next to yours and you look at them that just so happens to be "FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE!@#!1111".
Also, re. manually editing a link, how does one know that url isn’t linked to from elsewhere? Ie. it was published for all, and all you did was shortcut straight to it?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The problem is that here in Canada, we have stringent privacy laws. He's in the wrong because he got information that wasn't redacted as it was supposed to be by the law. The NS government itself is in breach of the privacy laws because they're not supposed to store personal information like this. Government agencies that handle this stuff have a PIO that scrubs information out for FOI requests. Likely, nothing will happen to him in the end or he'll be given a suspended sentence(meaning no criminal record after a year or two if he keeps his nose clean). The NS government though, now has a serious privacy breach problem and is in violation of not only provincial laws, but federal laws privacy laws. Which could lead to an awful lot of lawsuits.
Om, nomnomnom...
If your government is too stupid to secure their databases, you go to jail.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
# for I in $(seq 100000); do wget example.com/$I.html;done
It is highly illegal code and I should be getting 10 years for that, because that is basically what he did.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
They got lucky because he's in the same country and they can actually charge him. If he had been a, say, Russian hacker...
Ok, then we would probably not even hear about it because then they'd have to admit they fucked up and there's nothing they can blame but themselves for criminal neglect.
In other words, who says it didn't already happen exactly that way, too?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Government prosecutors actually think Hollywood produces documentaries.
Part of my job is to help law enforcement with computer related crimes. I really, really wish I could make at least half of the utter stupidity that drools out of some of the requests public.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Which is a pity, considering that he's more computer savvy and qualified for the job than the useless cunt that created the system. Who is, by the way, the one who should be thrown in the slammer and forbidden to ever come closer than a lightyear to a computer.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
As an Atlantic Canadian this makes me unbelievably sad.
They just traumatized a family because the government was incompetent. Is this truly where we're going?
They fucking interrogated his 13 year old sister?! I mean the documentation was fucking public; THIS IS HOW THEY CHOOSE TO HANDLE THEIR INCOMPENTENCY?
PM is outright saying he stole sensitive information; 15 officers raided the house.
Atlantic Canada is a pretty quiet place, and there's already enough sketchiness about how the general population feels about our police force; they're really not helping their case. I swear if they (Gov. & police force, RCMP I presume) don't get any repercussions for this I'll be legitimately scared of continuing to live in this country. This is beyond fucking ridiculous. I mean 10 fucking years in prison??
Yeah; I'm fucking angry, sorry.
I tend to rant.
...expect that people will find it. This is not hacking, this is shoddy practices by the people running the FOI site and they're blaming the public. Of course, it would require a modicum of technical understanding to not blame someone else.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
Ultimately it will probably come down the regular old "Hillary thing" of "intent", and judges or juries will make that determination. Did the alleged perpetrator "intend" to gain unauthorized access.
Table-ized A.I.
"He usually copies online forums such as 4chan and Reddit, where posts are either quickly erased or can become difficult to locate."
I thought that only porn hoarders existed, but this guy was hoarding 4chan's shitposts.
But...but...but...I coded to the specs given! You didn't say anything about security in the project requirements!
Lets be clear, editing the address line is not hacking, not in any way, shape or form.
It is hacking if the government defines it to be hacking. Not disagreeing with you just pointing out that we're talking about the fact that the people who make the laws are the ones we're dealing with here. The scary bit is that they can define something quite innocuous to be against the law. Any time you go against the folks that make the rules things tend to get dicey for the defendant.
A request for access was made and it as legally given, the government is screwed and a penalty should be applied for false prosecution.
Again I don't disagree but do you really expect the government to admit fault like that?
The interesting question is when does it become "security" and therefore "hacking"? In all fairness it's not as easy a question as it might seem. Does ROT13 count as encryption and therefore security? It's certainly bad security to the point of being laughable but it will keep the technologically impaired out so it's clearly effective to a degree. And it's possible to pass laws where it could be a violation of the law to crack their system even if doing so is absurdly simple. (see DMCA for example) Where is the bright line that distinguishes bad security from no security from a legal standpoint? (from a technical standpoint they are identical)
He was using the site EXACTLY as it was intended to be used: ask the system to provide information associated with some number at the end. This was not exploiting some unintended consequence to make the system behave in an unusual or unforeseen manner. This was making the computer system act in EXACTLY the manner the developer(s) intended.
By that logic you could claim any penetration of a system was merely the system behaving exactly as intended because that was how the developer programmed it. I understand where you are going with your argument but it's perhaps a bit more fraught than you realize? After all, how are we as users to know what the developer intended and why should that even matter? It's an interesting question.
The real question here is when does the system cross the line from no security to bad security from a legal standpoint. Technologically there is no difference but legally their can be. Because that is the point where legally it goes from using a system to "hacking" a system in the negative legal sense. Something as simple as ROT13 could be considered intent to secure the system despite being laughably easy to bypass but you could still find yourself in a court room for bypassing it under certain laws.
So I live in Nova Scotia; i.e. this is happening in my backyard. This is absolutely about the provincial government trying to cover its a**. The mistake was discovered internally when a government employee did basically the same thing and accidentally put in a wrong URL... and instead of getting a 404 got documents that shouldn't have been public-facing (including docs with personal info, SINs and the like). Rather than owning up to the mistake and dealing with the consequences, the provincial government kept it quiet for 7 weeks, and are now using this kid as a scapegoat ("EVIL HACKERS, CLUTCH YOUR PEARLS!!!!"). It's absolutely disgusting, and I hope the court of public opinion judges them (the gov) harshly.
Just because there isn't a hyperlink to the page with the document doesn't make the information private. If there wasn't security on the page/s in question they were public information regardless of what the government intended. The boy broke no laws. And no this is not like leaving your door unlocked and someone walking in to your house/car. It's more like I posted all of these documents on a public document pin board in the middle of the square but put a blank page over them so you couldn't read them without lifting the blank page. I would charge whoever designed the site (not the page coder but the person who decided not to invest in any security) with gross negligence.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Used the same URL tweaking method in my degenerate youth ... they weren't government documents though.
(Though doubtless accessed by many government officials ...)
I'm confused... Shouldn't the freedom-of-information releases themselves be freely available to the general public?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
What I want to know is that did he use a script to (or curl feature) download 7,000 documents or did he just edit the URL 6,999 times?
And where is he storing 30TB of data? Yes that is actually affordable (say 4 drives about $250 each) but who spends that kind of pocket money for something so nearly unusable?
Try doing a grep -r for some string on a mounted USB drive holding 1TB of data and see how long it takes. So what good is that?
Maybe he scrolls through all those documents one by one. For what. Anybody know?
Just what could he use all this crap for. What is wrong with his brain that he wasn't just downloading porn like every other kid?
How does it work?
That is why folks you don't put IDs as urls for something like this.
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
Intent matters:
"In order to break this law, you have to have done it with fraudulent intent," said David Fraser, a lawyer with McInnes Cooper in Halifax who specializes in technology and privacy laws.
"From everything that's being discussed about this, it's likely the person was likely trying to download content of public documents from a public internet site."
"Archivist"? A 19 year old.... archivist? What kind of bullshit made up term is...
The teen is estimated to have around 30 terabytes of online data on his hard drives
...Well alright then. I'm not even mad. Props to the archivist.
Right. I got the 10TB for 350. Now itâ(TM)s 310. So itâ(TM)s a grand of slow Hard drives. With totally useless data. Unless he was doing some NPL processing or classification stuff for school. And guessing urls is a crime? Isnâ(TM)t an entity supposed to implement reasonable security?
You could mistype a url and break the law. That wonâ(TM)t fly. Itâ(TM)s mishandling their classified? material to load it into that public website.
No, that's a problem with the people who failed to do the redacting.
And tax payers are going to keep paying the government employees that failed to redact, their lawyers, the lawyers for the people filing the suits, and the damages to the people whose information wasn't redacted. Everybody walks away richer from this, except for the taxpayer.
Truer words have never been spoken.
He's not insane, people value and buy/sell archived data. Here is one of my own stories. Back in 2010 I did a complete reverse DNS scan on the Internet just for fun/curiosity. It came out to about 1TB of uncompressed data. A few years later someone found out that I had done that and wanted to buy a copy of the historical data from me for several hundred dollars. In hindsight, I probably could have charged more, but who knew what the market was on historical DNS data. The point is, data has value and the guy in Nova Scotia knows that. Like most things, the interest in the data and it's rarity and the longer you can preserve it, the more it could be worth. archive.org is in the business of archiving data. Sure, they rely on donations, but money is coming in.
Two large double doubles and a box of Timbits, eh.
Did he extort anyone with this information? No? Then I think it's maybe 'malicious mischief' at best. Sentence the kid to community service and let it go at that.
what about self service soda fountains?
Most places with them have free refills and most casinos they are 100% free.
But let's say some places wants to be greedy and says no free refills then they have to post in way that it's not hidden or move to place where you need have some person working there to get it for you.
We love our freedom of information here in Canada, and governments resent it. As an example from just days ago, have a look at http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/rcmp-access-information-money-laundering-legault-dagg-delay-extension-1.4616137 to see what a government letter explaining that they need to delay an information request for 80 years looks like.
Nothing like having your house raided for accessing freedom of information related information.
Data hoarders, like me, collect it for the fun of collecting. It's no different from people who collect stamps, or tacky plaster statues. The fun is in acquiring the data and finding the best way to store, sort and manage it.
and violation of TOS is not a crime much less one where you can be facing hard time.
To bad that jury trial is not an right in canada for all crimes. In the usa just having the jury have to read an full 100+ page TOS may push them to vote non guilty just to get it over.
I'm not talking about the one executing the design, I'm talking about the useless cunt that designed it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If an ATM starts spitting money at you, or gives you more money then you requested can you legally keep it?
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
If the documents were public-facing, what law did he break? I'm honestly confused, and I hope this goes up the chain of government to be sorted out.
First what he did is in no way shape or form of "Hacking". I'm sorry, but even the most unknowledgeable judge or jury is going to raise a serious eyebrow when the prosecution tries to argue that the changing of a public facing URL equates to "unauthorized use of a computer" i.e. Hacking.
Second the government of NS literally did the stupidest most ill advised thing I can think of by raiding and chaging the guy.
About the only thing actually criminal here is the breach of personal information by the NS government who has a responsibility to reasonably safeguard said information within their custody. I'm pretty sure what this kid did pretty much says that they were negligent in that regard. So instead of quietly fixing the issue, and dealing with the kid about the data loss, they now just made it a public news spectacle.
About the only thing I see here is charges being dropped, and a lot of embarrassment for NS and possible legal action, not only by the kid, but by those impacted by the FOI breach.
However... that is all based on the content of the new article, which is a bit light on some information... Which may have an impact.
i.e. How was he caught? Were there some super cyber security watchdogs monitoring website activity and noting that the same IP address was seeming to access an awful lot of stuff? I seriously doubt it. Or did he like most folks that get caught for this kind of stuff bragging around chat groups etc... that happened to be monitored regularly by police... As that would sort of invalidate his innocent tale... If I had to guess, some peon in IT realized that there was a potential vulnerability in their POS FOI portal, was looking into fixing the oversight, and decided just in case to check the logs (well after the fact), saw a lot more activity than might be reasonable, looked a bit deeper, saw most the activity from one source (oh shit), and reported it starting the whole cascading snowball, but I bet management didn't ask the peon "how" (or them being the one who designed it, wasn't eager to share that information). I guess what I am getting at is the most likely event being the only way they would have caught the guy (apart from bragging), would be prior knowledge that their system wasn't secure at all in the first place which would sort of invalidate their charges. About all they have is reasonable intent (i.e. did he know what he was accessing was prohibited?), which sounds like they would have a pretty hard time to prove...
We denounce them as heretics and put them in prison. (We can't burn them at the stake anymore)
And behavior that makes the mainstream uncomfortable is to be punished as if it were equivalent to the actions of a criminal with ill intent.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Why does a country with such a small, relatively homogeneous population need such a huge intrusive government?
I have the same question about Australia.
This is /. We do car analogies here.
It is like going to a used car lot and sitting in each car in the row, and then being arrested because half of them belonged to customers.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
"Because he can" used to be a valid enough answer. There are plenty of people who are hoarders. There are tv shows dedicated to them. He just hoards data. And why? Well, why not?
I know a person who tries to download as much software as possible and sorts them in directories. These are all programs that he never ever uses and most he has no idea what they do. Why? Because he likes to do it.
Other people collect stamps. Just as silly.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Generally, things are pretty good in Canada, compared to most places. But public servant caught it being flagrantly incompetent, as in this example, too often try to blame the person who discovered the mistake. At the same time, the kid can be said you be authorised to view his own documents / information, but not authorised to view anyone else's. If this was explicit in any terms & conditions, then the kid is guilty. If you discover someone's house isn't locked, it's still stealing to go inside and take stuff.
Only boring people are ever bored.
The correct outcome is that they 1) let the kid go free and compensate him & his family for wronging them, and 2) they fire & prosecute the system administrators for misclassifying and failing to secure private information.
A GoFundMe has been set up to pay for the legal defense, and an expert lawyer has been retained.
Please consider donating. The kid isn't without fault, but he's being railroaded by the local government.
https://www.gofundme.com/ns-te...
..don't panic
A GoFundMe has been set up to pay for the legal defense, and a expert lawyer has been retained.
Please consider donating. The kid isn't without fault, but he's being railroaded by the local government.
https://www.gofundme.com/ns-te...
..don't panic
Seems like things went to pot with that Rob Ford ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...) guy that was the butt of Jay Leno jokes.
Now it seems like they're in the news almost daily for dumb law enforcement on dumb laws.