They'd say the Rosetta mission was faked, too. It's infinite regression or infinite regressives or something like that.:)
The only real solution is to send these folks to the Moon themselves, let them be our first colony, which IMHO would be killing two or three birds with one rocket.
Actually, the "brains" of the movement wouldn't go -- their motive is profit.
How does the ESA decide which projects to pursue, how much to spend, and who will contribute what or get which contract?
Give the political tussles that go on in the United States over such things, I can only think Europe with rivalries running back centuries would be quite challenging. On the other hand -- they seem to be doing quite well!
I do think Mitnick was smeared in the media, but that's neither here nor there. Certainly he was not sentenced in accord with those rumors, or he'd still be in. Also, the severity of his sentence takes into accoutn that he was a repeat offender. His priors probably doubled his sentence, if I recall my sentencing guidelines (I used to work in federal court).
However, your statement that you don't know if it is true or not, nor are you sure there was evidence, so he probably did it, is ludicrous. This is in complete contrast with the rules on how our justice system decides who is guilty or innocent. In America, we are supposed be to be innocent of a crime, until proven guilty.
Not true. You are confusing the standards we live by with the standards we use to deprive someone of their liberty. The former are practical, the latter very cautious. With someone like OJ Simpson, I am quite comfortable believing that he is guilty, if not convictable, and so he lost his civil case. Same for Mitnick, who admitted guilt rather than being convicted.
I am also familiar firsthand with the flexibility prosecutors use in charging offenses. They look for the quick kill on the biggest offenses, not an exhaustive listing. The objective is to get the guy sentenced and hopefully rehabilitated, not to tick off every suspected crime. Hence the willingness to drop charges in exchange for a plea bargain (Mitnick had, what, 23 counts? Dropping the other counts was a quid pro quo, not acquittal of them.)
So the length of his incarceration doesn't bother me, given his multiple felonies and fleeing supervised release. These latter points are among the most disturbing: evidently he wasn't rehabilitated. Mitnick has no claim to someone else's sentence because he thinks they were worse criminals, either his sentence was within the statutory guidelines or it wasn't, and he got a nice break with the piddling restitution (I understand that his profits from books may be seized for the next 7 years? Part of the rationale is that one shouldn't profit by crime, and he owes all of his notoriety to crime.). He was also one of the first, the "example" as he put it.
That Mitnick spent so long in pretrial detention is the thing that raises questions (a 22-month sentence was imposed during that time, but was not the reason for his continued incarceration). He didn't serve too long, he served in the wrong place, and obviously other cases like this should not be handled the same. I assume part of the problem was the novelty of the case.
I don't think ever longer sentences are the soltion to all ills, but do believe Mitnick deserved severe punishment. Will he keep out of trouble this time? I wonder.
Not that we're going OT or anything, but I would like to see statistics broken down by circumstances, criminal history, etc. Recall that rape used to be punished by death, esp. if the offender was black and the victim white. It does sometimes draw a life sentence now.
Some BJS sentencing stats. The 1998 stats for state sentencing indicate a mean sentence of 147 months (12+ years), of which on average a prisoner will serve about 60% (7+ years). I'd like to see a graph of the sentences, but that's me. They excluded life sentences from the averages, distorting the mean (IMHO they should have use3d actuarial tables to estimate life expectancy). Finally, the median would be a better measure here than the mean.
ANYWAY I don't see how Mitnick would preferred this sentence. He would have served it in "the big house" instead of pretrial detention and would come away with the tag of violent perverted felon.
Even if they were right, it was for the wrong reasons. So there.:)
This is a great example of bad translations fueling wild speculation. Never mind the general unreliability of the media when it comes to the details.
Here is an interesting post by a Mexican reader, reflecting some of the translation and cultural differences. For example, he says "arraigo" doesn't translate into SWAT raid.
BTW, I can certainly understand the appeal of a cheap CD in a country where even $10 must seem exorbitant; on the other I'd expect most of the buyers are fairly well off by Mexican standards (if they're buying any number of luxury items). But even the (not wealthy) gov't loses a lot of money to piracy, because it doesn't get to tax the profits.
Evidently you forget President Reagan's revelation many years ago that trees also cause pollution. Worse, when they are cut down they are used to build substandard homes, ground into paper for inferior publications, and worst of all burned, producing still more pollution.
To add insult to injury the tree next to our house tried to drop a huge branch on us the other day.
Ha, I can out-cynic you any day. If it turns on bribery, I'd suggest that the raid occurred because the target failed to pony up an even larger counterbribe.
I imagine the bootleggers are better connected in the Mexican government, and that these raids are only coming from enormous foreign (American) pressure. But that in itself does not prove the raids are illegitimate; there is staggering piracy going on, with Mexico City as the epicenter; and indeed if you were going to buy a raid, wouldn't you pick an actual enemy? I suspect there was at least some grounds to question their books. But no, I don't take the Mexican gov't's credibility for granted -- or the Mexican media's.:)
"A cynic is a person searching for an honest man, with a stolen lantern."
OK, OK, how about "better off" in the abstract, rather than a strict prison term view. I'd rather he messed with computers, wouldn't you?:)
If anything he points out the deficiencies in rape sentences. However, what the poster really should compare is the average sentence for wire fraud, etc. I think he'd get a number less than the average rape sentence, and Mitnick is likely an "unlucky" outlier. Another flaw with the rape statistic is that is likely includes first-time offenders; Mitnick's sentences reflected in part his previous convictions.
Seems to me that the headline "Jupiter Adds Another to Its Ranks" isn't quite right. How about "Humans Discover 40th Jovian Moon, Take Credit For Putting It There."
Interestingly, a whole stack of these moons were discovered around 2000 when astronomers decided to search existing photographic plates for them, then went looking for more. I remembered Jupiter have about 12. Read about it here. (An intereting solar system site in general.)
As for moon v. satellite, a moon is simply a natural satellite. Some purists say that only the Earth has a Moon (capitalized) whereas other planets such as Jupiter have natural satellites. As mentioned in the link above, "captured asteroid" is another candidate for these irregular-orbit chunks. Our Moon, meanwhile, is very unusual in the Solar System for its great size relative to its planet -- about 25% IIRC. There are bigger moons elsewhere, but the strength the gravitational Earth-Moon attraction has many dramatic effects. (I've also read that the Moon is more greatly attracted by the Sun than the Earth, thus it orbits the Sun. Please don't ask me to explain or defend, but it sounded plausible...)
BTW -- someone suggested non-moons are distinguished by being mostly metal (e.g., Landsat) -- well, many asteroids are mostly free metal, too (Fe, Co, Pt, and so on). If you want to split hairs, most rock is made of metallic compounds (Si, Fe, etc.).
But for two details -- Mitnick was harassing individuals, who deserve protection whatever you think of companies; and he was a repeat felon who fled supervised release, which can't be tolerated.
Regardless, Mitnick aside, I don't for a second believe the break-in described here had anything to do with clueless hackers. These were burglars who would just be going after other prizes if these were unavailable. I suspect an inside job, which is particularly hard to defend against.
While these tests, administered at the front door of every hospital, might indeed flag a problem, they're not much to decide not to seek medical attention, possibly for several hours. I think they'd be better off putting the money into the staff training rather than the gadgets. Imagine the publicity if they screw up just once and have someone die on board... with a couple hundred witnesses to their frugal bungling. You just can't buy publicity like that.
So strap a parachute on the patient and eject 'em over a city. (No, not seriously.)
Not to mention the bad karma points for having a passenger croak in front of several hundred others. Might hurt their repeat business. Maybe for the patient they'll also invent a nice "privacy enclosure" ("storage locker").
Speaking of amateur medics, anyone know how much training they're giving people on using those defibrillators? I have this nightmare that they'll zap me not realizing I'm just a deep napper.
I sympathize with your multiple victimizations, and happen to fear identity theft a great deal. It's terrible that they don't run these things down, but the governement, especially federal, focuses on high-dollar loss cases first, and underestimates these misery crimes.
Frankly IMHO the liability for identity theft should be squarely on the creditors who extend credit or perhaps gov't agencies that issue ID on insufficient proof of identity. As it is now, credit card companies do not "eat the loss," they pass it on as higher interest rates. Now, if the credit cards companies really sustained the losses, we'd see major pressure on the gov't to do something. Look what their efforts for bankruptcy reform -- because it would increase profits for minimal effort. Being stingier about extending credit to everyone and the family dog would hurt profits.
But I still don't understand "rather than" instead of "also." Mitnick was largely tracked down by a private party, anyway. Prosecuting him was inevitable -- he'd already done time twice before and fled supervised release. It is impossible to say what further damage he might have inflicted, as he appears to have the morals of a small child. And while it is true "we can't easily stop muggings on the street," we definitely can't stop them by declining to prosecute the offenders. Quite the opposite. I'm sure Mitnick's fate, just or unjust, has others very worried about crossing the line and getting caught.
I suspect your definition of negligence is over the top, perhaps not. As I noted, the srticles don't say whether the data was encrypted, though one might infer not. But no amount of a victim's stupidity exonerates the crook. If both are guilty, punish both.
I hope they don't hire you as their defense attorney! You don't appear to know American law, either, or what malicious prosecution even is, and how you read it into these facts is impossible to imagine.
You missed the point of the article and my post: supposedly they've been selling millions of under-the-table CD's in addition to millions more to legit companies.
Google does not do grep, if you know what it is, it's about as far from it as a keyword-searcher can be. You wasted time repeating another post. Remarkably I was looking for references to it in English so I searched for its name in English. Because I don't speak Spanish. Which I said. So I searched for "Mekong Group." In English. And the Mekong connotation has nothing to do with what anyonw is "trouble" about. It's a connotation, get it?
Hope that clears up the details. Sorry to have confused you.
It's different because you just called it Mexico City. No one in the States would call it City of Mexico, even though in Spanish it is Ciudad de Mexico. Becuase the translator has no understanding of idiom or grammar, it muddles right past that.
The translator would for the same reason not reverse White House. However, that would be a mistake in languages where the adjective follows the noun. In Spanish, White House translates as Casa Blanca, or in French Maison Blanche. So I imagine they would hear "House of White" or a similar malapropism, because "White" literally is an adjective.
They say to not know that they make other industries with the virgin discs that sell to them
Notice the dateline is "City of Mexico." I imagine President Bush lives in the "House of White."
How long before we have an international incident because someone relied on these freebie translators? Imagine the U.S. using google to save time going through all those docs from Saddam Hussein ("My God! He's stockpiled 36,000 sticks of weaponized rancid butter!").
*
I searched for "Mekong Group" (kind of a disturbing name to Americans in light of Vietnam fighting there: "The Mekong group comprises Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar and China's Yunnan province, all of which border the Mekong River.") No luck.
However, from reading the article in Spanish (and I don't speak Spanish) I get the impression that the actual allegation is that the Group knowingly sold millions of discs "off the books" and can't account for them in their invoicing. If true, the action doesn't sound so unreasonable, as it suggests they knew they were doing something fishy. "Suggests" -- who knows? But this doesn't sound like a suspicionless search, and not at all Orwellian.
You have to respect someone who managed to stay on the run for over a year, create a fake identity, and get a high paying job at a law firm with that identity.
Respect him... for being a professional liar? Here are some other talented fugitives. Who cares how "bad" they are.
Too bad he got caught in the end, after all it was nothing but a set up for the goverment to make an example out of someone...
Not really. This is a guy who fled supervised release, was on his third trip or so through the courts for the same basic offenses, continuing committing crimes on the run, and has shown only the vaguest signs of remorse. That's all without mentioning anything about tech stuff. Yes, they made a great example of him for other prospective fugitives and computer snoops.
DOJ's missteps do not make Mitnick smell like a rose. For perspective the DOJ provides a nice table of cybercrime cases -- Mitnick ("notorious hacker") has ample company.
If a few punks off the street can waltz off with the medical records of 500k+ service personnel
Punks? Where are you getting this stuff? They have no idea who the thieves were. It is this kind of prejudgment without facts that I was objecting to. I don't see the basis for your inference, not yet. My first question is why there wasn't encryption -- but then maybe there was.
I just looked and found a little more detail, which suggests laxity but not waltzing. It is still hard to say, and the pub may be biased towards military personnel. It is unclear what "apparently gained access to a property manager's office" entailed doing. Inside job?:
The break-in occurred Dec. 14, when a thief or thieves stole every hard drive out of TriWest ``servers'' used to store enrollment and claims storage. TriWest for the past year has housed its servers in industrial park offices in northwest Phoenix. The thief apparently gained access to a property manager's office, stole a master electronic key and entered TriWest spaces with ease. The office was not protected by surveillance cameras. Electronic door records show the thief was confident enough about not getting caught to make two trips, in and out, of the secured area.
The statement that you made is completely false, and Kevin was never indicted nor convicted of stealing any credit cards.
It has frequently alleged that Mitnick possessed a file containing credit card numbers. Whether this is true or not, we're not sure; given Mitnick's mendacity it probably is. But for to rebut he was "never indicted nor convicted of stealing any credit cards" is disingenuous and a long way from showing his innocence. The government has discretion as to which charges it brings, and either believed the charges it filed were adequate or did not feel their evidence on this issue was sufficient beyond a reasonable doubt. It is ridiculous to infer innocence as you do ("Don't you think they would have pursued charges for this breach, if they could have pinned it on Mitnick?"). Yeah, OK they couldn't "pin it" -- so what?
That Mitnick never used the file, and that others may have possessed it earlier, or had access to it, is immaterial to guilt. So are his motives. We'll never know, but what we do is sufficiently damning that one hopes it will take years to redeem himself, if he ever does. So far his track record is pretty bad -- how many convictions now? A dozen? Three separate occasions?
Re:Foolish Punishment?!??
on
Kevin Free
·
· Score: 2
At least the keyboard stops him from using those fscking "air quotes.":)
Slashdot Mirror
What will the Hoax theorists say?
:)
They'd say the Rosetta mission was faked, too. It's infinite regression or infinite regressives or something like that.
The only real solution is to send these folks to the Moon themselves, let them be our first colony, which IMHO would be killing two or three birds with one rocket.
Actually, the "brains" of the movement wouldn't go -- their motive is profit.
How does the ESA decide which projects to pursue, how much to spend, and who will contribute what or get which contract?
Give the political tussles that go on in the United States over such things, I can only think Europe with rivalries running back centuries would be quite challenging. On the other hand -- they seem to be doing quite well!
I do think Mitnick was smeared in the media, but that's neither here nor there. Certainly he was not sentenced in accord with those rumors, or he'd still be in. Also, the severity of his sentence takes into accoutn that he was a repeat offender. His priors probably doubled his sentence, if I recall my sentencing guidelines (I used to work in federal court).
However, your statement that you don't know if it is true or not, nor are you sure there was evidence, so he probably did it, is ludicrous. This is in complete contrast with the rules on how our justice system decides who is guilty or innocent. In America, we are supposed be to be innocent of a crime, until proven guilty.
Not true. You are confusing the standards we live by with the standards we use to deprive someone of their liberty. The former are practical, the latter very cautious. With someone like OJ Simpson, I am quite comfortable believing that he is guilty, if not convictable, and so he lost his civil case. Same for Mitnick, who admitted guilt rather than being convicted.
I am also familiar firsthand with the flexibility prosecutors use in charging offenses. They look for the quick kill on the biggest offenses, not an exhaustive listing. The objective is to get the guy sentenced and hopefully rehabilitated, not to tick off every suspected crime. Hence the willingness to drop charges in exchange for a plea bargain (Mitnick had, what, 23 counts? Dropping the other counts was a quid pro quo, not acquittal of them.)
So the length of his incarceration doesn't bother me, given his multiple felonies and fleeing supervised release. These latter points are among the most disturbing: evidently he wasn't rehabilitated. Mitnick has no claim to someone else's sentence because he thinks they were worse criminals, either his sentence was within the statutory guidelines or it wasn't, and he got a nice break with the piddling restitution (I understand that his profits from books may be seized for the next 7 years? Part of the rationale is that one shouldn't profit by crime, and he owes all of his notoriety to crime.). He was also one of the first, the "example" as he put it.
That Mitnick spent so long in pretrial detention is the thing that raises questions (a 22-month sentence was imposed during that time, but was not the reason for his continued incarceration). He didn't serve too long, he served in the wrong place, and obviously other cases like this should not be handled the same. I assume part of the problem was the novelty of the case.
I don't think ever longer sentences are the soltion to all ills, but do believe Mitnick deserved severe punishment. Will he keep out of trouble this time? I wonder.
Hey! I haven't seen it yet!!!
Is no one going to mention the Whompin' Willow? Or is that too lowbrow?
Not that we're going OT or anything, but I would like to see statistics broken down by circumstances, criminal history, etc. Recall that rape used to be punished by death, esp. if the offender was black and the victim white. It does sometimes draw a life sentence now.
Some BJS sentencing stats. The 1998 stats for state sentencing indicate a mean sentence of 147 months (12+ years), of which on average a prisoner will serve about 60% (7+ years). I'd like to see a graph of the sentences, but that's me. They excluded life sentences from the averages, distorting the mean (IMHO they should have use3d actuarial tables to estimate life expectancy). Finally, the median would be a better measure here than the mean.
ANYWAY I don't see how Mitnick would preferred this sentence. He would have served it in "the big house" instead of pretrial detention and would come away with the tag of violent perverted felon.
Just save a cell for the perps. :)
Cool. Still, it would be unsettling to wake up to some flight attendant ripping your shirt open. Well, that depends on the flight attendant I suppose.
Even if they were right, it was for the wrong reasons. So there. :)
This is a great example of bad translations fueling wild speculation. Never mind the general unreliability of the media when it comes to the details.
Here is an interesting post by a Mexican reader, reflecting some of the translation and cultural differences. For example, he says "arraigo" doesn't translate into SWAT raid.
BTW, I can certainly understand the appeal of a cheap CD in a country where even $10 must seem exorbitant; on the other I'd expect most of the buyers are fairly well off by Mexican standards (if they're buying any number of luxury items). But even the (not wealthy) gov't loses a lot of money to piracy, because it doesn't get to tax the profits.
Evidently you forget President Reagan's revelation many years ago that trees also cause pollution. Worse, when they are cut down they are used to build substandard homes, ground into paper for inferior publications, and worst of all burned, producing still more pollution.
To add insult to injury the tree next to our house tried to drop a huge branch on us the other day.
IMHO the damn things should be banned.
Ha, I can out-cynic you any day. If it turns on bribery, I'd suggest that the raid occurred because the target failed to pony up an even larger counterbribe.
:)
I imagine the bootleggers are better connected in the Mexican government, and that these raids are only coming from enormous foreign (American) pressure. But that in itself does not prove the raids are illegitimate; there is staggering piracy going on, with Mexico City as the epicenter; and indeed if you were going to buy a raid, wouldn't you pick an actual enemy? I suspect there was at least some grounds to question their books. But no, I don't take the Mexican gov't's credibility for granted -- or the Mexican media's.
"A cynic is a person searching for an honest man,
with a stolen lantern."
OK, OK, how about "better off" in the abstract, rather than a strict prison term view. I'd rather he messed with computers, wouldn't you? :)
If anything he points out the deficiencies in rape sentences. However, what the poster really should compare is the average sentence for wire fraud, etc. I think he'd get a number less than the average rape sentence, and Mitnick is likely an "unlucky" outlier. Another flaw with the rape statistic is that is likely includes first-time offenders; Mitnick's sentences reflected in part his previous convictions.
Seems to me that the headline "Jupiter Adds Another to Its Ranks" isn't quite right. How about "Humans Discover 40th Jovian Moon, Take Credit For Putting It There."
Interestingly, a whole stack of these moons were discovered around 2000 when astronomers decided to search existing photographic plates for them, then went looking for more. I remembered Jupiter have about 12. Read about it here. (An intereting solar system site in general.)
As for moon v. satellite, a moon is simply a natural satellite. Some purists say that only the Earth has a Moon (capitalized) whereas other planets such as Jupiter have natural satellites. As mentioned in the link above, "captured asteroid" is another candidate for these irregular-orbit chunks. Our Moon, meanwhile, is very unusual in the Solar System for its great size relative to its planet -- about 25% IIRC. There are bigger moons elsewhere, but the strength the gravitational Earth-Moon attraction has many dramatic effects. (I've also read that the Moon is more greatly attracted by the Sun than the Earth, thus it orbits the Sun. Please don't ask me to explain or defend, but it sounded plausible...)
BTW -- someone suggested non-moons are distinguished by being mostly metal (e.g., Landsat) -- well, many asteroids are mostly free metal, too (Fe, Co, Pt, and so on). If you want to split hairs, most rock is made of metallic compounds (Si, Fe, etc.).
Interesting arguments.
But for two details -- Mitnick was harassing individuals, who deserve protection whatever you think of companies; and he was a repeat felon who fled supervised release, which can't be tolerated.
Regardless, Mitnick aside, I don't for a second believe the break-in described here had anything to do with clueless hackers. These were burglars who would just be going after other prizes if these were unavailable. I suspect an inside job, which is particularly hard to defend against.
While these tests, administered at the front door of every hospital, might indeed flag a problem, they're not much to decide not to seek medical attention, possibly for several hours. I think they'd be better off putting the money into the staff training rather than the gadgets. Imagine the publicity if they screw up just once and have someone die on board ... with a couple hundred witnesses to their frugal bungling. You just can't buy publicity like that.
So strap a parachute on the patient and eject 'em over a city. (No, not seriously.)
Not to mention the bad karma points for having a passenger croak in front of several hundred others. Might hurt their repeat business. Maybe for the patient they'll also invent a nice "privacy enclosure" ("storage locker").
Speaking of amateur medics, anyone know how much training they're giving people on using those defibrillators? I have this nightmare that they'll zap me not realizing I'm just a deep napper.
I sympathize with your multiple victimizations, and happen to fear identity theft a great deal. It's terrible that they don't run these things down, but the governement, especially federal, focuses on high-dollar loss cases first, and underestimates these misery crimes.
Frankly IMHO the liability for identity theft should be squarely on the creditors who extend credit or perhaps gov't agencies that issue ID on insufficient proof of identity. As it is now, credit card companies do not "eat the loss," they pass it on as higher interest rates. Now, if the credit cards companies really sustained the losses, we'd see major pressure on the gov't to do something. Look what their efforts for bankruptcy reform -- because it would increase profits for minimal effort. Being stingier about extending credit to everyone and the family dog would hurt profits.
But I still don't understand "rather than" instead of "also." Mitnick was largely tracked down by a private party, anyway. Prosecuting him was inevitable -- he'd already done time twice before and fled supervised release. It is impossible to say what further damage he might have inflicted, as he appears to have the morals of a small child. And while it is true "we can't easily stop muggings on the street," we definitely can't stop them by declining to prosecute the offenders. Quite the opposite. I'm sure Mitnick's fate, just or unjust, has others very worried about crossing the line and getting caught.
I suspect your definition of negligence is over the top, perhaps not. As I noted, the srticles don't say whether the data was encrypted, though one might infer not. But no amount of a victim's stupidity exonerates the crook. If both are guilty, punish both.
I hope they don't hire you as their defense attorney! You don't appear to know American law, either, or what malicious prosecution even is, and how you read it into these facts is impossible to imagine.
You missed the point of the article and my post: supposedly they've been selling millions of under-the-table CD's in addition to millions more to legit companies.
Google does not do grep, if you know what it is, it's about as far from it as a keyword-searcher can be. You wasted time repeating another post. Remarkably I was looking for references to it in English so I searched for its name in English. Because I don't speak Spanish. Which I said. So I searched for "Mekong Group." In English. And the Mekong connotation has nothing to do with what anyonw is "trouble" about. It's a connotation, get it?
Hope that clears up the details. Sorry to have confused you.
It's different because you just called it Mexico City. No one in the States would call it City of Mexico, even though in Spanish it is Ciudad de Mexico. Becuase the translator has no understanding of idiom or grammar, it muddles right past that.
The translator would for the same reason not reverse White House. However, that would be a mistake in languages where the adjective follows the noun. In Spanish, White House translates as Casa Blanca, or in French Maison Blanche. So I imagine they would hear "House of White" or a similar malapropism, because "White" literally is an adjective.
New Scientist linked this story from the ice piece. I know this is sorta OT, but wow, I'm always stunned when I read a hail story like this.
Ice not nice.
They say to not know that they make other industries with the virgin discs that sell to them
Notice the dateline is "City of Mexico." I imagine President Bush lives in the "House of White."
How long before we have an international incident because someone relied on these freebie translators? Imagine the U.S. using google to save time going through all those docs from Saddam Hussein ("My God! He's stockpiled 36,000 sticks of weaponized rancid butter!").
*
I searched for "Mekong Group" (kind of a disturbing name to Americans in light of Vietnam fighting there: "The Mekong group comprises Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar and China's Yunnan province, all of which border the Mekong River.") No luck.
However, from reading the article in Spanish (and I don't speak Spanish) I get the impression that the actual allegation is that the Group knowingly sold millions of discs "off the books" and can't account for them in their invoicing. If true, the action doesn't sound so unreasonable, as it suggests they knew they were doing something fishy. "Suggests" -- who knows? But this doesn't sound like a suspicionless search, and not at all Orwellian.
for those slashdotters who actually read the articles
;-)
So YOU'RE the one!
What, you expect special treatment?
You have to respect someone who managed to stay on the run for over a year, create a fake identity, and get a high paying job at a law firm with that identity.
... for being a professional liar? Here are some other talented fugitives. Who cares how "bad" they are.
Respect him
Too bad he got caught in the end, after all it was nothing but a set up for the goverment to make an example out of someone...
Not really. This is a guy who fled supervised release, was on his third trip or so through the courts for the same basic offenses, continuing committing crimes on the run, and has shown only the vaguest signs of remorse. That's all without mentioning anything about tech stuff. Yes, they made a great example of him for other prospective fugitives and computer snoops.
DOJ's missteps do not make Mitnick smell like a rose. For perspective the DOJ provides a nice table of cybercrime cases -- Mitnick ("notorious hacker") has ample company.
Punks? Where are you getting this stuff? They have no idea who the thieves were. It is this kind of prejudgment without facts that I was objecting to. I don't see the basis for your inference, not yet. My first question is why there wasn't encryption -- but then maybe there was.
I just looked and found a little more detail, which suggests laxity but not waltzing. It is still hard to say, and the pub may be biased towards military personnel. It is unclear what "apparently gained access to a property manager's office" entailed doing. Inside job?:
The statement that you made is completely false, and Kevin was never indicted nor convicted of stealing any credit cards.
It has frequently alleged that Mitnick possessed a file containing credit card numbers. Whether this is true or not, we're not sure; given Mitnick's mendacity it probably is. But for to rebut he was "never indicted nor convicted of stealing any credit cards" is disingenuous and a long way from showing his innocence. The government has discretion as to which charges it brings, and either believed the charges it filed were adequate or did not feel their evidence on this issue was sufficient beyond a reasonable doubt. It is ridiculous to infer innocence as you do ("Don't you think they would have pursued charges for this breach, if they could have pinned it on Mitnick?"). Yeah, OK they couldn't "pin it" -- so what?
That Mitnick never used the file, and that others may have possessed it earlier, or had access to it, is immaterial to guilt. So are his motives. We'll never know, but what we do is sufficiently damning that one hopes it will take years to redeem himself, if he ever does. So far his track record is pretty bad -- how many convictions now? A dozen? Three separate occasions?
At least the keyboard stops him from using those fscking "air quotes." :)