Guy Convicted Of Hacking For Uploading Naked Picture Of Himself
from the that-doesn't-seem-right... dept
The ruling against Lori Drew was quite problematic, because it twisted a computer hacking law to convict a woman who had done something else, which was distasteful, but not illegal (at the time). It looks like others are doing the same thing... and succeeding. An appeals court has upheld a hacking conviction against a man whose "hacking" seems to have consisted of uploading a naked photo of himself to the website Adult Friendfinder from his work computer. How is that "unauthorized use" of a computer under the statute in question? Well, the court says that it's unauthorized use because he was using the computer to solicit prostitution -- and that's a crime, therefore, it's unauthorized. By this rather troubling reasoning, just about anyone who commits a crime on a computer can now also get hit with this law against hacking, because their use, by definition, would be "unauthorized." About the only good thing in the decision is that the court tossed out the lower court's ruling that the guy had "stolen" money from his employer by using the computer for non-work purposes.
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Filed Under: authorized, hacking
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Proxy Servers
That will be good for us in online radio. This would have an effect on us.
In short, the appelate court has effectively legalised internet radio at work, without realising it, regardless of what the boss says.
I wondered why I was suddenly seeing more listening coming from offices, now I know why. Kudos to the apellate court for throwing out the "theft" charge.
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were coming
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Not solicitation
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Re: Not solicitation
On the other hand, if it does count as soliciting prostitution, why was the guy charged with hacking rather than prostitution? Are they now going to go after everybody using that site in Ohio with the same charge?
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hacking laws will always be twisted
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using the computer to solicit prostitution
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Re: using the computer to solicit prostitution
Soliciting services from a dominatrix is not the same as soliciting prostitution. Prostitutes have sex with their clients. Dominatrixes (Dominatrices? Dominatrii?) do not. They dominate them instead.
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Endless Permutations
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Re: Endless Permutations
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Hacking?
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Re: Hacking?
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Authorization
> about anyone who commits a crime on a computer
> can now also get hit with this law against
> hacking, because their use, by definition,
> would be "unauthorized."
The only way this works is if you're using someone else's computer. In this case the guy was using his work computer so his use was unauthorized. If he'd used his own computer at home, the charge wouldn't apply since he can authorize use of his own property for any reason at all, even illegal reasons. The use may be illegal but it would still be authorized.
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Re: Authorization
As to people's comments about the solicitation, here is an excerpt of what he said, "Obviously I would be with you for at least an hour, but I would prefer to be with you for at (sic) 2 hrs, contingent on your discount. Is it possible to spend the last half hour or so being your lover? Whatever is possible, please let me know." After the mistress said no sex he then went on to say, "Ok, no sex . . . but I do get to climax though, right? Rick.”
The court then found based on this: When you take all these terms and place them in the context of the emails along with Appellant’s other online activities, such as the posting of nude photos of himself for the purpose of “online dating” and use of his computer to access pornographic websites, this Court finds jurors could reasonably conclude that Appellant was soliciting sex.
I had a number of cases like this in the military where this sort of thing was clearly a crime... this is stretching things in the civilian world though, and my biggest concerns are that 1. most people wouldn't know this was a crime, 2. using the computer for a crime got him more of a sentence than the crime itself did, and 3. this case does open up the door to turning a lot of non-criminal activity into criminal activity... if he had only looked at porn... he still would have been guilty of the unauthorized use charge....
Not sure that the court or legislature is wrong though... why should employees think as a matter of course that they can look at porn at work when they know that the employer does not approve (here he knew what he was doing was not allowed). When stuff like this gets out, as it sometimes does, the employer then ends up taking a huge PR hit (as the Army has on a number of occasions), worse an employer could get dragged into a criminal action based on the actions of an employee (for example looking at child porn on work computer). So maybe the answer is not to change the substance of the law but to change people's awareness of the law and their use of computers(still need to lower the sentence though.. a felony conviction is ridiculous for this).
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Re: Authorization
Defendant was lucky because the Lord of the appellate Court could have carried on with something like:
"If we Lords consider the appellant's off-line activities, we also note his clothes are always clean and pressed, and attends church weekly, which surely means that he's a cold-blooded killer who single handedly killed off the entire UK population, so we sentence him to 99,000 years."
VRP
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Not the meaning of "hacking"
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