Re: SPAM, credit card numbers, what would you do?

[Jeremiah Cornelius <jeremiah () nur net>]

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On Tuesday 14 October 2003 14:57, Jonathan A. Zdziarski wrote:
> > Also in that vein is Adrian Lamo, an underground hero of the
> > highest caliber who has just been arrested for helping many large
> > corporations like GE clean up their act.
>
> Hero? Hardly.  His willingness to help out the companies he hacked into
> was quickly overshadowed by the fact that he stole hundreds of thousands
> of dollars worth of services while he was doing it.  He's no hero, he's
> an idiot.

He's just a boy.  

"hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of services"  What?  Bandwith usage?  
Subscription fees?  Gimme a break.  He cost nothing in real dollars to 
anyone.  You presume either that he would have paid for services if he 
couldn't get them free, and/or that his utilization deprived other, 
legitimate users of their ability to access resources.  None of this is 
demonstrable, and none is even true.

With engineers, there seems to be a kind of unexamined binary "thinking" about 
law and legality.  Laws frequently change -often arbitrarily, differ in 
jurisdictions, are enforced in violation of over-ruling statutes, etc.  
Everyone reading this list is likely to be in violation of dozens of different 
laws that apply to them in the course of any given week.  This is outside of 
time spent interacting with networked computer systems!

Adrian may get jail time, while Ken Lay will go free.  Sprint may have fake 
billing "losses", while retirees lose their homes and pension benefits.  Laws 
tend to favour those with the ability to purchase them - too bad.


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