Hacker sentenced to six years – WITH NO INTERNET A 15-year-old hacker convicted of multiple felonies was handed an unusual sentence by a Long Beach, California juvenile court on Wednesday, one that will see him all but banned from the internet until his twenty-first birthday. The hacker's real name was not disclosed because he is a minor, but according to a report by Wired, …
> your toilet paper is even older? 1215 I believe?
Being neither Yank nor Brit, I'll say this: The Brits consider the Magna Carta to be an important historical document. The Yanks, on the other hand, consider anything created by their founding fathers and whatnot to be basically sacred artefacts, not a bunch of legislature written by clearly well-meaning guys, who have therefore earned the status of minor deities, despite being a rather lively bunch (wink-wink, nudge-nudge) by all accounts.
So that's the difference. The Brits have King Arthur as their kind-of creation myth and have, for the most part, got all of this out of their system. You lot, on the other hand, still haven't grown out of the Our collective daddies had superpowers! phase.
Wrote :- "The Brits consider the Magna Carta to be an important historical document. The Yanks, on the other hand, consider anything created by their founding fathers and whatnot to be basically sacred artefacts"
Indeed. Magan Carta was written at a particular time to address a particular problem (as perceived by some barons) with a particular king. Despite the fuss made about it today, most of it has been superseded by more recent legislation, also bearing in mind that much of the British legal system is based on custom and practice (eg case law) rather than written down by bureaucrats as is the case with some more recently established regimes.
Similarly the US constitution was written under a specific set of circumstances by men mostly descended from non-conformist emigrants seeking religious freedom not long after winning a revolutionary war, and who were therefore somewhat paranoid about "rulers".
Both Magna Carta and the US Consitution are regularly cited today in support of issues which would astonished their authors, if not make them turn in their graves.
its funny that more americans know about the Manga Carta then Brits these days though. Documents in english law as mentioned by previous commentard don't mean much. Case in point some towns have laws on the books that it is legal to kill welshman. That doesn't mean murder is legal even though it is still on the books you will still be arrested for murder under the relevent law applied later.
"its funny that more americans know about the Manga Carta then Brits these days though. "
And it's depressing that you seem to have no clue how the British legal system works.
Old laws do not need to be repealed if they have been made obsolete by later laws. That's why British MPs don't spend much time repealing old laws: they just haemorrhage new ones that supersede the old ones and effectively make the latter redundant. Repealing an old law is extremely rare, time-consuming and usually unnecessary. It's much more efficient to spend the time in Parliament – there isn't much of it – working on new stuff than performing basic spring cleaning.
Not that a bit of spring cleaning in the UK's legal system wouldn't be appreciated; it's become a lot more complicated than it should be. But that's another debate entirely.
@Sean Timarco Baggaley
I agree that spring cleaning would be a luxury, but it would have a decent effect. If you put together a group of legal scholars to go through the law books and distill them down into a single volume with all the laws, their current exceptions, etc. in one place it would do wonders for both the legal profession (less looking for obscure case law) and the population at large, as it stands the law is very hard to understand, and it shouldn't be; anyone with a form 8 education should be able to understand the basics of the law, but few can because of all the obscure and out of date information in there.
"its funny that more americans know about the Manga Carta then Brits these days though. "
Bits of dusty paper from centuries ago are and should never be more relevant to the Courts and judgement in a contemporary setting than common sense and current morality.
And yes: America does cling to a couple of dusty bits of paper with too much tenacity in certain circumstances.
It doesn't matter if X or Y was wrong or right because sky-fairy/king/bunch of stoners said it was hundreds of years ago. Its if it's wrong *today* that matters.
[Chester]
Jules: Well, killing Welshmen is legal there, right?
Vincent: Yeah, it's legal, but it ain't a hundred percent legal. I mean, you can't walk into a restaurant, pull out a gun, and start blasting away. They want you to kill the welsh in your home or certain designated places.
Jules: Those are churchyards?
Vincent: Breaks down like this, okay: it's legal to kill them with a longbow, it's legal to kill them in Chester, and if you're the proprietor of a graveyard, it's legal to bury them. It's illegal Monday to Saturday, but that doesn't really matter 'cause, get a load of this, all right; if you get stopped by the cops in Chester, it's illegal for them to search you. I mean, that's a right the cops in Chester don't have.
Jules: [laughing] Oh, man. I'm going, that's all there is to it. I'm fucking going.
Sadly, it's untrue (based on a royal instruction to banish the Welsh from Chester, or be beheaded - not by other commoners that is, but by the Princes men).
Allow me to respond as a 'merkin, good Sir Puppy.
There's a rabid minority here in "the States" who worship fictionalized versions of the founding fathers. They are a recent phenomenon, or at least only recently visible. We also have folks who set poisonous snakes loose in church, and speak gibberish; I don't party with them either. As an aside, I was Shocked(!) to learn that Brits incarcerate people who incinerate posies! Savages.
I was in primary school in 1976 when we enjoyed bicentennial hoopla. Our social studies teacher took us all to see "1776", a movie about the folks who appear on our cash. My most vivid memory is of the fictional Ben Franklin gleefully suggesting that they should all go "Drinking and whoring!" I don't recall any protests, shock, or even outraged parents suing the school. Times change, fads come and go.
So he forced twats to go without twatter for "several hours"?
Some would see this as a service to society.
It's odd how governments are so afraid of intelligent people, especially where computers are concerned.
In China he would probably have been put on a Government training scheme instead. (unless it was a chinese government site he was attacking, in which case the punishment would be death)
I understand what the kid did and that the Court wants to set an example, but with this restriction, it will be damn near impossible NOT to break his probation and end up in jail. Let's think about it, just about everywhere you go now has some form of access to the Internet. Schools do more and more on computers, which means he will be required to be on them, and they have access to the Internet. He can't get a cell phone as the phones coming out today all have access to the Internet, either via a data plan or using wi-fi. If he gets a job, chances are there will be computers there with access to the Internet. That's just today, it will probably only get worse within the next 6 years, so just how is he supposed to avoid going on the Internet? Will the school have to let the kids parole officer know in advance what classes the kid will be in that will have computers with Internet access, and make sure he's supervised there? If he gets a cell phone, will somone else have to hold it for him and give it to him whenever he wants to make a call? Will any potential employers have to be vetted to make sure he is never on a computer at work unsupervised?.. It's like the Court is setting him up tp fail.
I give it six weeks before he cracks and makes contact with his skiddie mates, and then it's off to prison for the little scroat. And good riddance too. Idiots like that can't survive without the thrill, it compensates for their inferiority complexes, and they end up addicted to the "lulz".
I was thinking that too. It's almost like asking someone to not eat salt for 6 years. Not impossible but very difficult to avoid unless you grow and prepare every moal you eat.
6 years ago we all using feature phones; building out DVD collections; the best way to watch TV shows was wait for them to be aired; we could only manage to carry books that fit in our bags; we brought our laptops when going for coffee - £5 for an hour of internet... if they had wifi; you printed out digital photo's and put them in albums otherwise you couldn't show family and friends; MySpace was popular; DVDR was the largest and most accessible way to copy files from one PC to the other....
What's the world going to look like in 6 years? Is there going to be any way of avoiding internets?
In a store or or any company that does not accept paper applications? Technically, it would be a special, limited-use machine. Just wondering how all-or non-inclusive this or other courts' instructions tend to be. If his case were sealed, he might not even have to disclose to employers not allowed to ask about sealed cases.
But, i can also see a parole officer scowling, "You know what the court meant!" ...
I do like the idea of internet bans as an alternative sentence - sending someone to prison more-or-less assures they'll become a serious criminal, as they'll leave prison unemployable. No employer is going to hire someone with a criminal record and prison time, and people learn new criminal skills and justifications in prison. There are some minor issues in the details, yes, but the idea is sound.
Office work is just about impossible under those conditions, though - guess he'll be spending a few years after school in one of the no-internet, unskilled labor professions. Shelf-stacker, professional leech on the family, litter-picker. The pay sucks, but it's still better than spending three years in prison and then being unable to find any work at all.
"Office work is just about impossible under those conditions, though - guess he'll be spending a few years after school in one of the no-internet, unskilled labor professions."
I love the idea that office work is 'skilled'. I've met six people with real skills this morning that could easily survive with no internet: builder, plumber, electrician, saddler, farrier, agricultural mechanic. On the other hand a zombie apocalypse would expose me and most of my colleagues as having very few real skills.
But where do those professionals order their supplies? Mail-order is dead. Brick-and-morter stores are fine for the common parts, but what do you do when you need a ball-valve assembly for a specific model of dual-flush toilet manufactured four years ago? You go to the internet. It'd be a nightmare even trying to pay taxes without the ability to easily google up the appropriate laws and regulations.
This place gets more like The Sun every day.
REALITY:
Script Kiddy not allowed to use the internet unsupervised for next 6 years and must let the court know of existence of any internet-ready devices he acquires in the meantime.
REG HACKS & COMMENTARDS:
ZOMG!!!!11 Teenage h4xxxor completely banned from INTURWEBZ!!!! Will never be able to work or look at a TELLY-FONE or go to SKOOOLL!!! and will have to live in a cave!!!
There is no way to avoid the internet today, let alone in 6 years.
This isn't 1998, pre-paid smart phones and laptops can be easily hidden and used where/when ever is convenient for him.
More than half the students around him likely have a smart phone. All it takes is "hey, can I borrow that a minute" and he is on the internet anywhere at any time.
Jail time would be far easier.
"Jail time would be far easier."
Apparently you have no understanding of the California Youth Authority (CYA) or the California legal system.
Had he chosen to go to trial and been convicted, the same or similar restrictive punishments would have been imposed on top of any incarceration, there would have been a probation term imposed as well, likely to be the same 6 years or longer.
For those who think he was better off taking the jail time, you are sadly misguided. The California youth authority is no joke, its not some country club where kids are taught to behave and learn the difference between right and wrong. CYA is a gladiator school, plain and simple. A kid like this, a 15 year old nerdly script kiddy would get devoured. Sending him to CYA, he would get the shit kicked out of him multiple times, his demeanor would become violent and he would spent the rest of his life in and out of prison
DDoS'ing is NOT hacking. Neither is CC fraud or bomb threats.
Please stop propagating this lie...
He is nothing but a juvenile delinquent. The internet is just a tool for him to destroy things. Others paint grafiti, tagging or physically destroys some property, steal a car, etc. This guy is doing the same, except it is just taking place on the internet. This does not make him a 'hacker'.
Actually most of his hacks involved social engineering, I suspect he was inspired by people like Kevin Mitnick who famously said "Companies spend millions of dollars on firewalls and secure access devices, and it's money wasted because none of these measures address the weakest link in the security chain the people who use, administer and operate computer systems"
So here we have a thug who abused the internet to carry out various crimes including fraud and making bomb threats (funny how those leaping to his defence on here wilfully ignore THOSE delightful areas of his crime portfolio, I wonder why?), and rather than just throw him in jail (where he will learn how to become an even "better" criminal at taxpayer expense) his punishment is to remove access to the very thing he abused in order to commit his crimes.
Sounds like a very well thought out punishment, actually. Perfectly sensible one, fits the crime, and is most definitely proportionate.
And those rushing to whinge that his hoomin rights have been abused by cutting him off from the internet would do well to actually READ the article wherein they will find he IS allowed internet access, under supervision with prior approval. So no, it won't stop him accessing legitimate sites to further his education.
We could do with seening MORE of this sort of creative appropriate punishment handed out by the courts, quite frankly.
"It's a good chance for him to get involved with activities healthy young men in their late teens used to do like getting drunk, shagging, taking drugs, driving too fast in bombed out old cars and fighting."
You have just described a large section of the middle aged, male, married, blue and white collar populace where I live - or so it would appear on a Friday and Saturday night. Such behaviour is, apparently, not just the preserve of the younger age group.
and I include the Reg headline writer in that.
The body text says he is allowed no internet access WITHOUT THE PERMISSION OF HIS PAROLE OFFICER, so in practice the parole officer will give permission for reasonable access.
That's not to say that he won't breach the conditions of his release though, as to properly enforce it would mean putting him under 24-hour surveillance.
"Additionally, I suspect part of the plea deal is the US gubmint gets his services on an on-call basis in perpetuity."
Trust me, the US government does not need the services of middling-level script kiddies. His value is limited solely to his ability to turn in other criminals. An ability that one supposes is quite limited now he is publically compromised and any information he does possess already obtained.
Another super l337 badboy gets punishment that he should consider a gift. No jailtime and by removing internet from his life he will get back something meaningful. He'll be able to see the sun and finally get some color on his ghastly complexion. He'll develop a personality (real, not internet avatar personality). He may even get a (GASP) girlfriend that he met on his own! He'll see that the internet actually kept him from enjoying the fun things in life, travelling, exploring etc.
When his probabtion s over he will realize that the internet is a toilet, useful only for pr0n and scams...and occasionally news, weather and sports scores.
I pity those AC commentards who consider this cruel and unusual punishment. See a therapist (real, not internet bot) immediately.
"....a long hard look at your society....." Well, that would be fine except for a few points. Firstly, the PC crowd you are no doubt part of won't actually look at a lot of the realities of our society because it upsets their PC sensibilities. Point in case - when the Police released crime stats and included ethnicity of the criminals involved, including that burglars were more likely to be white, they were called racist for DARING to reveal that the majority of muggers were young black males. Not just skirting but flatly denying an issue will not help.
Secondly, there are some people that will be habitual reoffenders, regardless of how much PC-approved rehabilitation they get. Some of them do start at a very young age and some of them do need to be locked up whilst in their early teens when all other resources have failed. At the moment, young offenders know they can get away with a lot more before they hit eighteen, but don't realise the patterns they get into - mixing with other crims and taking "shortcuts" to get what they want instead of working for it - will become engrained in their psyche, to the point where they will justify their continued criminality with such rubbish as "I'm from a poor neighbourhood and crime is the only way out". It's even more amazingly stupid when the PC crowd swallow that excuse.
I await your predictable PC frothing with wry amusement.
Wow, Matt. That post has more straw men than a scarecrow factory - all the guy did was point out the hypocrisy of society saying, "You can't take responsibility for sex / voting / drinking / watching R-rated movies because you're too young to understand the consequences" while simultaneously saying, "You did something bad so you'll be punished like an adult because it makes us angry". Take one side or the other - let 15-year-olds vote and make porn and drive if you consider them to be fully responsible for their own actions, or don't give them adult punishments if you think they aren't mature. It's a matter of consistency, not PC.
Projecting your own pre-packaged talking points onto a frankly unrelated comment just makes -you- look immature. And I suspect that you can't pin that on tender years.
"....let 15-year-olds vote and make porn and drive if you consider them to be fully responsible for their own actions, or don't give them adult punishments if you think they aren't mature...." Which assumes prison or being in some form of secure unit can only be an adult option, which is patently stupid. The original AC posted "Who'd put a 15 year old in gaol?", implying it was somehow barbaric or unreasonable. There are serial young offenders that simply need to be locked up, trying to make it into a "responsibility" issue is just PC frothing of a different nature. If you catch a child doing the same crimes over and over again and the PC-approved "rehabilitation" does not work, then the only recourse is to lock them up. To not do so, to deny it is realistic, is to say to the public "heck, we know he's going to commit more crimes, but we're just fresh out of ideas in PC-ville so you're just going to have to accept it". Massive failure, but I will assume in your case it is derived from a lack of wisdom and experience.
"PC-approved"
"PC frothing"
"PC-ville"
Suggest you try adding "Daily Mail" to your search terms in future, as this will increase your chances of finding the areas of the internet in which "PC" is used in the pejorative sense with which you're familiar. At the very least should stop you from accidentally ending up on IT site comments sections.
".....Suggest you try adding "Daily Mail" to your search terms in future...." Gosh, I'm just so wounded by your inabaility to counter or even discuss the points raised. I would suggest you try widening your sources of information to ones that might be able to equip you with some arguments as you seem to be stuck on Peter & Jane at the moment.
This is another favourite tactic of the PC brigade - when you can't argue a point, just try and make it socially unacceptable to raise the issue.
It's pretty obvious that some folks on here are pretty isolated from yoof today who are having sex at 10 years of age, shooting people at age 12, hacking and perpetuating DDoS attacks at age 13, having children at age 15, etc. Believing that most teens are innocent children today, is very naive.
As far as the punishment goes, no PC for six years is an insult to those who were attacked and it will serve only to encourage more uncivil behavior by this teenager who has now learned he can get away with criminal activities without any real punishment.
So, your argument is that "most" 12-year-olds spend their time fucking and shooting people?
I'm sure that the indignant outrage makes you feel wonderful, but you might be getting carried away... just a bit. You know.
A little.
For what it's worth, statistics for the last 20-odd years have shown that, overall, violent crime, pregnancy, etc, among teenagers has dropped significantly. I suppose one could correctly argue that the prevalence of DDoS attacks among 13-year-olds has gone up by about a quadrillion million percent in the last two decades, though...
Pesky little tyke, give him a clip around the ear and send him home to mum.
Kids will be kids, eh? Bomb threats, credit card fraud, taking down servers - they have to work it out of their system somehow, little blighters.
When I were a lad...
... hold on a minute!
I do wonder, if the internet had been around when I was 15, exactly what kind of stuff I would've got into.
Suffice to say, between 15 and 18, I got up to all sorts of stupid 'urban pranks' - the most ridiculous was relocating 26 post boxes on a street to one poor souls house. Other mindless idiocy was road sign collecting - and then affixing them to bedroom walls, throwing chips at passing cars, breaking open arcade machines to get free credits, petty shoplifting - a litany of youth crimes of the early 80's.
In short, I was a little gobshite.
Thank God I didn't have an internet connection and also that I got caught pilfering porn mags and was hauled in front of the police, my headmaster, my parents and suffered such excruitating embarrassment, it cured me of crime forever.
So much this. I would like to have all commentards with opinions on this posting their age and what they were up to at age 15... I'm 37, was caught shoplifting at that age. Got expelled for a couple of days (I was a good student), might have been worse if they knew what other crap I got into. The occasional pyromancy, getting totally drunk, joyriding, a bit of pot on the side... often all combined. If you were born in the seventies or before that, your opinion doesn't count. Kids today can get into a lot more trouble because of the Internet, just because they want to "be cool". And most parents have no clue what they are up to. If I had Internet access 22 years ago I might have well been in his shoes.
Supervised Internet access might seem ok, unless he gets an old fart as a parole officer.
To all the apologists trying to equate their childhood shoplifting to creditcard crime and bomb threats, you are just sounding foolish to say the least. This was not just petty hi-inks, this little moron had a part in attacking the Wounded Soldier Project. And it's not hard to see why when you find out one of his UGNazi accomplices also on trial is called Mir Islam - gee, with a name like that, I wonder why he'd be interested in attacking a site that helps wounded US forces personnel.
But it wasn't just UGNazi playing at teen hi-jinks, twenty-four other people in thirteen countries were also arrested as part of the same FBI sting investigation of creditcard fraud of 411,000 accounts. The sting focused on a forum the FBI created called CarderProfit. Membership of the site was carefully restricted to only those that could prove they not only had stolen creditcard details but also the techniques to steal and use them. The FBI then further tricked the skiddies into admitting creditcard crimes and then let them only sign up fellow skiddies with two recommendations - the stupid leading the stupider into confessing their crimes to the FBI. In short, Cosmo and Josh (Mir Islam), the two UGNazis arrested, were not just commiting "teen hi-jinks" but full-on creditcard fraud. But I bet that fact still won't be enough to tar them in the blinkered eyes of the Anonyputz faithful.
I am not part of the "Anonyputz faithful" as you so eloquently put it. I am just saying that 15 year olds might get in with the wrong crowd, and the Internet makes that easy... And resulting mischief has a lot more impact.
Target and associates are less relevant. But since you mention them so explicitly, I assume my arguments will be wasted on you. So be it.
I'm familiar with the word, thank you. I chose "pyromancy" because it was not "pyromania", i.e. I did not feel a compulsion to set fire to things, I did it (sadly) "for fun". I might add that it was basically kid's stuff, I was smart enough not to set fire to buildings. Call it juvenile vandalism, if you will.
Other than that: you'll have to admit that "pyromancy" is a cool word. The second reason for using it by the way was because I'm rereading Gibson. It just felt right to use it.
Are we really still handing out arbitrary punishments instead of helping people.
Clearly this young man has some flair with computers, that is the kind of thing that if guided and led in the right direction, could benefit him and others in the future.
Instead they just divert him to the underground.
Hell yeah, reward the kid for inappropriate behavior. That will teach him to respect law.
What a dumbarse POV some people have. As with hackers - after they spend ten years in the slammer, then if you want to teach them to abide by law and how to get a real job evaluating corporate security properly, great. Until they've done their time, they aren't any different than any other criminal.
If you believe this kid won't access a PC for six years, you may be interested in the ocean front property that I have for sale in Arizona. Just pay me ten thousand Euro every time the kid uses a PC over the next six years and I will retire a very happy man.
I recently went for 2.5 months without Internet at home (although I did have my smart phone). But it was astounding just how difficult it was to get anything done compared to only five years ago, and surprising just how reliant I'd become, particularly on Googling any stray thought.
But I found it difficult trying to find out information about government stuff (e.g. taxes), trying to sort my utilities out, booking appointments.
Arranging to get a phone line and a broadband connection installed was a bit of a catch-22. To find out any information to compare the prices and policies I basically needed to be online already. Even just finding out the phone numbers for anything. It's amazing just how disconnected and useless you feel without Google at your fingertips.
Of course, I did cope and didn't die without the Internet. In fact I found myself going to bed earlier. I did eventually sort everything, although some things proved more difficult than others (frequently being told to use their website or register with them online grrr). I think phone services in particular have become much worse because they expect you to use their online service. Most of them suggest that you use their online service as soon as you call before putting you in a queue for hours. I recall being in a similar situation only 6 years ago (moving house and having to set everything up) and it was nowhere near as difficult as I found it this time.
I expect the trend will continue. It makes sense because online services are generally better for the people who DO have an Internet connection and they are cheaper to provide. We will only become more connected. The Internet will be always available to us with smartphones allowing us to view any website exactly as it would look on a PC at any moment wherever we are. I wonder how far we are from glasses/contact lenses with Internet overlay.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2023
