Monday, August 18, 2003

The Freakin' Unbelievable Department. Check out this Security Focus article.  This guy emails a bunch of customers of an ISP, letting them know that they're vulnerable to a certain exploit, and that they should check his site for more information.  He's arrested, tried, and convicted for doing so.  According to the prosecutors, merely informing customers that they are vulnerable to a particular problem means that he impaired the network.  That is just freakin' unbelievable.  Talk about chilling effects.  This is exactly what the constitution is supposed to help us with. In this country, the only things you're supposed to not talk about are classified things.  That's fair, and makes lots of sense.  Since when is the security state of a civilian network something that has become classified?  I'll tell you exactly what happened.  This poor guy got buried by the company going after him, a SHITTY, UNETHICAL prosecutor, and a judge who should have set aside the case almost immediately.  With any luck the EFF or some other big gun will take a look at his case, and the appellate judges will do something reasonable, including throwing the FUCKING JUDGE who convicted him out of his job, or censuring him, or something. Unbelievable. 6:53:42 PM