
Petition Against Felony Charge for WiFi Prank - pearjuice
https://www.change.org/p/save-a-nerd-petition-against-felony-charge-for-harmless-retaliatory-wifi-prank-in-hacker-dojo-programming-club
======
FireBeyond
Not sure this warrants a felony charge, but not sure this petition is
particularly inspiring either.

Both parties behaved amazingly immaturely. But this petition is a heavily
reality-distorted mealy mouthed justification of hand-waving away of what he
did. Every action by the other party is blown up "many DDoS activities keeping
him out of important business meetings", while the things he did are just hand
waved away like so: "Jason decided to play a friendly prank on him in return
and performed three twenty minute stress tests on one of Brian’s wifi
hotspots" \- not sure how one person's actions are a DoS, but another are
not).

Hyperbole abounds, too: "Conviction would guarantee the rest of his life to be
spent in financial insolvency and as a third-class citizen with fewer rights
and only the most unfulfilling employment prospects."

Really, convicted of a felony, you're guaranteed lifetime financial
insolvency?

"a conviction would spell the end of his professional career and aspirations
to serve the nation's Foreign Service corps as a diplomat."

A little snarky, but I'd wager the State Department is looking for diplomats
who'd avoid getting into petty situations like this in the first place...

~~~
lnanek2
> Really, convicted of a felony, you're guaranteed lifetime financial
> insolvency?

This is actually flat out true. All large companies perform background checks
and none of them will hire you if have any sort of criminal charges
whatsoever. You don't even have to have been found guilty. This is called the
"digital plantation" by one ex-policeman who wrote a book about it:
[http://www.amazon.com/Arrest-Proof-Yourself-Dale-C-
Carson/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Arrest-Proof-Yourself-Dale-C-
Carson/dp/1613748043)

~~~
late2part
I have two friends with felonies that work in SV Tech, they each make over
$200k a year for the last 5 years at reputable venture backed companies.

~~~
alt2319
I have a federal felony conviction, for nearly the same exact offense that
Jason is being charged with. I've worked for several software companies since
my conviction, before starting my own. It definitely doesn't end your career.

------
MichaelGG
This is terribly written and comes off as extremely misleading. No useful
details are given. "Kept out of important meetings?" "A prank on WiFi?" What
happened, what are you trying to get people to sign their names to? Sure,
we're all biased against prosecutors and a "WiFi prank" doesn't sound like
anything really bad, but shit, write clearly and state the facts, don't try to
snow us.

~~~
jeffmould
Couldn't agree more. There is a significant amount that seems to be missing
from this and leads me to a couple questions:

1\. If Brian Klug is a founder of the HackerDojo as a Google search on his
name confirms, why would the HackerDojo sell a "premium email address" to
Jason Miller for a $100? Wouldn't Brian, as a founder, have a say in who has a
particular HackerDojo email account.

2\. Going out on a limb here, but a look at the MeetUp page for the Palo Alto
Data Science Association, shows no entry that I could find for a Jason Miller
as the founder.

I am not trying to make any accusations here, but something just doesn't add
up. The HackerDojo is a recognizable name and this whole thing doesn't add up
to me.

Lastly it is pretty standard for anyone on pretrial release to have some sort
of monitoring aspect, so that part is not out of the ordinary. This could be
especially true when, like Jason Miller, the individual is not a resident of
the state (Jason is from Maryland and appears to be living there now according
to his LinkedIn profile) where the charges were filed.

Anyway, I would love to hear the real story behind this one. I can't find my
PACER account information so if anyone has an account on PACER and can
find/share the charging documents it may shed some light on this case.

~~~
jsmthrowaway
Membership in Hacker Dojo was $100/month at the time. He paid for a month.
It's $125/month now for non-students.

It's evidence of the spin, because Hacker Dojo doesn't sell "premium e-mail
addresses." More spin: "Klug performed a denial of service attack on Miller’s
email account" = David was banned, which is clever, because it's Miller that's
charged with packeting Hacker Dojo.

Also, why the hell is Anonymous on the petition?

------
nickodell
I feel like there's something missing from this story.

Brian stopped Jason from receiving emails, then Jason broke Brian's wifi for
an hour, then Brian calls the FBI.

Do these two have previous history? Was there some sort of escalation between
the second and the third event?

~~~
eridius
What I want to know is why the FBI even cared in the slightest that Jason
broke Brian's wifi for an hour. I feel like there must be something missing to
this story to explain that.

~~~
acdha
Indeed – in the past, even if you suffered actual damages the first thing the
FBI would ask was whether they were over $50K because they didn't touch
anything under that amount. I wonder if most of the appeal was a case where
all of the participants are known & local – they're thinking a quick, easy
prosecution and some press to pad someone's annual review.

~~~
alt2319
Sometimes they prosecute these cases just to gain experience in prosecuting
them.

------
brink
When I was 17, I pranked my high school's website by replacing homepage
content with a rickroll video through some creative hacking. The school turned
around and hit me with a felony charge due to it being computer related. So I
can definitely understand where this is coming from.

~~~
girvo
I'm lucky, I think, because over the 5 years of highschool I cracked every
users password, found multiple vulnerabilities in the Novell NetWare system
that allowed me to run arbitrary binaries, found out that I could use the `NET
SEND` command to pop a message on every computer that was connected to the
network, among other things.

The IT Coordinator wanted me nailed to the wall, but the vice-principal found
a lot of the things I did interesting, and instead made the IT coordinator
give me access to a Suse VM with full permissions, and didn't even give me a
detention.

My impetus for doing all of this was so that I could run compilers and IDEs
while at school, as I was running a Pentium 2 with 76Mb of RAM in 2005. It
could've gone a completely different way, I think, and if my vice-principal
hadn't seen something in me I could've ruined my life with all that. Scary to
think about.

------
sudo-i
A textbook case of 2 people who take themselves way too seriously... and it
all escalated over a email address! The level of maturity of both sides is
mind numbing and the whole case makes Hack Dojo (which is an amazing place)
look like an immature little boys club.

~~~
Vendan
heh, if my hackerspace had emails like that, most of us would have stuff like
post.master@ and web.master@ within minutes... and high five anyone that
actually managed to use that to convince someone they were actually high level
email addresses for the site.

------
ccvannorman
I was a member at hacker dojo while this happened. His actions had a real
financial impact, not just on hacker dojo but on members like me who couldnt
get work done. While I never met him, it's difficult to feel sorry for him as
he knew exactly the damage he was causing and was "addicted to pushing the
button that hurt our wifi" (paraphrasing, but i do remember reading his
letters that said basically this.)

My personal opinion is that while i dont want a precedent for felony charges
for "wifi pranks", if this kid (20s) wasn't charged witha felony my gut says
he'll be back at it again harder and faster having gotten away with it.

------
zmanian
I remember when this was going on at Hacker Dojo. The Internet was completely
unusable for weeks. It seems likely that goal of the attack was cause Hacker
Dojo to lose members.

It seemed like an economic attack on a community space.

------
staunch
Bad things happen when idiots collide. I signed it though, because even a fool
doesn't deserve to be punished so severely.

------
jsmthrowaway
I've read this petition three times and I still have no idea what happened.
Also, what in the holy fuck is the author thinking giving everyone enough
information to find the "bad guy" in her story (I knew who she was talking
about even without it) but keeping the identity of the person we're allegedly
helping obscured?

The difference between me and whoever the person advocating for this guy is,
is that I know how to use PACER and am willing to pay to investigate claims
like this. Honestly, I wanted to read the indictment because the horribly-
written petition left me confused, but indeed, the petition leaves out quite a
bit of the story. That includes the guy signing back up for Hacker Dojo under
a false name after being banned, his grand total of one day being a member of
Hacker Dojo, and completely omitting the attorney that he retained privately
(and who quit not long after due to a "breakdown of communication"; puts
perspective on raising a legal defense).

By the indictment, which went before a grand jury, by the way, it sounds like
he signed up as "Ad Min," got banned, signed up as "Dallas Smith," got banned
again (probably), then threw a hissy a month or so later and packeted Hacker
Dojo. Poor guy indeed. Who attacks Hacker Dojo?

5:14-cr-00114-EJD, _United States of America v. Jason David Miller._

Grand Jury Indictment:
[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/indic...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/indictment.pdf)

Order to Seal (since lifted):
[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/seal....](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/seal.pdf)

Continuance so Miller can retain counsel:
[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/subin...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/subin.pdf)

Status hearing where Miller's attorney subs in:
[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/couns...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/counsel.pdf)

Withdrawal of Miller's attorney ten days later:
[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/withd...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/withdrawal.pdf)

Full history:
[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/histo...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6121606/hackerdojo/history.png)

This is all public information. I paid $2.60 to look it up, and you can too --
sign up for PACER. Federal court is really simple if you know how to look,
it's the state courts that tend to be harder and require a physical presence.

EDIT: I edited out my speculation once I had the indictment, and extend
apologies to the commenters who wanted to engage it.

~~~
hurin
> Keep your pranks on the right side of legal, or get burned. Understand the
> CFAA and when you are in violation.

Because the problem is clearly the "evil hacker jason" and not the
ridiculousness of the laws in which severity of punishment is entirely
inconsistent with any tangible damages?

I think people forget that it's _their_ tax-payer money being used to ruin's
someone else's life.

~~~
jsmthrowaway
Would you say the same thing after reading the indictment? Just curious.

~~~
hurin
Is there something in the indictment that you find to be in direct
contradiction to the petition? I couldn't find it - of course the Brian half
of the story is missing here.

~~~
takeda
There were no pranks but simply DDoS for being banned, Brian did not DDoS
Jason's email but banned him for breaking the rules. Pretty much the only
truth in that petition is that Jason is in deep sh*t.

------
eli
Felony charges are obviously ridiculous, but I don't quite see the humor in
the "funny prank" of shutting down someone's internet connection. It's at
least as much a "denial of service attack" as flooding someone's email
account.

------
codezero
I'm baffled as to why this didn't stop when he was asked not to use ad.min@ –
this seems like a reasonable request which most people could just accept and
move on from. High five, you did a nice trick, but the real admin asked you to
stop, so just move on, right?

As others have mentioned, there seems to be a lot not said here, which isn't a
surprise, and of course, felony charges are insane here.

~~~
MichaelGG
Or why didn't the real admin just rename/ban the account? Edit: Reading the
indictment posted in another comment, that's exactly what they did. The
indictment also says the Hacker Dojo network was DDoSed several times over a
few weeks. So this petition starts to feel more like outright lying.

~~~
jeffmould
I could be wrong here, but from reading the charging documents it sounds like
the "denial of service" that was actually done to Jason's email account was
really his account being banned when he was kicked out of the HackerDojo for
using a fake name the first time. It was not until he signed up for HackerDojo
a second time using another fake name, and getting banned again, that he is
accused of committing his DoS on the HackerDojo.

------
ChuckMcM
I guess the lesson here is that when someone pranks you with denial email
spamming you call the FBI? Sad situation folks.

------
ianstallings
GTFO of here, I don't know you and I'm not signing a petition based on
hearsay. This is a legal problem. Contact a lawyer and prepare for court.

~~~
takeda
Looks like even his lawyer doesn't want to have anything to do with him based
on the documents posted.

You are right the petition not only misleading it is straight lie.

