

Caught in the System, Ex-Hacker Is Stalked by His Past - cyphersanctus
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/04/stephen-watt-stalked-by-past/

======
rayiner
The key to the whole story is buried for some reason on the second page:
"Prosecutors disputed this and maintained that chat logs recovered from
Gonzalez’s computer described illegal carding activity that Gonzalez conducted
and showed that Watt at least had broad knowledge of what Gonzalez was doing,
if not the details. As Gonzalez and his gang hacked target after target, he
sent Watt links to news stories describing the breaches, though he didn’t
acknowledge in the correspondence that he was behind the attacks.

Watt’s attorney told Wired in 2010 that his client accepted 'responsibility
for aiding people that he knew would commit wrongdoing. However, he is very
disturbed by the government’s aggressive attempt to make him into more than
what he is.'"

The article spends a page and a half making you think that he's just some
innocent guy who wrote a program for a friend who ended up using it
maliciously, when in reality he admitted that he helped Gonzales who he knew
was going to use it to commit crimes.

This is open and shut aiding and abetting a felony. And not some vague made-up
felony. A felony that actually deserves to be a felony. Without taking any
affirmative measures when he found out to turn his friend in, and without
cooperating with police when he was charged with helping in the scheme. Is it
the mark of an innocent person to you that when he found out his software had
been used to commit a crime, even then he didn't help the police? The judge
did absolutely the right thing in not giving him probation in order to send a
signal.

~~~
pnathan
I'm going to argue contrariwise: say I write a compiler for a language I
created. It's a niche thing and some guys find that it works _really well_
for, e.g., doing network traffic analysis (work with me here, it's just an
example), and it becomes the preferred tool to write hacks using network
traffic (WPA2 sniffers, etc).

Do I have a responsibility to turn these people in? I know some/many/most of
the users are grey/black hats. I might even have a notion of who those people
are.

\---

Let's flip the argument a wee bit. Say you're working for a weapons contractor
building simulators and other tools for drones & ICBMs. You have a pretty good
idea that your work is being used for death and destruction. You see some
videos on the evening news of some people getting killed by a drone you helped
build. Do you bear responsibility for the use of that drone?

Because I see the answer to both to be about the same.

~~~
HoochTHX
Moral answer or legal answer?

There is a reason why we do not charge Soldiers with murder when we tell them
to go fight for us. It is the same reason we don't charge weapon makers for
the deeds there weapons/tools are used for. In the first case, the
responsibility lies with the people who elected that government that gave the
order. Not the Soldiers following legal/moral orders. In the second the same
applies, the tool maker can not be responsible for the actions of the tool
user, that falls on the tool user no where else.

In the case of the person in the article, he just got screwed over by the
government, by lawyers shifting the personal responsibility to the tool maker
instead of the tool user.

~~~
HoochTHX
"Watt, by contrast, evidently earned no money from the scheme and didn’t
participate directly in the breaches or possess stolen card data. His primary
overt act was to code the sniffer tool for Gonzalez, for which he received no
payment

But Watt refused to cooperate with authorities to help make their case against
Gonzalez — aside from the fact that he was resolved not to snitch, he also
maintained that he had no specific knowledge of his friend’s hacking scheme.
His defiance may have been what did him in"

Sounds like a tool maker to me.

~~~
rayiner
What's with people taking what accused computer criminals say at face value?

"Watt says he didn’t know the code would be used to intercept credit card
data. 'I assumed it would have something to do with web traffic or instant
messaging conversations or logins of some other protocol not related to the
credit card information,' he told Wired in 2010.

Prosecutors disputed this and maintained that chat logs recovered from
Gonzalez’s computer described illegal carding activity that Gonzalez conducted
and showed that Watt at least had broad knowledge of what Gonzalez was doing,
if not the details. As Gonzalez and his gang hacked target after target, he
sent Watt links to news stories describing the breaches, though he didn’t
acknowledge in the correspondence that he was behind the attacks.

Watt’s attorney told Wired in 2010 that his client accepted 'responsibility
for aiding people that he knew would commit wrongdoing. However, he is very
disturbed by the government’s aggressive attempt to make him into more than
what he is.'"

It sounds like the jury didn't believe his story, particularly given the IRC
logs and the links from Gonzalez describing the hacks. I can't say it's an
unreasonable conclusion on their part.

~~~
HoochTHX
Sounds more like Alinskys methods in use by the Prosecutor, just throw shit
till it sticks.

~~~
omegaham
Let's use a different example.

You have a friend who is into lockpicking. Hey, that's a perfectly legal hobby
as long as you're picking your own locks.

You have a Dremel tool and a grinding wheel, so he asks you to make him some
custom picks. You don't know initially what these things will be used for, and
you intentionally don't ask him what they're for. As it turns out, they're
built for breaking into a specific make of lock that is only used on
government installations. So, there is no way that it's just a hobbyist thing.

Your buddy then goes and steals government secrets with your custom picks so
that he can sell them to China. He then sends you links to news stories
talking about the thefts. You know that he's doing the crimes, but you say
nothing. And when the police come by and ask you if you made the picks, you
lie and pretend that you don't know anything.

Do you deserve the same sentence as him? No. But I'd say that you deserve
prison time.

~~~
smsm42
>>>> And when the police come by and ask you if you made the picks, you lie

Right here you're screwed, regardless of the rest. Making false statement to a
government agent is a crime of itself, regardless what this statement is
about. You could say "I'm not talking to you" or "Fifth amendment, to the
rescue!" but if you lie, they can knit a nice prison sentence out of it.

------
bennyg
The government really tries to cripple you following any sort of felony. Isn't
going to prison and not doing the things you normally do, for any extended
amount of time, enough punishment as it is? Isn't the whole thing supposed to
be about rehabilitation for tendencies that hurt society and the fostering of
tendencies that would help it? I'm not saying prisons, or the whole system,
are rigged to perpetuate more crime, but it feels like you'd have to do some
sort of illegal activity to stay afloat after losing everything then
constantly getting held under water after release so as not being able to make
a rent payment.

~~~
tbrownaw
_I'm not saying prisons, or the whole system, are rigged to perpetuate more
crime, but it feels like you'd have to do some sort of illegal activity to
stay afloat after losing everything then constantly getting held under water
after release so as not being able to make a rent payment._

Bad things don't happen to good people, and good people don't do bad things or
associate with bad people.

If someone gets arrested or convicted for doing something bad, then you
associating with them must mean that either (1) you are also a bad person, or
(2) bad things do in fact happen to good people, and could happen to you.

This would suggest that a way to fix things would be to publicize that the
system has a disturbingly high error rate (bad things do in fact happen to
good people) and the damage from that needs to be reduced. Another way would
be to get rid of the belief that (getting caught) doing one bad thing makes
you forever a bad person, but that would require working against how
intolerance seems to feed on itself...

~~~
bilbo0s
"...Bad things don't happen to good people..."

I HAVE to say this after what I've seen in my life. (I've spent a significant
portion of it researching cancer.)

Bad things DO HAPPEN to good people.

~~~
eropple
Might want to read it again with tongue in cheek.

------
utnick
Strangely, the article really glossed over his past and made it seem like he
was just an everyday programmer.

He is the same person who goes by the name of 'the unix terrorist' and was
pretty active in the hacking world:
[http://www.phrack.com/issues.html?issue=65&id=2](http://www.phrack.com/issues.html?issue=65&id=2)

------
Scramblejams
Single page link: [http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/04/stephen-watt-
stalke...](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/04/stephen-watt-stalked-by-
past/all/)

------
dobbsbob
If this guy worked for Morgan Stanley then why isn't he coding
Bitcoin/Litecoin/PPPcoin trading engines? Screw wallstreet, work for the
hacker wallstreet

~~~
sophacles
Because if he uses a computer for anything but his web development job (unless
he is monitored by an appropriate authority), he violates his terms of
probation and gets a second felony?

~~~
dobbsbob
No reason he can't turn web development into bitcoin trading engine
development by asking them. I know three sites that would apply to be his auth
employer immediately regardless of prison history. That's all he needs to
change jobs, a letter of employment confirmation sent to the parole board. I
know because I was on probation once when I was 19 for some BS hacking charge
and had the same restrictions

~~~
sophacles
There is the very real question here - He got special dispensation to do the
stuff at his work. It may be (I don't know but wouldn't be surprised if it
was) logged/monitored by law enforcement, even if it isn't, the reasonable
suspicion is there. So:

Would the judge, probation board, or whoever is in charge be ok with something
like bitcoin? It is pretty linked in the popular mind with criminal doings.

Would any bitcoin exchange be OK with their development potentially being
monitored by the government?

I think both of these are pretty likely answered in the negative.

------
fractallyte
Regardless of his level of guilt, the aim of the prosecutors/government was
not to punish, nor to rehabilitate - they wanted to _break_ him. This is not
'justice'.

And, sadly (in my opinion), it appears they succeeded.

------
futhey
Heh, Ironically, I bet if he came to this website, bells and whistles would go
off and he'd get a call about his internet activities.

------
deadfall
7ft tall hacker? I imagine that should be in the GBWR.

------
OGinparadise
Sorry but I have little sympathy for this guy. He knew or should have known
that he screwed many people's lives (clearing up the mess thanks to your
stolen CCs is a nightmare) and cost hundreds of millions.

He should've been happy making $130k a year in 2007

