

Australian youth faces 10 years jail for accused Anonymous hacks - maskofsanity
http://www.scmagazine.com.au/News/338830,sydney-youth-accused-of-anonymous-hacks.aspx

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friendly_chap
Welcome to the New World Order where they can throw you into prison at will
with supposed evidence which truth content can be hard to verify even by
experts.

We geeks are especially at risk. ("Look at that github profile, he even has
the codes, hacker, hacker! Burn!")

Doesn't it make for a warm feeling in the tummy to know that you can spend the
rest of your life being the best friend of Jammal, sharing a cell and a bed
with him, without doing something illegal?

Fortunately we developers are hard asses who are used to murder, rape, and
robbery. Oh wait...

~~~
shantanubala
> Welcome to the New World Order where they can throw you into prison at will
> with supposed evidence which truth content can be hard to verify even by
> experts.

The article was really brief and vague. Are you sure this is the case?

From what I understand, the title is not completely descriptive: the kid has a
_maximum possible sentence_ of 10 years _if_ he is convicted.

"The suspected hacker faces a maximum of 10 years jail time if convicted and
will face court again on May 17."

I obviously have no way of really knowing what exactly happened without more
information, but just assuming that random programmers are at risk for getting
arrested is a bit of a stretch -- even if there is a "New World Order" as you
say, it needs good programmers too...

It will be interesting to see what actually happens at the end of this, but I
wouldn't be surprised if it was a sentence to community service and parole for
some time.

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alan_cx
You are saying the same thing the person you are criticising is.

He said "can throw you in prison for 10 years" You say "maximum possible
sentence of 10 years"

Exact same thing.

Be in the accused's position, and then argue the difference.

~~~
shantanubala
Maybe this is a bit of a misunderstanding? I wasn't refuting the "10 years" --
that's a fact. I was simply pointing out that you can't really know what's
going to happen based on 10 sentences of extremely vague details in an
article.

I was refuting this:

> Welcome to the New World Order where they can throw you into prison at will
> with supposed evidence which truth content can be hard to verify even by
> experts.

That statement assumes that he will be convicted and the judge will deliver a
severe sentence, which is not necessarily a valid assumption since there's
barely any information provided. It's possible he may simple get a community
service sentence with parole, since he is 17.

And yes, the government "can" throw you in jail _if you are found guilty_ and
_if the judge decides to_ , but neither of those "if's" have been decided yet.

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DigitalSea
"The AFP did not give a timeframe for the attacks but said it did not believe
any sensitive personal or financial information was stolen."

Each and every day Australia starts to look more and more like the United
States (no offence to those who live in the US). I live in Australia and find
it highly alarming that a youth who didn't steal any personal or financial
information could be sent away for 10 years, comparatively you could rape
someone in Australia and if you plead guilty you would get sentenced to
basically the same amount of years.

How does a victimless computer crime which potentially only resulted in a
little bit of downtime and wasn't malicious in that information was stolen
equate to the same as raping someone? It doesn't add up.

~~~
Shaanie
If the crime resulted in downtime or in any other way inconvenienced someone
else, it wasn't a victimless crime.

Disregarding semantics, I completely agree that the potential punishment is
not at all proportional to the crime in this case.

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b0ttler0cket
Wow...to think that he would be 27 before he ever got out. I wonder how it's
possible for the government to penalize a 17 year old with 10 years of prison.
That's the equivalent of a class c felony in the US, which can be applied to
sexual assault, arson, and kidnapping.

To think that a computer crime where not even any "sensitive personal or
financial information was stolen" can be considered at par with kidnapping is
harsh.

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roel_v
Aaaand... watch the nerd indignation rise in this thread - 'omg they're
putting him away for 10 years!'.

Reporters use the maximum statutory sentences to report on yet-to-be-convicted
people for maximum headline sensationalism. Very seldom will somebody,
especially a first-time offender, actually be sentenced that. For example, in
my jurisdiction the maximum statutory sentence for rape is 12 years; yet
prison terms of a few years are common. The reasons the maximums are set so
high is to allow leeway for the judge for especially egregious cases.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Doesn't. Fucking. Matter.

Do you know why? Because the _actual_ sentences these folks tend to end up
with are often similar to folks convicted of homicide, rape, violent robbery,
etc. One of the Steubenville rapists was sentenced to around 2-4 years, for
example. And he is the same age as the accused here.

The idea that the punishment for rape should be similar to the punishment for
white collar crimes where no one was materially injured is preposterous. The
system is broken in a very fundamental way and jabbering on about the
subtleties of the difference between maximum and expected sentences is not
contributing to the discussion in a meaningful way, in my opinion.

~~~
dchichkov
I'm curious, how can you discourage kids from hacking into core infrastructure
and accidentally breaking things?

It is very natural for kids and teens to test their boundaries and try to get
as much access and control over any system that they could get into. And from
a kid perspective it doesn't feel like a particularly dangerous or wrong thing
to do. Hacking into stuff feels just like an elaborate and very rewarding
game. Game that requires specialized knowledge and skills, but a game
nevertheless. I think we all remember the feeling.

But in reality this is not a game. Damage that can be done by an accident
involving a such a game/hack that goes awry can be catastrophic. That includes
loss of life and likelihoods of a large number of people.

Examples? Say, can a hack interfere in a subtle way with remote surgery? Or
with hospital power supply? Or chemical plant? The answer is unfortunately,
yes. Our systems a networks are not secure enough and not kid-proof. And
probably will never be. So there must be some policy that discourage kids from
hacking into stuff that matters. And yet it should be friendly, because it is
preposterous to put people in jail for 'games' that are very unlikely to cause
any harm most of the time.

~~~
markyc
how about we work on making that infrastructure kid-proof, instead of
demolishing the kids?

~~~
dchichkov
Difficult. What system can really stand against a determined 17 year old with
some ten years of experience, including a few years of hacking and network
security?

Hacking and network security is a relatively shallow and yet specialized
skill. Relatively shallow, because it doesn't require years and years of
studying, like, say theoretical physics or modern math. And specialized,
because your regular developer is not necessarily stays current with all the
latest security practices and exploits.

Because of that properties a determined teen can outmatch skills of people
maintaining and designing the system by orders of magnitude. And with that
kind of mismatch in skills, what can really stand against that kid?

~~~
lucian1900
If our systems aren't able to stand casual, playful attack, they have
absolutely no chance at surviving a real, concerted attack. And there's plenty
of evidence that the latter happen all the time nowadays.

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hjay
It's really disgusting that there is a huge amount of teenagers who are
capable of racking up sentences of 10+ years like these, while adults who
commit rape, arson, etc end up with the same sentence.

Sure we see a few cases like this every month or so, but if all the teenagers
committing similar acts were actually caught; whether it be of malicious
intent or just pure curiosity, the numbers would be staggering. Things really
need to change, and the law needs to put more effort into understanding these
breaches, along with how easily obtainable this kind of knowledge is on the
internet.

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downandout
Of the charges he faces, one sticks out to me: "possession of data with intent
to commit a computer offence". That sounds absurdly broad and is another of
these catch-all laws that enables prosecutors to press charges against almost
anyone with a computer. Have uTorrent on a hard drive? You are in possession
of data with the intent to commit a computer crime. Intent is arguable, of
course, but in Australia that may well be enough to get you arrested and have
search warrants issued that could lead to other problems if you happened to be
on the radar of law enforcement.

I was under the impression that the US had the market cornered on this type of
nonsense. Apparently we have competition.

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aspensmonster
Nice to see the the article has basically no useful information content
besides a list of charges. Is there any further context to this?

