So you're going to charge teenagers with crimes based on "what they might have done" now? A bit minority report, don't ya think? This statement standing alone is a huge concern for civil liberties. Arresting someone and charging them for one crime based on your opinion of "what they might have done" seems remarkably heavy handed.
But who knows what this kid is like, perhaps he was a little hellion making this teacher's life a nightmare [was the teacher gay? homophobic? I don't know the back story here] and this was just the straw that broke the camels back? Eventually we all snap when pushed and kids know how to push your buttons better than anyone. Perhaps he needed be kept in check and have his boundaries enforced to reset his notion of what is and isn't acceptable conduct. But equally... a felony for a [hopefully harmless] prank that is common practice in I.T. environments around the world, that's a bit weak.
At least he's only a kid and it'll be sealed on his 18th birthday. However, it'll be attached to his school record and follow him around like a bad smell until he leaves academia. So I guess he'll learn his lesson... all be it a bitter consequence to what amounted to something largely harmless.
> So you're going to charge teenagers with crimes based on "what they might have done" now? A bit minority report, don't ya think?
They are throwing the book at him for a crime that he has admitted to committed (unauthorized access of a computer system). This a crime regardless of "what he may have done." The fact that no one is stopping to say, "Let's rethink this guys," is an indictment the police / prosecutors involved in this case.
This is a bit like charging a child with Breaking & Entering because he snuck into his friend's house through a window to play a prank on him, and the cops "aren't sure what he really did while in the house."
What exactly "unauthorized access" means is still being ironed out in case-law. Just because you have access to something doesn't mean that you are authorized. Prosecutors have attempted to push "hacking" charges against people for accessing something on a shared drive (with no technical permission restrictions) because the employee was not "authorized" to view said file.
Just because the students had the admin password doesn't mean that they had permission/authorization to access that teacher's physical computer. Even if they had permission to do that, they probably didn't have permission to access the wallpaper settings.
This is really a failure of the laws in question to be less broad, and a failure of prosectors / cops to show some sort of restraint.
Well, not quite; it is like charging a child with breaking & entering because snuck into his teacher's house through a window to play a prank.
Can you pause to examine why you think it's necessary to substitute "friend" for "teacher" in your analogy to make it work for you?
Presumably, "friend's house" is a place where you've been before (possibly even overnight), where all the household members know where you are and where you are generally welcome.
Not at all like breaking into a house, breaking into a house is a violation of physical safety and comfort. One's home is one's sanctuary, and an invasion is quite frightening.
This is analogous to the student noticing the teacher left their keys at their desk, taking the keys to unlock a private desk drawer, and putting some naughty picture in the drawer. At most, such a prank would merit a week of detention. Calling it a criminal offense of felony hacking is insane.
> breaking into a house is a violation of physical safety and comfort
There is an interpretation of your above words that the occupants are unsafe because of what the intruder could do even it doesn't happen.
That is analogous to the argument that the privacy and integrity of the data stored in that computer were unsafe, because of "who knows what this teenager might have done".
> One's home is one's sanctuary, and an invasion is quite frightening.
Whereas, say, an invasion of your e-mail, social networking, bank account, credit card, or medical or government file or whatever else just something you can brush off and move on with your life.
Hmm, on further thought, my intuition is that the severity of the crime actually depends on being caught in the act, versus caught after the prank.
Situation one: Imagine the students break into the teachers house to pull some prank while the teacher is sleeping. The teacher gets terrified, calls the cop, and the students get caught.
Situation two: the students wait until they know nobody is home, then break into the teachers house and pull some prank, like leaving a naught blow-up doll on the couch. Later someone tattles and they find out which students did it.
Situation one, you are more likely to have to treat the crime like felony burglary, since they caused trauma, and for all you know the claim of it being a prank is just an after the fact excuse. If you let them use that excuse, then any burglar could use that excuse.
Situation two, you treat them leniently, since obviously if they intended to do real harm, they would not have left a call sign, and they would have actually stolen something. So you know there was no malicious intent, so you do not need to treat them like felons.
It's the same with the computer. If the teacher walked in on the students using the computer, you would have to treat it a lot more seriously, because you would have to assume maliciousness. But once the prank is pulled, then you treat it more leniently, since if they were truly malicious they would have stole the information without leaving any footprints.
I don't know if we want to legally separate the physical and digital worlds like that. Isn't that the whole complaint with the NSA? Someone entering your home to do something might sound scarier than them doing something remotely. However, what is the difference if both results are the same, especially considering the ease of the latter compared to the former?
I chose "friend's house" because the analogy doesn't really account for the ease with which it is to "break and enter" into a computer system if you just watched someone type their password. Maybe you could say that he "broke into" a teacher's house through an open window?
I make this distinction because destruction of property could be an issue with a physical break-in (via the act of breaking in).
The teacher has had students over before, and unlocks his/her home by grabbing the key out of the fake rock sitting on the doorstep. The student uses that key and wrote something obscene with the fridge magnets.
It's not quite breaking and entering, but it's more than trespassing.
i like that version, and the "lasting" consequences are the same. move the letters back to spell "i love teaching", aka change your background back to whatever cat picture was there before.
If you must use an analogy it's a good idea to keep it close to the original act. In this case that could be "accessing the teachers office via keypad". House suggests another level of privacy.
> By your reasoning, picking a lock or guessing a combination couldn't be breaking in because you didn't literally break anything.
What reasoning? I said that "breaking and entering" can happen through an open window. My point was to modify the analogy so that the act of breaking & entering was "easy" and non-destructive bringing it closer to the level of severity in the situation that we are discussing.
Gaining access to someone's password has a much lower bar than something like picking a lock which requires a certain set of skills, and may imply a certain level of intent. The student didn't hookup a laptop to the school network and run metasploit.
Again, semantics, but I'd say it's more akin to a kid breaking into school, not the teacher's home.
Or, more likely, the teacher's briefcase.
Yes, using a computer feels a lot like going to an actual physical place. But we forget, it's a portable piece of property. It contains sensitive documents, but it's not breaking and entering.
In this particular case, the password was widely known. The teacher must have known that it is known, yet didn't bother changing it, thereby tacitly authorizing those who know the password to use that computer. In effect, the computer was public to the same extent like school property, such as a blackboard. I'm sure the defense will wield some version of this argument.
> but it's not breaking and entering
Well, nobody said it is, including the prosecutors, who are charging the kid with some information-technology-specific crime (informally, "hacking"), and not "burglary".
It's called an analogy. "Breaking & Entering" is the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of a situation where the act of someone gaining access to something is itself a crime. In this case, the student is being charged with "hacking" which according to the Federal law is gaining "unauthorized access" to a computer system.
What would be the crime committed in breaking into the teacher's briefcase? Theft during the duration of time that the student gain 'possession' of the briefcase to open it?
and look where that has led... the lack of notable consequences for ones actions tend to lead you down the path of "I'll do whatever I please because the only real consequences are a slap on the wrist," or rather "I know my rights and with a competent lawyer, I'll get off anyway, I don't really care how that affects you or anyone else." There appears to be little empathy for how one's actions affect everyone around you, with everyone looking out for themselves and feeling like the country somehow owes them something.
Fair enough this was a prank, and sure, we all used to do a lot more... and these days you can't let your kids run free without the police picking them up on their way to or at the park and attempting to charge the parents with criminal neglect. There is little that makes sense about any of this.
When talking about social changes, "look where that has led..." is definitely a good argument... in a bar, not in a serious conversation.
This kind of event is simply caused by the excessive increase of policing, and the political profit of such events; it's not a really special or complex phenomenon.
The major consequence is a context which supports excessive penalties for people, in which unreasonable laws, vampire prosecutors and self-obsessed politicians prosper.
Proceedings like this are a product of all the above - in the era of cyberwar, the government turned even minor incidents are into major crimes, in order to make an example, and to get the political monopoly on cyberoffense; such cases are quite common.
Wherever the excessive increase of policing comes... well, that definitely is a complex and special phenomenon, but I guess it's off topic.
I'd like to see a reliable source on that. The cultural differences with most countries in western-Europe certainly don't seem to support your assertions.
LOL we used to run free even in the 80's and 90's. Back then society was no safer, it's just we didn't have the media pumping fear into us every day. It's ridiculous how cooped up kids are becoming with parents expected to supervise (or even have someone else to supervise) their kids every minute of every day. That's not helping. Kids need time to themselves to find themselves and learn to stand alone.
It's a poor analogy in general, but given the context of the school, it's a bit more like a kid walking into the open front door that everyone else used, and then hanging up a poster. Computer security doesn't really exist in highschools/gradeschools it seems.
Arguing analogies is hopeless: arguing about specifics, changing minor details to make a point is arguing a synthetic case that has no bearing on the actual case under discussion.
Whether you illegally entered someone's house, garden shed, school office, car, briefcase, lunch box, coat pocket, smartphone or computer are things that are different in important ways.
Whether you had to force your way in, schemed and lied to perform your act or could perform it without any trouble matters.
What someone subsequently did is also relevant. Planting a note 'your ... was open' differs from planting a turd or an explosive.
We are dealing with someone that changed the background of a desktop on a computer obviously left easily accessible. That is what should be discussed.
Except it's more like he opened the (locked) screen door to put a poster in it and didn't open the (locked with the same key) door that led to the rest of the house. If anything, it's criminal mischief..
It said that students using teacher's passwords was rampant. I can imagine that some non-technical teachers weren't actually keeping their password a secret, out of convenience.
IMO, its more about the proliferation of Prosecutors who aren't taking advantage of prosecutorial discretion.
I think any judge / jury will agree that giving a felony to a kid who has only changed a wallpaper is absurd. But that isn't the point, the point is that the prosecutor wants to appear "tough on crime" and jack up the numbers on the "number of cases prosecuted".
The problem here isn't the law. The problem is the widespread culture of prosecutors.
EDIT: I found a better quote from the officer. It looks like this kid was a repeat offender. That's a big no-no actually... hmm....
Well, I'd largely say a friend probably wouldn't have charged their friend for B&E if it was for the purpose of a prank. If it had been something more nefarious, he probably would have.
Throwing the book at him is a bit harsh... but it really depends on the context. Fair enough, they don't know what he did. Fair enough he copped to the crime and that at first glance appears to be the extent of the "damage".
If this was a one off, okay, laugh it off. "You got me, you little bugger, but I'll get you back." No police needed. In which case this punishment is off the charts heavy handed... the punishment should definitely fit the crime.
If this is the actions of a kid that was constantly engaging in persecution of this teacher, he's been warned, sent to the principal's office, suspended etc. then it's easy to see how it could escalate. I fail to see how anything beyond expulsion is necessary... but some people do tend to blow things out of all proportion.
Regardless of context, I wish police and prosecutors (and the rest of us) would much much more cautious about indicting a child for crimes, even violent ones. Children don't have fully developed brains and are hard wired to behave recklessly. Getting them involved in the criminal justice system and ruining their lives at such a young age is idiotic.
I think this is one of the most important points here. Even from a practical perspective, the amount of damage done to a child by "throwing the book" at her will end up costing the state many times over. And then there's the fact that it's just inhumane.
A bit off topic, but I simply thing this is the commenter trying to be grammatically correct without using "him" as is standard in English. I've noticed quite a few writers lately (especially in tech) doing this more often. I seemed to remember RMS doing this in a recent post of his, using feminine pronouns as the generic singular 3rd person.
Interesting point. I'm not sure I agree with the connotation of sexism that it promotes. I would feel a gender neutral pronoun such as they/them/their would be more appropriate, regardless of grammatical correctness.
Grammatical correctness is a fluid thing. "they/them/their" used singularily is one of those things that is on the edge of being accepted. Thing is, schools are slow to react and will keep saying it's wrong using a rigid form of thinking about grammatical correctness.
It may or may not have been in customary informal usage for that long [citation needed], but it is still considered incorrect in strict, rigorous, formal usage. (Yes, this is on the cusp of changing, but for now, it's still true.) In formal usage, pronouns agree in gender and in number with their antecedents.
You can easily find citations in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they from Chaucer, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, George Bernard Shaw, and so on. It's not "customary informal usage", it's just a regular, ordinary feature of the English language.
In the absence of a third person, singular pronoun of ambiguous gender in English, I prefer to use "her" as it makes a nice change from the standard use of the masculine pronoun that is all too common.
Read into that what you will, but perhaps you're just trying too hard to take offence.
Be careful with this, I come from a country where someone below 18 can't be indicted for a crime. Regardless of the crime.
There has been cases of 17-year-old minors raping and killing that went completely free (or spent a few months in juvie).
What I'm saying with this is that yes, I agree with you: The age of the perp should be considered. But we should also consider the crime in question.
In this case, both age and 'crime' account for what is just a prank with no harm done (apart from bruising some teacher's ego). Even expelling the child would seem to me a bit excessive, but I could understand the school doing that. Anything more is just disproportionate.
An example from today. A 13 year old boy kills one person and injures some others with a crossbow. He's unlikely to face criminal charges because 14 is the age of criminal responsibility in spain.
'Not facing criminal charges' does not mean 'not being punished'. Kids like this are often placed in the care of the government until they are 18. They may also be forced to undergo psychiatric treatment. Neither is a cakewalk.
I didn't say he was avoiding punishment. I said he was notgoing to face criminal charges. I'm not sure what your point is, or how your comment applies to anything I wrote.
So in crimes like that, essentially no one is held responsible for the murder. The kid, being under thirteen, is a free agent, a loose cannon, able to freely commit any crime he/she wishes with no possibility of anyone facing consequences for it.
Am I the only one who thinks parents should be held criminally responsible for not training their kids properly? It makes sense, doesn't it? If the child isn't considered responsible, then the person responsible for the child should be.
Somehow the society is geared towards saving young pregnable wombs. Leave your wife? Pay maintenance. Have a kid that doesn't live with you? Pay maintenance. Don't pay maintenance? Go to jail. Kids is murderer. Whhaa? Poor baby.
Let me guess. That country is India and that rape was a group-rape with 3 other adults and this 1 minor boy. A country where more than 50% of rape cases involve ex-girlfriends and ex-boyfriends and where not marrying a girlfriend is considered rape.
Did you participate in that candle march?
Lets not be careful at all at uploading some basic truths - minors are minors and we _adults_ can't change the definition based on our communal level of outrage.
India? Wow you've gone far away... Nope, Spain, right in 'civilized' western europe.
The incident I mention, by the way, happened a few years ago and it was a group of high schoolers, all of them minors (except one, whose 18th birthday had happened a few months before, he was the only one charged as an adult).
I'm not sure about the violent ones... there has to come a point where the child learns that there are real harm and real consequences that occur for your actions. They have to understand that just because we (as parents) have shielded them from the consequences of their actions where we can, there comes a point where the protection we afford them reaches its limit. Even rich celebrities with endless reserves of cash to buy the best lawyers on the planet come to a point where they have to deal with the consequences of their idiotic decisions.
There are different levels of violent crime. I'm not sure a child should be prosecuted for assault in most instances, for example. Rape or murder, well, that they should be. But to say that even they should be prosecuted as an adult, and put away for life, or even executed? It seems absurd to say, "this 13 year old needs to learn that actions have consequences, so we will ruin their life and make it impossible for them to apply the lesson we've taught them and become a productive member of society." If they need to be taught a lesson, great, put them under heavy supervision until they're 18 or 21, with lots of help and lots of counseling. I'm just not willing to say that a teenager is beyond help and should be treated as a bad seed just because they made bad choices as a teenager. Teenagers make bad choices; it's what they do.
That's the cause of the prison system which is privatized and beholden to shareholders to make profits. They have a large lobby used to persuade the government to protect and pass laws that serve this purpose. At some point or another, with the way things are going everyone will find themselves in a position where they have to make this decision.
Well, in fairness, a good number of laws ostensibly designed for public safety are very much predicated on the idea of what you might do, and stopping you before said act is hypothetically done.
Not that I agree with this particular case or even such laws in general, but it's hardly something outside social consensus.
There's an entire layer here which is missing, which you touch upon - everyone seems to be focussed on the police's stance on this - whereas I'm more curious as to why on earth a teacher would contact the police over a matter such as this. Fragile ego? Authority complex? Sadistic tendencies?
Certainly it can't be that he had this pupil's best interests at heart - and therefore it seems equally likely that he has no pupils' interests at heart, and is there to collect a pay-check, and nothing more.
If anything, the issue here is that people who really should not be teachers, are.
I was unaware that in Florida it doesn't work like this. I hope for the kids sake then that he gets a slap on the wrist and realizes just how lucky he was not to get the book thrown at him and that it was only by the grace of the judge's goodwill that he got lucky... if the judge had been having a bad day, he could equally have had the book thrown at him.
That depends on her perspective. Perhaps she too is at the end of her rope with a troublesome child and perhaps this is her way of saying enough is enough. You've been warned, suspended and now the police are involved. If you're big boy enough to think you can keep breaking the rules despite our best efforts to keep you safe and protect you from the consequences of your actions, then you're big boy enough to deal with the real world consequences of your actions. Please Mr. Reporter, feel free to use our names in the hope that seeing his name in print finally gets through to my kid and he learns the error of his ways - because the next step is juvenile hall and I'd prefer to keep him out of there if possible.
Short sighted? Perhaps... but some kids always tend to the wrong side of the rules. Perseverance is tough when your guidance and advice is ignored and scorned at every turn. Despite your best efforts your kid always thinks they know what's best and they can do what you want. You get to a point where they cross a line of acceptability and you have to let the kid fall and hope like hell you've instilled them with the ability to figure their own way out of it.
Only a dumb parent can convert a situation involving a charge of a crime (that was going to be dropped pre-trial) into permanent damage as this kid's name is now published permanently on the internet.
The tradeoff is insane. The newspaper should NOT have published the kid's name.
So you're going to charge teenagers with crimes based on "what they might have done" now? A bit minority report, don't ya think? This statement standing alone is a huge concern for civil liberties. Arresting someone and charging them for one crime based on your opinion of "what they might have done" seems remarkably heavy handed.
But who knows what this kid is like, perhaps he was a little hellion making this teacher's life a nightmare [was the teacher gay? homophobic? I don't know the back story here] and this was just the straw that broke the camels back? Eventually we all snap when pushed and kids know how to push your buttons better than anyone. Perhaps he needed be kept in check and have his boundaries enforced to reset his notion of what is and isn't acceptable conduct. But equally... a felony for a [hopefully harmless] prank that is common practice in I.T. environments around the world, that's a bit weak.
At least he's only a kid and it'll be sealed on his 18th birthday. However, it'll be attached to his school record and follow him around like a bad smell until he leaves academia. So I guess he'll learn his lesson... all be it a bitter consequence to what amounted to something largely harmless.