It's a fact no matter how you try to weasel out of it: "enhanced interrogation" is actually torture. Which doing so in a time of war is a war crime. The stuff Japanese people were sentenced to death for shortly after their trials at the end of World War II.

And therein lies the problem. Yahoo! isn't relevant any longer. I don't even know the last time I even thought of it.

Waiting for my cheque to implement an entire alternate back-end in 3.. 2.. 1..

Enjoy your police state creep you have going on there. Next thing you know you'll be arrested for climbing a tree or something. No, nothing to see here citizen.

It wasn't cool at all. I did it because I could, not because I understood the potential consequences. Which is the same case here. But, hey, who cares if a person's life is ruined? Especially over something so fucking petty.

"Damaging" a computer? Like he took a sledgehammer to it? Or just changed some information in a content management system? Something that has version control to roll back changes. "Damaging" sounds better in court though I guess - especially when the computer is "protected." Weasel words.

Lock everyone up and throw away the key is the American way.

The actual crime was a defacement, credentials were just the vehicle. The 1984 law itself does not see the distinction between a prank and actual serious intrusions.

The thing is that the 1984 law in question is not just. It was written for people stealing proprietary information off of networks and such. Not a simple defacement, and the associated ruining of his entire life for a stupid prank.

25 years ago, when I was in high school, I hacked the computer network, got access to the administrative account and then changed it - locking out, completely, the actual administrators. The next day I was pulled out of class and brought to the principles office. They said "give us the password and you go back to class and that is the end or we expel you (and then they'd have to format and build the network back up)." I gave them the password and went back to class, end of story. Imagine if that was today, I'd be royally fucked.

Trials are supposed to be tried on the basis of actual events. If you start punishing people for potential damages then where does it end? I could have shot someone today, I was in a really pissy mood, should I be facing a potential 25 year stint in the klink?

And every childish prank has to be met with no mercy.

Justice.

The punishment should fit the crime, his trial should have been based on the actual events and not some nebulous "possibilities." In general, the USA has been leaning more and more to an authoritarian stance. Don't you think that the pendulum should swing back towards the middle a bit? After all, prisons are all sitting at three times capacity now. That's not a problem though. It was a non-violent crime that resulted in a petty defacement and that is what should have been judged.

"What if he had.." He didn't. If he did that would have been a different trial.

His "crime" was the equivalent of spraying graffiti on a wall - if the conviction was actually true. Two years in PITA for a headline that lasted 40 minutes? Just "because it's done on a computer" does not automatically turn what should be a $100 fine into 730 possible days to be raped.