Uncle Sam and Ma Bell go wayyy back if you know what I mean. You don't sass the latter unless you are ready to deal with the former in a very bad mood.
They did switch from "Engaged" to "It's complicated" a while back; but that part didn't change...
Claiming that he wanted to help AT&T improve its security, he wrote a computer script to extract the data from AT&T and then went public with the information.
THAT'S the problem. Had he done this, then only sent the data to AT&T rather than publicly releasing it, they likely would be thanking him rather than trying to send him to the pokey.
It's that pesky "went public with the information" part that screwed him up.
AT&T illegally gives the DOJ your phone calls, emails, messages, and other personal information in an up-to-the-second interface, and when some kid notices a security flaw the same DOJ comes after him? The public that puts up with this deserves to be treated this way.
"We believe what we did was ethical," Auernheimer told Computerworld last June. "What we did was right."
The federal prosecutor disagrees. If you follow the link in TFA, you'll find:
Rather than contact AT&T directly with what they'd uncovered, Goatse [Security] tipped off an unnamed third party, who in turn reported the design flaw to AT&T. Goatse took that route, Auernheimer said, to prevent AT&T from preventing the group from publicizing the e-mail address exposure.
The federal prosecutor disagrees. If you follow the link in TFA, you'll find:
So its like he claims: "I wanted to point out your security failures, so I opened your safe". And the federal prosecutor says: "You actually opened the safe and took the money out". While the first is possibly illegal, but let's us argue that no harm was actually done, the second is pure and simply theft.
They did switch from "Engaged" to "It's complicated" a while back; but that part didn't change...
That's not the problem.
Claiming that he wanted to help AT&T improve its security, he wrote a computer script to extract the data from AT&T and then went public with the information.
THAT'S the problem. Had he done this, then only sent the data to AT&T rather than publicly releasing it, they likely would be thanking him rather than trying to send him to the pokey.
It's that pesky "went public with the information" part that screwed him up.
AT&T illegally gives the DOJ your phone calls, emails, messages, and other personal information in an up-to-the-second interface, and when some kid notices a security flaw the same DOJ comes after him? The public that puts up with this deserves to be treated this way.
The federal prosecutor disagrees. If you follow the link in TFA, you'll find:
So, they found a flaw,
The federal prosecutor disagrees. If you follow the link in TFA, you'll find:
So its like he claims: "I wanted to point out your security failures, so I opened your safe". And the federal prosecutor says: "You actually opened the safe and took the money out". While the first is possibly illegal, but let's us argue that no harm was actually done, the second is pure and simply theft.