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Vainglorious Coward writes:
Polygraph "expert" Bruce Burgess who has worked with several trashTV shows has received a suspended sentence for lying to police about a traffic offense. Burgess, whose website promises "testing your honesty in the only way possible" pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice after lying about being the driver recorded by a speed camera. It appears that good old-fashioned coppering is what broke the case, rather than any technological chicanery, with the police officer commenting "my advice is — put your hands up at the first opportunity"
7308526
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Vainglorious Coward writes:
When UK hacker and Asperger's sufferer Gray MacKinnon lost the judicial review of his case it seemed likely that he would be extradited to the US to face charges of hacking almost a hundred systems causing $700,000 worth of damage. Today the UK home secretary rejected his last-ditch attempt to avoid extradition adding that the "his extradition to the United States must proceed forthwith". McKinnon's relatives are expressing concerns for his heatlh, with his lawyer going so far as to claim that extradition would make the 43-year old's death "virtually certain".
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Vainglorious Coward writes:
Reality continues to catch up with Nineteen Eighty-Four with the announcement of the development of a brain scanner that can read a person's intentions. 'It's like shining a torch around, looking for writing on a wall,' said the leader of the project, Professor John-Dylan Haynes . Demonstrating his own mastery of doublethink, Haynes continued 'We see the danger that this might become compulsory one day, but we have to be aware that if we prohibit it, we are also denying people who aren't going to commit any crime the possibility of proving their innocence.'
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Vainglorious Coward writes:
In the UK, a man has been sentenced to three years in prison for posting inflammatory messages to a website. Pleading guilty to inciting racial hatred on a site dedicated to the memory of a murdered black teenager, the 30-year old accused stated that he was not racist, and had intended to stir up an argument on the website, but did not believe in what he had written. The defending lawyer described her client as "isolated and living in a fantasy world, spending hours on his computer in his room where his persona could be as he made it, good or bad."
Criminalising inciteful behavior is one thing, but three years for six messages seems a stiffer penalty than he might have received if he'd actually physically assaulted somebody.
