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Randal Schwartz's Charges Expunged
Journal written by doom (14564) and posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Mar 01, 2007 09:35 PM
from the about-time dept.
from the about-time dept.
After 13 years, Randal Schwartz has had his conviction expunged. In effect, legally it never happened.
If you haven't heard about this one before, my take is that as a contractor at Intel, Randal did some over-zealous white-hat cracking free-of-charge; this embarrassed some people in management (he pointed out that their passwords were terrible) and management then chose to embarrass themselves further by having him convicted of a felony under an 'anti-hacking' law. More info can be had from the Friends of Randal Schwartz.
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Congratulations (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Congratulations (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Congratulations (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The whole point about expungement is that the court thinks you were guilty but is letting you off anyway because you've filled certain statutory criteria.
The most usual criterion (other than turning 18) is the passage of time.
This isn't justice delayed. The delay is the whole point. The court still thinks he's guilty but is letting him off anyway.
This means he can stop fighting REGARDLESS on whether or not the justice system thinks he was gui
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Congratulations (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, maybe, but what I always find interesting in cases like this is: How much money did it cost?
All too often, when the "little guy" wins, he's also bankrupt.
Anyone know what the bill was for all this legal action?
Parent
Similar to SCO vs IBM (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
What did you do, beat someone to death with a laptop?
Re:Congratulations (Score:5, Informative)
Objection! Assumes facts not in evidence, your honor!
Sustained.
Parent
Re:Congratulations (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Its about damned time this was cleared. (Score:5, Insightful)
--
Cheers Gene
Re:Its about damned time this was cleared. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
the terrible thing about character assassination (Score:3, Interesting)
The terrible thing about character assassination is that the event never had to happen. All you have to do is start a rumor about travel expenses and the victim is as good as blacklisted at big dumb companies where lip service is given to leadership but obedience and conformity are valued above all else.
Legally Never Happened (Score:5, Insightful)
And all the effects can never be erased.
For example any "lists" he's been added to over the last 13 years will not be updated to reflect his new 'never was a criminal' status. Be it terrorist watch lists, no fly lists, FBI persons of interest list, or whatever else, not to mention his prints will remain in the system, etc, etc.
Re:Legally Never Happened (Score:5, Funny)
@files = ("terrorist_watch_list.txt", "no_fly.doc", "fbi_persons_of_interest_list.ppt");
foreach $file (@files) {
unlink($file);
}
Parent
Re:Legally Never Happened (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, actually, this program doesn't do the right thing. Surely the right thing to do is not to delete the files but to remove Randall's name from them. Some people deserve to be on those lists.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
something like
map({open IN, "<$_";open OUT, ">$_.tmp";foreach $line(<IN>){ $line=~s/Randal Schwartz/Bill Gates/i; print OUT $line; }close IN; close OUT;rename($_.tmp,$_)},["terrorist_watch_list.txt" , "no_fly.doc", "fbi_persons_of_interest_list.ppt"]);
Assuming of course, his name is in plaintext in the doc and ppt files... otherwise, just need to pass it to something that can filter those to text and back.
Tm
Ditto; FBI can still see it (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically it means he can tell a police officer he's never been arrested and doesn't need to disclose it on a non-clearance employment application or any "low grade" background check like rentin an apartment.
With that out of the way, Randal has helped me out on comp.lang.perl (right before it went moderated) so
Parent
Re:Ditto; FBI can still see it (Score:5, Informative)
A. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, and
B. The Oregon State Police, and
C. The Oregon State Corrections Division, and
D. The Arresting Agency, Portland Police Bureau.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Ditto; FBI can still see it (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who has gone through a security background check, worked at Intel and read the decision of the appeals court: I would be fairly surprised if Randal was able to get a security clearance even even if no conviction had occurred. The undisputed portions of the case suggest that Randal lacked an ethical barrier between him and either his curiosity about things for which he did not have access or his desire to gain respect by demonstrating his skill. This was 13 years ago maybe he has changed, I don't know.
Whether his intentions at the time were noble or not: he logged onto a system for which he knew his account should have been deleted; he ran a gate program on the system (after previously being told to stop running a gate on other systems); he cracked one of the passwords to someone with higher access on the system; he then logged on to the system using the cracked user's account; he transferred the password file to another machine; he ran crack on this other machine; he turned up 35 weak passwords; he said nothing; he left for a while to teach a class; he came back; he still said nothing; he re-ran crack on another faster machine (this is apparently what eventually got him caught).
Randal claims he did all this to re-gain respect at Intel's supercomputer division. I have no reason to doubt this is honest. The fact that he so freely gave so much information to the police suggests to me that he was trying to convey that he had no intention of harming Intel's business. However it is very, very bad judgment. Now if you were the agent assigned to his security background check, looking to see if his character demonstrates a likelihood of compromising sensitive information, even unintentionally, what would you think?
Parent
Re:Ditto; FBI can still see it (Score:5, Insightful)
I was once working as an engineer at a secure facility, where one of my friends explained to me that he had never actually planned on working there. He figured he'd let them pay them while the background check was in progress, but never expected to actually be cleared (the interview with the Feds went something like Q: "So what about all these hits of acid they found in your refrigerator?", A: "Well, they were there.")
But they did indeed give him a clearence, I would infer because they concluded he wasn't vulnerable to blackmail on the point, and so on.
And I have to say that the opinion of "someone who has gone through a security check" isn't terribly authoritative, unless you were turned down for having a similar background to Randal's.
Parent
Depends on the check - and why they need you (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Legally Never Happened (Score:5, Informative)
I never lost my right to vote. Only four states do that, not Oregon.
I can probably still get out of jury duty, since I now have a bias about criminal convictions. {grin}
I can't possess firearms yet. I have to apply to the BATF separately. I plan on doing that, but it's not yet in progress.
Parent
Re:Legally Never Happened (Score:4, Insightful)
Having personally sufferred through a miscarraige of justice, you still don't don't see the point of the jury.
And people wonder what's wrong with the legal system these days.
Parent
an unfortunate encounter (Score:2, Interesting)
Congratulations Mr. Schwartz.
Whither $68k? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Whither $68k? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the 'controversial' pardons are granted the last day of office, so there is not enough data to compare the current president and former. Report back in 2008 when there is more data.
Parent
Re:Whither $68k? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
If you're going to blow the whistle (Score:4, Funny)
Don't touch the CD's with your fingers.
Destroy the CD burner when you're done.
Buy the CD burner secondhand at a garage sale. Pay cash.
Steal the CDs from a college student.
Don't leave the CD in a place where there's a camera.
What else. Help me out here.
Rely on someone else to find the data and spread it around. No need to get yourself into trouble. Have some Common Sense. Do you know what I am speaking of?
Re:If you're going to blow the whistle (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
In other news... (Score:3, Funny)
In other news:
Re: (Score:2)
-nB
Laugh, it's a joke (and I voted for the other, other guy anyway!)
Expungement is the sealing of a criminal record (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Expungement is the sealing of a criminal record (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed, a pardon cannot become effective unless you admit to wrongdoing - then you are "forgiven" and the penalty is dropped.
In this case, he could argue that he never broke the law to begin with, because he was (albeit overzealeously) exposing security issues to his own employer. So accepting a pardon would be saying, "Yeah, I did break the law, sorry." In this case, he does not have to admit wrongdoing. In this case, Randall is instead being told, "Yeah, you didn't break the law, sorry."
Honestly every one who knows Randall probably knows about this legal blemish, and probably don't care about it.
Parent
Moral Of Story: CYA (Score:4, Insightful)
The independent contractor shall...
The in-house employee shall...
May not seem a good use of time, unless you consider the value of staying out of the criminal legal system.
Re:Moral Of Story: CYA (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the real moral of this story, and others like it, is simple:
The bottom line is that corporate management doesn't give a shit about the actual security of their system. They only care about the illusion of security, and they'll bring their full wrath against anyone who dares shatter that illusion.
Let them have their illusion. If they ever get seriously 0wn3d, as is likely (it's only a matter of time), you can laugh your ass off at them, because it'll be evil people getting the shaft from other evil people. But today there is nothing but a whole lot of pain for the good guys in the world. Welcome to the real world, where evil usually wins in the end thanks to the world's inherent tendency towards chaos. You can try to fight it if you want, but you'll probably lose, so why bother? You're probably better off just keeping your own affairs in order and letting the others get fucked up the ass for their stupidity.
Parent
What about Chip? (Score:4, Informative)
How's that for revisionist history? (Score:5, Insightful)
- His position at Intel was not involved in security, intrusion detection, or other areas that might actually call for "white hat hacking" as part of the job function. He was a contractor, not an Intel employee, which I'm sure made Intel even more concerned about his security violations.
- He had installed backdoors on Intel machines, which allowed him to access the Intel network from outside the company.
- He took passwd files and ran cracking tools against them to break other users passwords.
- Not only was he cracking password files from Intel organizations, he was using Intel systems to crack password files from other companies, including O'Reilly and Associates.
See this writeup [mit.edu] for information from the person involved in shutting him down.
Whether this was "white hat" hacking could be debated. In any case, it was fucking stupid. Bypassing network security for an inbound back door?!? Cracking password files from other companies on Intel computers?!? These are just stupid moves, which anyone should expect to get fired for doing.
Re:How's that for revisionist history? (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong, I was a systems and network administrator. According to job description, that's part of the job.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You'd already been reprimanded for a security violation of the SSD facility after your contract there had expired. You were using resources (on a machine you had been told not to use) to crack the passwords of not only an Intel facility you no longer worked at, but also another company. You installed a backdoor that while you may argue it was secure, allowed external access to the Intel network without having approval to do so. Every employer I have worked at would look on these unauthorised actions as gros
Re:How's that for revisionist history? (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean just look at the fine to revenue ratios. And who got a criminal record because they were involved in the sony rootkit thing?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
By your own argument he was therefore absolutely responsible for the breach of security on the network that he himself caused. And yes, it was a breach, installing a backdoor for offsight access without permission - or at the very least notification to IT - is a breach of security.
Re:How's that for revisionist history? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Great news (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)