Alleged eBay Hacker Goofs up and Goes to Jail

juliao writes "SecurityFocus is reporting that alleged eBay hacker Jerome Heckenkamp was jailed after his first solo court appearance." It's pretty funny actually, stuff like challenging the indictment on the grounds that they typed his name in all capital letters, demanding to immediately testify (even tho they were only there to schedule the trial), threatening the judge and so on. He would know better if he watched a couple episodes of Law & Order. Note that I base all court proceedings on the wisdom of Sam Watterston.

I weep for the future

[AlexDeGruven]

I shudder at the complete lack of true intelligence this person appears to have. At the very lease, a modicum of knowledge about the legal system and the way it works probably would have saved him a large amount of problems. But, he proceeded to go into the courtroom with a verbal loaded gun and empty it's entire contents directly into his foot.

And this is someone who's supposed to be considered intelligent?

Hmmmm???

[BoyPlankton]

In a telephone interview after the appearance, Heckenkamp's father, Thomas Heckenkamp, said his son is only trying to protect his rights . "They've overstepped their bounds, and they're keeping him from defending himself," he said.

I wish the article went into more detail about this statement. I don't understand why the father feels that they are keeping him from being able to defend himself. He's getting his day in court and all. It appears to me that he's doing everything he can to screw up the trial instead of taking it seriously.

QMail? Qualcomm?

[fruey]

Perhaps he would not even be in this mess if he did not tell Qualcomm. ( The company who owns the secure mail deamon Qmail) After all they were the ones who went to the FBI after machines were getting owned with a 0-day exploit for qpop. In his post to BugTraq he did say "I found this overflow myself earlier this month. Seems someone else recently found it before Qualcomm was able to issue a patch." But lets not be naive, he is a smart kid.

Isn't Qmail open source, and Qpopper what he is talking about really?

Qmail, as I understood it, has NEVER been hacked.

Re:I weep for the future

[Garfunkel]

I'm not sure that intelligence has anything to do with it. I think it's more of an issue of not really caring what's happening, or maybe just not understanding. Who knows, the guy is obviously a nut, but that doesn't mean he can't be a computer genious at the same time. (Note, that I can't say for sure whether he is a geniour or not, but he surely makes some bad decisions, but even intelligent people make bad life decisions).

Easy Way Out

[stoolpigeon]

Just to throw out a different spin on this, as everyone seems just to happy to jump on the bandwagon.

There is a good chance that he is acting out because he has realised that he is screwed. He has probably talked to his lawyers and realised that no one is really going to be able to help him.

People have posted "he'll get his day in court", but he probably already realises that on that day they will just go through the motions of convicting him.

caged animals can act funny.

.

Good background article

[Covener]

[google.com]
google cache of siliconvalley.com piece

Home-schooled than masters in CS by age 19... lots of interesting stuff.

Truth of life

[Eric Damron]

Being that I work in a building full of lawyers and judges, I can tell you that they are just people too. You can "rub them the wrong way."

It sounds to me like this kid went in with no understanding of law and wanted to control the courtroom. This WOULD rub the judge the wrong way.

I have a friend whom, when he was young, was the same way. Once he got pulled over on a traffic violation and during the course of his conversation with the patrol officer he said: "Just how stupid do you think I think you are!"

As my friend learned, when dealing with people in authority, it is better to show respect and to play by their rules. Just a truth of life.

Re:That will make the judge go easier on you

[renehollan]

I, for one think that judges should be personally liable when they err, particularly when it causes suffering to parties wrongly convicted and those that depend on them (for income, etc.). Just what the punishment for judicial error should be is a matter for debate, of course, and honest mistakes should not be treated as harshly as gross negligence, but the idea that judges are somehow not answerable to the law, or not answerable enough bothers me.

Whether that's the case here is, of course, another story, but I've become increasingly distrustful of government and law "enforcement".

I am a vocal critic of abuses of state power, engage in minor civil disobedience myself (I used a deCSS-derived program to watch DVDs that I bought on a GNU/Linux computer because I neither want to spend the money on Windows® nor trust it to be spyware-free), and fully expect to wind up in prison someday for my thoughts, when I see crap like this. I can not just shut up and live a lie.

If anything should have the t's crossed and the i's dotted, it's the criminal justice process, from investigation, arrest, prosecution, to conviction. The defendants apparent folly in angering the judge does not change this.

Idiot legal arguments: capitalized name

[Brian See]

Heckencamp sounds like he's read the standard tax evader propaganda. These are the people that argue in tax court that the Sixteenth Amendment (income tax) was never properly ratified, etc.

A good link is http://www.adl.org/mwd/suss4.htm [adl.org], which collects cases smacking down defendants who, like Heckencamp, have raised an objection to their name printed in all caps. That argument is discussed in the same breath as other winning arguments like objections to a fringe on the courtroom flag or the presence of an eagle on the flagpole.

Of particular relevance may be a relatively recent case from the 10th Circuit. Pasting from the linked document:
US v. M.L. Lindsay (10th Cir 7/1/99) _F3d_, 99 USTC para 50648, 84 AFTR2d 5102; (tax evader complained of "his name being in capital letters in a prior order issued by this Court and then ... makes an incorrect reference to this form of using all capital letters as being proper only in reference to corporate entities. This is an incorrect statement of the law and ... is illustrative of [his] continued harassing and frivolous behavior." and fined under Rule 11

Amen! Remember Clarence Darrow

[mikosullivan]

Clarence Darrow was one of the best defense lawyers of all time, and he knew it. So when he himself was put on trial, what did he do? He got himself a lawyer. He knew that defending yourself is stupid.

Trivia: that fact about Darrow was cited to the Supreme Court when it was considering the idea that defendents have a legel right to have a lawyer appointed and paid for on their behalf if they can't afford one themselves.

-Miko

Extreme Moderation

[rjamestaylor]

Who wasted a mod point on this? It's a Score:0 AC post that would be trashed by the system once archived. Who would be distracted by a threaded 0 Score post? Isn't there some comment at 0 or 1 that is Interesting, Insightful, Funny? Or a level 2 or higher that is overrated, flamebait, or in need of further promoting? Are all the other candidate posts moderated sufficiently and this lowly, unobtrusive post was the only option remaining? Or did the moderator have too many mod points and was trying to dump them quickly (like dot.com options)?

Oh - one other thing - it arguably was on topic. It was a direct reply to a direct reply that was itself on topic.

I'm always bemused at worthless moderating.

I actually interviewed him for a job once.

[nvts-NUTS]

I remember it quite vividly. It was about 6 months before the whole hacking incident at Los Alamos happened. After talking with him for about an hour I found him to be a very smart individual.

Working for a large company at the time they had all sorts of tests applicants had to go through. Apparently, he didn't score well enough on the tests for my bosses liking because despite my recommendation he didn't get the job.

I guess I'm kind of glad he didn't get the job.

what exactlly did he do?

[edrugtrader]

'hacked lycos' 'hacked ebay'....

what exactlly did he do? find? he didn't get my max-bids did he?!?!

Not stupid, sick

[dscottj]

Working for a national non-profit organization that advocates for the mentally ill [nami.org] for six years has given me some extra insights into how people behave when they develop a serious mental illness, go off their meds, are having a crisis, etc. No, IANAP (I Am Not a Psychiatrist), but I've seen enough folks at our annual convention wobbling off their meds to know this kid is in trouble. Classic, classic signs of serious mental illness. I only hope he gets help while he's in jail. You just can't imagine what it's like to watch a brilliant person's brain rot away.