Randal Schwartz's Charges Expunged

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.

Re:Whither $68k?

[Score Whore]

No. He got his record cleared. Ie. he can apply for jobs of a sensitive nature. They haven't declared him innocent. Jesus people, get a clue. He was convicted of a crime. He was punished. Now he's received a pardon after his sentence was fulfilled. It's fairly common at the state level. At the federal level, it depends on the president. Clinton was fairly liberal with his pardons. Bush is tight with his. Whoop dee do.

Expungement is the sealing of a criminal record

[viking80]

Expungement is the sealing of a criminal record so it is not publicly available. The consequence might be that you can deny you have a criminal record, but it is quite different from a pardon, which is forgiveness of a crime and the penalty associated with it.

Re:Ditto; FBI can still see it

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a PDF file linked on the http://www.lightlink.com/spacenka/fors/ [lightlink.com]Friends of Randal Schwartz site states:

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the clerk of the Court shall forward a certified copy of this Order to all law enforcement agencies mentioned in the Court's file, including the following:
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.

So the FBI can't use it against him. The PDF file is a copy of the expungement order from the court.

Re:Expungement is the sealing of a criminal record

[humphrm]

but it is quite different from a pardon, which is forgiveness of a crime and the penalty associated with it.

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.

Re:Who's Randal Schwartz

[Anonymous Coward]

This charming example [oreilly.com] of Perl programming appeared in the first two editions of Schwartz's book "Learning Perl", published by O'Reilly. It serves as an introduction to Mr. Schwartz as well. I kinda wished they'd left it as an appendix to the book, which is now in its fourth edition.

What about Chip?

[nuzak]

Whatever happened to Chip Salzenberg [slashdot.org]? He seems to have pretty much vanished since mid-2006.

Re:If you're going to blow the whistle

[Matt Perry]

I didn't realise this was blowing the whistle; I thought it was part of any good IT department employees job. That is to ensure all passwords, more so management passwords, are as secure as possible.

He wasn't an employee of Intel. He was a contractor hired to do a specific job which wasn't checking for password security.

Great news

[mgiuca]

That's great. Coincidentally enough, I just became aware of Randall Schwartz the other day when I listened to the FLOSS Weekly [www.twit.tv] podcast where they interviewed him. It was a good listen (as always) - he talks about this case if anyone's interested.

Re:Ditto; FBI can still see it

[bladesjester]

A lot of the time, agencies (and even the courts) don't follow expunge orders. They conviniently "forget", so you have to hire a lawyer to follow up and make sure the court order was actually followed.

Re:Whither $68k?

[merlyn]

First, the amount in dispute was less than $5K. Second, the lower court just reaffirmed what they said before. In other words, no net change. So yes, I still paid roughly $68K in restitution, at the end of the day.

Re:How's that for revisionist history?

[merlyn]

"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.".

Wrong, I was a systems and network administrator. According to job description, that's part of the job.

Re:Congratulations

[merlyn]

"He installed backdoors at 3 companies"

Objection! Assumes facts not in evidence, your honor!

Sustained.

Re:How's that for revisionist history?

[Anonymous Coward]

He was a contractor, not an Intel employee

At Intel, the distinction doesn't even meet IRS standards. An Intel contractor answers an add by mailing their resume to an Intel address. They visit the Intel facility for their job interview. They are hired exclusively for the Intel job. They report directly to Intel personnel. Intel personnel report directly to them. They occupy Intel space and use 100% Intel facilities. Their facility badges may not differ from employee badges. They eat Intel food. They travel with their Intel coworkers on business trips, booked by Intel's agents. In many cases, the coworkers with whom they work most closely don't even realize they are not an actual Intel employee.

They differ from employees in their benefits package and the name on their paychecks.

Re:Legally Never Happened

[merlyn]

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.

Re:How's that for revisionist history?

[merlyn]

The password was "pre$ident". Yes, president, with the s changed to a dollar sign. Which "crack" found.