Does Hacking Grades Warrant 20 Years in Jail? 455
While there have been many students who decided they would rather change their grades than come by them the usual way, the punishments for the most part have been pretty reasonable. However, the latest chapter in this type of behavior finds two culprits facing a $250,000 fine and 20 years in jail based on the number of charges leveled against them. "The guys have been charged with "unauthorized computer access, identity theft, conspiracy, and wire fraud." Obviously, these guys did a bad thing, but it's hard to see how the possible sentence matches with the crime. Of course, it seems unlikely that any judge would give them the maximum sentence, but even hearing that it's possible just for changing your grades seems ridiculous."
Stupid link to another blog (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's the article at InforWorld. [infoworld.com]
Where I once worked we had a couple of student workers change their own grades, one caught after she had been accepted at University of Michigan, for which she was undoubtably given a right boot in the arse from them after we notified them she had changed her grade. She may well have displaced the next student in line, who was now elsewhere or changed majors as a result of not being accepted. Certain schools only take so many into a programme each year.
The consequences of changing grades can be dire. How about someone receiveing an engineering degree who doesn't really have the solid math background required, but had a friend who worked in the college records office.
We also sacked a student who changed her grades so she could continue to receive financial aid. Hurts nobody, right? Wrong. How about the student who deserved it but all the money in the scholarship fund was given to others, including the one who falsified records.
I, too, doubt the judge would make an example of them. It will probably be a fine and some community service, along with the stain on their records for being convicted of a crime, which would doubtfully make a positive impression upon prospective employers, unless Enron and Arthur Anderson were still in business.
As to this article, Seems a bit of a "slow news day" post. Why not something about how Martial Law in Pakistan has resulted in severed internet connections and how people might be coping.
Fairer (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Stupid link to another blog (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, the date on the other blog post was the day before my source, so it might have been that there were many submissions and my summary of the story was judged the best, but ScuttleMonkey judged the other blog the best/earliest example of the story, thus changing my TFA link. Or it might be that ScuttleMonkey changed the link for more nefarious reasons.
Re:Confusing The Issue (Score:5, Interesting)
So you don't think that the unauthorized access to the secretary's office with a stolen key would be charged as breaking and entering? That the stealing the key for the purpose of loaning it out for a fee wouldn't add additional counts of accessory to burglary, aiding and abetting, etc. They wouldn't tack on conspiracy, vandalism, fraud, and whatever else they thought they could make stick?
And when you tallied up all the maximum sentences for all those crimes, wouldn't they be in the neightborhood of 20 years?
Hmmm?
Re:Confusing The Issue (Score:1, Interesting)
For the most part grades are not written in pencil so a change would be more obvious and require the teacher to initial the change. Or in the case of file systems the teacher needs to login using his/her credentials to make a change.
In an earlier time.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Confusing The Issue (Score:3, Interesting)
Plus, if you go back and watch again, the graphics are all ASCII graphics and are printed out to the screen at a believable bitrate. They're only vector graphics once in NORAD.
(And at the risk of aging myself, I had one during that similar era and it wasn't uncommon to see early BBS systems with ASCII graphics in the 81/82 timeframe -- and right around that time you did see systems like ReGIS showing up that would go graphics over slow connections, although I think ReGIS in particular was maybe 4-5 years later than that)
They did a far more realistic job with that stuff than I think you even remember. Its worth going back and watching it again if its been a while.
Re:Confusing The Issue (Score:5, Interesting)
It does sound like such a tiny thing to go to prison for.. so you have the password to a server that tracks school grades so what? But because such a staggering amount of America's financial security is invested in insecure computer networks, they have to have extreme max penalties for hacking law violations- there have [wikipedia.org] been [wikipedia.org] hackers who caused millions in damages, and that's why the max penalties are so high- but the actual penalties are lower.. this 15 year old kid [wikipedia.org] hacked the department of defense in 1999 and only recieved 6 months in prision (because he violated his house-arrest parole). Of course the system does sometimes fail [wikipedia.org] but for the most part things are in place to allow a fair judge to hand down a fair sentence.
On to the part that I'm posting AC for, and why I'm replying to this particular parent.. when I was 17 I successfully got the highest-level access on my whole university's network (though I didn't even know it at the time). My friends ratted me out and I faced these charges and their terrifying max sentences.. but when the investigators found out that I hadn't actually done anything at all with it, and that in fact it was just on a disk forgotten under my bed for 3 weeks before they found me, they didn't even press charges! It was truly a case of: as you said.. other areas of law like copyright law and intellectual property need to be rewritten for the internet age but I think they've done a pretty good job setting things up for hacking legislation.