Cisco, US DOJ Fire Another Salvo At Peter Adekeye 94
theodp writes "Citing the widespread practice of sharing passwords for expediency's sake, Cisco's Chief Security Officer proclaimed in 2007 that people 'need to be held accountable for their risk-taking,' noting that CEO John Chambers drives home the point that 'information security is everybody's responsibility' at Cisco. But instead of accepting responsibility after a Cisco employee provided his ID and password to ex-Cisco engineer Peter Alfred-Adekeye, the networking giant sic'ed the Feds on Adekeye, who was slapped with a five-count indictment by a Federal grand jury last week. Adekeye's crime, according to the Court filing, was using the login credentials the Cisco employee provided him with 'in excess of the specific use granted by the Cisco employee.' For his five downloads of different versions of Cisco IOS — four of which were launched within a 15-minute period in 2006 — the government is seeking a penalty of 5 years imprisonment for Adekeye, a $250K fine, and 3 years supervised release. It's the latest salvo fired in the war Cisco and US prosecutors have waged against Adekeye since he filed an antitrust suit against Cisco in December 2008."
same bullshit law used against Drake and Manning (Score:5, Insightful)
this is the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which basically makes it a Federal Crime to 'do anything we dont like, with a computer'.
it is overly broad and probably unconstitutional.
that is, if someone would challenge it's constitutionality in court.
if you dont know about the Thomas Drake case, google it
same for the specific counts against Manning (i.e. the 'collateral murder' video, well, they are trying to get him on the exact same paragraph here, 18 usc 1030 a 2)
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Summary: Man penetrates corporate network with hot credentials, man copies software from illegally penetrated network, man complains when law enforcement gets involved.
Not only that, but he was let into the network to recommend his company become a preferred partner of Cisco. Why he decided to d/l software he was not authorized to possess is beyond me, but you would think he would realize that was likely to piss off Cisco.
There is more to this story than meets the eye; Cisco would not bother to do this unless there was something else at stake. My guess is there was some concern about how he planned to use the information he had gotten; or over the initial establishment of his company.
Of course, at /. big corporation bad is the general response...