Cable Modem Hacker Gets 3 Years in Prison > The Greedy Hacker

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Re: The Greedy Hacker

Actually, I think the court got it right. How do you get a freedom of speech argument out of this?

Historically the mail and wire fraud stautes have been given broad latitude in terms of scope. It's kind of like how the commerce clause is used (albeit the CC is given much broader latitude) for regulating things that don't seem commerce related on their face.
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So it is a tax! Now what do you say, you lying sack of crap? Or would you prefer I just hand over my entire check, jackass?

Because Harris exercised free speech in providing information only to his customers through books, online tutorials, and forum posts.

He did not commit any of the acts (or even charged with that).
I also dont think they even prosecuted those that actually committed the acts, they went for the 1 guy who was not doing anything.

If this ruling is not overturned then every gun manufacture is screwed, any manufacture that makes something that could be used for illegal activity, and anyone that writes a book or forum post that could help someone do something illegal is screwed.
This ruling violates the guys right to free speech.

They literally based justification of the wire fraud law on twisting interpretation of previous rulings as the law just does not apply.
The previous rulings are not in the same context as what Harris did, especially if you know what a computer is.
Unfortunately this is one of those cases where you have a computer illiterate jury convicted a person of something that was not true.

In the US you dont actually have to commit a crime, you only need to a prosecutor to convince a jury you did.
The prosecutor knows when he has real evidence and knows when he is bullshitting. The sad part is a lot of dick hole prosecutors have no conscience as they could care less of getting someone convicted with bullshit evidence like in this case.

If it is not overturned on appeal, then the supreme court will overturn the application of wire fraud to a situation of someone just selling things in accordance with free speech.
I dont think the prosecutors or courts will want this to go to the supreme court as they know they will lose which will instantly stop them for misinterpreting the wire fraud laws in the future.
So they will reduce the sentence at the appeal to "no jail time" to get Harris to not appeal again to the supreme court.
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...brought to you by Carl's Jr.

So that's how it works, huh?

I don't want to debate this to be honest. But you do realize that freedom of speech is not absolute and is subject to time, place and manner restrictions. And that there are many things that can be used for illegal purposes but can also be used for legal purposes. In those cases the harms and benefits are weighed.

This is not a Supreme court type case. They don't just take any silly old case. This will never be granted cert.
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So it is a tax! Now what do you say, you lying sack of crap? Or would you prefer I just hand over my entire paycheck, jackass?

A vague law that infringes on free speech, IS the kind of cases they hear. This argument says "supreme court" all over it.

The supreme court won't rule directly on the case, but they will rule on the argument of the case that the application of wire fraud to a situation of someone just selling things in accordance with free speech, but that person is not committing the illegal acts.

The courts and prosecutor will do everything to avoid going to the supreme court to ruin future use of a vague law, so on appeal I see him getting no jail time to shut him up.
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...brought to you by Carl's Jr.

As you wish. Debating this stuff with non-lawyers doesn't lead to anything good. I'm out.

reply to r81984

That is why we should not get into the game of saying what devices/texts that can be used for criminal activity are legal and what are not.
They all should be legal per the constitution, but if someone uses it for crime only the user should be prosecuted, not the manufacture or author.

The manufacture or author is not an accomplice or many industries can be shut down. The ruling is a dangerous ruling that opens up liability to authors and manufacturers.
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...brought to you by Carl's Jr.

In any case, rocket launchers, hand grenades, poison gas, flamethrowers aren't covered by the First Amendment.
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Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum

reply to r81984
These are all valid points but...

When a company like Microsoft developed Windows they know its not 100% secure. It will have exploits. No system is 100% secure. What happens and what makes something illegal is intentionally breaching a security measure put in place.

What you are saying basically is if a hacker hacks into a bank and transfers funds into a private account for his/her personal gain its perfectly okay. Because the bank should have measures in place to know about it and either stop or reverse what just took place with no punishment to the hacker that hacked their way through the already secure measures already in place. That makes a lot of sense.

There have been arguments over using an "open" wifi network setup by a residential customer saying its illegal. Thats like leaving the front door open on a house and not expecting anyone to come in and raid the fridge or any other goodies in the house.

I do agree with the free speech claim. But he did exploit the network of his cable company and made it available to everyone. That might be what he is getting the book thrown at him for.

Just my 2 cents

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to be fair, rocket launchers are fun as hell to shoot off. I'm all for legalizing rocket launchers for recreation.

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reply to r81984
But I still make the argument that if the cable modem is leased to a subscriber that modem does belong to the cable company. Modifying it is against company policy and illegal.

Purchasing a separate modem is a completely different story however. But it is the intentional act of connecting it to the already active cable line by paying for a subscription service.

True, MAC address filtering is not security. The cable network worked fine if everyone used their company owned or customer modem as the cable company originally intended.

Basically these hacked modems are designed to clone a MAC or use a MAC that has not been provision on the cable network and the CMTS allows it on the network to get internet connectivity.

There are other functions in the modem designed to get around BPI and certificates which authenticate modems for what they really should be as well as what config file it should be running.

Again, I have not read the book but I have an idea of who Ryan Harris is or was. He made it easy for anyone really to exploit the system that was put in place by the cable providers which was controlled by a device on customer property (but not necessarily owned by them in all cases). He did this with techniques he found and made it available for a price. That is really what the industry is all up in arms about.

Are they right, is he right? Opinions will vary but the law is incredibly twisted.

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