Wired: Court Upholds Hacking Conviction of Man for Uploading Porn Pics from Work Comp

[CowboysNickster]

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/05/court-upholds-hacking-conviction-of-man-for-uploading-porn-pics-from-work-computer/

In an insane jury verdict, an Ohio court convicts a man for looking at porn on his computer at work and sentence him to 15 months in jail (later reduced). Geez, people get less time for manslaughter. Basically the court said, although Richard Wolf had permission to use the computer, visiting porn sites was beyond the employer's implied consent given for employee computer use and thus, he was guilty of computer hacking.

Since when is using your computer at work to visit even those naughty sites you oughtn't considered hacking? Against workplace policy perhaps, but a criminal offense and punishable with serious jail time? Mon Dieu! :doh: Porn may be distasteful to some but it is not illegal (excluding any donkey sex sites that may be out there ).

I think this sets a dangerous precedent at what is considered beyond the scope of implied consent. This could easily apply to any website one may visit while at work, including..... errrr, ES. You workplace hackers (aka, internet surfers) better beware.

Anyway, I think this case is just crazy.

An Ohio appellate court has upheld the felony hacking conviction of a man who was found guilty of unauthorized access for misusing his computer at work.

Richard Wolf acknowledged that his behavior was inappropriate when he used his work computer to upload nude photos of himself to an adult web site and view other photos on porn sites, but he didn’t think he should be convicted of hacking for doing so.

A jury disagreed and felt he exceeded his authorization on the computer, which the appellate court recently upheld (.pdf).

Mark Rasch, a former federal prosecutor of computer crimes, called the conviction a misuse of the computer hacking law.

“This goes to the whole concept . . . that violation of an internal policy on the use of a computer can be piggybacked to make a crime,” said Rasch, who now works as a consultant for Secure IT Experts. “His uploading of nude pictures is certainly inappropriate and something he could be terminated for, but it was perfectly legal. When you use the heavy hand of the criminal law to prosecute inappropriate behavior, it’s just an abuse of the criminal statutes.”

...Wolf was convicted on state charges for three counts: unauthorized access to a computer, a felony; theft of services in office (essentially for depriving the city of his paid services while he conducted the unauthorized activities on a city computer on city time), which is also a felony; and solicitation of prostitution, a misdemeanor.

He was sentenced to 15 months and a $5,000 fine for the two felony convictions and ordered to pay the city about $2,400 in restitution for personal business on city time. On the misdemeanor solicitation charge, he was sentenced to 60 days (to run concurrently with his other sentence) and a fine of $500. His sentence was later reduced to two and a half years in “community control.”

[PokerPacker]

hacking? people are stupid.

[Destino]

ahhh the felony for no reason.... that american is now officially second class. The bill of rights no longer applies to him. Let's get tougher on crime guys, that way more people can excluded from the bill of rights... which is odd being that it doesn't grant freedoms at all.

BTW - you realize that pretty much all of you are guilty of this? Almost no one has a job that allows the use of computers for personal reasons outside of specific times. Porn wasn't the deal breaker here.

[10fttall]

This is an utterly absurd trend. This a "gotcha" offense that can be applied basically whenever anyone feels like it. You all realize that this is stupid to the point of allowing ANYONE to make a criminal out of others. People are being prosecuted, not for breaking actual laws, but for TOS violations. Therefore, anyone's TOS is now law.

Lorrie Drew was convicted of a hacking offense for creating a phony Myspace account, since I guess Myspace TOS requires your real name. This guy is now convicted for violating his employer's acceptable usage policy.

With these prescedents, any of us could be charged with a crime if we personally insult another ES member. It's against the TOS, so if we were to post again after that, we would be commiting unauthorized access to ES computers. If you've lied about your age, watch out! If you've had a birthday and haven't changed your age, you'd better fix it, you scofflaws!

[G.A.C.O.L.B.]

ahhh the felony for no reason.... that american is now officially second class. The bill of rights no longer applies to him. Let's get tougher on crime guys, that way more people can excluded from the bill of rights... which is odd being that it doesn't grant freedoms at all.

BTW - you realize that pretty much all of you are guilty of this? Almost no one has a job that allows the use of computers for personal reasons outside of specific times. Porn wasn't the deal breaker here.

Nice post.

As a felon myself (**** it, I'm owning it now) that's probably the part that disturbs me the most. The 14 months is a travesty and a disgrace. But that will come and go. The felony however will follow and haunt this man until the day he dies.

The stripping of many of his rights is bad enough but that is just the start. It is everyone else who feels the need to get in on the punishment that will destroy him the most. For example, with my 3.8 GPA I qualified for the honor society at my school. But on the application right there in bold print "If you are a felon you are not eligible." He better have a family connection at the local Wal Mart if he hopes to get a job interview.

But hey, making it impossible for people to get an education and to work and to, you know contribue something positive to society is definitely going to prevent them from committing future crimes. :doh: At some point SOON the country needs to figure out whether the goal of the justice system is retribution or deterrence.

God help everyone if us prisoners and the felons ever put aside our petty differences and get organized. Because we're several million strong now. And that's exactly what I'm going to school for. It's only a matter of time now. (And as I've stated before, do what you will with murderers, rapists and pedis.)

But anyway, that this guy has to go through all of that because he looked at adultfriendfinder.com at work is mind blowing and absolutely disgusting.

[ACW]

Firing-worthy: :yes:

Felony-worthy? :no:

[HighOnHendrix]

The felony however will follow and haunt this man until the day he dies.

...But hey, making it impossible for people to get an education and to work and to, you know contribue something positive to society is definitely going to prevent them from committing future crimes. :doh: At some point SOON the country needs to figure out whether the goal of the justice system is retribution or deterrence.

...But anyway, that this guy has to go through all of that because he looked at adultfriendfinder.com at work is mind blowing and absolutely disgusting.

Really good points, GACOLB. Especially about other people trying to get in on the punishment and basically piling on. I don't think most people realize just how tough it is to try to get ahead in life after a felony conviction. I have known a couple people who have had to deal with it and seen enough folks on TV doing the same to know how hard it is. Props to you for trying to overcome it.

And seriously, all this over adultfriendfinder??? Good grief. The judicial system in Ohio has some serious flaws right now; this is hardly the first case of stupidity and/or overly harsh punishment to come out of the Buckeye state in the last decade. I hope dude got laid real well a few times (I can tell you from my own experience with said website that he probably did :cool:) because that is about to end for him for a while.

BTW - you realize that pretty much all of you are guilty of this? Almost no one has a job that allows the use of computers for personal reasons outside of specific times. Porn wasn't the deal breaker here.

Thankfully I perform manual labor or a living and have no access to the internet while working.