[TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm!

[TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm!

[Noel Chiappa]

    > From: Arnold Skeeve

    > I suspect that he was also still young and fired up about things. :-)
    > ...
    > (In other words, he too probably deserves to be cut some slack.)

Much as RTM was cut some slack?

The thing is there's a key difference. RTM didn't _intend_ to melt down the
network, whereas Gene presumbly - hopefully - thought about it for a while
before he made his call to inflict severe punishment.

Did RTM do something wrong? Absolutely. Did he deserve some punishment?
Definitely. But years in jail? Yes, it caused a lot of disruption - but to any
one person, not an overwhelming amount.

Luckily, the judge was wise enough, and brave enough, to put the sentencing
guidelines (and the DoJ recommendation, IIRC) to one side.

However, that too was not without a cost; it was one more stone added to what
is admittedlyalready a mountain of precedent that judges can ignore the
legislature's recommendations - and once one does it, another will feel more
free to do so. And so we pass from a government of laws to a government of
men.

But I don't give Gene the lion's share of the blame: that has to go to Rasch,
and his superiors at the DoJ, who were apparently (as best I can understand
their motives) willing to crush a young man under a bus to make a point. The
power to prosecute and punish is an awesome one, and should be wielded
carefully and with judgement, and it was their failure to do so that really
was the root cause.

    Noel

[TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm!

[arnold]

jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) wrote:

>     > From: Arnold Skeeve
                     ^^^^^^ Skeeve is my domain. Robbins is my last name.

>     > I suspect that he was also still young and fired up about things. :-)
>     > ...
>     > (In other words, he too probably deserves to be cut some slack.)
>
> Much as RTM was cut some slack?

I should have said "cut some slack now".

I don't disagree with the rest of what you've said.

> The thing is there's a key difference. RTM didn't _intend_ to melt down the
> network, whereas Gene presumbly - hopefully - thought about it for a while
> before he made his call to inflict severe punishment.

And had he been a bit older and wiser, he might have done things
differently.

Whatever. I dn't want to get into an argument, since I am singularly
unfamiliar with the details of the case.  I merely point at that
Spafford is human too.

Thanks,

Arnold

[TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm!

[Arthur Krewat]

Around the mid 80's,there was another case where the DoJ was willing to 
crush someone, not for causing a real disruption, but for getting into 
the wrong places and reading the wrong things.

I'll keep the details out, but the prosecution of RTM might have been 
more over the top because of preceding cases of hacking.



On 11/3/2017 6:23 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> lion's share of the blame: that has to go to Rasch,
> and his superiors at the DoJ, who were apparently (as best I can understand
> their motives) willing to crush a young man under a bus to make a point.

[TUHS] "Oregano" and Unix wizards

[Don Hopkins]

https://i.imgur.com/qMN1are.jpg <https://i.imgur.com/qMN1are.jpg>

[TUHS] "Oregano" and Unix wizards

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi,

> The only thing that isn't obviously some sort of pun on an aspect of
> Unix is a canister labeled Oregano in the foreground of the picture.

    https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.unix.wizards/qkiqSJWgEPE/E5BwZYMvXwAJ
    The oregano is reputedly referring to an incident in which one of
    the original folks involved with BSD was hassled for coming across
    the Canadian/U.S. border with a bag of what was assumed to be an
    illegal substance, and turned out to be oregano.

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy

[TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm!

[Toby Thain]

On 2017-11-03 9:11 AM, Arthur Krewat wrote:
> Around the mid 80's,there was another case where the DoJ was willing to
> crush someone, not for causing a real disruption, but for getting into
> the wrong places and reading the wrong things.
> 
> I'll keep the details out, but the prosecution of RTM might have been
> more over the top because of preceding cases of hacking.

The DOJ brutality has only got worse since then:

https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/internet-own-boy-story-aaron-swartz/

--Toby


> 
> 
> 
> On 11/3/2017 6:23 AM, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>> lion's share of the blame: that has to go to Rasch,
>> and his superiors at the DoJ, who were apparently (as best I can
>> understand
>> their motives) willing to crush a young man under a bus to make a point.
> 
> 

[TUHS] "Oregano" and Unix wizards

[William Pechter]

Another thing that comes to mind was my late wife's roommate when she
was a contractor at either Bell Labs, AT&T or Bellcore back in the
late 80's to 1990 or so...

There was a rumor about undercover Narcotics cops inside the facility
going through desks and such at night.
Her officemate, who was a non-drug user -- but concerned about civil
liberties and privacy put two plastic bags of unknown substances in
his desk.

One leafy substance named catnip -- containing catnip.  One powdery
substance labeled sugar (which if I remember correctly was some kind
of confectioners sugar.

Shortly after that the substances disappeared from his drawer...  ( I
think some personnel did shortly after that as well.)

I can imagine the results of the lab tests coming back.  Perhaps this
info ran wide enough that some folks remembered this incident.

Bill
--
  d|i|g|i|t|a|l had it THEN.  Don't you wish you could still buy it now!
 pechter-at-gmail.com


On Fri, Nov 3, 2017 at 3:21 PM, Ralph Corderoy <ralph at inputplus.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>> The only thing that isn't obviously some sort of pun on an aspect of
>> Unix is a canister labeled Oregano in the foreground of the picture.
>
>     https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.unix.wizards/qkiqSJWgEPE/E5BwZYMvXwAJ
>     The oregano is reputedly referring to an incident in which one of
>     the original folks involved with BSD was hassled for coming across
>     the Canadian/U.S. border with a bag of what was assumed to be an
>     illegal substance, and turned out to be oregano.
>
> --
> Cheers, Ralph.
> https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy

[TUHS] Happy birthday, Morris Worm!

[Arthur Krewat]

BTW, the one case I was thinking of when I wrote this is not even 
documented anywhere. I can't find any reference to it whatsoever. It 
happened around 1983/84.

So it's not only the public cases, there were ones that were swept under 
the rug it seems. All the while, the defendant was threatened with 20-30 
years in a federal prison, but eventually was given 10 years probation.

I knew the guy involved. It was an interesting time.

On 11/3/2017 3:26 PM, Toby Thain wrote:
> On 2017-11-03 9:11 AM, Arthur Krewat wrote:
>> Around the mid 80's,there was another case where the DoJ was willing to
>> crush someone, not for causing a real disruption, but for getting into
>> the wrong places and reading the wrong things.
>>
>> I'll keep the details out, but the prosecution of RTM might have been
>> more over the top because of preceding cases of hacking.
> The DOJ brutality has only got worse since then:
>
> https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/internet-own-boy-story-aaron-swartz/
>
> --Toby
>