MESSAGE
| DATE | 2003-10-15 |
| FROM | Mike Richardson - NYLXS PRESIDENT
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [hangout] [DMCA_Discuss] Prosecutors Admit Error in Security Whisteblower
|
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 17:38:26 -0400
From: Seth Johnson
To: C-FIT_Community-at-realmeasures.dyndns.org,
C-FIT_Release_Community-at-realmeasures.dyndns.org,
fairuse-discuss-at-nyfairuse.org, DMCA_Discuss-at-lists.microshaft.org,
DMCA-Activists-at-gnu.org
Subject: [DMCA_Discuss] Prosecutors Admit Error in Security Whisteblower
Conviction
(Forwarded from Interesting People list)
-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Farber
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 17:18:02 -0400
Subject: [IP] Prosecutors admit error in McDanel whisteblower
conviction
>Delivered-To: dfarber+-at-ux13.sp.cs.cmu.edu
>Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 14:55:37 -0600 (MDT)
>From: "Kevin L. Poulsen"
>Subject: Prosecutors admit error in McDanel whisteblower conviction
>To: dave-at-farber.net
>
>
>Prosecutors admit error in whisteblower conviction
>
>By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus Oct 14 2003 1:26PM
>
>Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles will ask a court to set aside the
>conviction of a man who served 16 months in federal prison for blowing
the
>whistle on an ex-employer's cybersecurity holes, officials said
Tuesday.
>
>http://www.securityfocus.com/news/7202
'); //-->
Prosecutors admit error in whisteblower conviction
By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus Oct 14
2003 1:26PM
Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles will ask a court to set aside the
conviction of a man who served 16 months in federal prison for blowing
the whistle on an ex-employer's cybersecurity holes, officials said
Tuesday.
Without providing details, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office
in Los Angeles confirmed that the office's appellate division will
move this week to vacate Bret McDanel's felony conviction.
McDanel, 30, was convicted last year under the Computer Fraud and
Abuse Act for sending 5,600 e-mail messages to customers of his former
employer, the now-defunct e-mail provider Tornado Development, Inc.,
warning about a security hole in Tornado's service that left private
messages vulnerable to unauthorized access.
After a court trial, federal judge Lourdes Baird found McDanel guilty
of unauthorized access, accepting prosecutors' arguments that McDanel
abused Tornado's e-mail servers to send the messages. The judge found
that McDanel caused the statutorily-required $5,000 in damage in part
by bogging down those servers, and in part by harming the company's
reputation by disclosing the bug.
McDanel appealed last August,
arguing that the judge misconstrued the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
A federal prosecutor said Tuesday that the government was conceding
that point, and would
file a rare "Confession of Error" acknowledging that McDanel was
convicted through an improper reading of the law. "The Confession of
Error says we don't believe that simply disclosing the fact of the
vulnerability itself constitutes damage," said the official.
McDanel's appellate attorney, Jennifer Granick at Stanford
University's Center for Internet and Society, could not be reached for
comment Tuesday.
A government press release
issued at the time of McDanel's sentencing colored him a "computer
spammer," and touted the case as the first to go to trial in Los
Angeles under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. McDanel has already
served his full 16-month prison term.
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