Everyone has surreptitiously sipped from the Internets more illicit founts while slacking off from work. A Newgrounds.com flash game here, a few LOLCats pictures there perhaps the surprise Rickrolling or Goatse.cx, frantically Alt-F4ed in accompaniment with a wild swivelling of the head to ascertain the geospatial position of a tyrannical employer.
But did you know that slacking off on the Internet during work hours could be considered hacking? An Ohio man didnt and hes now spending 15 months in prison.
Over the course of five months, Richard Wolf used his work computer for personal use for over one hundred hours (which actually sounds fairly low, juxtaposed against the slacking of the average cubicle jockey). The rub is that he used the computer mostly to look at pornography, and to distribute naked pictures of himself.
Something of a skeezeball, then, yes. But Wolfs job performance never suffered, even by his employers admission. Never the less, they felt justified in charging him under Ohio law for hacking, since the use to which he put the computer was beyond the scope of the express or implied consent that defines hacking as a crime under their statutes.
Now Wolfs in jail. On one hand, this case is largely about Americas hypocritical moral puritanism: you fire guys who rub one out during company time, you dont throw them in the gulag. Wolf was railroaded with a trumped up charge due to the sexual nature of his offense. But its still a troubling precedent: the judgment claims that all non-authorized computer use, from solitaire to emails to grandma, is hacking and carries harsh prison terms along with the crime. Does anyone really want to live in that world?
Well it guess it is considered "hacking," i think they should rewrite the defention for hacking now because hacking could to refer to so many different things now.
didn't know you were British Ankur, we spell offense like that here in the states.
As for what is criminal hacking? Hacking onto other computers, stealing stuff, editing stuff, changing stuff around. Looking at porn on the internet is not hacking, thats just a lame excuse to fire somebody. He should've been fired for poor work ethic?
didn't know you were British Ankur, we spell offense like that here in the states.
As for what is criminal hacking? Hacking onto other computers, stealing stuff, editing stuff, changing stuff around. Looking at porn on the internet is not hacking, thats just a lame excuse to fire somebody. He should've been fired for poor work ethic?
This kind of makes me think of Kevin from The Office, why doesn't he get fired??! XD
well there was a story about some 13 year old kid who hacked into mayces mainframe in Russa (the russian guvernment didnt do anything) ill tryto find the story. but most everything on the computer is a form of hacking..
