Politech: FC: More on Georgia prosecuting man over distributed.net client

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

More info:
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?start=1&catid=39&threadid=490400
http://www.slashdot.org/yro/01/07/08/2153206.shtml

"Georgia reportedly prosecuting man over distributed.net client"
http://www.politechbot.com/p-02243.html

-Declan

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Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 21:11:08 -0400 (EDT)
From: "James B. DiGriz" <jbdigriz () dragonsweb org>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
cc: politech () politechbot com
Subject: Re: FC: Georgia reportedly prosecuting man over distributed.net
 client

My understanding is that the events in question occurred at Dekalb
Tech, a unit of the Georgia Dept. of Technical and Adult
Education, which is not part of the University System, nor administerd by
the Board of Regents, as I understand it.

Just didn't want to see the University System trashed.

Looks like our AG is doing a good enough job of trashing the whole state,
though. I'll wait for more info to decide whether he's just a bonehead, or
malevolent opportunist. Whichever, this is an abuse of the statute he's
using, and an embarrassment to the state.

jbdigriz

*********

Two anon responses:

> Dear Declan,
>
> I hope that every sane person that reads your mail daily tries to help this
> guy.  I called him in Georgia and the state attorney general's office waited
> until last week to hand down the warrant on the supposed offense that
> happened 2 years ago.  His attorney doesn't have the experience with cyber
> issues and I know that you have the proper contacts to help him.
>
> Having had to deal with the local and state morons in another state myself,
> I can tell you that it sucks.  If it weren't for my resistance and ability
> to turn the tables on these guys, I wouldn't have prevailed.  This guy in
> Georgia is a computer engineer and has probably never even had a parking
> ticket nor anything like this happen to him.
>
> I think that he is being made the scapegoat simply because he is not an
> "original good old boy" and an easy target.
*********

> While the U. of Georgia is acting draconially, unfortunately they've got
> the law on their side. He misused their computing resources and all
> types of enterprises are getting serious about this.
>
> What needs to be answered is whether the science project he was doing
> was for the University or not. If it was not, then he was stupid. I'm not
> saying I agree with what the University is doing and their $.59 per second
> figure is bullshit (realistic figure is more like $.02), but what is is what
> is.
> Howver, it is also likely that the University is not going to get dollar one
> because in any tort there has to be proof of damage done. In this case,
> there appears there was idle CPU and network bandwidth available, so there
> was no appreciable damage done, as the University has stated.
>
> If he was doing this without authorization, the best thing you can do is
> publicize the case in order to shame the University into backing down.
*********

Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 16:11:42 -0700
From: lizard <lizard () mrlizard com>
To: declan () well com
CC: politech () politechbot com, dmcowen () bellsouth net, cdjoyner66 () aol com
Subject: Re: FC: Georgia reportedly prosecuting man over distributed.net client

Why do I have this image of some PHB who thinks that the cycles used
should have been 'saved so we can use them later'?

*********

From: "Thomas Leavitt" <thomasleavitt () hotmail com>
To: cdjoyner66 () aol com
Cc: dmcowen () bellsouth net, dave () farber net, declan () well com
Subject: Re: FC: Georgia reportedly prosecuting man over distributed.net client
Date: Mon, 09 Jul 2001 18:11:23 -0700

David Joyner,

The State of Georgia's claims of damage are excessive in the extreme. I 
would suspect that any competent network/systems administrator would be 
able to demonstrate the specious nature of their numbers fairly easily (see 
provisio below, though). I'd be happy to volunteer my services (as a system 
admin with nearly a decade's worth of experience) to analyze the substance 
of their claim.
At worst, this represents a lapse in judgement on the part of David McOwen, 
in not checking with supervisors, etc. about whether this represented an 
acceptable use of network resources. I, personally, would not be too happy 
to discover my company's systems running software of this sort without my 
knowledge, but my reaction would be to simply explain that the person 
proposing to install this software needs to check in with his or her 
superiors before doing so.
Now - the thing to watch out for, is whether or not these systems were 
connected to the rest of the network via some kind of dial up ISDN or 
equivalent, i.e. it is quite possible that their network architecture could 
have been set up so that connections are only "active" when network traffic 
is flowing accross them, and that they were billed on a per second basis 
for usage of these lines... if the distributed.net client, alone, was 
responsible for keeping their network connections active, there was a true 
"marginal" cost for the activity. This is a common problem with certain 
network clients operating accross ISDN based physical network 
infrastructures which were not designed to be connected 24x7. However, I 
doubt that, under any circumstances, this could be construed to have cost 
"59 cents per second".
Regards,
Thomas Leavitt

*********




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