Social shaping via networks - hackers and the Chinese!

[Pekka]

THat's because it's not about the profit most of the times. Also, traditionally malware etc do belong to this domain with overlappings with the virus guys and these days perhaps even the phishing guys. From the other side that is.

[bipolarbear]

As long as we're on the topic, is it illegal to make a Bluebox still? I don't really care about using one but it looked like a fun DIY project with a bit of history to it.

[Pekka]

blue box, depends where you are, what country you are in.

Because back in the days, you didn't even have to use it, it is unauthorized access device. I can't remember the law changing. This would be the US that is.

I can't imagine anyone getting in trouble for having one though. Most authorities don't even know what it is and those who would know, would prolly have some warm memories or something.

[bipolarbear]

Yeah, I figured that they are really out of date by now, and that the phone companies have fidured out a way to circumvent the Bluebox so my assumption was that it probably isn't as bad as it used to be.

[Pekka]

yeah the old school blue boxes shouldn't work these days, at least that's what I think. But it's not a big deal, unless you get busted doing a lot of things, you know, serious security breaches, then they'll nail you with the blue box as well. What they want to do is rack up as many charges as possible and negotiate. Many of these laws and rules are vague (unauthorized access devices for example), so you'll just get a long list of these charges and these are really really difficult to make stick.

This is what should be known, what needs to be done is you need to link the physical body and person to the virtual one, which isn't easy when you need to have proof that is strong enough in a court of law. A lot of people don't realize how difficult it actually is, so they give up easy. This is why they want to negotiate and build up a big list. Not because they would be unable to prove any of them, but because most of them won't stick. So, they'd rather scare you with this long list that has a minimum of 10 years, negotiate it down to 1-5 years and return all your equipment and give the real names of these and these aliases

So no. A blue box shouldn't hurt you at all.

[bipolarbear]

Yeah, I know from personal experience how vague the computer crime laws are. Back in middle school a friend and I figured out the password to a friends geocities site and vandalized it. All we did was guess the password but they were trying to use that to pin me with a hacking charge. Oh yeah and the kid happened to be Jewish so they were threatening to call it a hate crime(which it was not).

But yeah thanks for the legal counsel. Looks like I have a new DIY project to absorb myself in.

[Pekka]

I wouldn't worry about it at all. And since you can't really use it with the old blueprints, I mean no one can show you had the intention to do some of that phone phreaking. Mostly because it isn't possible with the that particular device anymore. Or at least it shouldn't be possible.

So it's really not an access device, since you can't use it to access anything. Law enforcement might disagree, but it's not like you'd get into trouble having it. Then again, who knows, these things are vague

If you want to build it, go for it. Hey, Steve Jobs and Woz had it as well, they actually sold them in the campus area back in their own days, so if someone says only criminals have these.. that makes the founders of Apple organized crime.

About charges for hacking someones geocities page being able to guess the password? If it's not a celebrity, what are they going to do? It's not like you broke into the servers. These will never really go through, unless you have a bad lawyer and they have a good one, and the judge doesn't know anything and sees technology as a threat. Then again, this often is the case I guess what woudl have mattered is vandalizing the page, as in what kind of things were said, was there a reason to believe the owners reputation could be ruined etc etc. In this case? I really doubt it.

This isn't a case of breaching the security. Had you hacked into the actual server, then it would be a different case. Then you might have to pay fines.

There's been suggestions and I agree with it, that the courts need some kind of specialized judges who understand these types of crimes and activity. These kinds of things have a tendency to install fear into people who don't know what these things are. It's again the world war starting evil geniuses, even when that's not really the case. For most, it's just for fun and for intellectual challenge. For most that are good that is.

[bipolarbear]

It was kind of done with the intent of insulting the kid who owned the page, but there wasn't anything actually threatening or defaming on his webpage. It was around 98 or so when that happened though so computer crime laws were very vague and there was a lot of fear and misinformation going on.

I definitely think that specializing of the courts might lead to some better verdicts, especially when it comes to things like computer crimes in which cases can get quite technical.