Re:Arrest of WannaCry researcher sends chill through securit...
by tptacek on Saturday August 05, 2017 @02:39PM
(#14937189)
There are two elements to almost every crime in the US criminal justice: conduct and intent. Without provable intent, inappropriate conduct is often excused. Without inappropriate conduct, predatory intent is almost never prosecutable.
Your first case has both prohibited conduct and intent (actually, with or without the intent to sell the data, I think deliberately breaking into a factory is itself criminal).
Your second case does not.
1. Someone physically breaks into factory, steals a list of customers for the purpose of (selling to competitors/personal interest)
2. Someone drives around the country and records locations of $company infrastructure, in an industry where optimal placement provides a major competitive advantage, for the purpose of (selling to competitors/personal interest)
In both cases, the person now has information that the target would rather keep private, and in both I would assume that their plans for the data would be irrelevant to the legality of gathering that data. (I'd assume case 1 would be illegal either way, and 2 legal either way) So if Weev's actions are akin to breaking into/hacking a system, then case 1 would apply - but if it was closer to looking at publicly exposed information, then the situation would be like case 2. But either way, I don't think his reasons for taking the actions (or after the fact plans on what to do with the data) would affect the legality of what he did.
Of course, IANAL and US computer law seems to be completely screwed up so maybe it would matter. I just don't see how.