Former Student Gets 30 Months For Political DDoS Attacks 486
wiredmikey writes "A former University of Akron student was sentenced Friday to 30 months in prison, followed by 3 years of supervised release for conducting denial of service attacks on the sites of several prominent conservative figures as well as infecting several systems with botnet software. Mitchell L. Frost, age 23, of Bellevue, Ohio admitted that between August 2006 and March 2007, he initiated denial of service attacks on web servers hosting the sites of political commentators, including Bill O'Reilly, Rudy Giuliani, Ann Coulter, and others."
This is strange... (Score:4, Interesting)
He allegedly "admitted" to what looks like ten counts or more, but since his special assessement was $200, he was only convicted of a single felony count. So, then, why ever would he have admitted anything else? That would be allocution, relevant conduct and further admitted behavior. When I plead out in February 2007, I admitted guilt on one count and all others were dismissed. I denied them (they were indeed false) and no one admits other behavior and gets done for one count.
According to the sentencing table, [goo.gl] assuming this is his first offense, his offense was Level 22. He got a standard three-point reduction for admission of guilt and the judge gave him the low end of Level 19. He will do 87.5% of it, (no parole in feds) a little more than 26 months. He'll go to halfway house in 23.
But he will not go to a Camp. His relevant conduct will affect his custody, and he will probably go to a Low (basically a Medium with cubicles instead of cells), perhaps even FCI Elkton in Ohio where I was. Not fun.
My suspicion is whether he really admitted all those other counts, or this is journalistic excess.
Re:he'd be free if he hacked the dems (Score:3, Interesting)
because political operatives for the GOP have basically skirted the law for decades pulling shit like this and the DOS attacks on democratic offices and phone systems.
Citation needed. Try to make it within the past 20 years. Good luck.
Re:As a rabid lefty (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Meanwhile, a cop gets 2 years (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's how it works. There are three classes of people in American society. The first class is the people who run the large institutions: the politicians in government, and the executives of corporations. The second class is the people who protect these institutions: police, lawyers, the media, etc. The third class is everyone else. To calculate a criminal sentence, just use the following formula:
adjusted sentence = original sentence * 10^(class of perpetrator - class of victim)
If you kill someone of your own class, you might get 20 years in prison. But since the BART cop was in the second class, while Grant was in the third, this was dropped down to 2 years. Here, it's the reverse: the student targeted conservative pundits (second class) so instead of 3 months he gets 30.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Scratch a Liberal, find an Autocrat. (Score:2, Interesting)
It pains ME to see an ideologue debase a basic free speech issue iinto another stupid liberal/conservative diatribe..
Those MORONS think the whole world revolves around their artificial bullshit dichotomy.
Reduce the world to liberal/conservative and you reduce choices. Reduce choices and you reduce freedom.
It is ALL about the power of Big Capital. It frames the dialog, and the lemmings folllow.
Re:Scratch a Liberal, find an Autocrat. (Score:4, Interesting)
It pains ME to see an ideologue debase a basic free speech issue iinto another stupid liberal/conservative diatribe..
Those MORONS think the whole world revolves around their artificial bullshit dichotomy.
Reduce the world to liberal/conservative and you reduce choices. Reduce choices and you reduce freedom.
It is ALL about the power of Big Capital. It frames the dialog, and the lemmings folllow.
Well, Big Capital is one half of it. The other half of it is a public school system that takes great pains to never teach the basic logic, rhetoric, and critical thinking necessary to see that for yourself. Without that, many people would divest from the various sources of Big Capital and it wouldn't be Big Capital anymore.
Re:30 months is too long (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:As a rabid lefty (Score:3, Interesting)
1: The person(s) whose site was taken down. This can have a massive financial implication from both the lost patronage and the costs to get the servers up and running.
2: The people's whose systems were hijacked. This could be hundreds to hundreds of thousands of systems, all being used without permission and for a criminal act. Their service suffers, their ISP suffers too.
3: Society as a whole. Performing criminal acts of people purely because of their political views is incredibly harmful to a free society.
Just because it's done a lot by script kiddies and is fairly common it doesn't mean this is a minor crime.
Re:Jesus! 30 months!!? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:As a rabid lefty (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/11/05/bart-cop-mehserle-ge.html [boingboing.net]
Re:Jesus! 30 months!!? (Score:3, Interesting)
Our definitions of pranks must be different, a DDOS attack sounds as much like a prank as breaking into a jewelry shop and breaking all the glass display cases.
Sure, you may not have stolen anything, but it's hardly a prank.
If you would appreciate a different perspective, find some older (i.e. elderly) people and ask them about how police officers used to be.
In most places, the local cops acted more like neighbors. People knew who they were and it was okay to walk up to them and talk to them like any other human being doing any other job. They could lean on you really, really hard if you showed true maliciousness. Yet, most things that you'd call "childish pranks" were not dealt with so harshly.
For example, I have an older relative who grew up in the 50s. When they were teenagers and up to mischief, sometimes they'd actually throw eggs at police cars and do things like that. When they finally got caught, they were chewed out by the officer and were forced to clean up the car until it looked better than brand-new (maybe even with a toothbrush). They were then driven to their parents' and the parents were told what happened. Then they were in real trouble. It worked because after that they didn't do it again.
What happened was that growing up, they actually respected the police officers who served their community. They realized that they were given a break and allowed to grow out of their childishness. The cops were human beings, neighbors, maybe even friends. They were not trying to nail you as much as possible for every little thing. They were not thugs. Regular law-abiding people weren't afraid of them and in fact were generally glad to have them around.
These days, if some teenage kid threw eggs at a cop car I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if he was tazed, arrested, charged with assaulting a police officer, tried as an adult, and given a criminal record that would haunt him the rest of his life. Some people really wonder why young adults today have little or no respect for authority. Somewhere along the lines the human element disappeared and now it's all about screwing you as hard as possible and with as little lube as possible. It's lost most of its respectability. I think this began in the 80s with a movement called "proactive policing" but its roots likely go deeper than that.
One way or another, we lost something valuable and irreplacable.
The reason this happens... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Good... (Score:2, Interesting)
No, you fucking idiot, my posts on slashdot are being modded down by young assholes who don't like it when I point out the holes in their arguments and statements and ask for proof of what they say. They are probably not at my local university. Maybe you should learn to read, or is it that you are trying to twist my words?
I don't know you. You have no good reason to communicate like that. Imagine you were another person reading what you just wrote, and describe to yourself what they would think about you. (Google neurotic if you're having trouble picking out your self deficiencies) I'm obviously not a fucking idiot, and I am not twisting your words:
I live next to a major university and am a part of slashdot. I see plenty of young people who believe they have the right, if not duty, to silence right wing arguments. I am a victim of them, just read my sig.
You just said you were a victim of them modding down your comments on Slashdot, and you defined them as young people (implicitly liberal) from the university you live near. Apparently, I can read.
Also, and this may be a stark realization for you, but you can't actually know who mods down your posts. (When you Google neurotic, be sure to follow up on phobias) Did it ever occur to you that the reason your posts tend to be modded down might be that you call people fucking idiots, whereas people would rather have smart, reasonable conversations?