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Some Computer Crimes Are More Equal than Others
See this man? His name is Christopher Correa. He did a very bad thing with a computer. Today a Federal Judge sentenced him to 46 months behind bars and ordered him to pay almost $300,000 in restitution to his victims.
“This is a very serious offense, and obviously the court saw it as well,” US Attorney Kenneth Magidson said, feeling justifiably proud of himself for having secured a verdict meant to deliver a very important message — accessing Top Secret information and sharing it with others will not be tolerated no matter how powerful or well connected you are.
Correa’s crime? Hacking into the scouting files of the Houston Astros baseball club.
Jeff Luhnow, the Astros General Manager, used to work for Correa’s employer, the St. Louis Cardinals. When he went to Houston he took several other Cards employees with him. One of them was told to surrender his laptop and its password to Correa.
Thinking that the ex-employee might use a similar password at his new workplace, Correa hacked into the Astros system and stole information leading up to the 2013 MLB Amateur Draft.
Steal baseball information and what do you get? Jail time, poverty, and the end of a career. Put state secrets on a homebrew server that’s easily hacked by the Chinese, the Russians and just about every 12-year-old boy in his basement? The Democratic nomination for the White House and a stern, “Bad girl! Bad girl!” from the FBI.
Is there any wonder America no longer has trust in her institutions of government?
Published in Law
Evidently baseball is more important than a corrupt regime overseeing a bankrupt crumbling republic.
Somebody needs to clue in Mr. Magidson that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.
Maybe what he did was gross negligence, but surely there was no intent or malice…
Boooooooooooooooooo!
Why should he be punished? It’s not like he works for the Yankees….
If he did this to the Tampa Bay Rays would anybody care?
I say we add two games to Tom Brady’s suspension.
Not because of this. Just because Tom Brady. And Patriots fans.
That’s the spirit. It’s really the smug/snooty/supercilious/obnoxious fans who are the target. Not like us lovable losers….
I can’t pay attention to this. I’m getting ready to Pokemon-GO to the polls!
HA HA HA! Ha. Ah ha. Ahem.
I seem to recall that in a column about the Pine Tar Game, George Will said that more Americans were serious about the rules of baseball than the Constitution, and that was 1983.
Now they don’t care about baseball either.
Wonder where Mr. Magidson will be working after November … talk about stepping on the narrative!
Little remembered fact… Bill fired every single US Attorney as soon as he took office.
Did the White House issue a statement yet?
Was he investigated for Steroid use as well ?
Yeah, and it was reported far and wide by NBC, CBS, ABC, and CNBC. Behind the CBS anchor, you could clearly see pigs flying.
No intent or malice??? He hacked into a competitor’s system and stole data. How do you do that unintentionally?
If the upshot of Hillary’s bathroom server is that industrial espionage in America is now fine and dandy, then Hillary’s offense is far more serious than I thought.
Thanks E.J. Things like this help better understand how corrupt they are in Washington DC.
Is it incumbent upon me, the local IT and cybersecurity expert, to point out that what Hillary did and what Correa did are fundamentally two different things?
When are we going to have congressional hearings on this? The integrity of America herself is at stake. (Just to clarify, I am speaking about baseball, not Hillary).
It is always good to get an experts spin on it.
Will you also be discussing how batting averages compare to CIA sources and methods?
No. Obviously theft and breaking into someone else’s system is a serious offense. The point is that the end product is how seriously the Federal government takes the security of information, and strange that they treat baseball information like state secrets and state secrets like they were baseball information.
The lives of your family do not depend on whether the Cardinals draft a player coveted by the Astros.
It was a joke.
If what Hillary did didn’t rise to that bar nothing does