Friday, September 23, 2011

Local protester arrested

The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports:
SANTA CRUZ - A homeless activist who appears to have been instrumental in last year's Santa Cruz camping ban protests was arrested Thursday for allegedly hacking Santa Cruz County computers in December, federal authorities allege.

A federal grand jury's indictment of Mountain View resident Christopher Doyon, 47, appears to be part of a nationwide crackdown on the hacker community. A second man also has been implicated in the attack, which authorities say was planned as retribution for the breakup of a lengthy protest over the city's controversial camping ban. ...

Both Doyon and Covelli were charged with conspiracy to cause intentional damage to a protected computer, which carried a maximum of five years imprisonment and a fine of $250,000, causing intentional damage to a protected computer and aiding and abetting, which can carry a sentence of 10 years imprisonment and a fine of $250,000.
This is fishy. How much damage can a homeless guy do to a public web site? What was he doing, browsing from the local library? For that he can get 10 years?

The city considers homeless people a big nuisance of course, but it seems ridiculous to me that computer trespass is punished so much more severely than physicall trespass.

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