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Comment by HoochTHX | Hacker News Reader

Moral answer or legal answer?

There is a reason why we do not charge Soldiers with murder when we tell them to go fight for us. It is the same reason we don't charge weapon makers for the deeds there weapons/tools are used for. In the first case, the responsibility lies with the people who elected that government that gave the order. Not the Soldiers following legal/moral orders. In the second the same applies, the tool maker can not be responsible for the actions of the tool user, that falls on the tool user no where else.

In the case of the person in the article, he just got screwed over by the government, by lawyers shifting the personal responsibility to the tool maker instead of the tool user.

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"Watt, by contrast, evidently earned no money from the scheme and didn’t participate directly in the breaches or possess stolen card data. His primary overt act was to code the sniffer tool for Gonzalez, for which he received no payment

But Watt refused to cooperate with authorities to help make their case against Gonzalez — aside from the fact that he was resolved not to snitch, he also maintained that he had no specific knowledge of his friend’s hacking scheme. His defiance may have been what did him in"

Sounds like a tool maker to me.

What's with people taking what accused computer criminals say at face value?

"Watt says he didn’t know the code would be used to intercept credit card data. 'I assumed it would have something to do with web traffic or instant messaging conversations or logins of some other protocol not related to the credit card information,' he told Wired in 2010.

Prosecutors disputed this and maintained that chat logs recovered from Gonzalez’s computer described illegal carding activity that Gonzalez conducted and showed that Watt at least had broad knowledge of what Gonzalez was doing, if not the details. As Gonzalez and his gang hacked target after target, he sent Watt links to news stories describing the breaches, though he didn’t acknowledge in the correspondence that he was behind the attacks.

Watt’s attorney told Wired in 2010 that his client accepted 'responsibility for aiding people that he knew would commit wrongdoing. However, he is very disturbed by the government’s aggressive attempt to make him into more than what he is.'"

It sounds like the jury didn't believe his story, particularly given the IRC logs and the links from Gonzalez describing the hacks. I can't say it's an unreasonable conclusion on their part.

Sounds more like Alinskys methods in use by the Prosecutor, just throw shit till it sticks.

Let's use a different example.

You have a friend who is into lockpicking. Hey, that's a perfectly legal hobby as long as you're picking your own locks.

You have a Dremel tool and a grinding wheel, so he asks you to make him some custom picks. You don't know initially what these things will be used for, and you intentionally don't ask him what they're for. As it turns out, they're built for breaking into a specific make of lock that is only used on government installations. So, there is no way that it's just a hobbyist thing.

Your buddy then goes and steals government secrets with your custom picks so that he can sell them to China. He then sends you links to news stories talking about the thefts. You know that he's doing the crimes, but you say nothing. And when the police come by and ask you if you made the picks, you lie and pretend that you don't know anything.

Do you deserve the same sentence as him? No. But I'd say that you deserve prison time.

>>>> And when the police come by and ask you if you made the picks, you lie

Right here you're screwed, regardless of the rest. Making false statement to a government agent is a crime of itself, regardless what this statement is about. You could say "I'm not talking to you" or "Fifth amendment, to the rescue!" but if you lie, they can knit a nice prison sentence out of it.

> What's with people taking what accused computer criminals say at face value?

Well so far, accused computer criminals have a lot more credibility than Stephen Heymann. Whats with taking anything that guy says at face value?

> I can't say it's an unreasonable conclusion on their part.

To be fair, you can't say it's a reasonable one either, unless you've also seen the logs.

This is not a "toolmaker" case (i.e. suing gun manufacturers for murders). Because of his knowledge of the crime, it's a straight up "aiding and abetting" or "conspiracy" case. He didn't just make a tool. By making the tool knowing what it was going to be used for, he participated in the actual crime.

"There is a reason why we do not charge Soldiers with murder when we tell them to go fight for us."

Usually the winner gets to decide how strong a defense following orders is.

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