Feds admit error in hacking conviction

[William Allen Simpson]

http://news.com.com/2100-7348_3-5092697.html?tag=st_lh

Federal prosecutors asked a San Francisco appeals court this week to 
reverse a computer-crime conviction that punished a California man for 
notifying a company's customers of a flaw in the company's e-mail service. 

Filed on Tuesday in San Francisco's Ninth District Court of Appeals, the 
unusual request conceded that federal prosecutors in Los Angeles erred in 
bringing a criminal case against, and obtaining the conviction of, 
30-year-old Bret McDanel. The one-time system administrator has already 
served his 16-month sentence and is currently on supervised release, 
during which time his access to computers is curtailed. 
...

If the court agrees to overturn the conviction, it will remove a precedent 
that could have squelched the research of many security experts. The 
original conviction by U.S. District Judge Lourdes G. Baird determined 
that, by revealing a flaw in a system's security, a researcher could be 
accused of harming the system, a violation of computer crime laws.
...

Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office for the Central 
District of California said that prosecutors rarely ask for a reversal. 
"It's pretty damn rare," he said. "I have never seen it happen." 
...
-- 
William Allen Simpson
    Key fingerprint =  17 40 5E 67 15 6F 31 26  DD 0D B9 9B 6A 15 2C 32

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