Although I believe corporations should been punished when they make
private information public like this.
If anyone should be punished for
leaking the email addresses it should be AT&T not Auernheimer. It seems
there has been an attempt (successful so far) to deflect the blame away from
AT&T by going after the person who made their incompetence public.
As I
said before, if you don't meaningfully punish corporations for releasing private
information like this then they will continue to do it. If their mistake only
hurts commoners then they have no incentive to fix it.
OTOH, if the release of
these email addresses is no big deal then why is someone facing 4 years of jail
time and a $70,000 fine for it?
IMO AT&T should be punished for this
and Auernheimer should be rewarded for shaming them, otherwise you are providing
feedback that will lead to an unstable system. What you have now is a system
where corporations can divulge private information with impunity while citizens
who report such transgressions are severely punished. This is completely
backward. We have reverted to a feudal society. In this case Auernheimer is
being treated as a whipping boy and is being punished for pointing out
AT&T's security lapse.
I agree with you that on as far as security
lapses go, this one is very minor. That's what led me to wonder what the true
crime was and why the law was being twisted and broken in order to punish
Auernheimer so severely.
--- Our job is to remind ourselves that there
are more contexts
than the one we’re in now — the one that we think is reality.
-- Alan Kay [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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