A telescope fan sabotaged an astronomy forum. He ended up in prison (2018) | Hacker News Reader

A telescope fan sabotaged an astronomy forum. He ended up in prison (2018)

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86 pointsTomte56 comments

While the sentence of 26 months does seem extreme, never underestimate the lengths a scorned online community member will go to get retribution for being banned or moderated.

I own and operate a community that specializes in radio communications technologies, and I've actually had an instance of a member who we banned who threatened me personally and my family by trawling through property tax records to find out personal info, photoshopped pictures of my family, and registered tons of accounts through proxies and VPNs to harass our staff and moderators. Because of the detailed, targeted threats (like specifically threatening my wife and children by name) I went to the police. They ended up simply calling him on the phone to try to get to the bottom of the entire saga and he strongly apologized (through the police, they told him to not even think about contacting me). It was as if he finally realized the severity of his actions, only when law enforcement got involved. But it was actually pretty scary because of the targeted detailed aspects of how he exacted retribution.

I think the vast majority of these types of issues are mental health related. But it seems like an especially acute problem for niche businesses and communities. The time and effort it caused me to exert made me so upset that I would have cheered a 26 month prison sentence just to make an example out of the guy, but law enforcement encouraged me to just move on.

I experienced something very similar. I was living in the UK and was asked to help admin a local forum. It only had around 3000 users, but it was very active. There was one fellow who kept posting long rambling rants about all sorts, conspiracy theories, espousing racist views, taking pleasure in mocking members who lost a relative etc. After repeatedly banning him we got a plugin to make him invisible to everyone bar mods and admins.

He kept posting his long angry rants for a year before he realised what was going on. To say he was upset would be an understatement. I'm sure he tried to track down the site owners and admins, but we were very careful to maintain anonymity. So he went after regular members, he managed to figure out where some of them lived and worked by analysing their posting. One day he posted the names and address of a lot of the forums top posters.

Of course at that point the police were called in. The guy was tracked down via his IP address, he made no attempt to hide his activities. We did send occasional abuse reports to his ISP before this happened and they were always ignored.

He was charged with harassment and ended up with 100 hours of community service and a £150 fine. A pitifully small punishment given the fear he caused and that he did not show any remorse. If anything he seemed annoyed that he got caught. Apparently, in his first Police interview he argued that he was merely exercising his right to freedom of speech and was surprised when the police told him that such a right did not exist in the UK.

Some people have anger issues, some people have real mean streaks. Forums attract these kind and can encourage them to act their worst. If someone goes too far and starts to make people feel personally threatened or tries to ruin a business then I don't see the problem with them facing a severe penalty when caught.

The "freedom of speech" excuse bugs me when it is used in cases like this. Regardless of what the law is in various jurisdictions, the principle of free speech does not entitle anyone to an audience, and certainly not to harass people in order to hijack one.

> the principle of free speech does not entitle anyone to an audience

Indeed. My response in such situations is, you can say what you want, but you'll need to get your own printing press, you can't use mine.

He had no leg to stand on, using someone else's resources to say things they didn't want said.

>Apparently, in his first Police interview he argued that he was merely exercising his right to freedom of speech and was surprised when the police told him that such a right did not exist in the UK.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_10_of_the_European_Con...

Article 10 isn't as robust as the First Amendment, but it's not really accurate to say that there is no right to freedom of speech in the UK.

Of course, harassing people isn't protected by either.

Article 10 is a bit weak as fundamental rights go.

Part 1 implies that you can say what you want. Part 2 then cancels that out with the proviso that national law can override your part 1 rights.

That's not so much a right, more of a "defined allowance".

There are restrictions on the First Amendment too (e.g. obscenity). And Part 2 doesn't mean that any arbitrary national law can override your part 1 rights. You can see a list of Article 10 cases relating to the UK here:

https://inforrm.org/2013/05/10/the-united-kingdom-in-strasbo...

The restrictions aren’t built into the text of the First Amendment. I think that makes a difference in how the courts rule on 1A cases.

I'm not sure it makes that much of a difference. The First Amendment is very vague, and there's a long precedent for many of the same exceptions applying to it. For example, the First Amendment also has national security exemptions (https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1134/national-s...).

There are stronger legal protections for freedom of speech in the US than in the UK, particularly in relation to libel, but the difference can sometimes be exaggerated.

The 1A is not "very vague". The link you post to support your argument says this in its very first sentence:

> Despite the absolute language of the First Amendment

Yes, the government has found cause to argue for various limitations (and outright infringements, as in the case of the Alien and Sedition Acts). But in my comment, I was only asserting that the 1A text is very clear and simple and unlike the British law, does not have a built in caveat. To say it makes no difference is to ignore the significant differences between how U.S. and UK courts have ruled on individual speech rights. UK defamation law, for example, is significantly more in favor of plaintiffs than in the U.S.

I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on vagueness. “Freedom of speech” and “Freedom of the press” could mean a lot of different things, and historically these phrases have never really been interpreted by the US judiciary as conferring absolute rights. We're interested here in which rights are actually conferred by the US constitution as interpreted by the courts, not in which rights someone could potentially read into the document. Nobody is protected by their own personal interpretation of the US constitution.

>To say it makes no difference is to ignore the significant differences between how U.S. and UK courts have ruled on individual speech rights. UK defamation law, for example, is significantly more in favor of plaintiffs than in the U.S.

I didn’t ignore this - I mentioned it in my comment. But I’m not convinced that that has anything much to do with the language of the First Amendment vs Article 11. After all, the First Amendment also does not protect libel - it’s just a difference in how broadly libel is construed in Britain vs. the USA. You won’t find anything in the text of the First Amendment that tells you exactly where libel stops and First Amendment rights start. For that you have to look to prior court judgments.

Fair enough. You're right that the assertion in 1A can be broad enough as to for all intents and purposes be treated as a vague protection.

There’s also article 11 EU charter of fundamental rights [1] that still applies in GB. Possibly even after Brexit.

[1] https://fra.europa.eu/en/charterpedia/article/11-freedom-exp...

I don't think forums attract these people. I think forums make them more visible and impossible to ignore when they turn up.

The Internet has no quality filter, so as all posts get equal prominence - which means that if you don't shadow-ban them, toxic idiots, kooks, and those with personality issues get exactly as much screen space as people whose words you want to read.

Before the Internet these people would write letters to magazines, newspapers, and famous people, and their efforts would be binned, possibly after some laughter at their expense.

Internet systems give them a much wider audience.

More worryingly, politics has no quality filter either. Some of the extremist parties rely on these people for their membership.

It's hard to know how to deal with this - and it's potentially far more of a problem than forum trolling.

Yep, I agree with you. There are "bigger picture" problems for us here.

> He was charged with harassment and ended up with 100 hours of community service and a £150 fine. A pitifully small punishment given the fear he caused and that he did not show any remorse.

You're not wrong, but presumably he now also has a police record. A lot of employers are doing background checks, so it may come back to haunt him.

In uk? If in France, Germany or Scandinavia maybe.

> I think the vast majority of these types of issues are mental health related.

My experience was nowhere near as bad as yours, but I have gotten 4am texts demanding that a ban be lifted.

I don't think it's mental health; I think it's just a disconnect from the fact that the glowing dots on the screen have real people behind them. We can call it a mental health issue, but if that's the case, it's spread across our whole society .

That disconnect is a mental health issue, there are names for it, it might be more common than we like to admit but it’s still a thing.

Could you share some? How does a forum get so sideways that someone has to be banned and they end up sending late night texts about it? Is it the badges and post counts and stuff?

It seems boring and banal to me, but it was mostly a college-aged and younger crowd who had a lot of time, and many of whom had less social skills than maybe we should have.

After awhile, it really felt like a community. We shared a lot of online experiences, there were memes (weren't called that then, yet) being tossed around. Imagine all the silly bullshit you got up to in high school because there was a lot of time to kill, and a lot of people to kill it with.

Now imagine that one of your friends from that group unilaterally said, "you can't come to school anymore". You suddenly lost a lot of your friends, a large part of your social circle is now missing, and there's one person at whose feet you can lay the blame.

That's what's going through their head, and that's why they thought it was acceptable to harass me to get back into the forum.

(This is why, elsewhere, I'm very pro codes-of-conduct. It's tiring having to try to explain to someone exactly why they're behaving like a tactless jackass. It's tiring having to be a parent to someone who's acting like they're 8 years old. It's easier to just point to rule 4.5 ("don't call people racial slurs") and say, "you fucked up, you're gone, this discussion is over" and block them on every form of social media.)

Wow, never underestimate how crazy people can be!

I think the only case of DDOS attacks resulting in a prosecution and later sentencing here in Sweden was when a 16 year old took down the websites of our two biggest banks.

The maximum sentence was apparently 6 months, but since he was a minor he got 140 hours of community service [1].

I'm not saying our legislation is more appropriate, but always fascinating to see the difference in sentencing between the US and here (and I guess most European countries). 26 months seems somewhat excessive.

[1]: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%...

If you robbed the bank of the same amount of cash you would be doing a long stretch of hard time I bet.

What kind of savage country gives a 16 year old "a long stretch of hard time" ?

If they went over the bank counter with a sawnoff shotgun - most of them.

I was commenting on the lesser sentences for digital crimes - even if you discount use or firearms or weapons.

This is an interesting point. The attacks probably did have a significant financial cost to the banks and their customers, but harm is not the only factor that goes into sentencing. Judges often recognise that young people are less deserving of punishment due to their natural inexperience and weaker ability to foresee consequences. To be rehabilitated, they may only need to grow up, and a severe punishment is unnecessary.

Also the nature of intent and forethought are important, but are interpreted differently. Some jurisdictions tend to punish an easy crime like a DDoS less, because less planning and premeditation suggests a less guilty mind could commit the crime. Other jurisdictions punish more, because they want a greater deterrent.

and of course, there is no connection between sentencing and privatized prisons

Only a small percentage of prisons are private so I don’t believe this plays much of a role. In the end US society just likes to punish people and to be “tough”.

Quite right, prison guard unions have just as great an incentive to lobby for harsher sentencing as private corporations operating prisons do. They exist in state run prisons and no politician wants to piss off a public service union. They’re organised and they vote, same as teachers, police or firefighters.

somewhat excessive? the guy's life has been destroyed. the FBI agents were laughing about it, because the story is kind of funny. unless you think about what is actually happening to him. sitting in a prison cell for 2 years, all your posessions gone, your house and your job and your girlfriend all gone... because why exactly?

He obviously wasn't wealthy^H^H^H^H^H^H^H remorseful enough:

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-felicity-huffman-c...

IDK, maybe incitement to DDOS is worse than bribery, fraud, tax evasion and money laundering? (not to mention robbing hard working students from their well earned college spots).

These sort of comparisons are not generally very insightful, but for balance: "[Bieler's] father — the company’s founder — had gone to the hospital with cardiac problems from the stress."

And if Goodyear was genuinely remorseful, then he made a mistake in trying to pass off a pattern of abusive behavior, that included threats, as a momentary lapse.

The Bielers appear to be paragons of forgiveness. Perhaps there is something about Goodyear that did not come out in the article.

Fair enough, but the general commentary in this thread was about the excessiveness of the 26 month sentence; I think the comparison is valid since it illustrates the lack of fairness and obvious influence of wealth & connections in our justice system.

I think Huffman is the least important target in that whole thing. She bribed a test center or proctor to correct her daughter’s SAT score for $15k. While it was definitely a shitty thing to do, it’s no where in comparison to the other cases. Her daughter still had to do the normal application process. It wasn’t a bribe to get her directly admitted to the school. It’s still a stolen spot, though.

She came out and plead guilty right off the bat and who knows what information she may have given to the prosecutors that could’ve played in her favor. Loughlin, on the other hand, will probably get the books thrown at her if she doesn’t take a plea because it was multiple cases adding up to over half a million in bribes. Someone needs to be made an example of and her with her ungrateful daughters are a prime target.

Why didn't they (also) go after the site he solicited the DDoS attack from? Or was it just a bunch of people causing problems for them and not a single person initiating technical measures?

The people running the forum probably had nothing to do with he attack, and there would be no way to know which members of the forum decided to act. The only way to do it would be to somehow trace back the DDOS traffic and un-pick the network and people running it, but even then DDOS networks are often themselves fairly insecure and often taken over by different hackers for various purposes.

Cloudy Nights is one of the Good Places on the Internet. An intense, expert-but-amateur community of enthusiasts sharing a wholesome interest. The software is kinda old fashioned and unique, they've been around since the year 2000, but that adds to the charm. It is the place to go if you want to connect to a community and its wisdom and knowledge built up over the years.

I don't know what an appropriate penalty is for vandalizing a place like that, but I'm glad there is one.

> An intense, expert-but-amateur community of enthusiasts sharing a wholesome interest.

It regularly happens that 'enthusiasts' are sometimes more knowledgeable about a subject matter than the 'careerists'.

it's interesting to think about this case from the perspective of the banned user being right, morally, if not legally. what if?

as our social circles are increasingly connected, being "banished" from them may not be a trivial matter. what is the cost of this to the individual? well to be specific here for a moment, cloudynights is the premier amateur astronomy forum. so for an astronomer, being cut off from that community may be quite significant. imagine a programmer cut off from google or stack overflow or github. we have to remember that these communities exist and are profitable because they are doing something; it's not very easy to quantify the value they provide to an individual in the same way the owner of the forum can simply count up the lost revenue in terms of the number of ad clicks. but that doesn't mean there isn't a value and consequently a cost associated with losing it.

so our user is banned and it has an impact. intuitively it still seems that it doesn't justify attacking the platform. you should at least seek remediation first, right? maybe there is an appeal process. but what if there isnt? increasingly, there is not. as platforms "scale up" they are increasingly automated, with dark patterns consciously baked in from the get-go. the platform can make its own terms. don't like them? go away.

that was ok before the internet became a neccessity to function in modern society. it's not ok anymore, and we need to recognize that people are going to fall through the cracks. pretty normal people who matter just as much as anyone else.

from what i've read, this kid does not deserve to rot in a cell for years. it's going to get worse before it gets better.

Tl;dr, the "fan" didn't directly "sabotage" anything, but he did post on a blackhat forum asking for a ddos attack on the site - and things got out of hand, putting the site owner's small business at risk. The criminal sentence is harsh but dude's still a huge asshat, he should have been dragged into court and forced to pay punitive damages to the forum owner. Make him give up his nice telescope collection, since he doesn't seem to care all that much about astronomy anyway.

He was forced to pay punitive damages. $27352 in restitution, in addition to a $2500 fine and the 26 month prison sentence.

$30k in total? That's peanuts for the overall harm he caused, either willfully or recklessly.

> he should have been dragged into court and forced to pay punitive damages to the forum owner.

The article said that he did.

He wanted the website dead, he essentially put a hit out on the website, just without any monetary rewards and no follow up. He did this because his was upset at the moderators for not tolerating his inappropriate behavior. While it doesn’t deal with murder, it’s like some news articles you read about people posting on Craigslist to have someone take out their ex, for which they get prison time.

>moderators for not tolerating his inappropriate behavior

Going to need a source on that statement.

Try reading the article

'Goodyear had been a regular visitor until 2013 when he was banned for — as he put it — “mouthing off” to moderators. (Court documents paint a darker picture, saying he followed up with a threatening message “asking to fight” one of them.)'

The source is the article linked above, which of course all commenters have read...

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