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Comment by hn_throwaway_69 | Hacker News Reader

Really? It looks as though the system worked in this case.

A technical violation of the law was not prosecuted as a result of the exercise of prosecutorial discretion not to pursue a prosecution which was not in the public interest.

Grand juries are not a solution to this problem. One glance at the shockingly high percentage of cases in which grand juries indict should be sufficient to cast doubt that they are truly filtering out bad prosecutions. That the proceedings occur in the absence of the accused and therefore deprive them of procedural fairness is another problem.

The responsibility properly lies with the prosecutor.

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In this case, yes, but look at how much risk this journalist beared.

For helping the public... Helping protect teacher's private data.

What if the prosecutor was politically influenced against him? I don't know how, but there's got to be a better way.

> A technical violation of the law was not prosecuted

This part I was not clear on. I was under the impression that what the reporter did was not a violation of the law. Or does term “technical violation” have a specific legal meaning that I’m not aware of?

I probably should have said arguable, not technical. That's what's in the article. I guess we never really know if the law was broken at all unless a jury gives a verdict, so it's all a bit hypothetical.

Suppose there's a law that says you can't film other people without their permission. You catch a thief breaking into someone's house, film them, and give it authorities enabling their identification, then delete the footage. I'd describe this as a technical breach of the law. It probably shouldn't be prosecuted.

This is kind of analogous to the present situation, a bit of a rough analogy I admit. Whether or not a law was broken, the journalist did something that was a net positive to society, with no real victim except a red-faced politician.

> A technical violation of the law

Citation needed. I’ve seen no evidence that there was even an arguable violation of the law,

I should have said arguable, not technical, as you say in your comment.

In the article linked the prosecutor expresses that opinion.

"there is an argument to be made that there was a violation of law"

I think the argument would go something like "just because there was a flaw in the security doesn't mitigate malicious exploitation of that flaw." To take an analogy, if a bug in a banks website allowed you to make negative transfers (i.e. "pay" someone a negative sum and move money from their account to yours) then you would almost certainly be prosecuted for exploiting that bug. Even exploiting it as a proof of concept so you could report the vulnerability to the bank would probably be dicey territory.

Ultimately there has to be a judgement of intent which at some level requires subjective assessment. In this case it is blindingly obvious that the reporter was acting in good faith so ti seems unlikely any reasonable prosecutor would pursue this case, or if they did any reasonable juror would convict.

On reflection, it's might not fair to even describe this as a violation of the law in the first place, but I am outside post edit time.

In any event, I fully support the journalist.

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