Comment by carbocation | Hacker News Reader

Comment by carbocation | Hacker News Reader

> He says the New York district attorney’s office tried to strong-arm him into a plea agreement that would have had him hacking into the systems of his software clients in order to obtain the usernames and passwords of gamblers and their bookmakers to help authorities gather evidence of illegal gambling.

If the premise of Harvey Silverglate's book, "Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent,"[0] is correct, then this is quite plausible. A key message from Silverglate's book is that because it is impossible to know if one's behavior is lawful[1], it is impossible to be sure that one operates within the contours of the law at all times. Thus, if you would be convenient to nail not because of anything in particular that you've done but because you can probably be convinced to testify against someone higher up in their chain, beware.

From my recollection of this book, this was a tactic more typically used at the federal level, so either the tactic is spreading or my recollection of its state-level use is just dim.

EDIT: In response to all of the other comments pointing out other absurd choices the authorities could make (they could prosecute Pepsi since they sell soda to these operations, etc), Silverglate's book provides a nice framework for why this programmer would be targeted and not Pepsi. He's not the fodder, but he does have meaningful access to the fodder (whereas Pepsi surely does not).

[0] = http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/...

[1] = In contrast, it's often quite possible to know when one's behavior is unlawful.

I would look this up to refresh my memory, but I've loaned out the book. As I recall, states have a higher burden of proof than the federal government. It had to do with most states being bound by English common law tradition, whereas the feds have exempted themselves. So, a writ of habeas corpus, for example, is further undermined at the federal level [1].

[1] http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=1359676152299318...

My ears are burning.

For clarification, I agree with your implication that the authorities could make these absurd choices, not that I think your comment was absurd.

I understand and agree with the point you were making. Last comment was for funsies.

If we're going for funsies, I wonder if /dev/urandom could be considered gambling software, given the right circumstances? Only kind of kidding.

I can see it now: a bunch of grizzly old men huddled together in the back room of a local bar, a single bare light-bulb burning above them. Every few seconds they yell in anguish or delight and throw down more cash, words incomprehensible to any outsider. In the middle sits a pasty nerd, slowly typing out `echo $RANDOM` into a computer over and over again.

Now let's not go too far with this hypothetical computer-aided gambling scenario. Everyone knows that Bash keeps a history of commands and that our pasty friend simply needs to press the up arrow followed by return after the first roll of the digital die.

Up followed by return is too much work. Let's lighten the load:

    while true; do echo $RANDOM; read -p "Press [ENTER] to continue gambling."; done;

Actually, our pasty friend doesn't really need a job:

    while true; do echo $RANDOM; sleep 10; done;

  while echo $RANDOM; do sleep 10; done

    watch -n 10 'echo $RANDOM'

Attention! carbocation did not type this code. His account was hacked and a programmer working for the internet mafia released this code using his stolen account to make him the unwitting fall guy.

carbolocation was with me all afternoon, we were at church working in the soup kitchen, feeding the poor. We did so anonymously because we believe people who take credit for charity work are ego-maniacal monsters.

Very true, but never underestimate the importance of theatrics. ;)

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