Hacker News Reader

Getting fired for breaking policy is fine. Calling in favors to the Feds and nailing someone for 8 years is not.

He was caught bang to rights with company property how is that different to a shop worker getting caught with some of the shops goods

Quite obviously the coffee shop worker would not be serving time in Federal prison. He caught caught with source code, not with using the source code, selling the source code, threatening to sell or release the source code, etc etc. No actual damage occurred.

That must explain my bank's insistence on not having passwords greater than 9 characters, without spaces or most "special characters." They take security seriously!

Perhaps you're conflating the banks' security with that of their customers.

First of all: Banks do not take security very seriously. I know this from first-hand experience working at banks. What they do take seriously is people "leaking" or sharing proprietary information.

Secondly: Being fired is not what happened to this guy. He was prosecuted and sent to prison. Not even remotely the same thing.