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Schwartz VS. Intel


For some strange reason I wanted to be the one who started
this fun discussion.

If you haven't read it already, check out the front
page of the Oregonian's business section. I wont 
bore anyone with the details - go read it first.

I find it interesting that the defense is going to portray
the defendant as "a nice go who was hacking not cracking".
I took a security class while geting my MSCS at PSU and I
wrote a term paper on this very subject.  I did a lot of 
research at Lewis and Clark's law school.  What I found is
that its VERY EASY to defend cases like this.  Most of them
dont even make it to trial.  Think about it.  Who is 
Schwartz?  Some wino who took a baseball bat and clubed
somebody for their money????   NO!  He is a VERY successful
computer scientist who would appear to be insanely :) 
interested in computers.  Now consider the jury (or
maybe a single judge) and prosecuting attorney.  They
are already going to have an "Intel expert" siting behind
the DA to help him understand complex computer science
technical dribble.  The prosecution will probably blather
on about security issues, *potential* crimes which *could*
have been comited, the "hard facts" of what occured, etc.
The defense has it pretty easy.  They just say things like:
Schwartz is a nice guy, He likes to ski, play this, play that,
and he really likes to mess around with computers.  He was
just too darned industrious and PLAYED with the wrong computer
system.  Yes, he is guilty but hey, he was just playing around.
Jury's eat this up!  

You dont like this "Playing around" argument.  Go check
out a few recent court cases.  IT IS REALLY easy to defend
computer crimes with this argument.  Oh yeah, dont forget
the "David and Goliath" argument which they plan to use.
It works good too.  There are so many possible defenses its
hard to choose from!

My opinion?  Im on Schwartz's side.  I believe there is a limit
as to how much our society should rely on computers.  You cant 
stop hackers/crackers and the more we rely on computers, the
greater the risk of computer thieving.  It is damn scary relying
on things like 4 digit PIN codes for ATM machines, visa card
numbers which can be obtained and used to rent hotels WITHOUT
using the card itself, etc.  Suppose we start relying on 
computers to allow us to do our banking.  What about account
transfers???  It scares me.  Yes, I know that computers are
already highly ingrained in the banking community.  Just
think about those "You will" commercials by AT&T.  All I am
saying is that the more we rely on computers, the worse it
is going to get.  

Software security is created by humans,  and it can be broke by 
humans.  That is a fact.  Court cases are definitely siding
with the hackers.  That is a fact.  I think we have some 
roads to travel before we are  anywhere near making me feel 
"secure" with computer security.  

	-John

ps.  No offense to Schwartz.  He just happens to be the person
     in this case.  It could have been any computer related crime
     case that Im posing this discussion.

--
        John P. Biggs            |     Oregon Graduate Institute 
      biggs@cse.ogi.edu          |   Department of Computer Science
http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~biggs/   |            PO Box 91000
(503)690-1165       fax:690-1553 |      Portland, OR  97291-1000
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