Quoting "L. Adrian Griffis" : > A locked front door amounts to a statement of your intent not to have > just anybody in your house. True, and computer law does take into account that a system secured with a password is a clear sign that it's not intended for open public access. Still, we argued this distinction when we were considering unsecure wireless nodes with default passwords - are these doors really locked, or merely latched? When one of our members logged in to these nodes, there was no talk of shotguns or FBI investigations from Brad or anybody else. Brad's hacker went one step more and installed a couple tool kits so it would be easier to come back to the system, but didn't do any real damage. Brad has benefited from the experience in that he will now have a system that is better secured against someone who might more immediately apply his access to do damage against both Brad's and other systems. The argument that this benefit exceeds any real loss has been suggested here before, and I believe has been used as successful defence against "unauthorised access" charges. Brad is darned lucky that the hacker didn't use his system as a platform to launch an attack against someone else, who might have prosecuted Brad for leaving an attractive nuciance and contributing to the damage. That kind of prosecution HAS ben suggested here before, and I believe I have read of it succeeding. Brad probably has more attractive resources than some script kiddie. Brad's pissed off. He feels violated and offended, he doesn't want to fess up to his own omissions, he wants to go take his frustrations out on some kid instead taking responsibility for his own system. Like many small businessmen, he's all for draconian government action when he's the "victim", but he'd probably scream his head off if the feds required that he certify his system as secure before allowing him to charge for it's services. We have to be very careful that our laws and policies aren't set by people who are trying to shift attention from their own oversights. Yeah, great, let's get the National Security Agency after this hacker, send him to jail. What, you want complete traffic logs from my system so you can track other hackers? That's unamerican! --------------------------------------------------- This mail sent through tarcanfel's horde/imp system