What if they get blocked from the network and repeatedly change accounts, IPs and then MACs repeatedly to get around progressively escalating blocks from the network admins?

What if they hide a laptop in a wiring closet and then try to come back for it while covering up their face to hide from a camera inside of it?

What if they run from the police who try to stop them?

In any case, we don't have to have quibble over shades of gray, it's all in the well-documented write ups and court docs. Mens rea is easily established here.

mitnick also just logged into shit with default passwords and got ppl to send him source codes and give him access to stuff. by todays 20-stage crazy ass exploits its also not really hacking... these things change over time.

We've been impersonating home users en masse to scrape the whole web to verify ad network integrity for I think two decades now, at least.

I am only kidding, but if he would have used AI, or just said agents did it, in todays day and age he would be raising capital for his company.

Where is the jail time Sam Altman faces for unleashing AI worms across the internet? Nowhere. Billionaires don't face jail time.

putting morality to the side in favor of legal pragmatism , certain jurisdictions classify the act of accessing data without prior authority as data espionage

What annoys me is that when I asked Claude to use code I had already written with selenium to scrape a web page, it refused and told me it wasn't going to get into an arms race with cloudflare. One rule for them and another for us.

If you leave the door to your house unlocked, am I welcome to come in, pop on into your utility closet, plug into a switch port and take everything your machines allow me to fetch?

I don't disagree with what he was doing from a moral standpoint or a hacker standpoint, but it's very easy to convict him.

This discussion typically devolves into an argument about what is "publicly accessible." No reasonable person (i.e. those who serve on juries - not autistic software engineers) would agree that someone who isn't even a student at a school is legally entitled to enter a building (unlocked or not), venture into their utility room and access protected computer resources.

Everyone loves to make this about JSTOR: they weren't the only victim. MIT was far more aggrieved; JSTOR blocking his Harvard account access and him proceeding to breach their TOS ("clickwrap agreements aren't law!!!") and circumvent their defenses isn't required to convict him of CFAA violations.

Why can't I go into a bank, sit down at a personal banker's desk who is away on vacation, plug into a switch port and do whatever I want? There's no lock on his cubicle, the door was open! This is the legal equivalent of "neener neener, I'm not touching you."

Mens rea is an important thing people love to sweep under the rug with this case:

• First and foremost: Why did he have to go to into a closet at MIT to fetch documents? Why not do it at home or a public library?

  • Because of rate limits and/or authentication requirements. He *knew* he could not obtain the access he needed through other means, so he had to trespass to do it.

• Why did he cover his face with his bicycle helmet... just when passing by cameras?

  • He wasn't some weirdo who liked to wear his helmet that way: he stopped immediately when he believed he didn't need to conceal his identity any further. He *knew* he shouldn't be there.

• He registered his guest account using false credentials: "Gary Host" and "Grace Host" - "Ghost"

  • Why wouldn't he just use his real name if he believed what he was doing was legitimate?

• When MIT blocked his IP, he released/renewed and fetched a new one. Fine, no problem on its own, hard to prove intent there. When MIT subsequently blocked his MAC address, he proceeded to change one character and kept on downloading.

  • Computer people will try to reduce this to "MAC addresses aren't legal identifiers blah blah blah." The beliefs of zealous third parties are completely irrelevant: direct measures were taken to prevent his access, he recognized and immediately circumvented them. He *knew* what he was doing. That's what matters.

• Why hide his hardware under boxes? In absence of all of the other facts, sure, one could argue that he didn't want students at this ultra-prestigious Ivy League school to steal his shit, but to a reasonable person weighing the totality of the circumstances: he was again concealing his actions because he knew they were wrong.