Meet Brian Thomas Mettenbrink, an unsuspecting 20-year-old computer geek from Nebraska. He looks just like you and me, acts just like you and me, but yet there is a defining difference about him that separates us: he will be serving a year sentencing in a federal prison for his relation to the 2008 DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack on the Church of Scientology’s website called Project Chanology. The goal of a DDoS attack is to overwhelm the targeted website with repeated access requests to the point where the website either slows down to a crawl or goes offline. Prior to the cyber-attack, a video from 2004 depicting actor, Tom Cruise, preaching the churches strange and creepy sentiments was leaked online and viewed millions of times.
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When 29-year-old Deric Lostutter hacked into the fan website of his local football team, revealing pictures and information related to the rape of a 16-year-old girl that were previously unknown, he never suspected to be labeled a criminal but yet he is. Deric is now facing up to 16 years in a federal prison for violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, while the rapists (a felony) he helped to expose only served two years. Undoubtedly Deric’s potential sentence is absurd compared to the atrocities he helped to reveal, but regardless Deric broke the law. In similar cases of unreasonable search and seizure of cell phone text messages by law enforcement, officers can face the loss of critical evidence in the case, loss of employment, or even prosecution. In Riley v. California (2014), when the Defendant, Riley, had his cell phone searched without a warrant after the arrest took place the Supreme Court ruled this as being unconstitutional and the action required the use of a warrant. If Deric had a gun and a badge the same precedent would apply to him. Deric unlawfully entered into and searched a database. It was warrantless, but led to the resolution of a crime, as did occur in United States v. Wurie (2014) where the Defendant, Wuire’s cell phone was searched without a warrant, but lead to the discovery of further evidence for his …show more content…
Ken Westin, a security market specialist, views Anonymous attacks as a way to “actually force ISIS to be a little more security savvy… [driving] them to increase their capabilities when it comes to encrypting communication and securing their sites.” ISIS now knows how and where their websites and communication techniques are vulnerable to infiltration. In effect, Anonymous’s efforts are counterintuitive towards their actual goal and are only doing more harm than good. By having the government being able to monitor and track ISIS recruiting actions they can develop plans to effectively combat those activities. Now government agency effectiveness is decreased as ISIS operatives move towards other means of
When 29-year-old Deric Lostutter hacked into the fan website of his local football team, revealing pictures and information related to the rape of a 16-year-old girl that were previously unknown, he never suspected to be labeled a criminal but yet he is. Deric is now facing up to 16 years in a federal prison for violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, while the rapists (a felony) he helped to expose only served two years. Undoubtedly Deric’s potential sentence is absurd compared to the atrocities he helped to reveal, but regardless Deric broke the law. In similar cases of unreasonable search and seizure of cell phone text messages by law enforcement, officers can face the loss of critical evidence in the case, loss of employment, or even prosecution. In Riley v. California (2014), when the Defendant, Riley, had his cell phone searched without a warrant after the arrest took place the Supreme Court ruled this as being unconstitutional and the action required the use of a warrant. If Deric had a gun and a badge the same precedent would apply to him. Deric unlawfully entered into and searched a database. It was warrantless, but led to the resolution of a crime, as did occur in United States v. Wurie (2014) where the Defendant, Wuire’s cell phone was searched without a warrant, but lead to the discovery of further evidence for his …show more content…
Ken Westin, a security market specialist, views Anonymous attacks as a way to “actually force ISIS to be a little more security savvy… [driving] them to increase their capabilities when it comes to encrypting communication and securing their sites.” ISIS now knows how and where their websites and communication techniques are vulnerable to infiltration. In effect, Anonymous’s efforts are counterintuitive towards their actual goal and are only doing more harm than good. By having the government being able to monitor and track ISIS recruiting actions they can develop plans to effectively combat those activities. Now government agency effectiveness is decreased as ISIS operatives move towards other means of