Technology

The smart criminals never get caught...

That's why you only hear about the dumb ones

Did it say they went through his work search history? Everything you search on Google with your IP or through your account is recorded, in case law enforcement knocks. Don’t think using a phone protects you. Use a trusted VPN in a separate browser if you want to search for things and not have them show up in court.

In this day and age with everyone carrying a smartphone, there’s no excuse for using work computers for personal activities

There are plenty of reasons, mostly amounting to "Nobody tends to give a fuck" and "I'm not running out to buy a second high end laptop just to casually browse the web from my couch on the weekend".

What you've got is a very poorly enforced, very draconianly executed set of deliberately vague and inarticulate rules that vary from company to company. And none of that really has anything to do with the "kill switch" thing. In the same way you might say "Well but obviously nobody should smoke weed in a state that criminalizes it! That's just stupid!" when you've got the police tearing apart a particular person's house for a completely unrelated issue, based on an officer's exclamation of "I smell weed!" at the front porch.

Just accept you live in a police state and stop buying into excuses made to surveil and punish.

don't underestimate how lazy and stupid even the smartest person can be.

I developed a spreadsheet for a company I worked for a few jobs ago. When I left I used a picture of Dennis to lock everyone out of the spreadsheet but only for one day, months after I left. Stupid idea, but felt good.

Edit: this was it:

Exactly my thought. A corporation destroys people's lives by firing them? Nothing. Someone actually pushes back? Suddenly the government gets involved.

And how our legal system is setup to best defend the wealthy.

yeah it's pretty crazy. almost like government is for some things and not others, and knows it, like maybe laws were always just an excuse and tool for victim blaming. or something.

I don't see how pretending that's weird is gonna help anyone.

We all know we don't live in a just world.

We need to try and make it one, instead of pretending we're living in one which happens to have horrid injustice happening all the time.

Don't F with the power grid.

owned by the Ohio- and Dublin-based power management company Eaton Corp.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eaton_Corporation

Sentences are always harsh for anything to do with those who provide for public utilities.

@null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com has a comment about sabotage, which was likely a factor combined with this to drive max recommended sentencing.

Now to make it worse, ask this, "If the corporation did 10 times this amount of damage, but to the general citizens of the country, how many people would go to jail?"

That's right 0 people would go to jail! And they would only be fined for no more than 10% of the profit they made while doing it. Maybe someone like a jr director of operations gets tossed in jail, but he wasnt really apart of the club.

"Up to 10 years" is the maximum possible for that type of crime. Actual sentencing guidelines for a $500k loss for a first time offender will probably come out to about 2, maybe 3 years.

In order for the recommended sentence to hit 10 years, we'd have to be talking about damage of over $550 million, or something like a long criminal history.

Substantial disruption of critical infrastructure would get someone to around 5 years, as a reference.

he should have tried to overthrow the government, or stole classified documents. that's a drastically lower sentence

nothing he did was wrong.

allegedly costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses.

Also it's sabotage, which might attract heavier penalties than mere theft?

Same for my last job. My bosses and managers harassed and insulted me. They said I was useless and stupid.

I quit with 3 months of "notice" (standard in France to help you find a new job). They didn’t care during those 3 months. In the last week they panicked because they could not find a replacement that did everything I fixed every day.

I also interviewed my replacement, a junior out of school with big diplomas. When I asked if he knew Linux, he said "not really." I thought "they are fucked with this guy." They wanted to hire him because he was the son of some guy. I said to my boss that he would be a perfect fit for the company.

Unknowingly I was the kill switch. I sent them one last email with all the information they needed and told them to go fuck themselves in a polite way.

but even if you weren't caught, it's not worth it to personally be bitter like that.

Really depends on what you do for a living... Non-profit? Sure. Weapons manufacturer? Fucking have at it.

Sounds like lawsuit territory

Look at me, I am the killswitch now.

It's actually kind of worrisome that they have to guess it was his code based on the function/method name. Do these people not use version control? I guess not, they sure as hell don't do code reviews if this guy managed to get this code into production