San Francisco’s Federal Appeals Court Sentences Hacker

San Francisco's federal appealed court on April 5, 2007 defended a cyber-terrorist's judgment of conviction for intruding on and afflicting the ADP system of some high tech organizations, such as eBay and Qualcomm in 1999.

During this hack, Jerome Heckenkamp, presently 27, was a postgraduate student of computer science at Madison's University of Wisconsin.

He admitted guilt on two counts in District Judge James Ware's court in San Jose in 2005, for illegally infiltrating a computer and inflicting harm.

The lawsuit started in December 1999, when a Qualcomm functionary in San Diego discovered an intrusion inflicting the organization's computer system, and informed both the FBI, and the executives at the obvious origin of the strike - Madison's University of Wisconsin.

Jeffrey Savoy, the system administrator at the University of Wisconsin trailed the hack strike to Heckenkamp's computer, and detected that he was also attempting to infiltrate the university's mail server. Savoy barred Heckenkamp's IP address, which he modified very cleverly.

Afterwards Savoy in a report issued by cbs5.com on April 5, 2007 said that he was afraid that the cyber-terrorist might create "great" disturbance in the university if there was a breakdown in the e-mail services of students and staff while the students were busy in preparing for their finals.

Heckenkamp was convicted to eight months in jail and eight months of house arrest and directed to forfeit $268,000 as compensation.

In his petition he was permitted to challenge the intrusion of his PC, followed by combing of his dormitory by the FBI without a valid search warrant, whereas legally warrantless searches cannot be conducted.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in today's (April 5, 2007) judgment stated that Heckenkamp had a belief that his PC was strictly confidential, which would by and large imply that a search warrant was compulsory for a thorough search.

However the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals believed that Heckenkamp's lawsuit was protected by an exception laid down by the American Supreme Court in 1987 for circumstances of "exceptional requirements", which exempted the law enforcement authorities from acquiring a search warrant when it was not feasible.

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» SPAMfighter News - 4/13/2007