Australian Hacker Avoids Jail After Posting Confidential Apple Employee Details on Twitter

[laudern]

What about robbery, rape, child abuse... Things like that? How about kill only one person? how about that?

Suspended sentence. And if you're very unlucky a fine to go with it.

 

[msp3]

Are they generally soft on crime in Australia? Or is it based on territory/local government?

 

[2010mini]

Absolutely it could. And you would feel the same way too if someone posted your home address or Info about your kids schedules etc. That is dangerous information for the wrong people and once it’s there, it’s there.

We don’t know all the details, so maybe jail wasn’t warranted here (clearly the judge didn’t think so), but to say 5,000 aus is punitive enough.... I could see scenarios where it isn’t.

The problem with cash fines is that there are plenty of people who are good with money where $5,000 US dollars wouldn’t even be an inconvenience. Hopefully a judge could read that, but sometimes one day in jail is worse than $5000.

(And there are times $5000 is a death sentence for folks living paycheck to paycheck.)

Home and work address is already public info here in the US.

 

[Rainshadow]

Home and work address is already public info here in the US.

No it’s not. I live in the US and that is considered personal identifiable information and is protected in the case of companies and governments having the data. Any TWO forms of information used to identify a person (ie name and address is considered to require protection to some degree - higher degrees with more information). The problem in the US is that we freely give that info to companies whose terms and conditions allow them to share that PII

 

[2010mini]

No it’s not. I live in the US and that is considered personal identifiable information and is protected in the case of companies and governments having the data. Any TWO forms of information used to identify a person (ie name and address is considered to require protection to some degree - higher degrees with more information). The problem in the US is that we freely give that info to companies whose terms and conditions allow them to share that PII

home addresses are public info. I go on town hall records time pull up mortgage info with name and addresses all the time.

 

[MartyvH]

Are Australian courts a bit more lenient in general or... maybe the hacker had some dirt on the magistrate? :O

Australian courts are very lenient, in many cases far too lenient, because of political pressure as well as lobbying from community/church organisations sympathetic to offenders. Also, building more prisons is unpopular with voters.

The same people get away with a slap on the wrist again and again with no judicial deterrent. They are free to run amok to some extent. Justice has a routineness about it for these people, like going to the post office or bank.

 

[Rainshadow]

home addresses are public info. I go on town hall records time pull up mortgage info with name and addresses all the time.

Because there is a business need to make those available, plus they are mortgages of people who own the homes - not necessarily every person’s home address in the US, big difference. Same thing with delivering mail and other businesses. If there is a legitimate need to release informatiOn or make it available, of course you can get it. I never said you couldn’t find some of this info. However, it is still protected from careless release. I assure you, in the US, if you started sending out random persons addresses with names or any other information on it, you COULD be charged (depending on your intent) or fired. Simply someone’s address doesn’t have the same level of protection as their SSN, date of birth etc, but it absolutely is.

 

[amartinez1660]

Australian courts are very lenient, in many cases far too lenient, because of political pressure as well as lobbying from community/church organisations sympathetic to offenders. Also, building more prisons is unpopular with voters.

The same people get away with a slap on the wrist again and again with no judicial deterrent. They are free to run amok to some extent. Justice has a routineness about it for these people, like going to the post office or bank.

Thanks for the explanation. This is just too lenient. On the other side on the US is too extreme, just talking bad timing-wise to the police can put you on a crime investigation spin forever (as the business is to put as much people as possible in prisons).
What the hell happened to reasonable middle grounds, sometimes I’m amazed at how social structures are still standing with examples like this.