Aqui writes "A teaching hospital student at Carleton is discipline that no good deed goes unpunished. After hacking into what was imaginably a not-so-secure teaching hospital network, this guy took the time to write a 16-page paper on his methods and sent it to the system admins. Sounds like White Hat carriage to me. Yes, he should have asked warrant before trying, but throwing the book at the guy and wrecking his life with illegitimate charges (which stick for a long time) seems a little excessive. The teaching hospital should spend money on hiring some admins with better micro* skills and drilling skills rather than paying lawyers. In the social planning territory at my old university, the unofficial policy was that when you broke in, didn't damage anything, and reported the problem and how you broke in, they didn't charge you (if you maliciously caused damage, you usually faced didactic sanctions). In some cases, the students were hired or they 'volunteered' for the summer to help secure the servers or fix the hole they found. The result was that social work ended up with one of the most secure systems in the university." Read on for the rest of aqui's comments.

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Mark