So this guy named Richard Wolf is on the job at the Shelby City Wastewater Treatment Plant, where he’s using his work computer to surf porn sites. At one point even visits Adult Friend Finder and uploads a nude photo of himself.
He gets fired. No surprise.
This, however, is a bit more surprising:
Wolf was convicted on state charges for three counts: unauthorized access to a computer, a felony; theft of services in office (essentially for depriving the city of his paid services while he conducted the unauthorized activities on a city computer on city time), which is also a felony; and solicitation of prostitution, a misdemeanor.
He was sentenced to 15 months and a $5,000 fine for the two felony convictions and ordered to pay the city about $2,400 in restitution for personal business on city time. On the misdemeanor solicitation charge, he was sentenced to 60 days (to run concurrently with his other sentence) and a fine of $500. His sentence was later reduced to two and a half years in “community control.”
The solicitation charge is apparently legitimate because he tried to hire someone called “Mistress Patrice” (if we accept for the sake of argument that this is the state’s business).
The hacking charge is the big news at Wired, because Ohio’s anti-hacking statute includes an exceeding-the-scope clause:
The Ohio hacking statute reads in part that “No person, in any manner and by any means, including, but not limited to, computer hacking, shall knowingly gain access to, attempt to gain access to, or cause access to be gained to any computer, . . . without the consent of, or beyond the scope of the express or implied consent of, the owner of the computer, . . . or other person authorized to give consent.”
The appellate court wrote that Wolf’s conduct was “beyond the scope of the express or implied consent” and the charge of unauthorized use of a computer was based upon sufficient evidence.
Thus, any use of a computer for an unauthorized purpose—checking your personal email, paying your bills, maybe even just surfing the blogosphere—can earn you a felony hacking conviction. Violate your company’s computer policy, go to jail.
Then there’s the absurd “theft of services” charge, which stems from the fact that the time he spent surfing is time he wasn’t doing his job. It’s crazy that this is a crime. Whether an employee is doing the job or goofing off is pretty much between him and his employer. This is why we have civil courts. Unless it’s part of an organized extortion racket, there’s no way a quality-of-work issue should trigger a prosecution.
After all, the reverse never happens. If Wolf’s employer had cheated him out of pay by failing to follow the overtime policy, they might have been fined by the labor department, but no one ever would have prosecuted his boss for slavery.
As it happens, Wolf beat the theft of services charge on appeal. The judge said the prosecution failed to prove that he didn’t perform the duties for which he was hired. I guess you can’t convict for theft of services if the city got all the services they paid for.
In fact, although Wolf was suspended after his activities came to light, he was reinstated and then promoted. His employer only fired him after he became a convicted criminal.
Leave a Reply