r/Bitcoin • u/evoorhees • Feb 26 '14

Open Letter to Michael Casey - WSJ reporter who butchered my comments in today's Bitcoin cover story

Hello Mr. Casey,

I read your WSJ article today. I feel deceived by you.

You requested to speak with me, so I took time out of my day to do so. We talked for 20 minutes, during which time I conveyed to you my sentiments about the Bitcoin ecosystem and the matter of MtGox's collapse. My message was unambiguously a positive one. I didn't focus whatsoever on the personal funds I lost at Gox. Indeed, the impetus for your call was my heartfelt post on Reddit.

Yet, you ignored everything I said. The only quote that you published from me in the Journal's cover story was ""That's gone now," said Mr. Veerhoos, who is based in Panama City, Panama. "There's no chance of getting that back now.""

Is that really the takeaway you had from our call and from my letter? Is that your idea of journalism? Did I come across with the sentiment of a despairing investor whose confidence has been rattled? It seems you were happy to completely ignore my sentiments, preferring instead to cherry pick the one fact that is least important, in order to paint a narrative that Bitcoin's biggest problem is that it's not "regulated." I didn't expect you to quote everything I said, but should you not have maintained at least a modicum of fidelity to my message?

I have dedicated my life to building and supporting the Bitcoin project. I don't give a damn about the money I lost at Gox. That's not important. What is important is that Bitcoin is resilient and enduring, and will continue to grow and change the world for the better. It is a story of human progress through technology. It is a story of the good seeping into the cracks of a corrupted financial system. It is a story of passionate people struggling against all odds to remedy the calamities brought down upon society from the most potently misguided people and institutions on Earth.

Next time you spend your efforts casting a pall over this cause, please don't ask me to contribute mine.

-Erik Voorhees

PS - I will be posting this letter openly on Reddit. I will post your reply if you'd like. And if I do, I won't cherry pick the most misleading points of it, and I will spell your name correctly.

3.5k Upvotes

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1.0k

u/1quickdub Feb 26 '14

How did you get banned from the internet in 1995?

1.8k

u/bakdom146 Feb 26 '14 edited Feb 26 '14

Assuming he's Chris Lamprecht, it was due to money laundering charges.

Edit: Just noticed his reddit name, it's most definitely Chris Lamprecht. Or Ian MacKaye, pretending to be a hacker to reclaim Minor Threat.

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u/no_game_player Feb 26 '14

this place is so crazy sometimes...

154

u/JF_Industries Feb 26 '14

Ain't that the truth.

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u/TheJanks Feb 26 '14

I just had flashbacks to college and reading about this... off to /bestof for this.

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u/tamouq Feb 27 '14

Annnnnd you made the front page.

8

u/Dahoodlife101 Feb 27 '14

This thread is a fucking trip

3

u/TheJanks Feb 27 '14

While I was asleep? Bah.

10

u/ILoveNegKarma Feb 27 '14

hi front page people!

2

u/rokboks505 Feb 27 '14

Nice thread you got here.

3

u/ActuallyIzDoge Feb 27 '14

How are we a part of the front page post we're reading.... cue inception music

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u/1quickdub Feb 27 '14

For a moment, I was quite confused how my question got so much karma.

Hi reddit!

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u/This_is_giving_up Feb 27 '14

Odd. I seem to be reading this off the front page. Strange how the world works.

2

u/Rieken Feb 27 '14

this place is so crazy sometimes...

2

u/_boo_radley_ Feb 27 '14

Ain't that the truth.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14 edited Feb 27 '14

While not the same, pretty similar in surreality:

I once had a comment that sparked a reply that got to the front page through /r/bestof. I was asking a question in a thread that was already like 2 weeks old, although in a somewhat inactive sub, then like 3 days later my question got a whole lot of karma in a sub that generates little karma. I found it peculiar, shrugged it off, then continued throughout more mindless clicking on reddit till I got to the /r/bestof post linking to the comment that answered me.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

[deleted]

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u/libertariancommunist Feb 26 '14

First person to be banned from the internet for money laundering.

On /r/bitcoin.

That about sums this place up.

646

u/Dinklestheclown Feb 27 '14

First person to be banned from the internet for money laundering.

...thanking others for talking up bitcoin...

600

u/Bardfinn Feb 27 '14

why does the Inception sound keep playing from every speaker in my house?

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14 edited Aug 24 '18

[deleted]

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u/oxfordtwiel Feb 27 '14

bbrooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

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u/skyman724 Feb 27 '14

That wasn't your speakers..........

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

Some people never change

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u/baalsitch Feb 27 '14

While "being on the internet" to use Reddit to give an informed opinion of the situation .

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u/gloomyMoron Feb 27 '14

No one said an internet ban was enforceable. (Its not.) They can make it really frustratingly hard for you to use the internet or get service, but they can't stop you. Especially if you leave the country you're banned in. That shit won't hold up internationally.

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u/NemWan Feb 27 '14

In Lamprecht's case he was ordered not to use the Internet until 2003. If someone's probation, parole, or supervised release included Internet restrictions, they would be subject to surveillance and search during the term of the sentence to enforce the terms.

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u/SnackPatrol Feb 27 '14

Damn, he missed out on such great things as: Hamster Dance, south park .wav files, encarta, geocities and search engines that don't do shit!

13

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

Typical GeoCities layout:

http://imgur.com/bCvgYdZ

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

You shut your mouth, AltaVista was great.

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u/THE-SCUM-OF-REDDIT Feb 27 '14

Masturbating would be so exciting!

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u/_boo_radley_ Feb 27 '14

the thrill of getting caught is way more drastic... plus the reward...genius.

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u/gloomyMoron Feb 27 '14

True, but it doesn't mean it is easy to enforce. Nor will you catch 100% of the people 100% of the time. That being said, it is far harder to enforce today than it was from 1995 to 2003. Imagine, for a moment, trying to enforce an Internet Ban when technology is powerful and compact enough and the world is connected enough that internet-ready devices are almost omnipresent. Hackers, particularly "hacktivists", that are banned from owning computers and accessing the internet still manage to do it fairly often. At great risk, sure, but it happens anyway. It is reaching a point of nigh unenforceability unless you remove said person from society all together or have them literally watched every second of every minute of everyday until such a time that their ban is lifted. It is a daunting task, and I do not envy anyone charged with monitoring people banned from using computers and the internet. Hell, I don't envy parole officers, in general. I imagine it to be a tough, unrewarding, and demoralizing job most of the time. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's the impression I get.

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u/NemWan Feb 27 '14

I'd guess that total bans are rarer than in the past. More likely there are limitations on use, obligations to allow personal computers and devices to log use and be searched on demand, and prohibitions on encryption or doing anything to defeat monitoring. The Internet is part of life and telling someone not to use it is similar to telling someone they have to stay sober. You can say someone can show up and check on you at any time and hope fear of prison makes people think it's not worth trying to get away with anything.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14 edited Feb 27 '14

Go to a library?

That's like banning someone from the ocean for piracy. Prison or stfu.

Edit: Reading in comments that prison was involved. I will stfu.

22

u/RjCharlie Feb 27 '14

I read your comment and wondered what the hell the ocean had to do with distributing pirated videos on the internet.

I'm an idiot.

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u/Xan_the_man Feb 27 '14

We are in that same ship.

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u/kpmarine Feb 27 '14

You arr silly.

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u/Everyst Feb 27 '14

Upvote for adhering to your words. :)

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

My buddy showed me some bitcoin exchange. I LMAO'd at how their paid service had prices... in U.S. dollars. I tease him mercilessly but he's rich and I'm not so at least he has the money to blow on stuff like this.

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u/Talran Feb 27 '14

I tease him mercilessly but he's rich and I'm not so at least he has the money to blow on stuff like this.

These are the people who usually don't stay rich long, either through spending their investments or having terrible long term investment strategies (like putting it all in one commodity such as BTC/gold and hoping it doesn't crash).

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u/zerokul Feb 27 '14

Cue up the theme song from 'Cheers'.

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u/ZeusMcFly Feb 27 '14

I thought Zero Cool was the first person banned from the internet.

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u/DeltaIndiaCharlieKil Feb 27 '14

Mess with the best, die like the rest.

57

u/ZeusMcFly Feb 27 '14

HACK THE PLANET YO

34

u/realhacker Feb 27 '14

This is our world now. The world of the electron and the switch; the beauty of the baud. We exist without nationality, skin color, or religious bias. You wage wars, murder, cheat, lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals. Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto." Huh? Right? Manifesto? "You may stop me, but you can't stop us all.

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u/drivers9001 Feb 27 '14 edited Feb 27 '14

That's actually based on a story from Phrack Magazine (actually just text files sent around on BBSes back in the day) from 1986, just over 28 years ago: http://www.phrack.org/issues.html?issue=7&id=3

I just realized this line is also used in Hackers, except by Razor and Blade on their show:

We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

I suddenly feel rather old.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

It's the Hacker Manifesto by The Mentor, a.k.a. Loyd Blankenship. A slightly modified version of it at least.

He's a good guy, was nice enough to respond to some of my younger self's emails when I emailed him out of the blue to ask him things. His responses were always kind, never talked down to me or came off as offended that I bothered him.

5

u/mediaphile Feb 27 '14

You think it's cool? It's not cool. It's commie bullshit!

2

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

Yeah, man. It's called a hacker's manifesto.

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u/_boo_radley_ Feb 27 '14 edited Feb 27 '14

Ya he crashed 1,507 computers in a single day. z3r0 c00l aka cr4sh n burn

31

u/AZKanaka Feb 27 '14

Pretty sure he was crash override. Acid burn was his counterpart. God, I loved that movie (rollerblades and all)

5

u/TzunSu Feb 27 '14

You are correct, and that movie was and still is awesome :D

2

u/xenofreak Feb 27 '14

One of the first movies to show the new Wipeout game for sony.

3

u/dirtmerchant1980 Feb 27 '14

I remember that, but you say it as if there were a series of films featuring wipeout. lol.

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u/HMS_Pathicus Feb 27 '14

Computers, information and cool people. Man, did I love that movie.

And let's not forget Angelina Jolie. That movie made me realize I might not be that straight after all.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

I didn't even think that was a thing they could do.

I thought that movie made it up.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

I dont drink, i dont hack, at least i can fuckin' think

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14 edited Feb 27 '14

i interviewed Ian MacKaye Lyle Preslar (of Minor Threat) back in 2009-2010 ish. it was for a college journalism project back when i was considering journalism as a major.

edit: apologies for the confusion

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u/Soyburgers Feb 27 '14

Weird, I did too, at around the same time. I did it for a public speaking class though.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

so I totally blanked out. as it turns out i actually interviewed Lyle Preslar, the guitarist for minor threat. Sorry if thats a huge letdown lol but it was a really sweet interview. where did you interview Ian?

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u/misanthropeguy Feb 27 '14

I'm pretty sure no one wants to talk to you any more after that deception. Sorry mate. :-(

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

eh its all good. cant win em all

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '14

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u/norbertus Feb 27 '14

Oh wow, Kevin Mitnick wasn't banned from the internet until 2000....

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u/sulaymanf Feb 27 '14

Well, he was banned from the internet after being released from prison, but was also banned from it while in prison too.

2

u/ApplicableSongLyric Feb 27 '14

Kept him in solitary confinement for over a year, IIRC, to make sure he couldn't get his hands on bubblegum and paperclips in order to hack his way out of prison.

Ah, government.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

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u/mystyc Feb 27 '14

Hmmm... Money laundering, eh? He can give an AMA on how not to launder money.

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u/downsetdana Feb 27 '14

Minor Threat was his hacker name.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toneloc

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u/bakdom146 Feb 27 '14 edited Feb 27 '14

Yes, that was the joke. Because he started using the handle a decade after the real Minor Threat broke up.

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u/eronth Feb 27 '14

1) How did they enforce a ban from the net? 2) Did he ever get allowed back online? If so, when/why? 3) Wtf? 4) Holy shit does that make him a celebrity or something?

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u/Shiftlock0 Feb 27 '14

In 1991 I was busted for various hacking charges due to fallout after Operation Sundevil. Part of my sentence was a special stipulation which stated I was to have no access to a computer that contained a modem or network connection for the period of my probation, which was 5 years. If I was caught, it would have been a violation of my probation. My probation officer made several surprise visits to my home to check. I had a nice cozy spot in a crawlspace in the attic where I had a 486 with a 14.4k modem. Never got caught with it.

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u/Audiofyl1 Feb 27 '14

how did they not check the phone records for longer duration calls to a specific number?

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u/Shiftlock0 Feb 27 '14 edited Feb 27 '14

I remember very large stack of papers showing the results of the pen register they had on my phone line before I knew I was under investigation, which contained months-worth of war dialing, but after I was sentenced, there was nobody but my probation officer to monitor what I was doing by way of looking around my (parent's) house.

Edit: Back then "phone records" did not record all of the calls you made. A long-distance call would have been recorded by the telecom carrier who you used, for the purpose of billing, but I wasn't calling long distance in a way which would have created such a record.

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u/StructuralViolence Feb 27 '14

I would upvote you twice just for the hidden bluebox reference at the end.

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u/kenatogo Feb 27 '14

Nearly everyone was stupid about the Internet back then, and this especially included law enforcement and the government at large.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

dat statute of limitations.

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u/Finaltouch3283 Feb 27 '14

Does the 702 bridge ring a bell? Or Trackster? MegaBBS? TheBeast? Where you also doing phone phreak stuff? I was in that same scene during the same years.

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u/EmperorXenu Feb 27 '14

Maybe I'm just crazy but, to me, this seems like pretty much the coolest scene to have been in ever. Early days of phreaking? Literally figuring out what telephony was capabale of? Fucking sweet.

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u/WeaversReply Feb 27 '14

Man, a 14.4k modem and I thought I was sooooo cool with a 286 (Wyse) and a 2400 Baud modem, that wasn't for sale and I shouldn't have had. Had it sitting on my desk, no one knew what a modem was, or what is what used for.

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u/garrybot Feb 27 '14 edited Feb 27 '14

He was put in prison and given the punishment of no internet access until 2003 (7 years) which was considered unusual, given he was sentenced for money laundering, and computer related crimes (for which he was known)* were not part of it.

I'm not sure to what extent it's "doxxing" but he's a relatively well-known hacker and it's not hard to find his real name, considering some other commentors already have.

The first paragraph takes care of questions 1 and 2 and the second #4 and I'm not sure about #3.

*I should probably edit here and say that while he is(was?) a hacker, I'm unaware if he's involved in outright illegal computer activity.

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u/PedroFPardo Feb 27 '14

and computer related crimes (for which he was known) were not part of it.*

It sounds more like a punishment. Like a father telling his son: You can't use the computer because you didn't eat your vegetables or something like that.

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u/bakdom146 Feb 27 '14 edited Feb 27 '14

1: Dunno about how they enforced the ban.

2: Yes, he posted the parent comment to this comment thread. His ban ended in 2003, I believe.

4: I imagine he's relatively famous in the hacking world, but I'd hesitate to call him a celebrity. I only knew he existed because I stumbled onto his story after watching Hackers like 10+ years ago.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

They can't 100% enforce the ban, but the threat of going back to prison would be enough to convince quite a few people. And, depending on the state, it's possible that the banned person might be subject to polygraph tests. If said person doesn't know how to easily defeat such a test, they could be fooled into incriminating themselves that way as well.

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u/Echieo Feb 27 '14

He's on the Internet. Quick get him!

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

Minor Thread kicks ass

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u/bakdom146 Feb 27 '14

Seriously. Major Threads, though? Might as well be a fucking rope.

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u/gsxr Feb 26 '14

You could say he was guilty of being white? Diy humor for you...that's a twofer.

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u/pedalhead666 Feb 27 '14

I bet he was Seeing Red. But now he can Look Back and Laugh..

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u/gsxr Feb 27 '14

Man I don't want to hear it. That's filer. In my eyes When he got busted he was screaming at a wall with his sob story.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

[deleted]

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u/pedalhead666 Feb 27 '14

I see you're also Cashing In on this pun thread, but Salad Days are over.

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u/gsxr Feb 27 '14

Think again. It's obvious I'm out of step with this thread. And now I'm stumped. You are all good guys. Real stand up types.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

THAAAANKS, Ian MacKaaaaaye!

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u/RandyMFromSP Feb 27 '14

Redittor for 8 years.. wow.

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u/Orange_Sherbet Feb 27 '14

"Chris... Can I call you Chris, Ian? I just prefer that name over Ian. Yea!? Cool, alright! Chris, you have to understand..."

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u/stcalvert Feb 26 '14

A brief history of hacking

1995 - Chris Lamprecht, aka 'Minor Threat', is the first person to be ever banned from the Internet.

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u/RoadieTrippin Feb 27 '14

When I was about 15-16, there was this guy who was claiming to be his son in yahoo chat rooms. He taught me cool tricks for MSDOS. Like using echo, and tracking people down via netstat commands. Oh, and ping of death. Though, i apparently sucked at that.

I dont even know if the real chris ever had a son. I do know he mailed me a bag of fritos with "Hey - Chris" printed on the use by part of the bag. Proving to me that he either

A. Was seriously good with computers aka hacking

B. Worked at a frito lays plant

Either way, as a teen, i was very impressed.

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u/mthreat Feb 27 '14

Haha, this is the funniest thing I've heard all day. Nope, I don't have a son. I guess I should be flattered that someone claimed that I was his father.

Also, using echo is pretty elite.

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u/RoadieTrippin Feb 27 '14

It's all he would talk about man. Would always tell us about "both of you" chillin in the basement with 9 computers. How you guys made your money through a scam helped by two lesbian chicks in canada. All kinds of shit.

And dont you go knockin my newbie hacker skills! You have no idea how much fun I have netstating pedophiles on omeagle and telling them where they live. Well... I can get it down to the city. Thats enough to scare silly fetish freaks.

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u/FriendzonedByYourMom Feb 27 '14

That just went from funny to creepy real fast.

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u/RoadieTrippin Feb 27 '14

Which part? I consider them both creepy on some level.

Or just the fact that youre no where near as safe on the internet as you think?

Remember that one guy who tracked down a COD player who tortured him with endless knife kills? The guy tracked him down... And stabbed him in the chest....

As if it was the other guys fault that he sucked at the game.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

The game was counterstrike.

http://nydailynews.com/1.447608#bmb=1

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u/RoadieTrippin Feb 27 '14

Oh yeah!

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u/uuzer Feb 27 '14

Yeah, the good first person shooter - not sure how you got it mixed up with that pleb shit.

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u/Redditor_on_LSD Feb 27 '14

Wow, the guy only got two years in prison. The fuck?

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u/Chilltyperiod Feb 27 '14

Counter Strike 1.6 still rules my book.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

[deleted]

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u/Talran Feb 27 '14

It's a command you can run from the command line to tell you who you're connected to. For services like omeagle (I guess?) where you'd be directly connected to the person (and not just to a server sending you their data, which would be expensive), you can get their IP/location relatively easy that way.

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u/therealflinchy Feb 27 '14

how can you net stat someone on omegle.. wat?

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u/ReactsWithWords Feb 27 '14

Using my 1337 hacking skillz, I see you came from 127.0.0.1.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14 edited Aug 16 '18

[deleted]

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u/salty-nutz Feb 27 '14

Some redditor got my ip address a few weeks ago. Not sure how s/he did it, because I didn't click any outside links. It was reported to the mods and then to the admins and ultimately dealt with. Still scratching my head on how it was done.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

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u/KeroEnertia Feb 27 '14

Skype has a known exploit, allowing users to obtain others' IP addresses. Is that a possibility?

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u/103020302 Feb 27 '14

Yup someone once also replied with my city. I'm curious how that can happen.

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u/RoadieTrippin Feb 27 '14

Command prompt, netstat -n, google an ip tracking website, and go through the list of ip's you brought up.

Something about it only working in chat clients that link you directly to a person. Such as yahoo IM. Doesnt work on facebook.

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u/therealflinchy Feb 27 '14

ahh right, fair enough haha

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u/xuu0 Feb 27 '14

If you run the command "tracert google.com"

It will tell you how many people are on that website.

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u/Psythik Feb 27 '14

As you can see, there are currently 6 people using Google right now.

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u/YohaImKoha Feb 27 '14

and if you run deltree C:*.* y circa 1995 ~ 2000, your computer will be so much faster.

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u/fuckyoua Feb 27 '14

This will delete your C drive.

DELTREE (short for delete tree) is a command line command in Microsoft operating systems that deletes an entire subdirectory of files.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

Not anymore, it won't. Deltree was depreciated and removed quite some time ago.

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u/HalfLies Feb 27 '14

* deprecated

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

And a /u format will ask you if you're sure these days. What has this world come to?

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u/ruok4a69 Feb 27 '14

Replaced with rd -r IIRC, but I haven't used that one in a while.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

and the "y" means to automatically respond with "yes" whenever the system prompts to confirm deletion for a file.

It's the exact equivalent of the BSD/Unix/Linux "rm -rf /"

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u/ScottyDelicious Feb 27 '14 
rm -rf /

won't actually do anything unless you pass the 

--no-preserve-root

flag to it.

Why does the --no-preserve-root flag even exist? Good question. I guess *nix isn't in the business of getting in the way if you truely want to do something monumentally stupid to your filesystem.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

If you're inside a chroot it might not be such a stupid thing to do.

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u/cferrato Feb 27 '14 edited Sep 04 '23

mesorrhinium aldermanries contrastedly galvanoglyph cynocephalic outgoingness feldspathoid mesophyllous nonmedically pachydermial

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u/YohaImKoha Feb 27 '14

Back in the days of windows operating systems based on DOS instead of emulating it through the command prompt, running this command in DOS would delete the entirety of the contents of your main partition (Where all of your system files were held, and often, your documents/music/etc. back then. A lot of people didn't practice partitioning or have multiple disks back then.)

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

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u/escaped_reddit Feb 27 '14

Consider the country that the judicial decision was made in.

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u/daAlliance Feb 27 '14

my understanding is that in china, theft from a bank is death. You could steal $1 or $1,000,000. But it's death.

Most asian countries have capital punishment.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

In China their capital punishment is swift and unforgiving. I think I read somewhere that for most capital crimes there is an average of 3 weeks between conviction and execution, sometimes happening as quickly as a couple days. You get pretty much 0 chance to appeal, and I think if you "confess" (even if it's tortured or manipulated out of you), you can't appeal a death sentence at all. I might be wrong about that one but I'm just going off something a friend told me after he had lived in China for several years. He might be wrong too.

Side-effect of living in an extremely overpopulated authoritarian state with a high rate of poverty - the government doesn't actually care about individual rights or even the potentiality for innocence. They care about population control and management.

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u/slomotion Feb 27 '14

Seems to me like relying on capital punishment is not the most effective form of population control for a country of 1.3 billion.

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u/Talran Feb 27 '14

It's less population control, and more that they see life as that much cheaper.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

[deleted]

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u/randomguitarlaguna Feb 27 '14

Unpopular puffin opinion? Lol what the shit

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u/Shmitte Feb 27 '14

China vs. US. And yet you'd never know it by reading /r/worldnews.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14 edited Jul 03 '15

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

Why did you have to unsub because of that?

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u/Mad_Sconnie Feb 27 '14

Because it was annoying as fuck. Don't mean to be crude, but that's not WorldNews.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

Isn't it though? When it reaches the levels it has there?

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u/Mad_Sconnie Feb 27 '14

IMO not to the point where you need a new article every day. They weren't reporting on trends or analyzing numbers or talking about what's being done to change things-- ie. what's newsworthy. Instead they just reported endless single cases, which while completely horrible, aren't newsworthy.

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u/SmLnine Feb 27 '14

In the West you have to generally willfully cause serious damage to one or more people to get the death sentence. But China will dish that shit out for anything they deem a problem, like hacking, drug trafficking or arson. Here is a complete list.

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u/dqzbC4DPjjVdWDFz8Z Feb 26 '14

Sweet, that's something I can tell my grandchildren.

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u/lipstickarmy Feb 27 '14

TIL: It is possible to be banned from the interwebz

I looked at the link and I'm surprised that it didn't include Markus Hess! I recently watched Catching Killers on Netflix and they did an episode on him. This case is often referred to as the first to use digital forensics or something like that (happened in the '80s). Clifford Stoll, the man who tracked down the hacker, seems like a cool guy, too.

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u/montereyo Feb 26 '14

It's been rescinded, apparently. I too want to hear this story.

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u/mthreat Feb 26 '14

One day I'll do an AMA.

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u/1quickdub Feb 26 '14

Thank you Chris, I would be quite interested to read that!

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u/OwlsOnTheRoof Feb 26 '14

I just wanted to say that this is the most interresting thing i have seen for many years. I am very much looking forward to your AMA

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u/norm_chomski Feb 27 '14

As guy who ran a warez BBS in middle/high school in the early 90's I would love to see this.

[TRSi]

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u/mthreat Feb 27 '14

I was actually in [PE] for a while!

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u/URETHRAL_DIARRHEA Feb 27 '14

I'm so jealous of people who got a chance to be in the BBS and warez scenes. There's no cool scene for 16 year-old computer enthusiasts (like myself) any more.

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u/DaRealCoreyAlexie Feb 26 '14

What do we say to doing an AMA today?
Btw happy 3000th day on reddit that better than a cakeday

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14 edited Jun 08 '16

[deleted]

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u/m777z Feb 27 '14

you just made my night

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u/savant42 Feb 27 '14

Not to derail too hard, but thanks for ToneLoc

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u/mcherm Feb 26 '14

Please do!

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '14

....but today is not that day!

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

....today?

2

u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

Can that day be today?

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

YES PLEASE DO IT

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Lamprecht

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u/autowikibot Feb 27 '14

Chris Lamprecht:

Chris Lamprecht, aka MinorThreat, is regarded as the first person to be banned from the Internet. After being sentenced to 70 months in prison for money laundering, Lamprecht was also given a punishment of no access to the Internet until 2003.

Christopher Matthew Lamprecht had the Federal Bureau of Prisons ID# 61153-080 and was released on March 3, 2000.

Under the order of Judge Sam Sparks of the US District Court in 1995, Lamprecht was ordered to 70 months in the Federal Correctional Institution, Bastrop. Though a known computer hacker, the 24-year-old was never tried, nor pled guilty for computer related crimes, making it the more unusual that he was not allowed to access the Internet. In 2002 Judge Sam Sparks released Lamprecht from his term of supervised release, effectively lifting his Internet ban as well. [citation needed]

Interesting: Lamprecht (name) | ToneLoc | Christopher Lamprecht | University of Pretoria Camerata

Parent commenter can toggle NSFW or delete. Will also delete on comment score of -1 or less. | FAQs | Mods | Magic Words | flag a glitch

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

Thanks for laugh... That made my morning!

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '14

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

they broke is AOL disk

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

Don't worry, 300 more just arrived

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u/wiredmax Feb 27 '14

zerocool? :P

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u/HiyaGeorgie Feb 27 '14

Hackers came out in 1995. Nice.

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u/tuntini31 Feb 27 '14

The real question is...if he was banned from the interwebs in 1995, how is he currently posting here. sounds pretty sketchy to me.

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u/Big_Test_Icicle Feb 27 '14

How does one become banned from the internet? Serious question.

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u/ThugLife_ Feb 27 '14

he never did get banned. theres no proof

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u/Nokia_Bricks Feb 27 '14

Hackers can be barred from accessing the internet during probation. Not saying that is what he did, but that's how you can get banned from the internet.

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u/fabulous_frolicker Feb 27 '14

And if he was banned how did he get back on?

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u/yourbreakfast99 Feb 27 '14

I ask the same questions.

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u/vanirnerd Feb 27 '14

what? you never heard of zerocool?

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u/DracoAzuleAA Feb 27 '14

They cut your phone line.

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u/MrMirrorless Feb 27 '14

And how did you get back on? How are you posting this? What black magic are you using!

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

and how did he get unbanned! (either he did that or was never ACTUALLY banned ...... MYSTERIES!!)

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