G-men pay Kyle McDonald a visit

[dlevere]

Posted July 8th 2011 3:41 P.M. by Mike Szczys

Looks like the men in black have paid Kyle McDonald a little visit. The United States Secret Service is investigating him for fraud and related activity for his People Staring At Computers project.

We just took a look at that one yesterday, and were thankful that all he was doing was taking people’s pictures and not stealing their information. Looks like Uncle Sam wasn’t being as lenient – or it could have been Apple that did the complaining, since mums the word from the corporate giant.

Kyle's also keeping his mouth shut after soliciting the advice of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Since details are scarce, it’s time to play armchair lawyer. Let us know what you think Kyle might be up against, and whether we’ll see this thing hit the courts or not. And remember not to take these comments as legal advice, since none of us actually knows what we’re talking about.



By the way, the gentleman seen above isn’t Kyle, he’s one of the unsuspecting ‘victims’ with some wikimedia commons slapped in for effect.

Originally posted at Hack a Day

[OldSchoolGamer]

They can't let him get away with this. He didn't really do anything bad to anyone. But the fact is, if they say stuff like this is legal to do, then that will open the flood gates to people doing things in similiar nature that could potentially be bad. If stuff like this is allowed, then it will be hard to draw the line of saying what is legal and what is illegal in regards to a situation like this. Invasion of privacy will be questioned among other things.

I hope he gets the lightest possible punishment possible though. I don't think his intentions or what he did had any malice to it.

It is wrong and I think illegal to hack or download programs into other people's computers without their consent. So I guess that is the only thing that he did wrong. I don't think the security guard has the authority to give permission to let that guy do what he did.