Perhaps you know computer people like Shawn Carpenter. The kind of computer person that I have in mind is someone who is dogged and tireless. That person will spend endless hours at the keyboard to correct a bug, to make the system work ‘properly’, to hunt down the reason why something is faulty… well, I am sure you have run across that DNA variant. Shawn Carpenter, a security analyst, is like that and more. He held fast to his belief that he was right and fought in a court of law. And he won:
“…Carpenter, whose story was first written about in TIME magazine in August 2005, was a network security analyst working at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque when he discovered that the lab’s network was coming under a methodical series of attacks emanating from Chinese IP addresses. When the Navy veteran found out that dozens of Army bases and defense contractors around the country had been suffering identical Trojan horse attacks on their secure networks, he went to his bosses to present the evidence he had collected and ask for permission to “backhack” the attackers to find out their point of origin.
What followed was an object lesson in bureaucratic torpor…”
link: A Security Analyst Wins Big in Court
Shawn Carpenter believed that he was doing the right thing. A jury of his fellow citizens agreed with him. Vindication. And kudos to Shawn Carpenter.
Catherine Forsythe
Director of Operations
FlyingHamster: http://flyinghamster.com/
[tags]security, hackers, China, FBI, court ruling, catherine forsythe[/tags]