Lowes' wireless guys get 9 years
dr
<RANT>
Where to even begin?  <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=333698">This monstrosity</a> from ABC news is a fine example of <b>terrible</b> reporting:

<i>Two other men are awaiting sentencing in the Lowe's case. One of them, Adam Timmins, became one of the first people convicted of "wardriving," in which hackers go around with an antenna, searching for vulnerable wireless Internet connections.</i>

Well at least they defined the TERM (semi)correctly, unfortunately thats NOT what the crime was.  Good job, AP News.  Glad we count on you to influence peoples perceptions.

Moving along:

<i>"I think the massive amount of potential loss that these defendants could have imposed was astounding, so that's what caused us to seek a substantial sentence against Mr. Salcedo," federal prosecutor Matthew Martens said.</i>

POTENTIALLY I could drive my car into a crowd tomorrow, too.  This is like prosecutors using "Well, it COULD HAVE BEEN explosives" to add to the sentence for Bernie S.

Never mind that the company left a wide open public hole directly into their main systems.  No liability on them for exposing customer data via an insecure and brutally unintelligent network design.  This doesn't excuse breaking into a network and stealing, and as much as we might all want to take up arms for fellow geeks, they did definitely break the law -- but shouldn't at least some responsibility lie with Lowes, for exposing customer data so severely?

&lt;/rant&gt;