Al Jazeera hacker pleads guilty
Source: news.com.au
AN American web designer has agreed to plead guilty to intercepting email and content from Arabic TV station al-Jazeera's internet site and rerouting it to the "Let Freedom Ring" page he devised.
John William Racine, 24, of California, will plead guilty to felony charges of wire fraud and unlawful interception of an electronic communication, prosecutors said.
He will be arraigned on Monday in federal court in Los Angeles.
Racine allegedly acted after learning in March that al-Jazeera had posted photos of American POWs and soldiers killed in Iraq on its web site, according to the plea agreement.
In Dubai, the technology manager at al-Jazeera welcomed the charges but said the hacking of the internet site was a costly operation that could not have involved just one person. Aljazeera.net was subject to several attacks during March, including one in which visitors were redirected to a pornography site.
