In the US, hackers are the new witches

Over the pond, the US Justice Department has become so paranoid about hackers that it is bringing about a prosecution campaign which seems to take the Salem Witch trials for inspiration.

This week Andrew Auernheimer was jailed for 41 months because he dared to obtain the personal data of more than 100,000 iPad owners from AT&T's publicly accessible website.

Let's be clear about this, he did not hack anyone - he just visited the non-public bit of AT&T's server and downloaded the details. In what was later described as a witch trial, Auernheimer, 26, was found guilty of one count of identity fraud and one count of conspiracy to access a computer without authorisation after he and a colleague created a program to collect information on iPad owners that had been exposed by a security hole in AT&T's web site.