Lori Drew Indicted- On Hacking Charges

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Lori Drew is rightfully the most hated person on the internet. She impersonated a boy on MySpace with the express intention of hurting Megan Meier, a little girl who was her neighbor. That girl, brokenhearted over drama resulting from the fake MySpace page, committed suicide.

I never covered this story since it was so well covered by Trench here, here and here. But now she has been indicted in Los Angeles on federal charges for conspiracy, fraud, and get this- hacking! What hacking? She violated the terms of service on Myspace.

From Reuters here:

A 49-year-old Missouri woman accused of pretending to be a love-struck teenage boy on MySpace and driving a 13-year-old girl to suicide with cruel messages was indicted on Thursday on federal charges.

Lori Drew and others created the fake MySpace persona of a 16-year-old boy to woo neighbor Megan Meier for several weeks, then abruptly ended the relationship and said the world would be better off without her.

Meier’s 2006 suicide by hanging, just hours after she read those final messages, made worldwide headlines and prompted calls for social networking sites like MySpace to crack down on cyber-bullying.

The indictment, which was handed down in Los Angeles after Missouri authorities declined to prosecute Drew, was a first of its kind and could stretch the bounds of the federal statute on which it was based.

Drew was charged with accessing a protected computer to obtain information, a statute typically used against defendants who hack into government computers.

Drew, who faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison if she is convicted on all of the charges, was expected to surrender to authorities in Missouri.

I think Lori Drew deserves punishment of the harshest type. But if the Feds are going to step in and prosecute based on the violation of the Terms of Service agreement, which is a civil agreement between private individuals, this is a bad idea. First, the feds have neglected to do this for every creepy web predator that rapes kids they entice on MySpace. Second, no federal laws were actually broken under the code cited, which is Title 18 Section 1030, a code every cyber security professional is familiar with. In order to prosecute under this section, Drew would have had to steal a password or compromise the system- Not use the service in an unintended way.

The conspiracy and harassment charges should stick. But also think about this- when was the last time any prosecutor in Los Angeles was able to get a conviction? Unfortunately, I think Drew will walk on this charge.