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Demonstrations Are a Crime (from the album 1984): According to the Register, a Houston computer security expert was charged with hacking (actually, cracking) after demonstrating to an official and a reporter how swiss-cheese-like the county court system's wireless network was. This reminds me of a case over five years ago in which a legendary perl programmer, who I have had the privilege to meet, was convicted of hacking Intel's systems because he had the temerity to prove to them (without permission) how poorly managed their passwords were. As in this case, the costs of "repairing" the damage were actually costs associated with the reality of the poor management of the system in the first place. Intel got hundreds of thousands from my colleague; the county tagged its loss at $5,000. So, if someone authorized had pointed out the weakness, who would have eaten that cost?