[Brian Salcedo] made headlines a few years ago as a hacker who attempted to break into Lowe’s corporate network. He is currently serving a nine-year prison sentence, one of the longest sentences for a computer hacking offense. Recent events surrounding a different hacking case have revealed that the buyer he worked for, [Albert “Segvec” Gonzalez], was a Secret Service informant. [Salcedo] claims that were it not for [Gonzalez]’s threats, he would not have committed the hacking offense. While the Secret Service may not have even been aware of [Gonzalez’s] activity with other hackers, [Salcedo] could make a case of entrapment by arguing that [Gonzalez] threatened him as a government agent in order to make him plant the sniffer in Lowe’s network.
Im going to go out on a limb here and say I do beileve this is a case of entrapment. That Gonzolez informant was only supposed to help officials apprehend “current” hackers with criminal histories, not arrange for hacking attempts to capture them in the act. Unfortunately, with how rulings have been going against hackers and info theives as of late, I don’t think this will be an easy case won for Salado.
We’re rooting for you though!
CIA and FBI does this all the time. It’s the hackers that can’t keep their mouth shut.
just to curb the claims as soon as possible:
Entrapment — A law enforcement offical forces you to do something illegal. You would NOT be committing this act otherwise. The key detail here is that you were forced to do something that you wouldn’t do normally.
Not Entrapment — A low enforcement offical says “would you like to do this illegal thing. You would be willing to commit this act otherwise and the cop is simply there witnessing it. They may present the idea, but they aren’t forcing you to do it.
If the guy arranging the crime is a SS Agent and he forced him, then yeah, he was entraped. Since the guy wasn’t a fed, and the fed’s most likely didn’t know anything about the guy forcing him, it shouldn’t be entrapment (if the feds knew and approved, I’d say that it was).
However, from the wired article, it sounds like he was already committing the crime and the informant only threatened him to finsh the job and deliver the package. In that case, he was already doing something illegal. He showed that he was willing to do this crime on his own. I don’t see him having a case.