Hacking to rig election earns college student one-year prison sentence

[Renew Deal]

Matthew Weaver, a 22-year-old former business student at California State University San Marcos, was sentenced to one year in prison this week for using keylogging software to steal 750 fellow students' passwords and vote himself and four of his fraternity brothers into the student government's president and vice president roles. The five positions would have combined to bring the students a combined $36,000 in stipends, the San Diego Union-Tribue reports.
<snip>

On Weaver’s computer, authorities found a PowerPoint presentation from early 2012, proposing that he run for campus president and that four of his fraternity brothers run for the four vice president spots in the student government. The presentation noted that the president’s job came with an $8,000 stipend and the vice presidents each got a $7,000 stipend.

Weaver also had done a bit of research, with computer queries such as “how to rig an election” and “jail time for keylogger.”

Once the school caught onto the scheme, Weaver reportedly turned back to hacking to try to dig himself out of it. The Union-Tribune reports that Weaver created new Facebook accounts in the names of actual classmates, going as far as conducting fake conversations between the accounts to try to deflect blame. That contributed to the one-year prison sentence, which the judge presiding over the case elected even after Weaver pleaded guilty and requested probation.
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http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/hacking-rig-election-earns-college-student-one-year-prison-sentence

[NYC_SKP]

1. Well earned punishment, IMHO.

I only worry that it will make him money once he gets out.

There are company's that would like to hire people like Matthew Weaver and pay them handsomely for their skills and lack of ethics.

....

[xfundy]

2. Yet Ham Rove still waddles around free.

[AuntFester]

3. Good lord. No real politicians have ever gone to jail.

You hear that Bush? Rove? Cheney, you listening?

[longship]

10. Bull shit.

Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Dean, Chapin, Hunt, Colson, Liddy, McCord, Hunt, plus the four caught in the Watergate break-in. 40 total went to jail, many at the top of government. A president was forced to resign under the shadow of inevitable impeachment and conviction by the Senate.

[YOHABLO]

11. Good point .. but that was over 40 years ago; and no comparison to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld etc.

[longship]

12. Alas! We apparently do not have what we had then.

In other words, a responsible Congress.

Alas!

[AuntFester]

17. That was a very different time.

The corporate takeover was only just starting. The echo chamber was just a glint in the of right wing thinkers. The hard right was William F. Buckley.

Yes indeed, a very different time.

[elleng]

4. Good.

[progressoid]

5. There's a job waiting for him with the GOP when he gets out.

[rhett o rick]

6. A young Karl Rove. nm

[Snarkoleptic]

7. Could this be an illegitimate child of Karl Rove?

n/t

[longship]

8. It's called Ratfucking!

A term coined at USC by those who eventually became Nixon political operatives. Dwight Chapin, Donald Segretti, et al.

[NYtoBush-Drop Dead]

9. a republican is born.

[SoapBox]

13. Next stop after jail...FuksFakeNews!

Cause his getting jail time is all ACORN and O-bama's fault!

[blkmusclmachine]

14. Future employees for Black Box Voting Corp., Inc.

[Jim Lane]

15. When did student government positions start paying $7k stipends?

That seems like a pretty high amount.

Yes, the time they spend on student government work takes away from time they could spend on some paying job, but that's true of any such extracurricular activity. Am I retroactively owed a stipend for being president of the chess club as an undergrad?

[CFLDem]

16. He has a strong future in government

or K street!