By Andy McCue, 17 February 2005 12:10
NEWS A London man has pleaded not guilty to a charge of attempting to hack into a charity website set up to raise money for victims of the Asian tsunami disaster.
Daniel James Cuthbert, 28, from Whitechapel in East London, has been charged with one offence under section one of the Computer Misuse Act following what police called an "unauthorised" attempt to access the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) website on New Year's Eve.
The alleged hack was detected immediately and the Metropolitan Police notified, which led to Cuthbert's arrest on 20 January.
He was officially charged by the police last week following the examination of computer equipment seized during a search of his home.
Cuthbert pleaded not guilty this morning at Horseferry Road Magistrates court in London and has been released on unconditional bail until April pending submission to the court of a report by an IT security expert witness.
Comments
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1. anonymous
Whilst I can't comment on the case, I can comment about the arrest. If the hack had been spotted immediately, how come it took three weeks to arrest him?
2. Angus
The reason the arrest takes so long is that you actually need proof that someone committed a crime. It takes time to go through Log Files and for ISP's to release there logs and then Trace the alleged Criminal who was using that IP address at that time.
3. Robert Peel.
We take our time to arrest as we also monitor the alleged miscreant, incase they do other malicious attacks, thereby speeding any possible conviction.
It may surprise you to read that we actually do know what we're doing and do intend that justice is done.
If he is innocent the charges will be dropped soon.
4. anonymous
I don't agree with either of these responses. The first person simply contradicted the statement that the attack was spotted immediately.
The second person makes the bizarre statement that if someone has apparently committed an arrestable offence, the police wait for them to commit another one. Since when was this standard practice? Here was me being naive and thinking that the police upheld the law, not realising that there was some kind of internal quota system for offences. As I understand UK law any of us can arrest someone for an arrestable offence and detain that person until the police arrive. This includes moving that person to a safer location if necessary.
I would hope that if the case is thrown out that this would receive as much media attention as it did in the first place. Since charges have been made and a date set for a hearing, then I don't think that the charges will be dropped. Then again, I didn't think the charges would be dropped last October when an ambulance driver was charged for speeding.
If ambulance drivers on emergency calls can be charged for speeding, then anything goes!