[rpledge]

It's interesting to see him named in the article - since he is under 18 in Canada he will be protected by the young offenders act and cannot be identified in the media. I suppose that is only applicable for Canadian media outlets.

[corin_]

Where's the line between "the media" and "people personally involved"?

For example, if a 14 year old comes up to me on the street and commits a crime (e.g. he mugs me) and I know his name, would I not be allowed to tweet "just got mugged by <his name>"?

[chris_wot]

I really have very little sympathy for him. Plenty of people have issues at home, and they don't go on a spree, taking up valuable time from emergency services and causing grief to innocent people.

[Wilya]

Whether he is a nice kid or an asshole has nothing to do with how laws against revealing his identity apply.

[Shivetya]

are victims under the same restrictions as the press? What if they are the same as in this case?

[Wilya]

My guess would be that it doesn't matter. The relevant text seems to be [0], and it focuses on the act of publishing, not on who does it.

Being a victim doesn't give you any particular rights to publish this information. But the law says nothing about merely telling it to all your friends. And if you're walking the line between these two, it's probably better to talk to a lawyer before speaking.

[0] http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/Y-1.5/page-45.html#h...

[jacquesm]

Then I would say a bit of extra restraint would be appropriate. Especially if the victim has a habit of trying to engage the perps and has set himself up as an extra visible target. Imagine Billy the Kid picking fights with every kid with a gun (yes, sure it would happen the other way around as well but Krebs is doing everything to fan the flames).

It's a fine line between crime and entrapment, so when your business depends on having these crimes happen to you then you should be extra careful in how you go about dealing with the perps identities, especially if they are minors.

[frobozz]

From the first paragraph:

> A 16-year-old male from Ottawa, Canada has been arrested for allegedly making at least 30 fraudulent calls to emergency services across North America over the past few months.

Emphasis mine.

I would agree with you were the "allegedly" missing, and if instead of "arrested for", it said "convicted of".

[digitalengineer]

In the US allegedly or not, is besides the point. Everyone confesses and 'takes the deal', guilty or not.

"For 2011, the US Department of Justice reported a 93% conviction rate." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_rate

[JackFr]

The high rate of convictions for US Attorneys vis a vis state and local prosecutors stems from the higher level of prosecutorial discretion they enjoy. Basically US Attorneys only prosecute slam dunks. From the same source, you'll not that Florida for instance only has a 59% conviction rate.

[danielweber]

As others have pointed out, it's hard to make any conclusions from a high conviction rate.

Prosecutors are only supposed to prosecute people if they think the person really did it, and if they think they can convince a jury.

Prosecutors aren't supposed to prosecute "just to find out what happens."

[bkmartin]

Is that a sign of innocent people pleading guilty or a sign of an efficient judicial system? Got any stats to back up your inference that there are significant amounts of innocent people just pleading guilty? I'm not really sure what the point of your post was, but I don't have the ability to vote it down as irrelevant.

[nightpool]

That doesn't have ANYTHING tto do with the grandparent's comment.

[jacquesm]

I am a bit ambivalent about all this. Krebs makes his living by picking fights with people and then writing about it so if you engage him you shouldn't be too surprised to find your name in print. That said he's a bit too eager about it all, there is a 'bring it on' attitude that makes me wonder if most or any of the things that Krebs has happen to him would happen if he didn't make such a circus out of it.

It's a bit like a big bruiser going downtown to the clubs and trying to pick fights with every drunk and then bragging later about how many he bagged.

And to post the name of the kid before he's convicted (assuming he will be convicted) is out of line and possibly even illegal (he's a minor after all).

[sbarre]

Isn't it more like a big bruiser going down to the shady part of town and trying to pick fights with the muggers and drug dealers?

Most of Krebs' targets are carding rings, crackers and other Internet fraudsters and criminals. These aren't clueless people being dumb, these are usually bad people (allegedly) doing intentionally bad things to innocent people..

Also, the kid's name was in the already-published DOX that he linked to in his article. It's not like he was responsible for "outing" this kid's details....

[bkmartin]

Or maybe because of Krebs' notoriety he gets lots of playback from these thugs trying to boost their street cred by pulling one over on him. Its a high risk/high reward game for the thugs, and their egos are blinding them into jail terms.

[danielweber]

Since Krebs doesn't live in Canada, what illegal act may he have committed?

[fixermark]

The kind that crosses an international boundary but doesn't involve millions of dollars or major political embarrassment for either nation and therefore will never be fairly adjudicated in this generation. ;)