http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/sports/baseball/mlb/philadelphia_phillies/10577805.htm By L. Stuart Ditzen Inquirer Staff Writer Jan. 06, 2005 Though he moved away from the Philadelphia area 18 years ago, Allan E. Carlson's obsessive interest in the Phillies - and his hostile opinions about the team's management - only increased with time. Sitting in his apartment in Glendale, Calif., Carlson, 41, spent 70 hours a week hacking into other people's computers and using their e-mail addresses to spread his baseball gripes on the Internet. Carlson, who grew up in South Jersey, yesterday told a jury in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, where he is on trial for computer crimes and identity theft, that he meant no harm. In 2001 and 2002, he was jamming computer systems at the Phillies and Philadelphia Newspapers Inc., which owns The Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, with thousands of e-mails, but Carlson testified: "There's no way for me to know what was going on. I'm sitting in my apartment." That he might be causing problems "never occurred" to him, he said. Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael L. Levy, who is prosecuting the case, contended in his closing argument that Carlson caused a great deal of harm - and knew he was doing it. Levy said Carlson created havoc with a Phillies online ticket service and inundated the computer system of Knight Ridder Corp., parent of Philadelphia Newspapers, with so much spam e-mail that the company briefly had to take its computers off-line. Carlson, who is unemployed, said his main gripes were that Phillies management was spending too little money to build a winning team and that sports reporters and columnists in Philadelphia were not holding the team bosses accountable. Among other things, Carlson used the e-mail addresses of sportswriters to send ranting messages to tens of thousands of random e-mail addresses. That triggered masses of return e-mails to the writers whose names were used. One columnist received 60,000 returned e-mails, some with angry replies. Carlson also sent what Levy described as a racist e-mail to staff members at The Inquirer in 2002 in the name of Walker Lundy, the newspaper's editor at the time. Lundy testified as a prosecution witness. Carlson's lawyer, Mark T. Wilson, said in his closing argument that his client's behavior was "reprehensible" and maybe "crazy," but not criminal. "There is no evidence that he knew damage was occurring," Wilson said. "Nobody came back to him and said, 'Yo, you've got to stop this.' How does he know that all this damage is occurring?" Carlson is charged with 79 counts of computer-related crimes involving misuse of e-mail, unauthorized access of computers, and using the identities of other people with the intent to commit crimes. The jury is to begin deliberations today. _________________________________________ Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) Everything is Vulnerable - http://www.osvdb.org/
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