Hacker avoids jail
A former RAF man escaped a jail sentence yesterday after he admitted hacking into a rival website for reuniting members of the armed forces. John Thornley, 31, of Chorley, Lancashire, was ordered to do 60 hours community service and pay £520 compensation and £55 costs after sabotaging the Forces Reunited website in November and December last year under the user-name Harry Potter. Chippenham magistrates court was told that Thornley uploaded a program on to the website which caused members' details to be deleted, after becoming mistakenly convinced that a rival webmaster, Dominic Hayhoe, had stolen email addresses from his site and uploaded viruses to his computer. But sentencing Thornley, the magistrate, Caroline McLean, said: "If you think of a fight in a playground, because somebody hit you that doesn't give you the right to hit them back." Last month Thornley, who was in the RAF for nine years, was told after pleading guilty to four offences under the Computer Misuse Act 1990, he could face a jail sentence. However yesterday Ms McLean said that magistrates had taken into consideration his remorse and cooperation with the inquiry.
Reproduced from an article published by Guardian Unlimited
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