Via Information Week comes this interesting item: A Massachusetts man was sentenced in Florida this week for hacking into the Accurint public-records database owned by LexisNexis. According to the U.S. attorney’s statement, the man will spend a year in prison and must pay restitution of $100,000 to LexisNexis and the Port Orange, Fla., police department. The statement says:

“The case originated with a complaint from Seisint, Inc. in Boca Raton to the United States Secret Service. Seisint is the owner of the product Accurint and was acquired by LexisNexis in 2004. The defendants accessed computers through various methods (computer intrusion, Trojan horse, social engineering) and obtained user login identifications and passwords and subsequently made unauthorized entries into the Accurint database which is similar to Autotrack and used by law enforcement and others. Due to the company’s prompt reporting of these computer intrusions, the United States Secret Service was able to terminate the defendants’ access to the system and to identify and prosecute the culprits.”

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Bob is a lawyer, veteran legal journalist, and award-winning blogger and podcaster. In 2011, he was named to the inaugural Fastcase 50, honoring “the law’s smartest, most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Earlier in his career, he was editor-in-chief of several legal publications, including The National Law Journal, and editorial director of ALM’s Litigation Services Division.