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House OKs Life Sentences For Hackers
ByteHog writes "The House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly Monday to create a new punishment of life imprisonment for malicious computer hackers. The article on MSNBC also mentions that police can conduct internet or telephone eavesdropping without first obtaining a court order. Says a Rep from Texas: 'A mouse can be just as dangerous as a bullet or a bomb.'" Other articles can be found here and the text of the bill is available.
Build your own computer? You're a terrorist.
Run an "unsecured" operating system? You're a terrorist.
Share files? Terrorist.
Complain about corporate abuse? Terrorist.
Demand your Fair Use rights? Terrorist.
Fail to consume your fair share? Terrorist.
In 100 years, when they are picking over the ashes of our civilization wondering what went wrong, this will be the turning point day they decide on...the day when you could get LIFE in PRISON for using a computer.
So if I train my dog so it kills someone, I'll get a cushy 4 years in jail, but if I train my computer so it causes only fiduciary damages, I can get life in prison? That seems screwy to me.
The future isn't what it used to be.
That would sensibly be covered by existing murder and man-slaughter laws. The internet and computers are not some how "special" and "different" - they should and must be subject to the same laws as every other human endeavour. No need for endless special legislation - well except for the senator from disney and his cronies to promote their pay-master's interests.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
I hope none of the 1 million Governement Snoops I read about via Drudge don't turn you y4nk33 haxxors in. (What happened to fighting the good fight with 'Hacker' vs 'Cracker', anyway?) Actually, its probably reasonable, if someone deliberately set out to kill people by screwing with Air Traffic Control or somethings. But there's a cold wind blowing from the hill.
The sad part is, i doubt many people will fight this. Sure, the media will acknowledge its existance, but will say that it makes life sentences available for hackers who damage our infrastructure, and further hurt digital terrorists in our country (clip of something in there). Nobody will hear about the invasion of privacy stuff. Oh wait--what privacy. Sorry, guess i forgot that its not for your average American Citizen.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&o
The funny thing is that the biggest threat to the internet right now is WorldCom itself....since they own UUnet and are going seriously bankrupt. Of course UUnet will stay alive somehow, either by WorldCom, sold to someone else, or through a government bailout. The major backbones and networks are really in a pretty powerful position, since they control major portions of the internet.
Oh, looks like they are, just as you said. So why do we need a new law? Does it make a difference what tools are used? It can't see how it should.
JADBP
What I don't understand about this is why there needs to be specific bills related to computer hacking.
As I understand it, the bill relates to the case of "if the offender knowingly causes or attempts to cause death or serious bodily injury."
Doesn't the USA have laws against this already? I mean, if I murder someone with a frozen banana, it's still murder, you don't need a law saying "you are not allowed to murder someone with a frozen banana". Surely knowingly causing or attempting to cause death or serious bodily injury is currently against the law anyway, however you go about doing it? Why is this law necessary?
That murder is usually a State, not Federal, matter. In the case of a hacker, who may be operating across State lines, it is proper for the Federal Government to get involved.
Best Slashdot Co
I like the "from the but-still-okay-to-rip-off-the-stock-market dept". That's fitting, given the posturing of congress to get tough on corporate crime.They paid lip service to it and raised some of the penalties but they've done nothing to increase the vigor with which these cases are prosecuted. To date, few of these cases have been prosecuted. When they do prosecute a company for cooking it's books, they'll be defended by the best lawyers money can buy. When a hacker is tried, he'll have the standard, substandard legal defense. The result is few corporate criminals will ever go to jail but lots of hackers will be railroaded.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Well, this is just the beginning. Computers are a realatively new technology. Compared to the history of automobiles. In the beginning of widespread use, 1920's, there were certainly no need to have a license if you wanted to roam the public roads. (internet)
And If you wanted to roll your own car, no problemo. As cars became more or less everybodys-god-given-right, accidents started to happen everywhere and people did die. It will happen! Computers will be as regulated as cars. And it will happen soon. Sooner than we would like.
lazee_coward
Pray you never find out the hard way.
No Zen is good zen
Then why is a new law needed?
Get what repealed?
IT'S A BILL
This still needs to go to the Senate and the Pres. Lobby them.
I'm not sure I see how the level of sophistication should affect the sentencing. Does this happen in other crimes? ("He shot her a bit amateurishly, so we'll only give him 5 years"). And why does it make a difference whether its a government computer or not?
This does make it a federal offense, while "ordinary" murder is a violation of state law in most cases, so the law's not a total noop.
--
Benjamin Coates
SEC. 106. STRENGTHENING PENALTIES.
Section 1030(c) of title 18, United States Code, is amended--
`(B) if the offender knowingly or recklessly causes or attempts to cause death from conduct in violation of subsection (a)(5)(A)(i), a fine under this title or imprisonment for any term of years or for life, or both.'.
If you try to kill somebody you might get a life term, no different to recklessly or knowingly causing death any other way. So you try to crash air traffic control computers you get thrown in jail for life - sorry if I'm not too sympathetic.
Once again America doesn't need MORE laws just to apply the existing ones judiciously.
In all seriousness, could some one explain to me why we need to crack down on "Cyber Terrorists"? I thought it was the regular, box-cutter-weilding, gun-toting, bomb-making kind that were giving us problems lately. Shouldn't the government be trying to stream line its paperwork processes and attempting to fix internal security problems?
Shouldn't we be working harder to fix existing government agencies that don't work as intended instead of making new ones?
[signature]
It's "needed" so that Joe Congressman can claim he's "doing something" about a "problem" that Joe Constituent has heard Katie Couric say is "pretty bad".
Not unlike hate crime laws, which legislate additional penalties for already criminal acts based on the victim's membership in some group and the criminal's thoughts.
Assaulting me: 1 year.
Assaulting me because I'm Zoroastrian: 5 years.
Assaulting me by hitting me over the head with a computer: 10 years.
Passing feel-good laws that make a patchwork of justice: priceless!
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
here is the focal point of this discussion:
`(B) if the offender knowingly or recklessly causes or attempts to cause death from conduct in violation of subsection (a)(5)(A)(i), a fine under this title or imprisonment for any term of years or for life, or both.'. (my bold)
You may think of 'hacking' as an act in and of itself. This bill deals with various crimes that a 'hacker' might perform, using hacking as a tool or a means.
For additional perspective, refer to these acts mentioned in the bill:
(F) whether the offense involved a computer used by the government in furtherance of national defense, national security, or the administration of justice;
(G) whether the violation was intended to or had the effect of significantly interfering with or disrupting a critical infrastructure; and
(H) whether the violation was intended to or had the effect of creating a threat to public health or safety, or injury to any person;...
Examples of acts that are contemplated here: disabling a national defense warning system; flooding a city by opening the spillways on a dam; disabling the air traffic control system in a busy metropolitan area.
And for those who will quickly argue that these systems should not be connected to the Internet, note that the bill does not limit these acts of 'hacking' to access from the Internet. Hacking can also include access from inside a company or facility, dialup access to a piece of critical equipment, or even some acts of 'social engineering.'
These are not new criminalizations of innocent acts. They are simply expansions of existing principles to include new technology and means of hurting people and property.
you could get LIFE in PRISON for using a computer.
That's like complaining that you could get LIFE in PRISON for using a screw driver. If you use that screw driver to tighten screws, you're fine. If you stick it in someone's eye and wiggle it around, you may be facing LIFE in PRISON for the MURDER that you committed with your SCREW DRIVER.
Evil is the money of root.
Nicely put. But I'll add:
Peace: A situation where there hasn't been any overt terrorist activities, and the government decides it cannot afford to sustain the high-level of alert because of budget deficits and the coming elections.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
I imagine that the Treasury Department and Justice Department want to be able to claim jurisdiction quickly and easily in these cases, and now they can cite a federal crime being committed. Of course the feel-good nature of the legislation is helpful to the politicians.
Alric.
If a hack causes death the hacker can never be the only one to blame IMHO.
Maybe so, but read some of L0pht's papers about the widely insecure remote access to power grids, city works (traffic controls, etc.), and other such things which are probably very hackable and not connected to the internet.
I think the premiss of this law is probably correct. If you commit a robbery and someone gets killed during the commision of that crime the law regarding that crime says you may be held accountable for that death. I don't think this law is much different.
If I hack something like a city's traffic control system and start playing around, only to leave the busiest intersections lights green in both directions, then unbeknownst to me some Soccer mom and her 5 kids get killed by a 18 wheeler driving through said intersection, I'm the one liable for their deaths. The people responsible for maintaining the traffic system may also be liable under either criminal or civil matter for neglegence or something like that, but they can't be held responsible for my actions. Just like, going back to the robbery, if that store owner pulls his gun and shoots and me but hits a customer, I'm still on the hook for the customer's death.
I am not a lawyer, nor a gynocologist, but I play both in my back shed.
Because it's an election year, and Joe Congressman needs the law to show the voters he's tough on terrorist hackers.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
I had the same "knee jerk" reaction but...
/jarek
"(B) if the offender knowingly or recklessly causes or attempts to cause death from conduct in violation of subsection (a)(5)(A)(i), a fine under this title or imprisonment for any term of years or for life, or both.'."
This just acknowledges that computers are integral and vital parts of our lifes and can be used in malicious ways just as knifes or guns. Welcome to the global village and the on-line world people.
I am sure that many of you read about the Honeypot that was hacked into last week and eventually the hacker himself was located.
Does this mean that teenage "hackers" (Very loosely used) will now be tried as adults and put in prison for life?
Many of those people barely know what they are doing, as was shown with the hack attempt on that OpenBSD honeypot.
What I really want to know, is why the heck can a mouse be as dangerous as a bomb? Don't people back up data? That is a terrible generalization. There shouldn't be any reason for a mouse to be as dangerous as a bomb. The systems that could allow such damage to occur should NEVER be accessible by unauthorized individuals. They should be on their own hardened network, seperate from the rest of the net.
Sure, it can be helpful to have an application that connects to the nuclear reactor's control and monitoring station so that a director can view and alter the flow of nuclear material from his internet connected desk computer. Why the heck take the chance that some SOB angry 15 year old or terrorist would be able to access that system?
Personally, I think that this threat is being blown WAY out of proportion and is really designed to protect corporate networks that aren't locked down enough. I say to bad. If they want to have internet connected desktops across their enterprise, then they better be ready for the assault that WILL happen. If they don't like that idea, then they should cut themselves off of the internet, only allowing E-mail to come and go from their network. Sure, a few workstations would need net access, but not EVERY single workstation in the company.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
(G) whether the violation was intended to or had the effect of significantly interfering with or disrupting a critical infrastructure; and
(H) whether the violation was intended to or had the effect of creating a threat to public health or safety, or injury to any person;...
So if Joe sends an email to Jane and for some reason that email trigger some weird bugs that somehow cause some shitty system to go down and that system going down cause G or H then you can get life imprisonment for sending an email?
Ok that exemple is a bit extreme, but still, given how everthing is/can be interconnected through computers who knows how much unintended effects can result from some interraction with buggy software.
It simply boggles the mind how these fucktards running our country can make a law for every single thing in existence in the world, covering the same crime by 50 or 60 different laws...
Grrr... obviously they don't have anything better to do than waste our tax dollars and pork interns(not just Billy boy, mind you, the whole lot of our public servants mostly), or possibly kill them. It is becoming excruciatingly painfully obvious that our public officials are not like the average American, they are much, much greedier and of much lower character.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Didn't the leaders of Enron and Worldcom ruin lifes?
If there is a life sentence for computer hacking why isn't there one for mallicious cooking of the books?
(answer: The politicians would be so vulnerable that they couldn't pass it)
I think it is funny that hackers can get life in prison by doing maybe a few million in damages to a company or government. But then the CEOs of WorldCom and Enron can fuck their employees out of their retirement and all savings they might have had by cheating the system. Not to mention the amount of money investors are out of because the stock market has tanked. Have you heard what sentence they are going to get? Nothing I am sure. Pure bullshit!
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
It's simple, if you elect a xenophobic, (ex)alcoholic, opportunistic idiot for president you get a lousy government that issues stupid policies.
Any of you guys who voted for Bush have no right to complain now but if you don't like it you can always reconsider at the next election.
(5) if the offender knowingly causes or attempts to cause death or serious bodily injury in a violation of subsection (a)(5)(A)(i), a fine under this title, imprisonment for any term of years or for life, or both.
they arent talking about a DoS attack & they arent talking about defacing someones website. they are talking about air traffic contol systems, stoplight controls on busy intersections, railway switching programs, nuclear powerplant software and other things that have the potential to cause graet harm...
they may have been watching to many movies, but I see where they are coming from....
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
First, survelliance without a court order is unconstitutional. This portion of the bill will surely be stricken down by the Supreme Court.
Second, the rest of the law is redundant and unnecessary. Crimes committed via the internet should receive the same punishment as those in the real-world, where the situation is analagous. For example, breaking and entering can be treated the same. Simply hacking into a persons computer is breaking and entering, even if it causes no damage; similarly, breaking/entering into a person's home, even if you do no damage or steal nothing (and don't damage the locks), is a crime.
When a hacker purposefully hacks into, say the USAF HQ, and steals top-secret documents on airplane design, then divulges them to China that's a crime just as it is in real life (treason). Similarly, it should be punishable just as it is in real life (by life in prison or death).
Another example, if a mob boss orders an underling to kill someone via an on-line e-mail, that's murder and conspiracy to commit murder. It should be punished just as it is in real life: by life in prison or death.
The fact that a crime took place over the media of the internet does not greaten or lessen its severity or lack-thereof. It simply creates a jurisdictional issue. The issue can be solved like such: if a crime is committed on the internet and its affect occurs in that state, then its the state's jurisdiction; if it occurs in one state and affects another (i.e., the mob boss in NY orders his hitman to kill someone in CA), then it should be under federal jurisdiction.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I never intended to say the hacker should *not* be held responsible, but most of the time (but not always) a hacker gets his chance because somebody did a lousy job keeping the system secure. If this system is something that could kill people of abused then a lousy sysadmin is as responsible as the person abusing the system IMHO.
So they needed a new law for this? If I broke into a powerplant or something like that, caused damage that resulted in deaths, I'd be ok? I doubt it. Doing it physically or via computers shouldn't matter. Gee, next you'll tell me that CEOs need special laws in order to go to jail if they commit fraud.
No, the same wonderful ACLU that helps ensure that we can go to the library and actually be able to browse Slashdot, the Register, various political party sites, sites giving information on birth control and aides and various other legitimate sites that would otherwise be blocked by dysfunctional filtering programs.
It's not about going to jail for life. It's about the fact that they are allowed to invade my privacy. If I make a joke to my friend about how I'm going to break his leg and they can wire tap me? c'mon! All of this stuff can be grabbed without a court order now: telephone number, IP address, URLs or e-mail header information. This is BS if we don't have the right to free speach what do we have the right to? It means to me that I now have to watch every word I say in an e-mail or fear that I will be tapped by the government. If we're not protectig our rights what's the point to protecting anything? Can anyone say 1984? Orwell was a little off on the date
The Only Person Willing to be Me is ME!
If a cracker can kill using the web then surely the site that allows that weakness should be considered at fault. If you blame the cracker then only American crackers are stopped and the life threatening sites feel safe. Therefore any anti-American person in another country can kill Americans with impunity.
It is lax security that is the real crime...
Most of this anti-cracker hype is just stupid. 99% of cracks are just grafitti, no worse than paint on the wall. It is hyped up as something serious but I have only heard of a few cases where it is anything more than that.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
As a matter of fact, they probably ruined more lives than the jets in WTC did. How many people lost their savings and pensions on Enron, Worldcom and Arthur Andersen? While it is extremely sad to lose someone you love, the effect of losing all your money is much more tangible. Yep. I'm arguing that from an impact-on-society point of view, fraud is worse than murder. Am I losing it?
Stop the brainwash
"Specify that an existing ban on the "advertisement" of any device that is used primarily for surreptitious electronic surveillance applies to online ads. The prohibition now covers only a "newspaper, magazine, handbill or other publication."
;) ) popping under my browser will now be illegal? We might get SOME good out of this thing....
Does this mean those damn X-10 camera ads (which everyone knows people only buy stick in the girls locker room - surrpetitious surveilance.
Somehow this seemed appropriate:
The Conscience of a Hacker
by Mentor
Written on January 8, 1986
Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"...
Damn kids. They're all alike.
But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him,what may have molded him?
I am a hacker, enter my world...
Mine is a world that begins with school. I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...
Damn underachiever. They're all alike.
I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head."
Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.
I made a discovery today. I found a computer.
Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up.
Not because it doesn't like me...
Or feels threatened by me...
Or thinks I'm a smart ass...
Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...
Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.
And then it happened. A door opened to a world rushing through my phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found.
"This is it... this is where I belong." I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all.
Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike.
You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.
This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals.
We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals.
We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.
Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.
I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all...
After all, we're all alike.
Copyright 1986 by Loyd Blankenship (mentor@blankenship.com). All rights reserved.
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
Life sentences for lesser crimes already exist... For example, in many states you can server a life sentence (without parole) for growing of marijuanna. Hundreds of men are serving life sentences in prision for that right now. That seems to harm far fewer people than hacking.
we already have differing penalties "based on... the criminal's thoughts." [e.g., basing different categories of homicides on intent]
True. No argument there.
But differentiating between first degree murder and a lesser homicide charges is -- pun intended -- a horse of an entirely different color than differentiating between a "hate crime" and non-"hate crime".
We punish homicide if you planned to do it ("first degree"), if you didn't plan to do it ("second degree") and even if you failed to adequately plan your actions to prevent it ("negligent homicide"). But please note that this is all about planning your actions.
The Anglo-American political tradition, especially as codified in the U.S. Constitution, strives to protect individual freedom of belief. This tradition, one might say, strives to officially ignore what one believes, and to pay attention to one's actions only.
This is not merely a high-minded libertarianism of spirit; it's also a quite pragmatic formula first worked out in Europe after years suffering the disastrous consequences of attempting to enforce individual moral belief. With the rise of Protestantism, Europe was convulsed by decades of warfare putatively over and greatly fueled by sectarian difference. The wars ended with millions dead -- and with treaties guaranteeing freedom of religion. The State agreed, more (Holland) or less (English "test" laws), not to examine individuals' beliefs lest it lead once again to civil war.
The situation was as precarious, or more, in the nascent United States: while the northern British American colonies had been settled by persecuted religious minorities (Massachusetts Bay by Puritans, Pennsylvania (led) by Quakers and later joined by a whole host of Protestant splinter sects, Maryland by Catholics), these minorities held radically different religious views and some were more than willing to become persecutors themselves (thus the founding of Rhode Island, for example). To create a common civil union - the United States -- in North America required freedom of conscience, again not merely because it is right but also because nothing else would work in that pluralistic amalgamation of colonies and sects.
What has this to do with laws against hate crimes? Our legal tradition, learned with hard experience, is to punish injurious actions but not to police or punish belief. Hate crime laws deviate from this legal tradition by more forcibly punishing actions that are accompanied by beliefs or ideologies.
While racial bigotry has become perhaps the most ill-regarded civil sin in the United States, I don't think any mainstream legal theorist has or would explicitly propose outlawing bigoted beliefs unaccompanied by actions.
Except -- what, then, does the "hate crime" law punish? The action? No, that's already illegal.
Is it punishing the action, when performed by a bigot? But isn't that just saying that we have different laws for different classes of people: one law for "right-thinking" people and another for "bigots"? And since the difference between a bigot and a non-bigot is just that one does, and the other does not, hold some bigoted belief, isn't that tantamount to punishing the bigot -- (or to be entirely technical, punishing the bigot more when we're otherwise punishing him for some action) - for having that belief?
Then if the "hate crime" law isn't punishing the action, and it isn't punishing the action when performed by a bigot, then it must be punishing - yes - the holding of the bigoted belief. And if we're punishing the holding of a belief, that's entirely distinct from any action. The action triggers the punishment, yes, but what's punished is not the action, but the "incorrect" believing. That's not really any different from outlawing the belief, and that's just saying that we punish "thought crime".
Outlawing belief or ideologies didn't work very well in 17th century Europe, it wouldn't have worked at the founding of the United States, and it hasn't much chance of working well now. Let's leave every man the freedom of his conscience, and punish his actions without trying to read or regulate his mind.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
this must be a first, a life sentence charge without even physically harming anyone, something doesn't add up.
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
Which has a good definition at http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/UnintendedConse quences.html
Never mind the fact that we already have laws covering theft, murder, hacking, etc... As laws against cracking, and even hacking, get more and more draconian, what will be the eventual effect?
I think that a probable result is fewer and fewer hackers in the US. Which means, over time, less and less US expertise in safe systems, and relatively more foriegn expertise in cracking systems. Combine this with the various M$ attempts to make their insecure products mandatory, and their attempts to outlaw the release of information on their bugs, and what do you have?
Anti-cracking laws are fine, with reasonable penalties; unreasonable penalties will result in a huge loss of security for the USA in the long run. Only the bad guys will have the skills, and the really bad ones want to cause damage, not just get some props by embarassing corporations into fixing their security holes.
Well, the general idea is, if you make an example of a few hackers and script kiddies by putting them away for a long time, the long term effect will probably be the unintended consequence of much higher susceptability of the USA digital infrastructure to attack by the "Really Bad Guys".
It is interesting that Congress has approved a penalty usually reserved for murder for a crime that essentially amounts to expensive vandalism. If you deface a wall, you get a few hours of community service. If you deface a website, you get life. I would say that it is difficult to consider a society that can put people in prison for life for a crime that is more or less a misdemeanor a free society.
What about those Enron and Worldcom executives? When do they get life in prison or an even stiffer sentence? The crime they committed was premeditated stealing. That at least would be considered a felony in most cultures.
Moral:
If you are greedy and like to steal, Uncle Sam wants you to run a major corporation and write a book. If you are a teenager and have nothing better to do than deface a little property, better do it with spray paint, because if you use your computer, you can grow old in prison.
Nice message we are sending to young people these days. I suppose Gecko was right: "Greed... is good!"
All data is speech. All speech is Free.