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Lawyers Say Hackers Are Sentenced Too Harshly
Bendebecker writes "Cnet is reporting: 'The nation's largest group of defense lawyers on Wednesday published a position paper arguing that people convicted of computer-related crimes tend to get stiffer sentences than comparable non-computer-related offenses.' Finally, someone is listening..." The document makes the points that most computer crime cases involve disputes between an employer and employee, and that the seriousness of the offense is generally comparable to white-collar fraud cases.
The bulk of hacking is internal anyway. Only makes sense.
"I have an odd craving to whisper about those few frightful hours in that ill-rumored and evilly shadowed seaport of dea
Quite frankly given the number of laywers who do their best to circumvent the true spirit of the law I don't want them making any public statements on my behalf...
All the best,
--Bob
I think it all depends on the crime committed.... stealing 8 million credit cards is a lot more serious than defacing a website for an hour, don't you think?
Isn't this story a dupe? I thought I just saw it.
_
Best Windows Cursors Ever
On the other hand I AM glad that computer crime is possibly going to be recognized as a white collar crime instead of a terrorist threat.
This one bombed a bus. That one stole a credit card. Kill 'em both!
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
People need to know that some stuff is wrong and I like the idea of setting some examples. You don't screw with other people's property or their data.
defacing a web page != stealing credit cards.
they shouldn't have equal sentences, but that isn't to say one of them isn't deserving of what they get...
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
But if those doing the hacking didn't do it, then there'd be no jail service at all.
I think the sentences should be unified. A crime of type is equal to a crime of similar type. That demands equal treatment.
On how much financial damage the cracker did when he defaced the website.
What's this Submit thingy do?
In many cases, the victim would be ignored if s/he didn't over-state the actual damages. I've heard victim after victim (right here on slashdot) state that they've went to the FBI/local officials, and were denied help because the actual damages didn't add up to a certain amount.
No wonder victims are overstating the problem, it's because they don't like being ignored.
--sex
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
There's strength in numbers - and the lawyers finally realized that geeks are the only people as universally unpopular as they are.
Scenario A: man walks into a store with a gun, demands they empty the till, walks out with a hundred bucks.
Net effect: 100 bucks for the store + mental anguish for people in there.
Punishment: Ten years
Scenario B: Man defrauds investors, pension funds etc out of millions or billions
Net Effect: Pension funds slashed, thousands made unemployed
Punishment: 5 years
We all know that white collar crime gets punished a whole lot less, but is that right ? Why shouldn't execs from the likes of Enron, WorldCom et al be looking at life behind bars for the havoc they have reaked ? Well because there really is a different set of laws for the rich. Sure they might even get 15 years in the cases of these massive frauds, but is this enough given the damage they have caused ?
So maybe the problem is that white collar crime is punished too little, rather than hacking is punished too much. Maybe having sentences for theft, fraud etc (of any kind not involving actual violent which already has punishments) should be related to the amount of money stolen.
Maybe 1 year per $1000....
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
And the white collar fraudsters should be hit harder? I think I'd rather see that myself. Send Skilling, Lay, and their ilk up the river for an age and a day.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Quoth the Rave,,, err, Anonymous Coward:
"Oh, well, in that case, since it's ONLY fraud, might as well let them go free."
You didn't understand the argument, or didn't bother to read it, at least. They're not saying computer criminal should "go free," but that the harshness of their punishments should be similar to the punishments meted out for similar crimes not involving computers. Is that really so difficult to support?
I believe it would be better off to just go and steal stuff old school than to do it via hacking.
Hint Hint Your are more likely to get your Credit Card number stolen by giving your card to the waiter/waitress in a restaurant to have the bill paid than by having it stolen over the net!
That is fraud though. . . . maybe identity theft? A better defining line needs to be made up, not all that happens over a computer is "hacking", intent should be judged as well as actions. If a person goes into a bank pointing a gun it is not automaticaly a bank robbery, it could very well be a hostage situation. Intent, ya know?
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
sipthe seriousness of the offense is generally comparable to white-collar fraud cases.
Read: The fast-growing, little-punished type of crime that destroys the finances of thousands every year.
"Hacking" is no more the refuge of the geek. True criminals have embraced it as a way to siphon off lots of money with little risk.
Let's not charge people looking for CC#'s with terrorism, but let's not label it "annoying" and offer up slaps for people's wrists.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
Are hackers sentenced too harshly, or are "comparable" criminals not sentenced harshly enough?
--
Think Green... Burn only 100% recycled dinosaurs in you car.
It's because lawmakers have no idea what hacking is. All they know is that the news and their handlers and their real constituents (donors) say it's very bad. It's just like way back in the day when people were put in institutions for being depressed. No one knew why they were depressed so they just put them away.
Now, I'm not saying that hacking others' equipment is good. I'm just saying that the punishment should fit the crime, not get 10 years in jail because you made the RIAA website say they love mp3s instead of money.
Note To Self: change plans from hacking to fraud.
-You're wasting your time. Alfador only likes me.
Its the inability to impose proper sentences for violent criminals and drug offenders. I have no sympathy for people invading companies computers for whatever reason and they should be punished harshly. I have better things to do on my weekends then combat those assholes. But there is a need for reform in the way punishment is administered for violent criminals and longer sentences need to be handed out.
Worst. Sig. Ever.
If I break into someone's house, I'll be charged with breaking and entering, and with trespassing.
If I hack into someone's network and don't even do anything but look around, I'm charged with causing losses of millions. I'm charged with stealing any sensitive content I gained access to whether or not I even looked at it. Not to mention they'll slap all the cybercrime and terrorism laws they can find down on me too. It has nothing to do with the severity of the laws, just that you get pinned with so many of them.
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If hacking isn't white-collar, then what is?
I remember when there weren`t any specific computer crime laws on the books in the U.K. and prosecutors tried to charge the accused with theft of electricity.
I can see that sometimes the claims of damage in online crimes can be ridiculously high. However, if the claims of damage is reasonable, I don't see why the punishment should be any lesser than any other crime.
I think white-collar criminals are already getting far less punishments than they should. How could someone who screws up the millions of dollars from their employees be subjected to punishment comparable to shoplifters or burglars?
geek page at KY speaks
Wait, a large group of defense lawyers said that penalties are too tough for the types of cases they sometimes work on? Really?! Now why would they do that? </sarcasm>
Yeah, drug offenders are also punished far too hard.
arguing that people convicted of computer-related crimes tend to get stiffer sentences than comparable non-computer-related offenses.
Only in US. Convicted hacker Raphael Gray, who stole 23,000 credit card no. and sent Bill Gates boxes of Viagra, was only sentenced to three years of community rehabilitation. As he told BBC:
"...Kevin Mitnick was stopped from going near computers, even from working a cash register, but they can't do that in this country.
I've had two job offers - one from the guy who tracked me down..."
...are the hackers of today.
There probably is some truth to this, especially in a civil case when each side may atate extreme positions to allow for bargaining room for pre-trial settlements.
But in the case of criminal trials this shouldn't be the case, especially by the punishment phase of the trial when all of the facts should be known.
On a related note, in cases such as this who normally decides the specific punishment, judge or jury? Or does it vary state to state.
Sometiems I feel that the overstatement of damanges should be a crime in itself.
geek page at KY speaks
The system is fubar'd, CEO's who milk the system and break the law should be comparable to treason but get off completely, while pot users and dealers are in jail for minor crimes.
"... McOwen was charged under Georgia law with computer trespass. Facing up to 120 years in prison..."
A man installed a program that for all intent and purposes is a screen saver and he could have been forced to serve 120 years in prison had he not plea bargained. Clara Harris killed her husband with her Mercedes, was found guilty of 1st degree murder, and was only sentenced to 20 years (she'll get out in 10).
I think something is wrong with a system that gives you more time for installing a program that doesn't do any damage than it does for murdering a person in cold blood.
...more year in prison than the average raper ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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With the computer tresspass and fraud act, you have a minimal amount to trigger the act ($5000) and a large penalty. If you steal a car (worth $5000) you get a much smaller penalty.
Fight Spammers!
--sex
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
A symptom that copyrights are unenforceable, so the only way they can compensate is by fear mongering with draconian punishments. Our response should be to act in civil disobedience whenever possible. The sooner we force this thru, the sooner we can get on with the information age.
Check this out:
Story (palmbeachpost.com)
An 11 year old snuck into his classroom during lunch and changed some of his grades on his teacher's computer. He was caught and is now facing FELONY computer fraud charges. Tell me that's not a bit ridiculous.
-Dan.
The issue isn't tough sentencing for hackers. The issue is that white collar criminals get off light.
Hacking is not a white collar crime. When I think of white collar crime I see millionaire executives spending stolen money for blow jobs by preteens in foreign countries. When I think of hacker crime I see a trail of empty Mountain Dew bottles and Cheetos bags. Hackers need to become filthy rich before they can play the courts like the big boys do.
Extreme cases aside, most hacking is like kids stealing cars to take 'em for joy rides. Sure, a few people get hurt by each crime, but it's not like you have a few hundred thousand stock holders who'll have to work 10 extra years before they retire because their portfolios are toast.
"The (majority) of the offenses are generally disgruntled employees getting back at the employer or trying to make money."
And how is this not serious? Destruction and blackmail are extremely serious and should not be tolerated in society.
Prison is not just rehabilitation. It is a deterrent. If there were little or no consequences to, say, wiping out a server just because you are mad you got fired then many many more people would do it. Consequentially companies would crack down hard on everyone and treat all employees like assumed criminals.
Most of the world we live in is based on trust. Most homes and businesses are relatively easy to break into. And if the consequences for such actions were light then more people would be trying it just for fun. And then home owners would have to put bars on their windows and constantly worry about keeping their house secure.
In fact, this is essentially what Slashdotters are recommending people do to their computers. Most people have better things to do with their lives than worrying about locking down their computer from hackers. How about the hackers say on their own boxes and stay the heck away from everyone elses!! If someone breaks into my computer, it is not MY fault the computer was easy to crack. It is the hackers fault for doing something they weren't supposed to do. And the hacker should go to jail for it, just as they would go to jail for breaking into my house and checking out all my stuff. I don't care if they steal anything or not, it is an invasion of my life and privacy!
I am sick of the hypocrisy Slashdot getting all up in arms about the Patriot Act and then worshipping Kevin Mitnick. At least I can vote against the Congressmen who supported the Patriot Act. I can't vote to keep Mitnick wannabes off my computer, except to vote to put them in jail where they belong.
Brian Ellenberger
People have always tended to be hysterical about that which they fear and don't understand. They see this "hacking" (it should be called "cracking" in this context, but that's a lost cause) as a vaguely defined but fearsome threat, regardless of the actual reality of harm, and clamor for the modern equivalent of witch burnings.
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
Kevin Mitnick, in his Slashdot interview, explained this in detail:
Suffice it to say, we need to find a compromise where we can accurately represent the loss of intellectual property without undually exaggerating its (non-material) worth.
it struck me that the kid had motivation, ingenuity, and guts. He saw a problem, weighed the options, formed a plan, and took action. Move him into advanced placement, if you ask me.
Its not like it takes an order from the president with full access codes to launch a strike or anything. Just a dialtone and a modem from the computer that lauches the strikes.
Also he could of obstructed justice by using a walkman or radio because he could of turned it into a hacking device. The fbi needed to take these priveldges away as well so he can stare at the walls and do nothing in his solitary confiment for 7 months while still technically inocent I may add. I mean screw John Gotti. This man is clearly more dangerous to our whole American way of life.
Also look at economic sabatoge and espianage caused by Jon Johnson from reading his own personal dvd's? The RIAA and the BSA claimed they lost over 9 billion a year because of piracy. Its a shame and we all know that these kids and college students can easily afford adobe photoshop, 3dStudioMax and all of Nsync's and britney spears artistic masterpieces of great music which is worth every penny of the price so it must be piracy! We need to stop these so called terrorists before they kill every man woman and child on earth. Hopefully some hardware based solution will be the salvation towards the problem.
Do we want the whole ecomomy to fall apart and lose millions of jobs because of lenient sentancing? Somebody please think about our children.
http://saveie6.com/
Well this is really quite simple.
/usr/bin/perl
Computers are for "smart" people
People feel marginalized when they don't understand even the basic concepts of what has happened
Therefore when a CEO realizes they have been hacked/cracked (you fight that out) they feel even more violated since they don't even understand how someone could get past all the hardware they bought and all those 45-100K+ people they have running around purporting to be computer experts.
Their anguish is then felt by atrtorneys who can't understand the crime, the criminals or why everyone is so upset. The one thing they do know is that THAT FAT GUY WITH THE UNKEMPT BEARD AND THE WIERD SHIRT THAT HAS THE FORMULA FOR HELL ON EARTH:
#!
ON HIS SHIRT IS DEFINITELY GUILTY!
And that's pretty much what happens.
This
We are speaking about people who break things.
A cracker is someone who exposes a crack in a brittle security. A food-cracker is brittle and is easily broken. A cracker, as applied in the proper premise of a noun, is someone who cracks.
In the premise of computer software security, a cracker brakes through the security, or shall I say the implied insecurness, of a specific software to gain access to the unprotected core the security-software aided in disguising.
Too harshly? Why, in my day, after Prometheus stole fire and gave it to mankind, we chained the guy to a rock and had a giant bird eat out his liver every day. Now that's punishment!
-kgj
...take ln(Value/100) and round down. 9 years for a mil, 2 for a K.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
That a lot of the problem here is due to double standards and lack of accountability.
Joe Schmoe embezzles from his S&L firm for ten years, gets caught, and it is realized that he made off with 500K. He is slapped on the wrist, fired, made to "pay it back" on time deferred payments, or maybe stuck in a white collar prison/country club for a few years.
Mike, the l337 hacker from down the street, defaces Stuff-Marts web page, pointing out that Stuff-Mart buys 80% of its stuff from china, where it is made in forced child labor camps at gunpoint, and it is repaired in an hour.
Now.. Stuff Mart's lawyers tell the jury that they *potentially* lost MILLIONS due to the damage, (when in fact, they did not "lose" anything.. and there is no way to prove how many people would have bought during that time anyway). The SM lawyers also point out that it cost "an estimated 100K dollars to repair the damage!".. which means they just budgeted in A) the new server and colocation company to handle the site, B) the three person team who maintains and handles the site already, and C) all of their IT staff who received an Email about the "hack" and therefore were "working" on it.
Its all about what the jury wants to hear, and all about language.. "potential" is used ahead of "we could have potentially lost BILLIONS in sales!" but the judge/jury does not hear the "potential". Nor do they realize that 99% of that IT staff was already working there, doing their routine jobs, and had nothing to do with the repair anyway.
(Same reason a procedure at the hospital that took all of 15 minutes costs your insurance company as much as your house did.. funky accounting and everyone wanting to be "in" on the action.)
I think a lot of "hacking" is a no harm no foul problem anyway.
Maeryk
Feminine Protection? What is that? A chartreuse flame thrower?
people get off far to lightly for white-collar fraud crimes.
1: Open a Swiss bank account.
2: put money from xyz white-collar fraud into account, get a few mill
3: goto jail (not for that long)
4: take money out account.
5: Enough profit to retire.
or
1: Open a Swiss bank account.
2: Rob a bank for a few thousand
3: goto jail (for a long time)
4: take money out account.
5: umm... well you've got a bit of cash, but was it worth the time?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
From http://www.savage.net/public_html/net/phrack.html:
This guy was accused of stealing 80 grand when in reality it was worth 13 dollars!!!Also see Kevin mitnick answers if you missed it.
I think we should try a different approach to punishing crackers. I propose that we put them infront of their own personal computer which was confiscated by the feds with a non-working keyboard and mouse, and run tail -f on a few of their personal, or valued files while they are slowly being deleted. I can just imagine them crying as they watch their recently stolen visa credit card list disappear line-by-line, and then their pics of sarah michell gellar disappear scan-by-scan. Muahahahahaha As for real hackers, i'd say nothing would be worse then putting them in a closed room except for a oneway mirror, and a few monitors displaying just screen captures from around the IT dept they are in, specfically one that gets hacked alot. I can also imagine them crying watching all the terrible wiring and horrible system administration. Muhahahha (again)
the solution would be a requirement of PROVING damages. an invoice from "overpriced security fixer-uppers" for $21,985.31 to install W2K sp3 to fix that hole that script-kiddie4 used to get in are proveable damages... the "we lost $295,997,667,342.87 because he MAY HAVE copied a file" needs to be called bullcrap by everyone involved.
if you cannot produce an invoice or legitimate quote for repair/losses then you are told to shut up would fix every bit of this.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
However, these are small-time crooks, by and large. The real money is in the white-collar big time. It is now our historic privilege to be witnessing the greatest example of legalized embezzlement in the history of mankind.
- This year's Defense Department budget ~370 billion
- Additional funding for ABM system ~70 billion, probably much more
- Additional expenses from invading Iraq ~200 billion
That's in the vicinity of 2/3 of a trillion dollars legally funneled into a secretive, tightly-knit group of industries with only the most perfunctory public analysis. Even Enron, WorldCom, and the several other high-profile frauds are dwarfed by these numbers. Nobody is going to jail though, far from it. The perpetrators are hailed in the news media as brave patriots struggling to defend freedom, liberty, democracy, etc.This could work out. The key concept here is aggregation of harm. There are many annoying, but all too common, common business practices which take a few cents from millions of people. If these can be prosecuted as criminal violations, society as a whole will benefit.
If it works against spammers, we'll have a huge win. We've reached the point where half the E-mail capacity of the Internet is tied up by spam.
A chilling effect on companies that send unsolicited bulk e-mail, huh? This has got to be the coolest chilling effect I've ever heard of!
And as far as the last sentence goes, don't we all know that Microsoft has been guilty of terrorism for a long time now?
WWJD? JWRTFA!
My (ex-)girlfriend works at a bank. Her bank branch has never been robbed before, but take the following into account:
a) Most Bank robbers wouldn't know what bait/dyepacks would look like if it was sitting in front of their face
b) If the tellers just grab their bait, the robber's getting away with ~$83 per teller
c) Some Bank Tellers have their own 'valuts' (Bank tellers buy and sell money from the bank vaults to their cash drawers. Some banks differ in how much money they're permitted to have in their drawer, or don't permit their tellers to have locked valuts.
Let's say I'm Jon-BankRobber. I walk in with my gun, flash it around, walk out with ~$300 bucks (~$80 x 4 bank tellers), caused some bank tellers to quit their jobs/go into therapy/become really depressed. I go to Court, visit the Judge, who gives me ten years.
Now, let's look at Joe-31337h4x0rd00d. I break into my bank's tellering system, create an account, and either blatently (to the fact that it comes up on the next day's report) or sneakily (penny-slicing) steal money. I can get away with much much more, but for the sake of keeping things same, I only take $300.
When Joe-Hacker goes to the judge, he's going to get a max of 6 months. Non Violent Crime, Under $500 (no felony), no gun. (this is assuming that they don't get him with electronic tresspass)
If they're looking to give hackers/crackers a free ride, it won't happen. If they're trying to equal things...just make the same crime punishable by the same punishment. Rob a bank or Crack a bank, go to jail for up to ten years.
I know some of you will poke holes in this, but the average white-collar-criminal just doesn't go to prison, unless you've pissed someone really off, or really f*cked up.
Replies will be answered.
ONUCSGeek
I disable sigs...do you?
Is this a confession to hacking? Mr. Abooey, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law...
Boom Shanka
figuring for both files lost, cleaning it from systems, and a prorated amount
for the effort/energy/and money poured into the creation of patches/antivirus software.. can we apply the death penalty to the virus author?
63 years, times 365 days, times 24 hours, means 551,880 hours
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Defacing a website is different from defacing a building how? Oh wait, you can reload a backup of the WEBSITE. Therefore whatever sentence is passed down for defacing a building should be about twice what you should get for defacing a website.
Stealing 8 million credit cards? What was the actual cash value of the loss? Wouldn't it be the same as sneaking into a bank at night and walking off with that much money? Aren't there good legal precidents for this sort of theft?
Move into the scary realm of so called "Cyber Terrorism". You shut down a hospitals power grid and 10 people die. It's either manslaughter, if you didn't do it on purpose, only indirectly caused it, or 10 counts of murder1 if you did it on purpose. (Or maybe one of the flashy new anti terror laws, which no doubt would leave you kneeling over a shallow grave somewhere.)
Eventually legal theory will work this out. It's all about precident. Once everyone gets over the novelty of it, and stops seeing it in some quasi Victorian sense of "Progress/Intelligence gone awry." things will cool back down.
At least, they had better. This crap is ridiculous.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
That's true! In fact, most societies would forgive you if you shot and killed someone who was busy carving up their friend with a knife. Do you know of any that would do the same for someone who shot a hacker? So why is it that hackers can be held for five years without being charged as KM was?
Punishment should fit crime, and ordinary rules of presumed innocence need to be applied in cases of suspected computer crime. As things are, any with-it employer could be frighfully abusive if they wanted.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
If you spray painted the outside of walmart with the words "CLOSED - BUILDING UNSAFE" and they lost a days sales because of it would they not be deserve to recoup said loss?
Honestly I have no sympathy for hackers or any other type of white collar crime. Most all of them get far too light a sentence IMHO. So do many violent criminals as well. We spend so much of our time locking up drug users and dealers, while drunk drivers get off that we can't properly deal with REAL crimes.
Anyone remember the old Star Trek episode "I Mudd"
(Not an exact quote.)
Works for me...;-)
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
"Lawyers just happen to be the most intimitately involved with both types of cases and therefore are qualified to state an opinion." However, these guys are the most biased, and their opinion should be ignored totally. Defense attorneys will ALWAYS say criminal sentences are too harsh. After all, these are the guys that commonly lie in the courtroom to get the guilty off entirely. They are biased, just like tobacco companies saying cigarettes are safe.
> So you're comparing
Umm, no I'm not. I even said, "extreme cases aside." I compared hacking to stealing a car for a joy ride.
Your example of stealing $2000 as being typical of white collar crime is more extreme than my car theft example. In yours, $2000 is gone. In mine, maybe a window is smashed, and the inside of the car is littered with garbage. I know because my car was stolen by joy riders. I replaced the window, vacuumed everything, and kept the frisbee they left under the driver's seat.
Does someone who steals 8 million credit card numbers warrant more than one year in prison than the average raper?
Yes. For some reason we seem to take "physical" crimes more seriously than ones which attack our social structure. More explicitly, executives which stole tons of money via private trading should be facing the death penalty -- instead of killing one person, they have single-handedly wipe out the savings [work product of many many years] of thousands of people and the enjoyment of retirement.
The problem here is, of course, white collar crimes arn't punished enough.
Ok.. now what do you when you have no tail? Can you go around commiting crimes without fear of punishment?
So when the person took advantage in a weakness in the lpd I had running on my linux box hooked to my broadband connection and installed a rootkit I sustained no damage, right?
Never mind that I needed to spend a good bit of time checking to see whether the systems behind that firewall were compromised. Never mind that it took me a while to determine if the attacker had done anything else.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
The time I spent determining that it was an lpd exploit (of course I should have turned that off, but I missed it.) was not important, either.
So the time that I took to build another gateway box with more up to date software and a tighter ruleset was not important.
This was just my home system - no measurable economic loss. I spent many hours figuring this out and installing a replacement that was more secure. My time is worth nothing?
Never mind that I'm pretty sure that the attacker didn't get anything important (like my financial information) from that system. I had a functional system prior to the attack, and didn't afterward.
Yeah. No harm no foul. I was harmed, and I was fouled.
You can make the argument that I made a mistake by not putting up a better firewall, but if you walked up to my front porch and jimmied the lock on my front door, you'd still be trespassing, and you'd still go to jail even if you "just looked around."
You could make the argument that I should have upgraded to a deadbolt instead of relying on the knob-lock that is 10 years old, but it wouldn't keep you out of jail.
Cracking is tresspass at the least and theft at the most. It deserves jail time. The issue is how much jail time. The guy who hacked me should face at a minimum the legal penalty for breaking into my house and rifling through my file cabinet.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
it was not a facet of his sentence
it was a condition of his early relase
he could haven chosen instead, to stay in the slam
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
since when is drug dealing a "minor" crime?
The only analogy I can think of regarding the comparison of computer crime to a physical crime is to call cyber-crime "cyber-rape". It is more devistating than most of you want to pretend. You never know what someone looked at, you never know what they changed. When your web site is defaced, you feel violated, you think you'll never be safe again. Script kiddies that write MS SQL Server worms, or even email worms ARE committing cyber-terrorism, even if they didn't consider it to be such. These people, I don't care if they are 12 or 21 or 51 years old, well, we should lock them up and throw away the key.
Comparing it to "white collar crime", even though I feel the sentances for white collar criminals are not strict enough, many of you are illustrating points with exceptions rather than the rule. I personally know people who committed white collar crime (fraud, several who have stolen between, oh, 1/2 to 4 million dollars) who have gone to jail for quite some time. Should it have been longer? Probably. Did they "get away with it"? no. Drunk drivers, drug dealers, rapists, murderers, corporate ceo's, and script-kiddes - many have been guilty, been caught, and haven't spent a day in jail. Compare apples and apples, not apples and oranges.
If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.
If you're honest, considerate, and law abiding - you're not affected by the jail terms - so who gives a damn how long they are? Let em all rot in jail.
As far as all of you saying it should be "cracker" instead of "hacker" - while your subculture may use the term "hacker" as someone who plays with cool technology, a good part of the english speaking world uses "hacker" to mean someone who breaks into computers with malicious intent. Deal with it.
[from m-w.com:]
hacker:
3: an expert at programming and solving problems with a computer
4 : a person who illegally gains access to and sometimes tampers with information in a computer system
I've had the unfortunate opportunity to learn a little about how federal penalties work. It's all based on a point system. A certain number points for the crime, points if you have a prior record of anything in the past 10 years (state or federal), subtracted points for taking a plea, etc. Then they add them all up and use a chart to determine the range of sentences they can give you.
And for copyright cases, they automatically tack on 4 points if a computer was involved.
100 years ago before the automobile became dominant, society & the economy depended quite a bit on horses. As such, you would be hung for stealing a horse, not because it's such a horrible offense, but because if the punishment wasn't really stiff excess horse theivery would probably have actually undermined the stability of society. Who would want that!
The same forces are probably in effect here.
Keep passing the open windows...
Everyone who breathes, that's 5cents a breath.
Everyone who poops, yeah I have that algorithm too, thats a penny.
Oh yeah, anyone that wants to use muscles, well, yep, I have that too. That's ten cents.
Pay up now. I'm going after every American with my patents and making tons of money. You thought bill gates would make money off patenting 1's and 0's (old joke)? Well, move over Gates. You owe me a lifetime of breathing, pooping, and muscle movements.
that's right. pay up.
-gabe
The real question is whether justice is state-surrogate revenge or to keep the public order.
Under your thinking, if I lock my doors, but the locks weren't the best, most effective ones, then I am at fault. If a new lock that comes out that is strong and I don't upgrade, then I am at fault.
Well, door locks only keep honest people honest. Within 3 feet of my locked front door is a window that is easy to break and enter through. Am I at fault for not putting bars on it?
No. It is not my job to deter people from doing illegal things, even if I do. They simply are not supposed to do them and if they get caught, the can be punished.
That and the they have to report the loss to the IRS, inform their investors and wall street that they lost that much money and actually adjust their books to account for it.
War is necrophilia.
Umm, the article was written by laywers who pointed out that computer crimes were punished more severly than their meat space counterparts. KM himself says that he was wrong and deserved to be punished. No one, however, deserves to be held in jail, sometimes in solitary confinement, without charge for five years. The paper simply points out that the justice system is largely clueless about the threat and cost of such crimes.
The (majority) of the offenses are generally disgruntled employees getting back at the employer or trying to make money."
This is very serious as it might just be the other way around. Ever been under a supervisor that did not like you? It does not last long, generally. If they are clever, they could set you up for an extened stay in jail and get rid of you at the same time. There are always two disgruntled parties whenever someone is fired and you should take what either says with a large grain of salt.
And the hacker should go to jail for it, just as they would go to jail for breaking into my house and checking out all my stuff. I don't care if they steal anything or not, it is an invasion of my life and privacy!
Would jail your bank, grocery store, and comercial software vendors for those same violations? No, they don't tell you they are doing it, they just do it. The backdoors are put their by design and others sometimes use them. Sure, it's wrong, but you should hate all those who abuse you or simply recognize that you don't care.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
why should you have to do that, are you a different person from the one before, or just a scape goat.
Are you somehow worth less because your boss screwed the company over and you lost your job.
As is very, very often the case with human nature, people lash out against the unknown. In the case of computers, hackers are very much a mystery to normal people. How many techs out there have seen a person's computer malfunctioning for various reasons (usually windows, or bad RAM, or the fact that they've install kazaa and a million other crapware loaded programs) - and they automatically assume it's been haxored and/or infected with a virus?
When it comes to computers, most people are hypocrondriacs (sp?). And what do people do when they fear something unknown, they lash out against it.
Many people on computers today are affected by spam, viruses, and other issues. Their solution, nail the bastards, put them somewhere - it doesn't matter where, so long as they can't cause me trouble - and jail is a seemingly optimal location for this.
On the flipside, for kiddies who build idiotic viruses that knock down routers worldwide and cause general chaos, I think that many of the users here on slashdot would be very happy to see them lynched. We have to seperate major disruptions and white-collar criminals from the kids who write "H4XOR3D BY 133TM4N" on a website.
Don't you recall the photos of Peter Norton, from a few years ago? He wore a pink shirt, and it had a pink collar. Therefore, hacking is not white-collar, it's pink-collar. QED.
I no longer have any respect for cnn. Al-Quida financed himself, and presumably the 9/11 actions, by credit card fraud? Give me a break.
This is the sort of reason why people have a wacky idea of hackers, and getting caught reading 2600 can get you in trouble.
The link describes how the credit card fraud perpetrated by hackers, and theoretically Al Qaida, was done via hacking.
IANAL, but if it's testimony given under oath, then it probably is. Though, it's unlikely for DA's to go after lying corps who help them get big convictions on their names. If it is accurate, then should the FCC be going after them for hiding multi million (or billion) dollar losses? I believe it was in Cyberlaw that I read the justification that stealing code threatened to undermine all the developement a company put into it since it could be given to its competitors - hence taking away the victim's market advantage. This seems rediculous to me.
Yes, this is part rant, but I think it holds a valid question as well: How can a person be responsible for damages that don't exist?
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
where everyone is half-naked, and wes almost bites the bullet via lethal injection...
the numbers that are stolen by those food servers end up at the same place. The practice of waiters and waitresses using a mini-scanner to read off cards is called "skimming". I've seen a few news articles and a waiter would not have the technical skill in order to:
1) design and build the skimmer himself
2) even if you say he got it off the "black market", he still needs to get some device to read the skimmer's register info.
3) waiters are usually the mere pawns of a larger operation. Take a little from each card # and you can buy somre pretty nifty things. In fact, most of the time the numbers end up in some far off place, such as hong kong.
Non-white defendants in the US are more likely to be convicted and, when convicted, receive harsher sentences than white people convicted of comparable offenses.
Fixing this problem would improve the lives of many more people, and would set a useful precedent -- while having few if any of the public relations and semantic problems of fighting for "hacker rights".
Penalties for posession and distribution of cocaine are much lower than the penalties for similar crimes involving crack cocaine. Lots of people have speculated that the reason for this is that white and/or wealthy cocaine users do not use crack, while black and/or poor cocaine users do. Wealthy white people make the laws, so the penalties are lower for crimes that memebers of their social circle are likely to commit.
A similar mechanism might be at work here. Lawyers and businessmen write the laws, so so-called white collar crimes like fraud tend to have low penalties. Lawyers and businessmen do not hack, so the penalties for crimes that involve hacking tend to be higher.
Horse thieves were hung because stealing someone's horse out in the middle of nowhere was tanamount to killing them.
I'd look at it this way; you broke into the house to steal a TV, but on your way out you slipped into the china cupboard and accidently broke a Han Dynasty era vace worth 1.2 million. Just beacuse you got away with a $350 dollar TV didn't mean that 1.2 million dollars in damages wern't done.
If the hacker had access to the web page, he could have had access to all kinds of things and since it's hard to track what exactly transpired; you *have* to assume the worst. This means informing all of your customers (a big hit + liability), having them cancel their credit cards (time/money), and doing a full audit to make sure that nothing else changed.
So, a small web defacement is very expensive from the company's perspective.
Obviously it's not detering a whole lot of people. Just giving them more of a thrill.
Whale
Depending on exactly what the hacker does, we're talking about vandalism, or thief, or trepassing using a new technique. When bank robbers moved from horses to cars was it important that lawmakers have a detailed understanding of cars before writing applicable laws? When copyright laws moved from covering just books to motion pictures, did lawmakers require a detailed understanding of how motion pictures are created? Does it really matter the exact technical approach used to commit the crime? I don't think so. Vandalism is vandalism. It doesn't matter whether I use can of spraypaint or I hack into the web server. It costs the company money to fix. The dollar value of the damage should drive the punishment.
The word "cracker" is a "TASTY TREAT"
It is also a caucasian, when being spoken to by an elderly african-american gentleman.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Um that's man hours so in fact you have to divide by the amount of persons involved in the work to find the amount of time it would take the company to complete the project.
The loss in profits increases with that value not with the man hours value.
So a company that wants to be resilient in the event of an attack should hire more people. They may lose money in the development of the project, but the amount damage in the attack is going to be the same man hours whether they have one hundred or ten thousand employees.
The more people they have to fix the attack, the shorter the delay to release the product and the less chance the customer will buy a competing product if they would not already.
'Course all the above is a hideous generalization.
You Mileage Will Vary.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Duh, it is. It's called fraud, or something similar...
Hmmm, breakdown by OS:
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
stop the presses!
So, hey, anally raping your boss after he/she fires you will give you 5 years, maybe as much as 7.. Wiping out thier servers (which can be replaced with backups in an hour) will give you 10 or more.
Think about it for a second, which one of those would really be more fulfilling to you, the disgruntled employee? Yeah, that's what I thought... See the system works!
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Or
Lawyers Say What They Are Paid To Say.
You choose.
And they want to make a federal case out of it.
Damn bodegas.
Jeez, it's not like enough hackers even get caught for their crimes. Perhaps if we dug ourselves into enough of a hole where it were possible to catch and prosecute every little web-defacement kiddy, the discussion of overblown sentencing would have some merit.
But as it stands, you have to be both incredibly stupid and incredibly prolific to even merit attention from law enforcement agencies --
a very small percentage of computer abuse and fraud that exists.
EFF has also started an archive (which has the document as well).
-- Are you an EFF member yet?
In case you haven't noticed, you can't just go where ever you want just to look around. Thats why we have breaking & entering, and tresspassing, Smart Guy.
I'm going up in front of a judicial review board for a small prank I pulled. After the whole Fake CNN news generator, our school set out a public e-mail to everyone saying that the Olson Twins were not going to come to my college. Me and my roomates thought it would be funny if "they" sent out an e-mail saying that it wasn't a fake. So I went thought the trouble of photoshopping the Olson twins on campus. Then I made up a short reply, "We're sorry about our previous e-mail. We're proud to say that the Olson twins are going to be joining us for the class of 2007." I found the MAC address of an institute computer (Only .institute. computers cand send out mass e-mails to all students) and used a fake e-mail program to send it from the same person that sent us the first e-mail.
Well it didn't go through. (COMPRESS YOUR JPG's) and I got called in for it, right now I'm pending the review board decision.
At the same time in an unrelated matter my roomates and I went and talked to the head of housing about a guy that wanted to move into our suite that liked to drink. Directly from the head of housing: "Oh, we don't care if you have alcohol in the building, as long as we don't see it." First off only probably 10 people in my dorm are over 21, Second this school advertises themselves as a DRY campus to high schoolers.
I pulled a prank that hurt no one and didn't actually get pulled and I'm up to get kicked out of school. But if you're drunk and underage on campus who cares?
Moral of the story: we need to get everyone to crack/hack. If it's the majority of the public then it'll start getting over looked, you can't put everyone away for 100 years can you? If we can get more websites hacked than people murdered then the punishment will go down.
I know of some cute girls who would be perfectly defined as "crackers" then. ;-)
~ kjrose
I think something is wrong with a system that gives you more time for installing a program that doesn't do any damage than it does for murdering a person in cold blood.
Of course there is. But you're comparing the maximum sentence of one crime to the actual sentence of another.
We know that having the death penalty doesn't reduce the murder rate. And one of the key elements of doing white collar crime is also a belief that you can "get away with it" by hiring enought lawyers.
So what if it isn't a deterent ? It doesn't look like the drugs sentences are detering smugglers either, should we therefore reduce the sentence ?
White Collar just means "people like us", where "Blue Collar" means "them".
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Foolish human. Lizard tails grow back.
I've been arguing for a long time that whether or not it involves electrons, there should be no difference in sentencing.
We need a sane parity between electronic and non-electronic crimes. That would make the punishment assigned to me simply ludicrous.
This is good news! I hope my lawyer can get me out of this federal pound-me-in-the-ass penitentiary soon! I only did this because Peter said we would go to a white-collar resort, where I could have conjugal visits!
Signed,
Samir
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
Like the guy who got 26 years for selling 4 one ounce bags of marijuana ("Teenager busted for marijuana gets 26-year sentence")?
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
I would argue that, in addition to the very low conviction rate for these crimes, it's the very short sentences (leaving aside that they're often served in more "comfortable" federal facilities) that contribute to the condition you describe.
If there were, say, 80 or so convictions among former Enron employees, service providers (like banks), and government officials involved in Enron's activities, and those people spent the rest of their life behind bars, I think you will find awareness growing by leaps and bounds. After all, these folks keep up on the news a lot better than "blue collar" criminals.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Only in US. Convicted hacker Raphael Gray, who stole 23,000 credit card no. and sent Bill Gates boxes of Viagra...
I think it was Bill Gates who received the "stiffer" sentence...
Freedom: "I won't!"
is that the term hacking sounds bad. It's what crazed men in hockey masks with machete's do to college coeds. What we need to do is change the term to something like "Fluffin' the Bunny". Who'd think that's bad?
Here's an example:
Stan was arrested for computer hacking.
Judge: Give him 15 years solitary.
Stan was arrested for Fluffin' the Bunny
Judge: That's so nice what you did for that bunny. You're free to go.
See, the difference.
Remember, Fluff the Bunny
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
Clara Harris killed her husband with her Mercedes, was found guilty of 1st degree murder, and was only sentenced to 20 years (she'll get out in 10).
;-)
I think something is wrong with a system that gives you more time for installing a program that doesn't do any damage than it does for murdering a person in cold blood.
"Cold blood" means that the murder was committed for no real reason. Clara Harris ran over her husband because he was cheating on her, not because she just felt like killing someone that day.
Of course, the "damage" of a cold-blooded murder is the same as that of any other murder: the victim is still dead, no matter how you slice it... (sorry, couldn't resist...
Your main argument is still good (and I completely agree with the point of it), but I think you could make it more convincing (especially when you're preaching to the un-converted) by avoiding hyperbole.
Especially when the hyperbole is committed in cold blood...
Don't sell drugs near schools in Alabama.
So many people posting here appear to be jumping to take sides one way or another about whether or not hacking is good or not good. The point isn't about hacking, it's about the punishment directed against people convicted of computer crimes as compared to other crimes - and that the punishment is disproportional. I agree with that. I have little sympathy for people that are actually guilty of any of the crimes - computer or otherwise - but feel that punishment should be consistent (and here I'm also not arguing on the effectiveness of punishment as a deterrant - different discussion). There is a knee-jerk reaction to the word 'computer' appearing in any judgement that appears to result in a much harsher sentence than when that word is replaced with 'gun', even. The sentence for any crime should be reasonable and consistent for the damages of that crime; "piling on" because that crime is today's buzzword is not appropriate.
"The bigger the lie, the more they believe." - Det. Bunk
IMHO, dealing pot is a minor offence. In certain states though you can end up in prison for years just for peddling a little plant.
What troubles me about your post is that you have an idea of what un*REAL* crimes are. Crimes are crimes, there is no dispute about that. The topic is to determine whether the *sentences* fit the crime.
Not sure I follow you here. Define unREAL crimes. What troubles you? What I meant, if it wasn't clear, is that I think most of the drug laws are pointless and we waste resources making self-destructive behavior a crime.
I agree that the topic is to determine what sentence is appropriate and I think most hackers get what they deserve. But I admit that I am a hard ass about any and all crime. But that doesn't mean that treating them like terrorist and blocking the basic rights we all are support to have is correct either. Kevin Mitnick's No Bail hearing was a load of crap. And the value damages stated against him was fraudulent as well.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
Our society does rely on computers heavily but the crime should be related to what you do or how much damage you cause.
Stealing the horse of someone who is in the middle of nowhere in the west would be the worst thing you can do to someone short of torturing them to death (which could happen if their horse is gone). Especially if the victim is in the desert.
If you use computers to damage any entity greatly then you should get the appropriate amounts of punishment.
This isn't about doing something simple and causing huge amounts of destruction to infastructures or something else and getting huge punishments.
The problem now is that doing the SAME amount of damage using the computer gets you a far worse sentencing then doing it without a computer.
Remember the computer is a tool, you can do a lot of damage or not. Those who do little damage shouldn't have to do the time for huge crimes.
Hmmm... Pie...
One thing that just jumped out at me as being a prime source of inflated punishments for these case seemed to be in the estimation of damages. Perhaps a requirement that the complaintant be required to file his losses in his SEC filing (for publicly traded companies) and in any apropriate IRS paperwork. This would criminalise the over-inflating of damages and provide the stock market with much-needed insight into the security abilities and practices of publicly traded companies.
The entire legal system is grappling with this new world. Too many lawyers are luddites who can barely program their phones, much less comprehend what "hacking" (sic) is all about. And, worse, so are the judges who oversee their trials. And the juries that weigh the evidence. And the media that covers the trials.
I dunno, it's a little disheartening to be an aspiring lawyer when I've heard of a firm that prides itself on defending those accused of computer crimes has a password policy that mandates a particular format for your network passwords, and that your password always be provided to your assistant.
First... Say you break into a system (dosen't matter which one) and you cause some "damage". You deserve to be punished accordingly, no doubt. But, the corporation or company you broke into, goes to court and makes false claims about their losses, to me that would be purgery, and is FAR worse than any hacking crime, as the judicial system relies on honesty. But we can overlook that, big companies create jobs for people so we can stick one punk kid in jail to keep everything in line, $$$ is obviously far more important than "life" Maybe those companies end up losing millions by paying lawyers to make up false cases and lie in courts for them? but again, who cares, we need those companies dont we? Hell, maybe the kid is better off in jail since that (heartless, since he dosen't care about that kid's life he's ruining) CEO would probably run him over with his jaguar some day when he's out enjoying the fresh air... Point being here, the influence you have makes a difference in your chance of geting caught and/or sentence, is that fair? That's how society is, certain things are accepted, and it shouldn't be allowed, but hey, the people who get voted in are usually the ones with influence and who help each other out, so what can ya do? :)
vote for the little guy, maybe its a pipe dream, but someday everyone will get equal treatment that way :P
Posting useless rant since 2003.
Ooooh sentence me baby! Sentence me all night long
Eat at Joe's.
But if so, why do people still break the law? Wouldn't you think over punishment would cause people to commit fewer crimes?
If you leave your 5 year old child unattended in a running car in a parking lot you can be arrested for child endangerment and have your child taken away from you. Should network administrators who leave their network insecure be arrested and have their network taken away from them?
Remember it is only a cynical cliche until it is proven over and over again to the point of becoming defacto policy... that is that the higher up you get and thus a cause/effect of which is the people and things you know and your level of bullshit artistry you can get off for more things. Remember that while it SHOULD be that higher position bears more accountability and is the result of more responsibility our modern world reverses that. This is why the former Air Force intel traitor could get the death penalty (and he should) for ATTEMPTED espionage yet an extremely highly placed individual in the FBI who doesn't just attempt but does in fact SELL HIS SOUL AND HIS COUNTRY (not to mention the agents that died and the intelligence networks compromised) then you get off by plea barganing. God bless the USA. Land of the peasants who are ruled by unscrupulous dogs who long ago shit on the Constitution.
This article should be, "from the no-shit-sherlock dept."
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Did I see the word "hacker" in the headline, referring to computer criminals? On Slashdot?? Impossible.
Signature.
I am, and I wont.
--
Think Green... Burn only 100% recycled dinosaurs in you car.
It's just disgusting how money-oriented most all parts of US society are, that's all. :-/
I mean, money is just money is just money. You can get it back, earn more; but you can't get back human life or individual's sense of security, after being almost beaten to death, or raped, or tortured.
Kevin Mitnick would have done a lot better by turning himself in and fighting back instead of running and pleading guilty later.
The important thing you left out, is if you steal a few million dollars or more you are into a second category of "velvet" criminals, and they on average spent 1 day in prison for every hundred thousand dollars. Don't believe me? Mr. Taubman of Sotheby's stole 43.8 million and he was only sentanced to 364 days, err, that's about $117,808 per day. Not a bad deal. I'd spend a year in a very-low security posh prison for 43.8 million, wouldn't you?
I agree. It is sick that we live in a society where items left unattended might be stolen, sometimes in a matter of minutes.
.sig. Does that make me lame?
But..
Do you lock your doors? Your windows? Your car? Because that is what you are advocating. I would love to live in a safe, utopian world where everyone has everything they want. But all attempts by humanity to produce such a society has only ever resulted in nearly everyone having nothing that they want. For historical reference, read the Communist Manifesto and then compare contrast the ideals and the reality of the situation.
Have your report on my desk by Monday. (kidding)
I don't have a
I am not a lawyer. This post does not constitute any form of legal advice.
I just thought I would check in to see how my favorite clusterfart /. idiot is doing. Nice to see that you are still as dumb as ever, Malcontent. Keep up the good work.
But what company loses a whole day of business because their website is down for one day? You can't just evenly divide up their revenue for a year into business days and remove one, and then claim they lost that amount of money. If a grocer or a florist is closed, sure. But if am planning a major purchase and a website is down the day I decide what to buy, most likely I will just try again later.
Oh, and please try to see criminals as human beings before you put them to death. The most basic function of government is to prevent retribution killings, as any anthropologist could tell you.
Java: the COBOL of the new millenium.
Mens Rea. He ran, so he acknologed that someone thought what he was doing was wrong. He neither faught for himself or agianst the law. He ran and eventualt roled over. Beh.
that crimes which involve hurting another person should carry the greatest sentences. I think it's ridiculous that businesses get to put people away for years for white collar crime. They're BUSINESSES, it's not like someone slashed their CEO's throat.
White collar crime should be subject to civil penalties, fines and not being allowed to run a business. Jail time? They'll just try and commit the same offence from inside. (Alan Bond, anybody? Aussies would know him well)
Murdering two people like O.J. Simpson DID: A slap on the wrist.
Pinging some port on a remote machine: 1,000 life sentences in a torture chamber.
Is there something wrong with this picture? I think it should be like this... The law should say that if you get into some system and manage to steal a billion dollars because of it, the owner of the system must hire you for whatever price you want to fix the system. If you ask a price that puts them out of business, they must close down the organization, sell off all the property, and pay you everything they have. Oh, and if you do it to a government organization, then you simply get 5 million dollars a year for the rest of your life, adjusted annually for inflation, if you tell them how you did it. Oh yeah, and hacked organizations should have to pay a FINE. $$$. Because that's the way it should be.
Mens Rea.
Like it or not, this is not Latin for "I have a big dick".
He ran, so he acknologed that someone thought what he was doing was wrong
He ran becaus ehe had been fuck over by the cops before, and thought (correctly!) he would be again.
My we are being brave today.
War is necrophilia.
You have to be really desperate for arguments if you're quoting a 40 year old TV series.
It was a joke! Geez.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
The first is that a group of computer crackers breaks into a mom & pop eStore that is hosted on an ISP that doesn't have all of the latest patches installed. These crackers deface the home page and lift the customer list/credit card numbers for subsequent resale. They claim that it's the store front owner's fault since they didn't have a full time system admin and a network admin and a security admin that allowed them to do this. Through boasting in a chat room the FBI manage to bust them. They are sentenced to 18 months of community service and get jobs later as 'White Hat' hackers to a security firm for a 6 digit income.
The second is that a group of under-educated kids from the south side break into a convenience store, spray paint the walls, take the petty cash box, and haul off all the cases of beer that they can carry. They wreck their car laughing that the small mom & pop store couldn't afford to hire a full time security guard and were easy pickings. The local constabulary drags them off to the hoosgow and they end up in the big house doing 5 to 10 years for this crime. They get sodomized within 3 days and learn all the prison trades to become better criminals when they are released.
What is the real difference? None really, other than it is racist to allow the middle class kids to get off without jail time.
To say that a mom & pop eStore deserves a felon assault(being cracked) is like saying that a convenience store deserves an armed robbery since they didn't have a combined arms mech infantry battalion with an attached tank platoon and air defense section positioned around their store. It is like saying that a woman deserves getting raped since she dressed that way and didn't carry a pistol with her. The law is quite clear on physical breaking and entering. If there is anything in the way of the intruder, and this can be as slight as cobwebs, that breaking anything on the way into an establishment is a crime. The same standard should apply to eStores. Any form of physical protection gives you the maximum amount of legal protection.
Four simple monosyllable words. "Thou shalt not steal." What part of that don't you grok??
Keep in mind that downloading copyrighted music or software is a felony. So I hope you've never been one of the ~4 million people who are on Kazaa at any given moment. I hope you never got into the Napster craze a couple years ago, because the statute of limitations on that felonious behavious hasn't yet run out.
This break-in and look around thing brought an analogy to my mind: in Europe houses are designed to keep unwanted people out: hard doors with multiple locks, strong brick walls, metal curtains on windows, double reinforced glass windows, metal bars on small windows and more. But you are not allowed to own guns.
In the US, houses are built in a very unsecure way: windows open from the outside with little force, doors that you can kick in with a single toe, simple locks that any beginer thieve can pick. Hell, you could even break directly through most of those light plaster walls in two minutes with an axe. But they have gun and they shoot you if you enter.
So the computer world with the harch sentences is akin to shooting someone because he walked through the garden door. Do we want the European method of keeping everyone out ? Can we ?
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Never ever ever trust them when they say they'll use it in appropriate cases, Bizzare laws designed to stop one or two special cases are used in strange ways.
There is an example, a english woman married to an american man, he pulled off a small con job, (( he used rented items in a tv ad which made it look like he owned them )) And his wife put a lil money away in her savings account in england.
Wham life in jail, thats an offshore account, and laws designed to counter orginised crime, along with a prosicution lawier who has no morals at all leaves her rotting in jail.
You're not like other people, here in the trailer park.
Nice to see someone with a great musical taste...
Time to break out TDM cds
Two wrongs don't make a right, but 3 lefts do - Lew of GO magazine
I was just kidding, of course, about being perfect etc...
However, once again, I am pleased to inform you that you've gottne what you hoped for. I never got into file sharing, and I can honestly say that I've never downloaded a copyright protected file for other than permitted or fair use, AFAIK.
There's a difference between "making a mistake" and willfully breaking into a computer system to which you are not allowed access.
--
Think Green... Burn only 100% recycled dinosaurs in you car.
The cnn article is simply hogwarts...I mean hogwash. Unfortunately, a lot of people won't clue into that.
I've seen a lot of companies with those incredible tv advertisements, that implicit say if you buy a product you gonna get respect and a lot of chicks, not to mention nike basketball commercials, and toys comercials for kids.
These sttuff are not even questioned, but if people do something very like this on somewhere else, they probably go to jail. What about these marketing people, didn't they need more equal laws also?
If someone is a bussiness and attack people they don't have much problems.
And what about a guy that kills to steal oil? That uses government money for personal interests (kill saddam) isn't that stealing and corruption?
if they follow the law, no matter what the laws says, then they're not "corrupt"
Evil persists when good men stand by.