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Lawyers Say Hackers Are Sentenced Too Harshly

Posted by michael on from the hacker-crackdown dept.

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.

2 of 430 comments (clear)

  1. There's crime, and then there's government by Un+pobre+guey · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    Hacking into systems to steal credit card numbers and the like is theft, and should be punished as such. Yet I'm sure we can come up with dozens of examples where the precise punishemnt is either too severe or too lenient in hacking- or cracking-related crimes, as well as the vast diversity of other sorts of law breaking.

    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.
  2. it's time for me to exercise my patents... by thesadjester · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    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