The Economics of Executing Virus Writers

applemasker writes "Slate.com has an article titled Feed The Worms Who Write Worms to the Worms which argues based on economic theory (and somewhat tongue-in-cheek) that it is a 'better investment' to execute the creators of worms, virus and trojan authors, than murderers. Anyone who has tried to resurrect a network or computer after a nasty infection may agree. Although the author does not seriously argue for capital punishment for the script kiddies, it does raise some interesting issues about how much 'value' society puts on certain types of harm and the author's view of a government's role in protecting us from it."

Comments

Punishments go up, never down

[LostCluster]

Politicians love to associate their names with "get tough on crime" laws that raise the punishment for certain crimes... but you rarely here about anybody supporting lower sentances for crimes.

Is it just me, or is there an inflation effect hitting our criminal justice system as over time the punishments keep getting higher for the same crimes...

Re:Punishments go up, never down

[Q Who]

In other words, capital punishment was never abandoned anywhere?

Re:Punishments go up, never down

[Short Circuit]

Is it just me, or is there an inflation effect hitting our criminal justice system as over time the punishments keep getting higher for the same crimes...

I wouldn't be surprised. Crime is always considered high by the populace, and the most obvious solution is always to increase the penalty. Not that it always works.

Personally, I think the most effective solution is to convince people that if they break such-and-such a law, they will get caught. Presently, most ways to back up that threat involve trampling on civil liberties.

Given the choice, I'd rather put up with the crime rate and have the option of protecting myself.

Re:Punishments go up, never down

[Cecil]

Sodomy laws, marijuana laws, in the states. Man-and-woman marriage laws here in Canada. There is plenty of incentive to change laws when you have a vocal group supporting it.

The problem is, despite all our technical advantages, computer geeks are a loose rabble compared to the well-organized and well-funded gay/lesbian rights groups and legalize pot groups.

They have a single, focused goal, and they are going for it. What do we want? "Freedom". Not very specific, and few really agree on what the hell it means either. If we united all geeks under a "legalize reverse-engineering" banner, perhaps we'd have a better chance, but no one is passionate about that.

Re:Punishments go up, never down

[laigle]

I'd say a better solution is to start telling people the having their shiny electronic gizmos (very) occasionally stolen is not the biggest concern facing mankind. By all means we should pursue and punish those involved, but at some point the marginal cost of lowering the crime rate outweighs the cost incurred by the crimes.

People need to learn the mentality that crime can actually be low enough. But try getting that through to a populace that can't be made to understand that life will always be imperfect.

No no no. Planes and cars should never crash. Nobody should get cancer from anything. Everything you eat should be good for you. Prolonging HIV patients' lives by years, even decades doesn't count because it's not a cure. We need to toss out our civil liberties because terrorism is doing a fraction of the damage of eating too much red meat.

Re:Punishments go up, never down

[Vellmont]

Personally, I think the most effective solution is to convince people that if they break such-and-such a law, they will get caught. Presently, most ways to back up that threat involve trampling on civil liberties.


Except in the case of virus and worm writers, unless you're amazingly stupid there's almost no chance you're going to get caught. The situtation is as if anyone with a small amount of knowledge could walk up to a payphone and wreak havoc on the phone network.

In this case the only way you're going to stop people doing damage from releasing viruses is to change the computing environment. The OS shouldn't run apps unless they've been signed by an administrator. For business computing the administrator isn't the user. People will bitch and moan about not being able to run their weather app, but too bad. If you're not capable not spreading viruses, you're not capable of administrating your machine. Do we let general users mess with the inner workings of tools they don't understand like a typewriter? No, of course not. Why then do we let users install apps, run cutesey executables that were sent by Mom, etc? Until this practice stops, you're not going to stop the massive email spreading worms.

Re:Punishments go up, never down

[Kiryat Malachi]

No, that's abuse of freedom.

But most of us recognize that freedom comes with the inherent risk of abuse, and many believe that the possibility abuse is far better than the certainty of the lack of freedom.

In other words, I'd rather see 10% of the population infringe copyright than 0% of the population be able to transmit data over the net.

Re:Punishments go up, never down

[Minna Kirai]

It's all short-sighted selfishness.

NOT creating viruses would be short-sighted. They're like an inoculation- without the constant minor threat to keep us alert on security, we'd grow complacent and vulnerable. If there were no viruses, worms, or hackers in general, then the software running the internet would stay insecure, and would accumulate more and more holes over time. Then someday, a homicidal maniac with nothing to lose would find it easy to take over the world' computers and begin a reign of terror.

Prankster hackers* perform a useful role in the software ecology- they restrict the propagation of dangerously vulnerable programs, without inflicting the real damage a computer-criminal would do.

*Yes, I know exactly what "hacker" means. Nobody try to "correct" me.

Re:Punishments go up, never down

[JohnWiney]

The number of murders in Toronto is almost exactly the same - in a city four times the size. The number of murders in Austin Texas, the last time I checked, was almost exactly the same - in a city half the size. Guess which city is toughest on crime, and which least so.

Re:Punishments go up, never down

[roemcke]

Catching criminals, doesn't necessary prevent crimes. You allso have to convince people that if they don't break any laws, they won't get harassed.

Luckily, the best way to assert that, is to respect cilvil liberties.

Re:Punishments go up, never down

[uradu]

> I think the most effective solution is to convince people
> that if they break such-and-such a law, they will get caught

Understandable gut reaction, but it flies in the face of statistics and research. People in the trenches (social workers, psychologists etc.) will tell you that a recurrent theme in criminal offenders is the failure to consider the consequences of their actions. This extends much deeper than just the crime aspect into their every-day life. Such people have trouble recognizing and considering even positive consequences, such as that getting an education will lead to a job, having a job removes the need for begging and/or stealing, etc.

The easiest way to understand that is to think back to childhood, or to observe your own children. I look at my two five-year-olds and am amazed at their inability to consider the consequences of their actions PRIOR to riding that bike down a steep hill, or getting so focused in a chase that they completely ignore obstacles and other dangers, until they come running to you with a boo-boo. Many criminal offenders exhibit stunted mental development in areas such as this. These are people that usually also fail at rehabilitation without ongoing outside assistance precisely because they're incapable of planning, which is just another facet of considering consequences.

And yet, legislation completely ignores such established knowledge and understanding, perhaps because it is created by people that are unaware of it at best, or are merely out to satisfy the primordial need for punishment and revenge at worst. But recognizing that deterrence is ineffective for many types of offences and offenders would be a first step towards a more holistic, preventative and rehabilitative criminal justice system.

Re:Punishments go up, never down

[Minna Kirai]

and the same argument used against preemptive overuse of antibiotics...

They're really quite different. The argument against antibiotic overuse is that there is a fixed max population for bacteria. And of all the bacteria out there, X% are vulnerable to antibiotics and (100-X) are not. The more we kill the vulnerable ones, the smaller X becomes, until eventually 100% of bacteria are immune. And then it's as if antibiotics no longer exist as a medicine. By restraining ourself from killing the vulnerable germs, we ensure that some germs (at least) can be defeated.

It doesn't really work to twist that idea to working with virus authors- it's not like killing off the vulnerable hackers will allow the others to take over.

If you want to make a biological analogy, then look at excessive hygiene/cleanliness. The research isn't quite firm, but it appears that human children raised in obsessively cleaned indoor environments are more vulnerable to asthma and diseases than kids who are allowed to pet strange dogs and try to eat dirt.

Re:Punishments go up, never down

[dasunt]

Actually, I've found that very few "geeks" want freedom, because freedom also brings with it responsibility. I've found that what many geeks really want is really lack of responsibility. Look at the various "geek issues"... it's all about doing whatever they want with no responsibility or cost.

Er, are you really sure? Lets look at your examples more closely:

Downloading music for free.

Er, downloading music for free is not illegal. Downloading copyrighted music for free is not illegal. Here's a short list of free music to download.

As for infringed copyrighted music, there are plenty of Slashdotters (geeks) who said "go after the downloaders" and are content to see them go under.

Downloading software for free.

Er, yes, geeks like to download software for no cost. Almost all of the software I use on my machines was downloaded for free -- Debian, Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, GIMP, Abiword, Sodipodi, etc.

For the issues of illegal music downloading and illegal software downloading, I think you confuse geeks getting upset at the high penalties with support for the crimes. Its one thing to support copyright infringement. Its another thing to get upset with copyright infringers getting more severe sentences than violent criminals.

Creating viruses (it's Microsoft's fault, don't you know).

You are confusing the issues. Windows viruses are, in a large part, encouraged by Microsoft's lack of security. When many people "blame" Microsoft for viruses, they mean that Microsoft Windows shows a stunning lack of security by default. We all know that there are a few script-kiddies out there writing viruses, and they are the source of viruses, but if it wasn't for Microsoft lowering the amount of effort needed, we wouldn't see as many viruses.

As for copyright, us geeks are paranoid. I doubt many people here would have problems with a copyright flag for TV or radio broadcasts (other then correctly assuming that (1) they will require new purchases of hardware and (2) they will be cracked rather quickly). But we are paranoid -- if, say, every MP3 was tagged according to if the artist wanted redistribution or not, a lot of indie bands would have a leg up on the mainstream bands. This gives the indie bands an edge that the RIAA does not want. Ergo, we are assuming that any DRM in music will automatically assume that all music is pirated, unless proven otherwise.

As for DRM on the PC, we see that Microsoft is launching an offensive against Open Source. If they can create a huge financial cost for any piece of software to be certified to run on a new PC, and if they can be in control of the certification, they can use that against Open Source.

Finally, I will admit, a lot of us geeks have a slight problem with legality vs morality. The anime fan-subbing community is a perfect example: A lot of the groups will only fan-sub anime not available in the US, and will stop distribution as soon as an official English copy comes out. Is that legal? No. Is it moral? Perhaps.

Re:Punishments go up, never down

[Brandybuck]

To quote what I think is the greatest book ever (Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand):

If you think that book is the greatest ever, you need to seriously broaden your literary horizons! As a novel it's a second rate dystopia. As a philosophy it rivals the Matrix in sophistication. As a cult vehicle, though, it's right up there with Dianetics.

Re:Punishments go up, never down

[DarkProphet]

Re:Punishments go up, never down (Score:5, Interesting) by CoolToddHunter (605159) on Thursday May 27, @11:24AM (#9267752) I'd say a better solution is to start telling people the having their shiny electronic gizmos (very) occasionally stolen is not the biggest concern facing mankind. By all means we should pursue and punish those involved, but at some point the marginal cost of lowering the crime rate outweighs the cost incurred by the crimes. You (apparently) have never been robbed. It's not the "shiny electronic gizmos" that go missing, it's the feeling of security. I don't care about that stuff, but it bothers me that I feel uncomfortable when someone I don't know rings my doorbell at night now.
Maybe its a callous point of view, but I'd say that the only thing you really lost was a FALSE sense of security. Ignorance is bliss, and all that. And if you feel uncomfortable when someone rings your doorbell, do the sensible thing (what you should have done in the first place to avoid being robbed) and excercise your 2nd amendment rights, assuming you're a fellow American. Defend yourself. Who else do you trust to defend you anyway? A baseball bat is usually all the crime deterrant you need ;-)

Actually... in a few years

[Anonymous Coward]

When someone develops a virus tuned to someone's DNA to kill them, then the virus writer is a murderer.

Right idea, wrong target

[djh101010]

First, let's execute some spammers, _then_ we can move on to the virus & spyware folks. Viruses and worms only are a problem for one segment of the online population, spam has to be dealt with by all of us.

Re:Right idea, wrong target

[moitz]

Technically, murderers are only a problem for one segment of the population too...namely, the segment they're merrily killing off. Just because it's not you doesn't mean it's not a problem of concern.

-moitz-

Re:Right idea, wrong target

[Kainaw]

It sure is annoying to get penis enlargement and online Phd ads, but at least you dont lose any data because of them.

The truth is that many people are losing data because of spam. They aren't losing data that is already on their computer, but data they want to get in incoming emails. Many good emails are accidentally deleted by spam blockers as well as the human who is trying to quickly parse out the good from the bad. That is one of the rarely discussed spam problems.

Re:Right idea, wrong target

[Anonymous Coward]

If you send out 2*10^9 spams, and take a second out of the life of each recipient to deal with it, then you've taken away as much as the remaining 60 years of life of a twenty-something murder victim.

*snerk*

[Analise]

Well, there's a thought. Though some would say the punishment wouldn't really fit the crime. Unless a worm/virus/whanot caused someone's death because it screwed up the computer that ran air traffic control. Or, you know, something a bit less unlikely and somewhat more likely.

Kind of scary the process by which people can take anything and reduce it to a number somehow. That's probably why I hated statistics class.

Re:*snerk*

[Satan's Librarian]

Now think a virus writer or spammer which steals less amounts from everyone. Not just time reinstalling the OS and/or cleaning the virus. But also time wasted because the pipe was choked with a packet storm. Time spent installing and updating AV programs. Time spent on tech support. Etc.

Uhm... lemme guess, you got PAID for that time, didn't you? And wait - you didn't secure those machines after the last time you got hit, did you? Hell, you openly advocate installing a less secure OS because it saves you time - deal with the results.

I've had to deal with viruses in corporate situations before, it ain't pleasant, it did waste my time, but..... the comparison you're giving just doesn't work.

And for christ's sake, leave the bloody Nazi references out. They're stupid.

Re:*snerk*

[Nasarius]

So why aren't we executing them yet? No, I'm dead serious.

Because that's not how punishment for crimes are determined. Why do you think manslaughter is a lesser crime than premeditated murder? It's not a numbers thing; it's about intent and how "bad" the crime was. Someone who blocks off traffic for an hour isn't going to be executed, even though they inconvenienced a million people during rush hour.

Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Killing people is wrong. No matter who does it.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

If it is so simple then tell me why? Now do it without invoking any religous doctrine.

Re:Simple

[goldspider]

Rewarding murderers, rapists, and child molesters with a lifetime of food, shelter, and medical care at taxpayer expense is even more wrong.

Re:Simple

[Peden]

Have you ever been to prison? Rewarding rapists and child molesters with a lifetim og gangraping, everyday beating and general hell is what they get. That statement is just SO stupid, no matter how you look at it, prison will never be like a hotel. Freedom is the thing taken away, is that not what America is all about? Take that away and you have punishment, killing poeple is so low, and utterly stupid.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

oh please, you are taking away someone's liberty and putting them in a small box; people in prison get very very inferior health care and eat crappy food -- sounds like you've never tried the prision system... our high scool allowd people to "vounenteer" to spend a night in prison as part of our civics class. Let me tell you, it sucked. Spending a life in a cage really really sucks.

If you care so concerned about expense, did you know that 60-80% of prision population is for non-violent offenders? If you want to reduce government burden, fix this problem frist before you move on to the death penalty.

Also, prusuing a death penalty case (to make sure that there is absolutely no error... right) costs approximately 2-5x the incarceration of keeping a prisoner in for life. So, it's not like death sentances are 'cheaper' they are actually far far more expensvive; or else you have to drop all of the safeguards (which don't work well anyway) that protect innocents from being executed.

As long as we're making modest proposals...

[dark404]

we should add spam to the list of capital crimes as far as wasting the world's time, resources, bandwidth, and money.

Wow

[elwell642]

Tounge-in-cheek or not, this article is comparing a person's life to a dollar figure. Now, I'm as much a fan of cleaning out virii as anyone else, but that's just messed up. How much is a human life worth?

Re:Wow

[Grishnakh]

I would suggest that, using a utilitarian philosophy, a human life's worth is based on how much that person can contribute to society. Therefore, anyone who makes a positive contribution to society, whether they're janitors or farmers or engineers, is worth keeping around. However, spammers (along with serial killers, SCO executives, etc.) do only harm to society, and thus have a negative value. Removing them with a $0.10 bullet would greatly improve the lives of everyone else, and would be a large positive contribution to society (minus the $0.10 for the bullet).

Basically, society is like a machine, and only works when people work together to keep in running smoothly. If someone is actively sabotaging it, society needs to remove that person in order to protect itself.

While you're at it

[Safety Cap]

Execute the lazy/ignorant sysadmins and infrastructure guys who fail to keep their servers patched, have their firewalls set to "Allow all" and who leave the default passwords on their systems.

All we need...

[kneecarrot]

Slammer and SoBIG and some of the other viruses have been costly and damaging, but nowhere NEAR as costly and damaging as a virus could be.

As soon as there is a virus/trojan/etc. that spreads easily and is highly destructive (overwrites crucial hard drive sectors, for example) I think everyone will start seeing the punishment of virus writers in a whole new light.

Corporate malfeasance...

[Anonymous Coward]

Execute bad CEOs first.

redamndiculous

[happyfrogcow]

ok, if you are thinking about executing a person for writing a piece of malicious software (that didn't even cause any human harm), you need to step away from the computer, turn off the power, get out of your office and walk through the woods for a while.

and if you come back and tell me "financial harm is human harm" i say go back and walk through the woods some more. maybe read a book while you are out there... something that doesn't mention computers. Something by Emerson.

Re:redamndiculous

[happyfrogcow]

how can you not take something seriously that puts a monetary value on a persons life? joking or not, the idea that someone can attach a monetary value to someones life is apalling.

loss of productivity in an office for a day while computers are patched is not damage. just like the mp3 filetrading scene is not damage to the RIAA. damage is what occurs before mass graves are filled. damage is being shot in the head three times from behind while walking down a crowded public street.

The uncommon event that a virus effects a critical system is partially the fault of the maganerial staff in selecting the wrong software or selecting the wrong administration staff. i know, i know... it's like saying "it's the victims fault that they were assulted" which is typically bad. but in this case, it's the managerial and administrations duty and responsibility to maintain a critical system. That's why they get paid.

Startling.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft's press wing advocates executing intelligent teenagers rather than writing secure software. Film at 11.

insanity

[Anonymous Coward]

i have actually seen a fair amount of similar sentiment - not always "tongue in cheek" - expressed, lately, on the net.

i can not believe that anyone, in their right mind, can seriously equate an action which causes a temporary inconvenience with one which causes a permanent end to a human life.

i find this trend very disturbing.

the problem with capital punishment...

[hak1du]

The problem with capital punishment are that (1) it's irreversible, and (2) it is dangerous to give governments that kind of power. The economic costs resulting from these two properties of capital punishment are probably enormous. The first means that you need a complex judiciary and review process (and, in fact, executions seem to be more expensive than life imprisonment). The second means that it creates a serious risk that governments become totalitarian.

I suspect the evidentiary situation for virus writers is even hazier than for your average murder, so capital punishment would, on balance, probably be worse.

Incidentally, there is an easy way to avoid paying a high cost for the effects of viruses: don't let them infect your systems in the first place. And that's easy: keep them patched and up-to-date. So, while virus writing isn't nice, I think people whose systems get infected are contributing to the damage through their negligence. By comparison, while stealing cars is illegal, if you leave your car unlocked and running with the key in the ignition and it gets stolen, you won't get much sympathy from either the police or your insurance company.

Stupid Article

[TheFlyingGoat]

"Which would you rather have, the safety or the cash? Almost every American would take the cash; that's exactly what we learn from studies like Viscusi's."

This is just dumb. Perhaps if the monetary value were higher than the 83 cents they've calculated. They also fail to take into account that the safety increase is not just for that individual, but also for everyone they care about. So, would you rather have 83 cents, or the knowledge that you, your family, and friends are slightly safer?

Stupid, pointless article.

Grandma

[J_Omega]

I first laughed at the simple concept of it.

But what happens if a nasty worm/virus starts disrupting food transport, shredding hospital documents, places trains on the same track, open the doors in the CDC, route airplanes into skyscrapers?

A properly designed infection could wreak havoc, and kill hundreds, thousands?

I realize that I'm being overly dramatic, but there's probably a point where capital punishment WOULD be a justifiable answer.

Crime and Punishment=

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

Want to eliminate certain types of crime?

Make the punishment so harsh, no one will want to commit said crime.

This either:

(a) Solves the problem

or

(b) Turns your country into a police state.

Which will it be?

so..

[radja]

should we also execute fraudulent managers of big corporations?

Deterence is not measured in the ammount of money

[ganhawk]

saved. Capital punishment deters the ammount of people killed. You cant quntify that a life is worth 10 millions and argue based on that.

Just wrong

[jb.hl.com]

Capital punishment is inexcusable. Full stop.

Even tongue in cheek, it's just wrong to say that another person should die for writing computer viruses. It's also wrong to say that another person should die for killing someone.

Confiscate computers, not somebody's life.

Re:Along the same lines...

[The Only Druid]

Oh yeah, nuking the producers of the most-used OS on the planet would be brilliant.

This sort of joke isn't funny, its just demonstrative of an unhealthy vitrol towards Microsoft. Linux is great, no one is saying otherwise, but it has serious lackings. It lacks ease of use, unification, game support, hardware support, etc. Quit bitching [everyone] about Microsoft, and help develop a viable Linux solution to the home user desktop.

Re:Wow: Wasted Life: 1 person vs 1 million

[G4from128k]

Tounge-in-cheek or not, this article is comparing a person's life to a dollar figure. Now, I'm as much a fan of cleaning out virii as anyone else, but that's just messed up. How much is a human life worth?

How about equating this in term of life-hours destroyed? A murder takes, at most, 872,000 hours (100 years) of one person's life. But a virus creator takes hours from each of millions of people's lives. The total "life lost" is worse with computer viruses.

Moreover, I'd argue that the victim's life destroyed by virus/worm/trojan infections is far worse than murder as it is more a prolonged torture rather than a quick end.

Re:Hear Hear!!!

[Ectospheno]

I'm going to lose some karma on this one but somone has to respond to this silliness.

A suburb-born CPA who kills a police officer gets executed.

A ghetto-born man who ruins the retirements of thousands of families gets a slap on the wrist.

The problem isn't one of race or money. The problem is that sentences don't match the crime. Your initial statement was correct but your example brings elements into the situation that merely cloud the actual point.

Economists should take a clue from ecology

[Cryogenes]

I would argue that virus and worm writers fulfill an important role in software ecology. Billions have been spent on making computers safer from Ninja, CodeRed and Sasser. Without these threats the money would not have been spent and nearly every PC would be wide open today. Can you see how much power that would give to those who do not fear the death penalty?

If we were to kill all harmful bacteria today, infections will go back dramatically. But when, in 80 years, a new strain happens to come into existence, nobody will have any immunity system and humanity will be wiped in 24 hours.

This will get abused very soon...

[DocSnyder]

As soon as someone shouts for capital punishment after IT crimes, writing viruses or sending spam would be the least of all cases, compared to intellectual property violations. RIAA, MPAA, BSA and others would like to see thousands of software/media pirates executed. These associations have much more power than all anti-spam initatives together.

Virus writers vs. murderers

[Digital_Quartz]

A virus writer creates a computer virus which causes a minor inconvenience for a relatively large number of people (and a major inconvenience for a few system administrators). Keep in mind that these people are the people who open up a word document called "I love you".

A murderer kills someone. He ends their life, forever. They will no longer feel happiness, or sadness, or laugh, or click on "I love you" attachments". A murderer devastates the lives of the countless people who are friends and family of their victim.

These two acts are not comparable. An "equivalent punishment", be it captial (which I'm opposed to in either crime) or some other, only makes sense if you have a greatly over-inflated view of the "value" of economics.

The part that kinda concerns me...

[Satan's Librarian]

.. is that the language often used for these pranks is cyberterrorism, and it's already a pretty serious felony. Now, there could be such a thing, but most of what I've seen coming from virus writers are teenagers playing pranks.

Since we've thrown the entire world on one ad-hoc network without securing anything, those pranks are damned expensive right now and there's a real problem. But.... most of the people causing these untold trillions of dollars of damage are bored teenagers, just as antisocial as a lot of other teenagers who are out smashing post office boxes, spray painting walls, and sniffing glue, that happen to be somewhat adept at using a computer.

There do seem to be a few pro's in the field that could be linked to the spam operations and possibly even corporate and government espionage, but they're still seriously in the minority.

So - does some kid doing something stupid warrant destroying the rest of the kid's life? Do these kids really understand the consequences of what they're doing and what kind of destruction they're causing? I think in most cases - no, they don't. In the rest, well - they're still kids. Punish them, let them know what they did was wrong, but don't try to lock them up for the rest of their lives or bury them under the jail for what to them seemed like a funny prank. There's a huge difference between creating a piece of code and shooting someone in the head.

I think we need to do two things.

1. Secure the damn networks so that your average 14-year old geek can't cause billions of dollars worth of damage with a few days of work.
2. Educate our kids in a more compassionate way, teaching them ethics and responsibility along with computer skills rather than sending them to a meat-grinder / day-care that does nothing but frustrate halfway intelligent people that want to learn something.

Re:Let the heads roll

[Coneasfast]

personally i think all these worms may be worthwhile in the long run, i mean they DO make people and microsoft aware of the vulnerabilities of windows and its security problems.

instead of saying "we need to execute worm writers" maybe they should say "we need to secure windows"

viruses are not necessarily bad

[funbobby]

Given that Microsoft will write software that can be exploited, I'd much rather have it exploited by something that reboots my machine and some script kiddie gets a kick out of it, than have it exploited secretly and repeatedly by someone with worse motives. If we didn't have these occasional public displays of how insecure our software is, it would be far easier for other people to take advantage of it, people like the terrorists and governments. That would be a hell of a lot worse than having all your machines reboot, or even losing a hard drive here and there.

The real solution is quality software, and punishing virus writers won't get us any closer to that.

This argument is of course only valid as long as the viruses are relatively benign.

Virtual Death...

[MojoRilla]

For a virtual crime, the right punishment probably should be virtual death. Lifetime ban on using computers.

That might make a hacker think twice.

10 murders deterred per death sentence?

[G. W. Bush Junior]

Let's do the math. What do we get out of executing a murderer? Deterrence. A high-end estimate is that each execution deters about 10 murders. (The highest estimate I've ever seen is 24 murders deterred per execution, but the closest thing to a consensus estimate in the econometric literature is about eight.) That's 10 lives saved...

Now, I'm no expert on these matters, but would there really be ten times more murders in america if capital punishment was substituted with life in prison?
That number sounds completely ridicoulous to me. I would probably put that number lower than 2 and closer to 1... without taking the time to compare all 38 states with capital punishment to those who don't it doesn't look like theres anywhere near a factor of ten difference between them.

this article looks like yet another example of the fact that 86.2% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

Re:10 murders deterred per death sentence?

[Eivind]

Good question. Especially considering that most countries that have abandoned capital punishment have a *lot* lower murder-rates than does USA.

Yes, sure, correlation does not proove causation, we all know that. Still, I'm pretty sure the added deterrent effect of capital punishment over lifetime prison is pretty much unproven.

New Despised Classes

[blueZhift]

While it sounds cool on the surface to kill the vermiscripters (along with the lawyers and the spammers), it seems that we're creating new despised classes of people for the digital age. Geeks and nerds have never been very popular to begin with, and now the government is getting in a position where it can finally punish this despised class just as ethnic minorities have similarly suffered disproportionately at the hands of the government. For my money, I'd still rather get the truly violent off the streets rather than offing some pimply faced hacker.

So let's hope that this talk of killing virus writers won't become more than talk. Next thing you know, the Department of Justice will be rounding up file sharers for RIAA...oh wait...

Crap

[Fuzzums]

How many viruswriters / hackers continue writing viruses / hacking after they got caught, convicted, served time and were released? How many viruswriters / hackers get job in the computersecurity industry and thus contribute to society?

How many murderers continue murdering after they got caught, convicted, served time and were released? How many murderers get a job with the police / FBI and thus contribute to society?

Re:Wow: Wasted Life: 1 person vs 1 million

[Bluesman]

I don't know about judging a cumulative effect as the same as a one time effect.

If I give 100,000 people paper-cuts, causing them pain and wasting cumulatively a whole lifetime of hours when they take time out to apply band-aids, am I really as bad as someone who kills another person? Are people going to be afraid to go outside because of the paper-cut man? Are neighborhoods going to decay because of me?

I don't think so.

Even if a pickpocket steals from thousands of people over his lifetime, he is only guilty of many counts of petty theft. He doesn't graduate to grand larceny after a certain cumulative dollar amount.

Re:Humans keep living longer

[orangesquid]

And since humans learn much more slowly nowadays, it takes longer sentences to teach them a lesson, right?

The point is that humans aren't inherently bad, except in some rare cases, but some people get some fucked up ideas about ethics. So, the people who are causing significant harm get yanked out of society for a bit, deprived of some of the things they enjoy, in hopes that they will not only be negatively reinforced, but that they will also have time to think and realize why what they did was inappropriate.

Increasing sentences is only going to drive people batty.... at least, I say ;)

Faulty assumptions....

[mseeger]

What do we get out of executing a murderer? Deterrence. A high-end estimate is that each execution deters about 10 murders. (The highest estimate I've ever seen is 24 murders deterred per execution, but the closest thing to a consensus estimate in the econometric literature is about eight.)

I hate to see such rubbish published, even if the article is half joking. You may get deterrence but you also get brutalization. Personally i doubt there will be a positive (lives saved) balance. Crime figures of countries with and without capital punishment leave some doubts concerning this. But the point is not about capital punishment.

Why do we have courts and just don't hang'em high? Because "Deterrence" is only a secondary goal of serving justice. The primary goal ist restoration of judicial peace. If we forget this, we may also toss the idea of the rule of law outside out of the window. Punishment may be one measure to achieve it. All those strange procedures during prosecution and at court are to ensure that in the end, even if the ruling is faulty, we have a state of judical peace.

This notion may seem strange, but you always have to be aware, that there can never be a "perfect justice".

Regards, Martin

Dollar Value on Human Life

[0x0d0a]

Maybe we should execute politicians whose districts receive more money than average (say $4.5 million more than average, since that was the "value" of a white-collar worker in the article).

The "trick" to the "value of a human life" point in the paper is that humans do not assign value linearly. The author simply converted a point on a value curve into a dollar amount. Dollars are normally valued linearly with risk (.1 chance of 10 == 1 chance of 1), so he started doing linear calculations, then converted back into value. This does not work.

It's very clear that the author is wrong. For example, we may pay a dollar to avoid a one-in-ten-million chance in being killed. However, if someone offers me $10 million dollars to be killed, I wouldn't take it -- simply taking what I would be willing to pay and multiplying it by ten million does not correctly predict my actions. My value/risk curve is not linear (and isn't likely to be, until we turn into perfectly rational beings).

Re:Dollar Value on Human Life

[0x0d0a]

My value/risk curve is not linear (and isn't likely to be, until we turn into perfectly rational beings).

Actually, I take this back. Even being perfectly rational doesn't mean we'll have a linear value/risk curve.

You've obviously never been the victim of a crime.

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus, I can't believe you actually wrote what you did. Riiight, of course we need to learn the "mentality that crime can be low enough."

It's only ever low for those who haven't been raped, murdered, stabbed, robbed, etc.

For those that have, the rate is always too high.

I can see which of the two categories you fall in.

You are painting with a very broad brush

[TamMan2000]

That guy took the words right out of my mouth. There is a cost of reducing crime, and it is not worth my freedom.

That said... I have been robbed, my wallet was taken from a locker at a gym (yes it was locked, no I never figured out how they got in...) I found my wallet, devoid of all cash, in a nearby trash can. I was also assaulted about 10 years ago, fortunatly no harm came to me, he took one swing at me, missed, and I ran... A lot faster than he could...

I think crime is pretty low right now. Of corse I wouldn't complain if the crime rate was lowered, but if big brother is needed to lower crime, I will take my chances, thank you very much...

This is why they should teach history in America

[kahei]

Sigh.

In the napoleonic era, a typical punishment for highway robbery was death. The punishment for plain old mugging was death. The punishment for burglary was death. The punishment for slipping a few florins from a stranger's pocket into one's own pocket was death. Crimes involving less personal contact were treated a bit more leniently -- the stealer of a sheep in the UK, for instance, could look forward to a mere 8 years or so in an Army penal battalion.

Crime was high, though, much higher than it is now, because of such factors as: the low chance of being caught (no detectives, few police), the large number of desperate people (no welfare), and the social disruption caused by having people EXECUTED THE WHOLE DAMN TIME.

But yeah, make the punishments harsher, it's bound to work.

Re:If you want to save money...

[(trb001)]

This 'report' that you mention, written up on worldnetdaily is ridiculous. Overvly vague, it gives statements without backing them up and brings up numbers to justify its position without mentioning the numbers aren't BAD. For instance:

"The United States ranked first in private ownership of guns, resulting in drastic rise in gun-related crimes."

BS. We own a lot of guns because we're allowed to, it's in our Constitution and the vast majority of these people use guns responsibly. Outlawing guns does not make a society safer, it just moves guns into the black market.

"According to the outcome of a survey released by Washington D.C.Mayor Anthony A. Williams, 60,000 people out of the 600,000 population in Washington used drugs and indulged in excessive drinking" ...and I'm proud to call myself part of that group. Excessive drinking is a damn right, as long as it's done in the safety of your own home.

"The jails nationwide receive 700 new inmates every week in the U.S. where 701 out of every 100,000 people are in prison"

That's .7%, and if they did the crime, they can do the time.

"According to a report by Amnesty International, more than 700,000 inmates were held in high security prisons and there they are compelled to stay in wards for 23 hours a day and even longer, subjected to ruthless and inhuman treatment and humiliation"

I assume they're talking about high-security lockdown, reserved for heinous crimes or prisoners who can't get along with the other prisoners and start fights or kill them. I say kill them off, but we keep them around and away from other people.

"Statistical figures from the Center for Responsive Politics showed that Lockheed Martin Corp., the country's biggest arms dealer.."

They're a DEFENSE CONTRACTOR! They design and produce weapons for the government.

An increasing number of US media organizations are getting involved in false reporting or cheating scandals. On June 5, 2003, two chief editors of the New York Times resigned after their role in a plagiarism scandal was exposed. John Barrie, head of Plagiarism.org in Oakland, California, claimed that "every newspaper in this country is not doing due diligence" and "everybody's got this problem".

This is isolated, at best. With the number of newspapers in this country, it's going to happen somewhere. Funny that China would talk about OUR press system when theirs is government owned...

"Certain policies of the US government, instead of helping narrowing the country's wealth gap, have aggravated the rich-poor disparity and led to an unfair distribution of wealth"

We live in a Capitalistic society, it's not the government's job to play Robin Hood.

Okay, I'm not even half way through this thing, and it's just packed with blatant lies and half-truths. Did you read this before posting?

--trb

Re:If you want to save money...

[(trb001)]

I said it was filled with blatant lies and half-truths. For instance, if I'm writing about how horrible Wheat Thins are, I could write "These little crackers, made from the grain grown by the working class farmer and his underprivileged household, contain 10 calories apiece! Over the course of a serving, that's almost 500 calories! No wonder Americans are getting fat!". Wheat Thins aren't terribly bad for you, the farmer is doing what he wants to do for his living and neither has anything to do with Americans getting fat, yet all statements are true.

You can mix up any words to build something that sounds more ominous than it really is.

--trb

Re:You've obviously never been the victim of a cri

[FrYGuY101]

Ahem.

I've been both stabbed AND robbed.

Personally, I think the 'horrendous crime problem' in the US is more a product of the Media trying to sell advertisements than an actual problem. Hell, a study came out a while back showing that violent crime in the UK was the highest in Europe... and a throw away line in the report was that the US ("Known for its violent crime") was lower than any of the European countries being compared.

Yes. Crime is a problem. But, like the grandparent said, there comes a point where the cost of trying to lower crime more is more costly than the crimes themselves...

And I say that people are inherently bad.

[Nopal]

I'm guessing that you don't have children. They start life as selfish, egocentric, manipulative beasts because it works for them. Eventually, they learn to be "good" as they come to grasp the benefits of living in a society (sharing resourced, mutual protection, affection, etc.), and learn the subtleties of good behavior.

But some never learn and remain selfish, egotistical bastards. We call those people "sociopaths" (e.g. criminals and some politicans). Having said that, I agree in that we should try to teach them to be good, but many are just not willing or don't care to learn. That's why they are criminals.

Re:And I say that people are inherently bad.

[benna]

You are wrong. The babies have no ego at all. They don't even know the concept of an internal world in relation to an external world. To them there is no difference between a cloud in their minds eye and the sound of a car outside. Both things just happen. Also, as far as the baby knows they aren't happening to anyone and nobody is doing them. This is exactly what is meant by no ego. Kids only become what you say when adults make them that way. The natural human condition is that of enlightenment in the zen or taoist sense.

Re:You've obviously never been the victim of a cri

[An Onerous Coward]

Indeed, skepticism abounds today, for I cannot believe that you wrote what you did.

There are these wonderful things called "statistics" and arguments like yours are designed solely for the purpose of keeping people irrational and avoiding thinking about them.

The basic thrust of your argument (and I'm hoping that thrust was unintentional) is that, so long as there is a one in six billion chance of being the victim of a violent crime, we as a society are responsible for taking whatever measures are necessary to alleviate that risk.

Let's pull a number out of the air and say that the U.S. spends $100B for state and federal law enforcement every year. Let's also imagine that each time we double that number, we halve the crime rate. Maybe it would be worthwhile to spend $400B to reduce the rate to 1/4, or $800B to get it down to 1/8th the current level. But what about 1/256th? That would cost $25T, which would mean that pretty much the entire economy would be channeled into crime prevention. Forget other wonderful things like medical research, we might not even be able to feed ourselves. And still, people are getting killed, raped, stabbed, and shot.

Nothing in the previous analysis even mentions the secondary costs that come with living in a de facto police state.

I think you're going out of your way to be insulted. When the grandparent says crime is "low enough," he doesn't mean that we just don't give a crap about the victims who remain. He means that the costs associated with getting it down further are unjustifiable. Going back to my earlier example, imagine if we halved the current law enforcement funding. Assume that caused the crime rate to double. Would that be a bad thing? Certainly. But that doesn't eliminate the possibility that it might be the best thing to do, if funneling that money into medical research lead to an overall improvement in the quality of life.

I could sit here and make precisely the same arguments you do, but in favor of such medical research. After all, for the parents of a child who died of cancer, there is no way the cancer rate was "low enough." But how big a tax increase would we allow to reduce it further than we already have? Would we allow the government to step in and start outlawing certain foods, or require that every citizen take an anti-oxidant tablet every morning? Would we sit by while those who refused the pills were jailed?

The whole idea is that we allocate things like resources and government regulations where they will produce the most good. Simple economics.

Deterrence?!?

[j-turkey]

From TFA

Let's do the math. What do we get out of executing a murderer? Deterrence. A high-end estimate is that each execution deters about 10 murders.

I don't know where he gets his numbers, by all measures I've ever seen, they show that capital punishment isn't a deterrence. I guess this may go along with the idiom about lies, damn lies, and statistics.

fuzzy logic

[joexdestroyer]

People need to remember that a human life isn't really just a series of consecutive hours. It's one complete unit. Thinking of it as a series of hours reminds me of one of Zeno's paradoxes. Just because a hacker may steal millions of hours overall, he steals zero complete lives. This is why murdering is of course worse than writing viruses.

Re:Value of a human life.

[cyberformer]

Martha Stewart's crime has a huge economic impact, because it affects confidence in the stock market. Average people are less likely to invest in stock when we see that the market is rigged to benefit insiders like her and Ken Lay. This drives the market down, and would considered a negative.

OTOH, the mugger in the bad neighborhood has a positive impact. Because you're afraid to walk through the neighborhood, you might spend money on a bus or cab, buy a gun to defend yourself, or (the fear-instilling news shows' favorite) take out a loan to buy a huge SUV. When the mugger actually shoots or stabs you, he's helping to boost the medical industry. All these show up as positives in the GDP figures. For the economy, fear of crime is good, and actual crime even better!

This is called the "broken window" fallacy, used to demonstrate the limits of traditional economics. It's particularly relevant to the computer security industry, most of which only exists because Windows is broken.

I buy it...

[Deton8]

I buy the economic argument that we should execute verminscripters (and spammers while we are at it). But how about we also calculate the deterrence effect of executing officials of software companies if their products are so insecure that we have to download daily patches to keep from having our work utterly destroyed. What would the economic benefit to us be then?

Re:You've obviously never been the victim of a cri

[Minna Kirai]

a study came out a while back showing that violent crime in the UK was the highest in Europe...

If you believe that 25 fistfights is more violent crime than a single gunshot to the head, that is...

Re:If you want to save money...

[Valdrax]

That's .7%, and if they did the crime, they can do the time.

Two questions:
A) Is the punishment justified based on the nature of the crime? Take the example of the kid doing 26 years for selling marijuana to other students. That's more punishment than many murderers and rapists will get.
B) Why did they commit the crime, and can we do something about that cause? In other words, can we attack crime at the roots rather than ripping it out after it's sprouted up?

The fact is that we have the largest percentage of our population who are or have done time of any nation in the world. Our rates have been climbing steadly for the several decades from .2% of our population in prison in 1978 to .7% today. He make up 5% of the population of the planet, but we have 25% of the world's prison population. Furthermore, a whopping 4.8% of the black population is in prison right now. That's nearly 1 in 20 and suggests a broken racial and economic policy. It doesn't help that that means 1 in 20 black people won't be able to find a decent job anymore once they're out.

Most of these offenders are there due to drug policy, especially "possession" violations. The federal prison population swelled from 57,000 in 1990 to 130,000 in 2000. 75,000 were drug offenders, and in 1999 over half of all drug offenders were first time offenders receiving on average 4 years in prison. Now, I'm not for legalizing drugs, but I am for taking it down from prison time and from having to report it on job applications for the rest your ruined life to a traffic-sized fine and mandatory rehab. Considering the root causes of drug abuse and its minimal effect on society compared to other crimes, we should be looking into constructive rather than destructive solutions for fixing people's lives. It would save both lives and taxpayer dollars to not have to house all these people in prison.

I assume they're talking about high-security lockdown, reserved for heinous crimes or prisoners who can't get along with the other prisoners and start fights or kill them. I say kill them off, but we keep them around and away from other people.

No, actually, they're probably talking about the fact that prisons don't do enough to prevent them from killing and raping other prisoners in the first place. Some prison guards actually encourage that sort of thing. Abu Ghraib and the presence of an America prison guard in the scandal were no surprise to anyone who has paid attention to prison abuse in America. Our prison situation is a huge shame for our nation. At least it should be, but there's a sizeable half of the voting population *cough* Republicans *cough* that likes it this way and poisons any public debate about fixing it.

Felching

[meehawl]

We live in a Capitalistic society, it's not the government's job to play Robin Hood.

First of all, you don't live in a pure capitalistic system - you live in a tightly regulated market economy where the Government engages in massive redistributive programs. You ant a pure "Capitalistic" system go back to the 19th century, eliminate social programs, eliminate progressive taxation, eviscerate your middle classes, and reintroduce slavery and debt bondage. Oh, and bring back hanging for larceny and petty theft.

Secondly, does the phrase "of the people, by the people, for the people" mean anything to you? Governments serve people and provide for the common good; they are not mere rubberstamps for corporations or capital - despite what many fringe ideologues in the US would have you believe.

Re:If you want to save money...

[drsmithy]

Already the Chinese feel in a position to issue reports [worldnetdaily.com] damning America's human rights record. I'd recommend reading the report - you might find that they have a point.

They may have somewhat of a case in that the things they talk about are true, however, it's a textbook example of that old "glass houses and throwing stones" proverb.

The situation in the US may not be ideal compared to some mythical, perfect utopia - but it's a hell of a lot better than most of the rest of the world and, more importantly, generally trends toward improvement (excepting minor hiccups like the US's current administration).

Consider it this way - where would you rather spend the rest of your life, given the choice between present-day China and the present-day US ?

This story was written by an economist

[o'reor]

or a would-be economist, or some satirist trying to impersonate one. The reasoning in this article is so simplistic that it boggles my mind. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon among very influential economists close to power or in the highest institutions; it exemplifies the average reasoning among right-wing economists where man is supposed to serve the economy, not the other way round. Such flawed ideas, coming from the World Bank, the US Treasury or the International Monetary Fund (take a look at what Nobel award Joe Stiglitz says about them) have already been the cause of thousands of deaths, with economic havoc in developing countries (Argentina anyone ?) due to their stupid advice.

Therefore, I would suggest frying a bunch of those simple-minded economists first. The world would be better off without their brain-dead advice, and millions of lives (not to mention huge funds) would be spared in the process.