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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."
While reading the article, just bear in mind that Slate is owned and paid by Microsoft.
Ironclad Security only exists when you have Chuck Norris on the shift. Do we really have to discuss this? (Plutonite)
It kinda depends on how much someone is willing to accept for the act of killing you. Crackheads will take $5, so I guess the answer to your question is: Five Dollars.
Here's an interesting article about the value of a life.
We perform this kind of calculus as a society all the time. When the national speed limit (in the US) was raised from 55mph, there was a predictable cost in human lives. In fact, the fact that we allow cars in the hands of private individuals at all has a steep cost in terms of human lives, and so we attempt to mitigate the cost to some extent with mandatory safetey features, license issuance, etc. The same can be said of alcohol and tobacco. The same kind of math goes on in wrongful death civil suits on a regular basis. Human life does indeed have some finite value, although that value seems to vary depending on the human or humans in question.
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
I tired of "white-collar" crime that ruins family, lives, and dreams getting such light punishment.
A ghetto-born man who kills a police officer gets executed.
A suburb-born CPA that ruins the retirements of thousands of families gets a slap on the
wrist.
It's not fair, just, or right.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Our legal system actually employs actuaries whose primary task is to compute the estimated earning potential and household work potential of a dead person based on what they had done at the time of their death and what statistics indicate what that person would have done in the future.
It's a sick job, but somebody's got to do it in civil cases involving a wrongful death finding in order for there to be a dollar value assigned to the verdict.
When you can be 100% sure that someone innocent is not hanged, then you have my blessing to kill those convicted of crimes.
Unfortunatley, any human justice system is prone to failures of mis-memory (people claiming things that didn't happen and fully believing they did with all good intent), courruption (police and other officials planting evidence to make their conviction rates better), and level of access (those with a good deal of cash hardly ever go to prison, and are never never executed due to better representation).
You make the system perfect, then I'll consider the death penalty.
You and I know that, but unfortunately 80% (yes, I'm just throwing that number out -- probably not too far off) of home users simply don't back anything up. This, despite the fact that digital cameras and digital music means that we have more and more assets on our PCs.
In fact, even here at work, despite my pleading, there are production servers that are not being backed up to a sufficient level.
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
Oh, I'll say that the punishment most definitely fits the crime.
And I won't even do the maths in dollars, because it seems to me like measuring someone's life in dollars is a horrible thought. I mean, I don't know. Putting equals between a life and how much can you profit from that poor bugger, is something I would expect to see from a Sith, but not from anyone else.
I'll do the maths in hours. A murderer can be executed for, basically, shortening someone's life. I'm assuming (and I'm pulling the number out of my ass) that, on the average, a victim would have lived an average of 30 years after the murder. Some would have lived much more than that, some would have been hit by a car the next day, some in between. But let's say on the average it's 30 years.
In hours that means 30 * 365.25 * 24 = 262,980 hours. That's it. We execute someone for stealing an average of 262,980 hours out of someone's life.
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.
It seems to me like these retards must be clocking at _least_ tens of millions of hours total out of other people's lives. Yes, we're talking a total equivalent to murdering _several_ _dozens_ of people. By comparison they make Jack the Ripper look tame and harmless. Heck, by comparison some of the Nazi massacres in WW2 don't tally up that high.
So why aren't we executing them yet? No, I'm dead serious.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I think this is quite interesting.
When estimating the value of human life when making laws, a decent estimate would probably be the value of that life to society.
I'd pay quite a bit to continue my own life, or someone in my family, but that's for selfish and sentimental reasons only. Odds are, people in Montana couldn't care less whether I live or die, despite what some might say to the contrary. There are only a small amount of people who are actually aware and affected by my existence.
A simple means of measuring an individual's effect on society as a whole then is the economic impact that person would have over his lifetime. Like him or not, Bill Gates will obviously have a much greater impact on society over his lifetime than your average joe. Many more people have an interest in his continued well-being than they have an interest in mine.
Should this be weighed when making laws? I don't know. It would seem to me that since Bill Gates has a measurably greater impact on society, he deserves greater compensation for wrongs done to him and also has more responsibility to do the right thing, knowing that his actions affect millions.
But the economic impact is not the only consequence of crime. I'm not scared to walk through a bad neighborhood at night because I think Martha Stewart is going to jump out of the bushes and rob me. Her crime has little impact on the order of society and the perceived safety of its citizens.
Similarly, should we prosecute someone who kills a homeless man? They have little impact on society, and their lives aren't worth as much in economic terms. I think, however, most people would reject the idea that some murders are more ok than others based on economic reasons.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
Actually, Christianty does not forbid capital punishment:
From Romans 13:3-4 (NIV)
(3) For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. (4) For he is God's servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.
The base problem with this article is the author actually believes you can put a dollar value on life. Once one believes this, crazy statements like this follow:
"Execute the people who write computer worms"
"Harvard professor Kip Viscusi estimates the value of a life at $4.5 million overall, $7 million for a blue-collar male and $8.5 million for a blue collar female"
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Rather then government, we should allow the marketplace to decide this issue: Personally I favor the employment of a small offshore mercenary army that stands ready at a moment's notice to kneecap a Netsky, bugger a Bugbear, Silence a Sasser, blow away a Beagle.. etc. In any endover it is always best to employ a professional who specializes in the specific field...
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
Insightful:Why?
The guy is about to kill my 7 year old son. I'm at a distance. I have a gun. I kill him to protect my son.
My painfully and fatally ill father, in full mind of his actions, asks me to help him die.
6 people in a balloon, too much weight. Its heading into the rough seas below. Casting one over will save the other 5.
The man about to fly the plane into the twin towers lowers his guard for one moment only. If you kill him you may have time to steer the plane out of the way, if you are forced to struggle, you will not.
And a dozen other thought scenarios. I'm not saying killing is right or wrong. I'm saying its far from simple.
The difference between a murder and captial punishment is that the death penalty is carried out in the name of justice. What right does one have to exist when they take the life of others in cold blood? It's the ultimate punishment for the ultimate crime.
1) Script kiddie writes virus
2) If virus is successful you hire the writer to continue writing viruses.
3) Writing virisus becomes exponentially more difficult as easy exploits are found and patched.
Result: Stronger software. Instead of wasting time paying people trained to create things to discover the flaws that destroy things, you hire specialists who have the correct mindset.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
To quote what I think is the greatest book ever (Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand):
... We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against - then you'll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power a government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Reardon, that's the game."
"Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?
And now, to my thoughts:
And there we have the underlying philosophy related to many drug laws. Once we have a blanket full of laws and penalties that many are likely to come up against now and then, we must differentiate them with the severity of their penalties, make the truly horrific punishments be those which no 'normal' upstanding citizen could ever commit, make them feel safe that they will never have to face life in prison or the chair for their vices, you leave them free to feel safe in their own law breaking knowing that the penalty for the minor things they do is trivial, but ultimately keep them feeling just guilty enough to keep them inline.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Just like the viruses that attack the human body on a daily basis and make our immune systems stronger.
With out them pounding on the operating systems insecurities what motivation would you have for making something more secure?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Seriously, though, if there's anybody out there who thinks the ideas in this article are meant to be taken seriously, i'd say skip the Emerson and read Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal
Why is it wrong to place a dollar value on your life. You do a smaller calc every day when you trade your time for dollars, money if just the reference we use to trade goods (and I'm sure you would agree that more life can be considered a good).
I'm not sure I believe his (or the "experts") value of $50 billion in damages from virus/worms/spam, but it isn't an insignficant cost. There isn't a whole lot of debate any longer regarding the value of a statistical life being something between $5 and $10 million. His best point was that government is there to provide goods and services that are difficult to transact on the open market.
The other good point was what is a viral writer's potential value to society. Look at Woz, started by hacking the phone system (blue boxing) created the mac certainly reform is a better solution in some cases. Also, this brings me to a bigger arguement the difference between script kiddies and the sharper people who write the tools that allow kiddies to function. I'm not sure that killing a script kiddie would really reduce viral output signficantly but reducing the tool availibility might dampen viral output considerably.
In fair disclosure I am an economist, and got a not insignficant part of my training from Landsburg's books (wrote the micro books we used for intro and intermediate). He's one of the better econ writers and is great at making what would be a very dry topic (the studies he is indirectly refering to are filled with stats and differentials) interesting to non-economists.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
What would be the consequence of the government refusing to punish virus-authors? It would amount to a privatization of software security. (And isn't privatization supposed to give us faster and more efficient results than government control?) Publishers like Microsoft would have no choice but to make security job #1, or be ruined in the marketplace. It'd be sink-or-swim... and those product-lines which survived would be hardened fortresses of supreme security.
Reducing the punishment to virus-authors is equivalent to removing a government subsidy on sellers of insecure software- and cutting a subsidy always unleashes the free market to do it's optimizing work.
Worm authors are like punk kids who break into corporate offices or bank vaults and kick over all the furniture before running away. Yes, they've caused some inconvenience in knocking stuff over, which can equate to lost chance for revenue, which is somewhat like damage. But they've also revealed a gaping security flaw in a way that the company can no longer deny and will thus fix before real thieves start to use it. Most of the "costs" attributed to worm-authors are actually spending to fix security holes that should've been done anyhow.
Software is more secure today than it would be if nobody wrote worms and virues.
If in 40 years Osama BinLaden Jr discovers a flaw in Microsoft(tm) WindowsGJ44(r), he might be able to cripple the world economy and kill thousands of people- and he's already accepted his own death, so the threat of one more execution won't stop him.
We should also take into consideration that since people emulate the behavior of their leaders, corrupt, selfish behavior quickly spreads through a society like a virus, rotting it away from the inside until it collapses. Like the chinese say, a fish rots from the head down.
So maybe a law getting tough on 'system sabateurs' is needed. But for some reason, I don't think politicians would approve of my liberties with the definition of 'hacker'...
"First you get the Linux, then you get the power, THEN you get the women"
Speaking of rolling heads for crimes you don't otherwise consider worthy of capital punishment... In China, banks are run by the government, not private individuals, thus considered a public service. If you are in upper management, and you get caught embezzling funds, you *will* be executed (for the good of the People, of course). It's a great way to eliminate ambitious subordinates, literally.
Also, during my time as a Parsons engineer in Saudi Arabia, Americans were often encouraged to view public executions (and beheading was within the order of the day). Some of those were for things we would consider corporate misdemeanors.
Outside of my personal experience, I can think of plenty of countries where writing viruses will make you subject to the death penalty.
Solomon Chang
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
This means there is an inevitable tendancy of Government to restrict freedom ever more wretchedly. DMCA? Abusive patent ovverreach? PATRIOT? All merely corollaries of the root problem, my friends!
That's why I am posting this: The Free State Project
As far as I can tell, it's our best chance to have a free society. Even ESR thinks so (whatever you think of him!)
Part of the Second American Revolution!
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.
That said, I agree that the marginal cost is definately not worth the benefit of lower crime. It sucks to have been robbed, but if that's the cost of preserving greater liberty for all, I'll take it.
The government views the loss of information, and the loss of the use of the computer itself, in a manner similar to a property crime. When my car was broken into and the cd player and airbag stolen - along with massive surrounding damage to the car itself - the police were scarcely interested. You file a report for insurance purposes, and that's it. Similarly, when a box of checks was stolen from the mailbox (stupid! stupid!) years ago, only businesses that cashed the checks could pursue complaints legally, even after the culprits were caught with the checks - never mind the hours and hours over two years it took me to repair the mess to my record. Virus writers, and the damage they cause, I think are viewed in the same manner. They can perpetrate their destruction with little fear of consequences, unless the damage is too great to ignore. Human nature, I suppose, there being bigger fish to fry.
Take a good, hard look at where the world is going in terms of networking everything, and every network interlaced. Today, when a virus strikes, a virus loses a corporation lots of money. (sarcasm) But that's okay, because they're The Man, and we all hate The Man. It's not like it did anyone any harm, right? The Man just didn't get to buy another Learjet that year. (/sarcasm)
But seriously, I don't believe an economic crime demands a lethal punishment. Yet. Why? Because preventatives, insurance, investment, and policy (wise business decisions) can all decrease the effects of these crimes.
However, take into account Hospitals. As more medical equipment comes online, and has to be administered via network, medical care becomes more automated by computer. Medical Files are already on vulnerable networks. As a rule, most hospitals are understaffed, overworked, and in a constant state of emergency. So what happens when a virus brings down an entire hospital's networks for the day? People die. Perhaps the virus only corrupts here and there, unnoticeably. Suddenly medical info is incorrect, or unavailable in a time of crisis during an operation. Someone dies. Perhaps, further down the road, processes (such as medication, or life support) become networked, and a virus brings those systems down, or corrupts the system enough to cause a problem.
That's the most obvious way of a virus writer committing murder. Now apply it to other constant-crisis situations. Flight control-towers, airplanes, filled with people, might in the future be vulnerable as well. Entire planes full of innocent passengers could be lost in mid-air collisions, or ground collisions in low-visibility weather. Traffic control systems in major cities are already online. Corrupting them might cause redlight/greenlight problems, resulting in deaths by car wreck. Or perhaps it just causes a huge traffic jam, and all those in an ambulance, or needing one, are lost due to this virus.
As silly as this article seems, and as smug as the attitude of some posts I've read here, you can't always protect against all virii 100% of the time. There's always going to be something new and clever enough to take advantage of a weakness in the software.
Currently, computer viruses are not a capital offence, but once they start resulting in the loss of human life, and guilt is established, I say let the writer fry/hang/burn/choke/etc... at that point they have just become a premeditated murderer, no different than a bomber.
-The Libra
"You've got no kids, no wife, no job, and you're not in The Tigger Movie!!!"
- my best friend's son, Gabe, at 5 years old.
-The Libra
"Please be patient--The future will begin momentarily."
Between 1972-1976, the death penalty was declared unconstitutional in America.
You can count me among those. However, I would be wary of talking about moral "costs" and "benefits"; that's economics-speak, not morality-speak.
This is where I part ways with the president of the United States and this article. The article is about an imposition of morality, about the way we calculate the value of a human life in money. But this entire research frame is morally suspect, if life and death are really about more than dollars and cents.
Further, policy debates like this one are full of different methods of decision calculus. This economics-inspired utilitarian accounting of the probable increase or decrease in human lives is just the most popular one, the one you learn in Political Science school and war-planning school. These are ethical methods and moralities too; it's not like policy-centered utilitarianism is "science" and deontology (or some other ethical framework) is "morality".
This utilitarian flavor in political science has real effects at the political level. For example, one woman went to nuclear war-planning school and learned to do this, but found that the decision-making methods used to fight nuclear wars are dehumanizing and illogical, not to mention immoral. Why should it surprise us that more of this warped kind of thinking should lead to warped conclusions?
Other ways to talk about life and death are possible in public policy debate; they're just not permissible. They're also not as tangible and easy to use in mathematics and write up in the annual budget. But who said they should be?
Perhaps this kind of measurement is unnecessary... and perhaps it is flawed... and perhaps, when we learn that it is "counterintuitive" but true that we should kill computer hackers to save money, we should not only seriously question our calculations, we should seriously question our sources of inspiration.
I, for one, would be pleased to have policymakers who are unserious, according to this columnist, who will appeal to the heart's reasons, who think that life is valuable beyond a cash settlement. For "The heart has its reasons, that reason does not know." This is what Pascal was talking about: not that the heart's reasons are inferior to the demands of logic, but that they are superior.
Q: What did the comedian say to the crowd?
A: If I knew, this joke would be funny.
I think, infact, laws on many crimes are becoming far more slack and certain thigns are no longer being considered crimes. I think that we aren't seeing a penalty inflation, we're just seeing the judicial focal point shifting. Of course maybe this is just becaues i'm in canada, and maybe the war against drugs, gay marrige, and such is still raging strong in some states, but up here we've been pruning off the laws that society is starting to see as silly, while maintaining the laws that actualyl protect people.
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
Exactly, that's part of the problem..
Who do you want choosing your anti-terrorism laws? Terrorism experts and lawmakers, or victims of 9/11? Which do you think is more likely to choose a reasonable, balanced approach that addresses the fundamental issues involved? Which will craft laws based on feelings of "revenge" and "closure"?
I'm not trying to disrespect the victims of crime, but you must admit that emotions have the possibility of clouding reason. Victims should only have a say in punishing the criminals that hurt *them* specifically.
Watch CNN one evening and you'll see what I mean. No reports on, say, technical issues or reports about decreasing crime (or very short ones), but long, horrible reports on death and sex and health risks that are blown way out of proportion. That's why I listen to NPR and watch BBC America; they're less concerned with sensationalism because of the differences in their funding processes.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
It's all a matter of perspective though. From your descriptions, you haven't been in a real serious crime. Neither have I. On the other hand, what if you or someone you care about was accidentally shot in a drive by shooting (I live near Baltimore, MD and this is not a rare occurance). If I lived in the city, I might be willing to give up some freedoms knowing that I could let my kids play outside without having to worry about getting shot or being approached by drug dealers.
The problem is that everyone will have a different tolerance level and what one envisions as too much, another will see as too little. Consider that some people don't have the resources to protect themselves and the ones they love (picture a single mother who leaves her children at home because of day care cost).
There is a cost of reducing crime, and it is not worth my freedom.
We have already given up a certain amount of freedom. Do you feel that the current freedoms we've given up (social security numbers, birth certificates, drivers license, public records, etc...) are adequate? I'm sure I could find someone who thinks these are too much.
We had a farmer who got tired of unflattening his mail box so he put two up and the one of the right was filled with concrete. I guess he innoculated himself from kids with bats, at least after the first broken arm.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
No comment.
--Oh, but don't stop there - you also have to nail the CxO's of major companies who make 55 Billion a year while driving the company into the ground, and then jump out the top-floor window with a Golden Parachute.
--If you don't nail those guys, all that money gets held up and never reaches the system, donchaknow.
[/CzarChasm]
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== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
the only way you're going to stop people doing damage from releasing viruses is to change the computing environment.
And as I've argued elsewhere in this thread, reducing the punishment for those "amazingly stupid" guys who do get caught would force software and network developers to start improving the environment.
Evidently there isn't free-market pressure for secure OSes, so apparently the consequences of running unsecurely aren't high enough. Allowing more cyber-vandals to go free would raise those consequences...
My child didn't. Granted, he's only (just barely) one year old- but if we're all relaxing watching TV, and mommy gives him two cookies, very soon there will be a small hand in my mouth feeding me one of the two cookies. And he came up with this all on his own, it's one of his favorite little games.
Kids learn by immitation- if kids start out as greedy, selfish, egocentric, manipulative beasts, I'd say look at the parents and how they treated the kid during the first three months of life.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Question... what are the birth rates per viable female for the following groups?
So next time they "visit" prison givem the option of getting fixed for a reduced "visit" and prevent the next generation of crime. Apply this to all classes from the Michael Milkin's to the crackhead bob's and watch what happens for the next 40 yrs to...