Death Penalty For Hackers?

EMIce writes "The New York Times Op-Ed page has a piece entitled Worse Than Death (Obnoxious but free registration required) that calls for harsher 'hacker' penalties as a deterrent, quoting one academic as recommending even well, the death penalty - as a deterrent for the likes of Sasser author Sven Jaschan. Let's face it, businesses are becoming more dependent on their computers but they continue to be a point of failure, and subsequently, frustration through lost profits. Perpetrated breakdowns are now pushing that aggravation towards an edge. The author suggests commuting the idea of a death sentence into a lifetime of servitude doing viral cleanup. What role should enforcement play in such cases and is this too harsh, even considering the billions in damage that is sometimes caused?"

Comments

They're felons, they have no rights.

[Thud457]

"The author suggests commuting the idea of a death sentence into a lifetime of servitude doing viral cleanup."

Nice to see America returning to the core beliefs it was founded upon, like religous intolerance and slavery.

More Death Penalty

[airship]

Personally, I'm in favor of applying the death penalty to any criminal who has shown himself (or herself) to be a complete sociopath. If someone habitually does stuff that is self-serving and is unrepentant, society is better off without them.
I think we should start with those a**holes on the freeway who cut you off.
Or maybe we should just leave it up to the people. Let them vote on who lives and who dies. After all, they've shown their collective wisdom by electing wise leaders to run our country. Why not let them dole out the death penalty directly, as well?

Re:I agree. The very idea of such a penalty is evi

[I_Want_This_ID]

I hate to burst your bubble, but depending on the government has nothing to do with red vs. blue counties. It's come down to social and religous (self rightous?) values. An awful lot of those red counties your refer to as "make it a point to try and not have to depend on the goverment" receive an awful lot of subsidies from the goverment and wouldn't be able to survive with their lifestyle without them. Anywhere you see a farmer, you see a welfare recipient (through farming subsidies).

As far as the difference between rural and urban poor, you're going to have a mix of hard working (working poor) and lazy asses wherever you go.

Re:Largely through work

[AtariAmarok]

"Your arguments sound like the "oppressed white male" who can't stand all those "racist minorities" getting "all the breaks.""

No, no-one deserves such "breaks" as those unfair advantages offered by Jim Crow or affirmative action.

Race matters....only to racists.

comments on TFA

[not-enough-info]

...Richard Reid, the shoe-bomber who didn't manage to hurt anyone on his airplane but has been annoying travelers ever since. When I join the line of passengers taking off their shoes at the airport, I get little satisfaction in thinking that the man responsible for this ritual is sitting somewhere by himself in a prison cell, probably with his shoes on.

He ought to spend his days within smelling range of all those socks at the airport.

I think, increasingly, that the problem with our system of punishment is the blind compliance with so called "no cruel or unusual punishment" clause. I can think of no situation where any kind of punishment is not "unusual". Crime is supposed to be contrary to proper-functioning social norms (i.e. unusual). We're so concerned with being riteous by definition of the 8th amendment that prisoner reform almost becomes a non-option. Make the criminal do something humiliating? *gasp* We can't do that! That's cruel and unusual! Well, odds are that he's a criminal because normal societal standards didn't/couldn't put him on an honest path; more of the same probably won't either. And I'm not talking about crimes of passion where well adjusted people can, with prison time, repent for something they know they've done wrong. I'm talking about the people who didn't think twice about the morality of what they were doing, the people with utter disregard for others. If I were the sentencing judge for Richard Reid, I'd have him put those sneakers back on and detonate them like he had planned (not on an airplane of course); it is, after all, what he intended to do in the first place. It would then be my cruel and unusual compassion that would keep his miserable existance alive. (Use feet to carry murderous, explosive payload: live life as an multi-amputee; I think that punishment fits the crime.)

Similarly I think that Kevin Mitnick's punishment of tech restriction was fitting (though not necessarily the prison term). The criminal, for lack of a better word, is reformed (no more crime), and can continue to be productive to society (to some extent).

Back to the article, the writer generalizes "hackers" to be basement dwelling teens whose lives revolve around video games. He says that death row will scare the a good many into submission. How exactly will imposing a lasting example of oppression reduce feelings of teen angst against "the man"?

I think a better solution might be to bring back indentured servitude. Send the teen to MS and make him work off his debt to society by finding holes and reporting them to the engineers on the Windows dev team. Make sure he's paid minimum wage minus premiums and interest for his debt of servitude. Keep him at or below the poverty line. No computers outside of his one task of finding the bugs. Non-compete (don't let him use those skills anywhere else). Hell, make it a lifetime obligation. I'm sure the eventual boredom will certainly be "worse than death".

Re:So hacker gets death...

[RhettLivingston]

Every system will have imperfections and even injustices. The current system allows massive amounts of injustice to go unpunished and still frequently punishes those that aren't guilty. 100s of people die due to just the direct effects of crime for every single death sentence handed out. I just believe that the average injustice dealt to society as a whole would go down if a system like I described was in effect.

In the specific subject area here, not millions, but billions of dollars would be saved if hacking was very aggressively punished. The multiple billions of dollars that we spend on antivirus software and on hardening software under development represent work that had to be performed. If there is just one workplace or job related death for every billion dollars of work performed, hackers are already killing people. Crimes with economic impact do result in deaths. All this would do is shift the balance of the deaths back to where it belongs.

It would also be good to add the cost of your defense into the cost of your crime if you lose in the trial. That would make it very risky indeed for rich people to spend a few million getting off for relatively minor crimes.