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

So hacker gets death...

[aicrules]

because he costs companies millions in lost revenue, but CEO of company who commits fraud and loots the pension funds for billions gets nothing or maybe a few years in prison?

Yeah, we're looking at the right places for deterence.

Death Threat?

[spiderworm]

Wowsers. Makes me wonder what the punishment would be for the software vendors whose products are virus friendly?

Re:is the punishment comissurate with the crime?

[krgallagher]

"loosing most of the income for the rest of your life seems like a much harshier sentence, than death."

Since part of the sentence for people convicted of computer crimes is that they can never use a computer again, they actually do lose their best opportunity to make a decent living.

Personally I think the idea of a death penalty for hacking is rediculous. People have lost their retirement savings because of the actions of a few executives at Enron, Worldcom, and Tyco. I do not hear anyone calling for "The Death Penalty for Intentional Accounting Fraud."

Asimov had an interesting idea here

[harlows_monkeys]

There was an interesting Asimov short story about a computer criminal. The punishment was he was conditioned to get sick if he used a computer, and then was given a credit card with a large limit, and released. The general population was told of this, and told to be kind and help him whenever he asked.

Since nearly everything involved computers, this left him very helpless. Restaurants had computers at the tables that you used to order, for example--so he could not get food at a restaurant unless he asked someone to order for him. Same for pretty much any purchase, or use of public transportation, and so on.

The idea behind this punishment (which was for one year) was to make him see how dependent society was on computers, and therefore how serious and bad a crime it was to do anything that threatened the security of or the public's confidence in computers.

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

[BewireNomali]

not so anymore. not in the united states. the very nature of poverty has changed fundamentally.

I grew up in a welfare hotel in Harlem, here in New York. In the 90s, as a teen, I had a computer. So did a good number of my friends. Granted, most of us were in an accelerated academic program, so most of my friends were geeks, but we for the most part had computer systems.

Kids now in my old neighborhood definitely have computers, and penetration is significant as computers are cheap. Local community leaders have impressed on the population the importance of computer literacy and parents have followed suit.
And Harlem is as poor as a lot of places in this country.

More importantly, having a computer and an internet connection is immediate distraction from poverty. When I was a kid, and to this day, cable penetration was very high, especially given that we had the second lowest per capita income in the city. It's the same reason drugs flourish in poor communities. When you're poor, you pay a premium for distraction. Computers these days are a relatively cheap distraction.

and so you understand, I remember times when my computer was new and our refrigerator was empty. I can imagine it not being different now for some kids in Harlem and other poor places in the country.

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

[ThosLives]

That's an interesting description of 'poor' on several accounts. Mostly I'd note that it's pretty poor that people somewhere deemed computer literacy more important than food and self-sustaining trade skill education. Obviously they understood the importance of education in breaking out of the poverty cycle, but it seems a little misplaced to me. And you had cable but no food? That seems as much a crime as drugs to me.

The contrast between urban poor and rural is also kind of striking; rural poor don't bother with any of the 'distractions' - they are too busy actually out working in a field somewhere to grow food, repair their house, etc. Rural poor actually make it a point to try and not have to depend on the government to get them out of dire straits - a marked difference from urban poor (observe: red counties vs. blue counties). In fact, sometimes it's hard to define what rural poor really is: I've known some people who by most measures were dirt poor, but they: owned a piece of property, had a house, had enough food to eat, and had enough running water and resources to not be stricken by disease, and enough surplus to have free time to go on nice trips around their area (the Appalachians). And these folks were not uneducated either. The big difference is that they didn't worry about gadgets, television, the latest fashions, whatever. They were content with what they had, and they had enough to not live a life of hardship. Yes, they had to work, but were they poor? In some ways I think they are richer than I am.

Re:Companies Should Look Inside First

[Kafteinn]

The virus situation is much more like if..
every house in the world has a "Microsoft Super security system (tm)" installed so you shouldn't be able to get through the front door without a key.
then a guy discovers he can get into his house without a key so he makes a robot who opens other houses, closes the door then has sex with the TV to make another robot who goes into another house to fuck a TV.

I think this is perfectly acceptable since no one would know you don't need a key to get into Microsoft houses if the robot hadn't started his rampage of hot television on robot sex!

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

[Valdrax]

Unless the parent(s)are total crack-heads, do any kids in the US REALLY go hungry?

Yes, yes they do. Not many do, but some extreme cases do. There are a lot parents who you might call "total crack-heads." My sister works as a teacher at an inner city school, and she sees a lot of this sort of thing. Some kids only get a school lunch as a reasonable meal.

In the projects, there are two essentials -- a car and cable. Properly feeding and clothing your kids is secondary. It's not surprising given that most "parents" in the projects are stupid kids who got pregnant at an early age and never really learned how to fend for themselves. These are people who have no job skills and no initiative to improve themselves since they see every other pathetic loser around them as the status quo. They have no role models other than the flashy celebrities on the TV living hedonistically for little hard work (making music or playing games). As long as they're having fun and looking cool to their peers, everything's good.

The kids (most of whom weren't wanted when the mother got pregnant) are treated as an burdensome obligation in many cases. They're taken care of just as well as any other unwanted chore is -- that is, shoved off on a grandparent or even another child. My sister has seen a six year old left at home alone to take care of a two year old. (Poor girl got put in a foster home where the foster parents didn't care about her either and just wanted to spend the welfare check for taking her in. I digress.)

We are SO spoiled.

Exactly. This is why this sort of thing happens. If the parents honestly had to work to survive and didn't have their own parents to fall back on, I think these kids would be a little better cared for. For the most part, parents in the poor neighborhoods DO feed their kids, but the cheap crap they feed them isn't healthy for them. This is why obesity is on the rise fastest in the poorest areas of the nation. How much does a good healthy meal with vegetables cost vs. McDonald's. You do the math.

Junk Columnist

[Corydon76]

Everybody (and Slashdot) just got played. This is par for the course for John Tierney. He lives to make really stupid suggestions in his columns, just to get people to respond. It's his own way of feeling important in the world. If enough people ignore his garbage columns, he will eventually go away.

For more perspective on this, and to see some of the subjects of his past columns, see here.