Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft to Fight Crime With Spammer's Millions
daria42 writes "It looks as if the $7 million Microsoft won from spam king Scott Richter won't go into a Swiss bank account and never be seen again after all. The company plans to dedicate a cool $5 mil to helping law enforcement agencies address computer-related crimes. Another $1 million will go to New York State to "expand computer-related skills training for youths and adults", with the rest being flagged to pay Microsoft's legal costs."
If it's going to law enforcement, It'll end up going to the "OMG Kiddie PorN!!!!!!!! It's teh evil!!!!!" fund.
Don't get me wrong. Child pornographers deserve their own special ring of Hell. But it seems that to law enforcement, computer crime == kiddie porn. Period. No other crime occurs on a computer. Ever. Just child porn. Nothing else. End of line.
There are other crimes occuring involved the magic, glowing grey box.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
As a resident of NY, I'm actually in favor of this, even though I'm a linux die-hard. I *really* hope NY doesn't just toss this into the General Fund and lose it on some left-wing pork barrel project. That sort of thing is all too common here; the highway tolls were supposed to disappear years ago, and yet the tolls are still there. The power company in my part of the state is the single largest land-owner, and yet it pays no taxes. So, I really hope these MS funds are used for cyber-crime law enforcement. FWIW I think very highly of the police here; they usually require at least a 4-year degree and military/para-military background in my area. So, these guys tend to be big, strong, and smart. That doesn't mean they know jack-all about computer crimes or even computers. So if this means they get some computer crime training, that's fine with me. There are some *big* dataenters and backbone here, so I imagine the field is ripe.
C|N>K