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The Long Arm of Microsoft
eldavojohn writes "Software giant Microsoft is helping the law track down and find phishers and political borders are no boundary for them. From the article, 'One court case in Turkey has already led to a 2.5-year prison sentence for a so-called "phisher" in Turkey, and another four cases against teenagers have been settled out of court, Microsoft said on Wednesday, eight months after it announced the launch of a Global Phishing Enforcement Initiative in March.' This initiative started back in March and has resulted in 129 lawsuits in Europe & the Middle East. Perhaps their legions of lawyers will come to some use for the rest of us but teenagers settling out of court? That reeks of RIAA/MPAA tactics to me."
Notice that Microsoft is suing only to the people that has set up phising sites that try to look like MSN/hotmail. Is not that so strange that they're doing it.
So wait, Microsoft is suing people who tries to steal your credit card number and they're wrong? Actually, they're only suing pages that try to resemble to MSN/hotmail and that try to steal passport passwords. So suing people that makes your company look like burglars is wrong?
I'm surprised you didn't accuse Microsoft of paying all those physers to set up their site just to sue them later and look like they're fighting crime. It'd have been a good end for your sci-fi relate.
You don't have a problem with corporation acting as law enforcement?
I would, if that's what was happening in this case. It certainly is NOT what is happening in this case. They're helping out Keystone Kops in this case. They're not prosecuting anybody. They're working within the system.
If you want to get your panties in a bunch over corporations being involved in law enforcement, then you should read a bit more. You should know that many prisons in the United States, are in fact, run by private corporations. THAT is a "corporation acting as law enforcement". MS helping cops to track down phishers is not.