US Wants UK Hacker To Pay To Fix Holes He Exposed

bossanovalithium writes "Gary McKinnon, whose tribulations we have followed for several years now, is the UK hacker trying to escape extradition to the US. It appears he is expected to foot the bill for the US Government patching holes his breaching uncovered — to the tune of $700,000. It's not really the norm for someone to pay for exploits to be patched — damages fixed, yes, but this is a very different thing." The article paraphrases Eugene Spafford as saying that the victim of a cybercrime should not take the blame. "If someone broke a door to rob a store, he said, it was usual to charge them the cost of the door." Isn't the McKinnon case more like charging him to buy the lock that had been missing when he walked in?

Comments

Re:Taking responsibility for ones actions.

[dbcad7]

Your analogy changes though if it's a greased naked man who squeezed through a skylight on the roof and is looking through your sock drawer at 2 am. Now perhaps it is not the mans fault that you have a skylight, and that other people who are willing can do the same thing he did.. but you can see how you might want him to pay to keep others from doing the same thing.

So What?

[jjohnson]

Even granting the OP's flawed analogy, I don't care if MacKinnon is placed into perpetual servitude to NASA and the U.S. government. The bad act started with him. He knowingly committed the acts for which he is being punished, and I see no need or use for treating him leniently because he was a flake looking for UFO material, or because he didn't trash the system.

When you, of your own volition and under your own power, commit crimes, you own the consequences. Don't want the consequences? Don't commit the crime.

Re:Jaywalking is illegal

[holophrastic]

It doesn't matter if he stole anything. You don't want trespassing to be legal. It doesn't matter if he caused any actual damage.

It's as much of a privacy thing as anything else. It's also a thin-skull concept. The damage you may or may not have caused can't be up to you to evaluate. And since you weren't permitted to be there in the first place, and you knew that was so, it's up to the property owner to determine the damage. Maybe you made the carpet dirty. Maybe he doesn't like other people walking on his carpet.

He has those rights.

Re:Potholes

[houghi]

I once reported child porn so it could be removed and needed to get to the police office to explain a LOT and the police investigating threatened me with several lawsuits. Obviously I never have found anything anymore to report.