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Mariposa Botnet Authors Unlikely To See Jail Time
krebsonsecurity writes "Three Spanish men were arrested last month for allegedly building an international network of more than 12 million hacked PCs that were used for everything from identity theft to spamming. But according to Spanish authorities and security experts who helped unravel the crime ring, the accused may very well never see the inside of a jail cell even if they are ultimately found guilty, due to insufficient cyber-crime legislation in Spain. 'It is almost impossible to be sent to prison for these kinds of crimes in Spain, where prison is mainly for serious crime cases,' said Captain Cesar Lorenzana, deputy head technology crime division of the Spanish Civil Guard. ... Spain is one of nearly three dozen countries that is a signatory to the Council of Europe's cybercrime treaty, but Spanish legislators have not yet ratified the treaty by passing anti-cybercrime laws that would bring its judicial system in line with the treaty's goals."
Fine them 50 million, release them, wait for them to knock over a bank, then throw them in jail.
Are the alleged criminals from Spain, or did they move themselves there, knowing the legal situation?
No, I did not RTFA!
"Send an Instant Karma to me" - Yes
Yes, these people should be punished. But I agree with Spain's prison/court system when they say that prison is for violent crime.
There's other ways to punish people and have them be productive to society, instead of rotting in prison. Sure, there may be special cases, but for the most part if you're not a physical danger to people then there's no need to keep you separated from the population.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
If Spain is anywhere near as litigious as the US, I could see them facing a rather large class-action lawsuit from the owners of infected computers. But IANAL, and certainly not a Spanish lawyer.
LRN 2 SWM
...some extrajudicial punishment is in order.
Maybe being tossed nakkid into the ring with several pissed off bulls.
Force them to spend a month solid working closely (close quarters) with Nancy Pelosi.
Fix it up so that in order to eat and drink, they have to make that browser window that keeps asking, "Are sure you want to leave?", go away by only clicking in the browser window.
Five thousand hours of Steve Ballmer doing the monkey dance.
Suggestions welcome.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
This sounds like another "there ought to be a law" call for adoption of the new cybercrime treaty when there are plenty of laws already on the books that just need to be enforced.
Not going to jail over cybercrime isn't ideal, but I'd take this any day over people being fined millions for downloading a few songs off the Internet. Ridiculous penalties for trivial acts are a lot worse than a few cybercrooks being let go with some large fines instead of jail time.
(Note: downloading music and videos via p2p is legal in Spain)
'It is almost impossible to be sent to prison for these kinds of crimes in Spain, where prison is mainly for serious crime cases,'
Do they grasp the economic impact of these botnets? There may not be any physical violence, but the spam hassels, system cleanup, and DDOS attacks create hundreads of millions of dollars in economic damages. Sure, that's distributed over millions of people, but this sort of macroscopic vandalism is, in fact, a major crime. Throw the book at 'em.
Eww, seriously? A criminal roaming free in the streets? They'll corrupt my children... Think of the property values...
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
I was expecting the Spanish Inquisition.
Every time I see this I think Marisa Bot. Which is totally possible because she was a complete bitch.
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Aren't things such as fraud serious crimes in Spain? Or could they be extradited?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
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they need to be separated from the computer poplulation!
And what of Con men, who will happily pay the fine and go right back out and swindle more people?
Or people whom, through callous disregard, 15,000 people in Bhopal die from a venting of tonnes of poisonous gas?
Or somebody who steals cars without the threat of violence?
None of those are 'violent' crime. And yet I feel that prison is a reasonable punishment for all of them. What makes a botnet different? It's showing the same sociopathic behavior as my other examples, so why should it be special?
It's Friday man. You need to relax.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Pack your bags, kids, we are moving to Spain!
Yes, these people should be punished. But I agree with Spain's prison/court system when they say that prison is for violent crime. There's other ways to punish people and have them be productive to society, instead of rotting in prison. Sure, there may be special cases, but for the most part if you're not a physical danger to people then there's no need to keep you separated from the population.
Any effort spent punishing them would be better put towards hardening the targets. If you're interested in the prevention of similar events in the future, that is.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Yea, imagine the exodus from the neighborhood when they know that a spammer moves into the street. You know, coz spammers only cause problems for their neighbors.
Oh, for the days when fighting spam meant catching the asshole who persisted on ignoring your "no junk mail" sign.
I hate printers.
I am not a lawyer. But my best friend is. And sometimes I ask him questions about the law, how it is applied, and so on. This gives me a better understanding of how it really works, whether I agree with that or not. This should not be a problem that there are no cyber crime specific laws. There should be existing laws that cover crime and one would hope that Spain's laws aren't so weak that those don't apply. Really, are we supposed to believe that Spanish authorities are honestly going to say "Sure, we have laws against stealing, but we didn't write those laws to specifically deal with stealing by computer, so you're out of luck"? That would be like arguing that you are powerless to arrest someone who killed another person by smashing an iPhone against the temple of the other person in a fit of anger because you have no laws that specifically cover killing via smashing with an iPhone. There are certainly negative aspects of Spain, such as their weak stance on illegal immigration, but I'm finding it hard to believe that some existing law on thievery won't do the job here.
Ok, I can understand having muddy rules where the operation of a botnet is concerned, but what I do not understand is how they can get away with launching that DDOS attack. Shouldn't that be like large scale vandalism or something? Hard to imagine them getting away scott free.
You are a moron. The purpose of any system of punishment is to set an example for other people who would commit the same crime. If you don't send criminals to prison, you get more criminals. Period. Nobody gives a shit if they might have to pay a fine or do some community service. They'll take that risk. It's because of fucking idiots like you who have pussified our criminal justice system that crime rates continue to increase.
Unless all 12 million pcs were in Spain, they should qualify for extradition. Most likely another EU country, but also the US. Heck, Spain could just shop these guys around if they really want to maximize the pain to these guys.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Change that from 'no prison for non-violent criminals' to 'no prison with violent criminals for non-violent criminals' and I think you're on to something. I say lock these guys up for a good stay, even if not in the same prison they keep killers, rapists, and other physically violent criminals in.
You assume, incorrectly, that I mean there should just be a small fine and set them free.
There's lots of options for punishing people without dropping them in a prison cell. You can strap tracking devices to them, you can restrict their movements, you can force them to do community service, you can enforce fines to be taken from their paychecks, etc, etc.
Seems 15,000 people dying from poison gas is pretty violent to me. No? I mean, people died.
Yea, so there's the Car thing. I think car thieves suck, but again, it's just property. Locking someone up for decades doesn't seem to make any sense to me.
You seem to think that people should be locked up for behaving in a certain way - because that behavior is a "gateway" to other crimes? Such a tired argument..
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
ya because all those people in prisons in the United States of Prisons are really a deterrent to others? IF that was the case you would not be seeing the overcrowding present in every prison in the US, You would not see them housing prisoners in tents. The system is not working but by your logic if we just keep thrwing more money at it the problem will eventually fix itself. Give your head a shake, unless of course you yourself are one of the few who are profiting from this system?
And you're posting as an anonymous coward. So what's that make you?
It's been proven - OVER AND OVER AND OVER - that prison is NOT a deterrant. It's not. "Period."
Because what does every single criminal think when they perform their crimes? "I won't get caught."
If prison and death penalties was an effective deterrant - why are there SO MANY PEOPLE in our prisons, and SO MANY PEOPLE getting murdered every year?
You actually think the criminal justice system has been "pussified"? I guess you haven't gotten in trouble for anything, like, ever. Because they hand out sentences like they were peices of candy in a doctor's office.
You, sir, are the moron - get your head our of your ass and use your god given brain for once.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Better yet, how about solitary confinement for EVERY criminal, violent or otherwise. Isolation from all society, especially peers, gives them a good chance to think about what they did.
Oh, for the days when fighting spam meant catching the asshole who persisted on ignoring your "no junk mail" sign.
I still get more junk mail in my letterbox than I do junk email.
Occasionally I do manage to catch the creeps. I live in a cul-de-sac street, so delivery people have to go out the way they come in. So if I do happen to see them shove paper in my mailbox, I accost them as they retrace their steps and make them take it back.
Or people whom, through callous disregard, 15,000 people in Bhopal die from a venting of tonnes of poisonous gas?
AND
None of those are 'violent' crime.
Only for someone with an extremely narrow view of what constitutes violence. I agree with the GP so long as one has a sensibly broad interpretation of 'violence'
Because get rich quick is not a sociopathic behavior, no matter how you see it, so should be dealt with differently. Following your line of reasoning, every crime no matter how small or large should be treated the same, throw them in jail.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
ATTENTION ALL CYBER SCUM
Are YOU being persecuted in your own home country? Do you face large fines and jail time just cause you're trying to make a living at cyber crime?
Well, we have just the solution for you! Spain is your cyber crime haven!
Prison is meant to protect society from the people being imprisoned as well as serving as punishment and deterrent.
If there is no need to protect society (or conversely, protect them from revenge/vigilante attacks) then seeking other forms of punishment that are less costly seems to me to be a good idea. While someone is in prison not only are they not contributing to society (if only by paying taxes on the things they buy), but society is paying to house and feed them. Why not keep the non-dangerous criminals in the community, and perhaps force them to work off their crimes?
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Too expensive.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
The point of a prison really isn't punishment per-say but a way to keep dangerous people away from the public so they don't hurt others. The Death Penalty should be only used if the person would still be a threat while they are still in prison. (which usually isn't the case even for the most horrible criminals).
Now for the United states there is this odd rule about Cruel and Unusual Punishment. However it is kinda odd, but it is often a bad detractor for new innovations in justice. Things like castration of serious sex offenders, Having to pay back people they scammed with 50% APR in installments....
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Essentially what these spammers have mostly done is cause a lot of people a great deal of inconvenience. If they are guilty of phishing attacks, then that would surely come under the heading of theft or fraud, which would be punishable by jail under Spanish law.
Otherwise, jailing the creeps only places another drain on society, when what you really want is to stop them being antisocial, and preferably discourage others from doing the same. So how about this, for a change:
Make the guys do something actually useful for a few years. Like send them out on supervised work orders to pick up rubbish from the streets, scrub public loos and remove graffiti.
The thing is these dudes did (and will do) millions of dollars of damage. They did a b&e on thousands of computers and will not see a day in jail?
There is no penalty for these guys. Apparently you have never had your life turned upsidedown from your 'identity' being stolen. It takes *YEARS* to fix. Then when you think you have it all fixed it all comes back. Meanwhile the dudes who did it are long gone and the money spent.
By your reasoning no one should go to jail except murderers. Prison is to keep people who are basically serial criminals out of society. Jails are a punishment to the 'one offs'.
Steal a car take it to a chop shop and all I have to do is pick up garbage on the side of the road every weekend. Many people would see that is a fair exchange. Then if all I have to do is pick up garbage what else can I get away with.
The idea is to punish the offender into NOT DOING things. As those things hurt society as a whole. Also most punishments are graduated. 2 yrs first 5 yrs second etc...
You apparently have not been around people like this. They are looking for every angle and they do not care who they hurt/steal/burn along the way. Just so long as they get what they want.
You sir are blaming the victim.
That's where you're wrong.. It's not done because it's considered inhumane. If we eliminate outdoor time and reduce facilities to food, a bed, and a toilet, it could work. Youo don't even need to have walls between them. Just bars with screens between them and a noise cancelling system would work.
While I'd agree that non-violent crime needs some better for of punishment, the majority seems to think that having someone sit in jail for carrying a bag of pot is acceptable, so should someone that scammed people out of money, clogged inboxes and essentially broke into millions of computers be an even more acceptable jail resident? As long as no one was hurt should people found guilty of breaking and entering, grand theft, larceny and forgery be set free as well? Frankly I think that cybercrimes should be punishable at the same level of their real world equivalent, though perhaps the punishments on both sides should be reevaluated if there is really is a better alternative to jail.
I'm amazed at how often the more savy people on the internet tend to dismiss this kind of thing and blame the victim, in the real world you dont see people going "well he shouldnt have had such a nice car" or "you shouldnt have kept money in your house", or "well its your fault you didnt have better locks" yet online it seems there always seems to be this unexplicable symapthy for the criminal.
Don't interpret an internet article for the word of law.
Great, how does that help against spammers? They can compute from anywhere.
Unless you pile on so much community service that they can't do anything else than the punishment is far too lacking. You might as well put them in jail since you'll have to support them anyway in order to pile on enough community service to justify letting them off with only it based on their crime.
What paycheck? They are spammers, they don't work day jobs and they will just do something under the table if you garnish their wages.
No, you seem to not realize that people need to be punished to deter future crime of this type. None of the things you listed would even slow a spammer down. What you propose is to slap them on the wrist and let them go to do it again.
These people have taken advantage of millions of PCs, they have essentially burglerized millions of homes, not physically but electronically. They have cost hundreds of millions of dollars to others that they can't pay back in their life time. They've made and stuffed away in various places massive amounts of money for themselves that will never go back to who it was stolen from.
And you want to 'fine them' ... great, lets treat spammers like we treat CEOs, brilliant fucking idea.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I don't think that community service and prison time are mutually exclusive. I'm sure prisons can get cheap but adequate nutrition (some spiced up version of nutraloaf for instance) and keep them in a cell of some sort while during the day they can go out and work on community service projects. Guys like this, maybe they can work on something like township (or Spain's equivalent) websites or something.
Sure, give a person who commits the computer crime of serving up illegal schemes to the public over the internet access to state computers used for serving content to the public over the internet. There's a brain storm that's sure to have great results.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
I do believe the parent was trying to say that the majority of people care not at all how 'inhumane' mandated isolation would be, rather, that they balk at the increase in their taxes that would come along with it.
There's lots of options for punishing people without dropping them in a prison cell. You can strap tracking devices to them, you can restrict their movements, you can force them to do community service, you can enforce fines to be taken from their paychecks, etc, etc.
And, if the activity is still profitable and possible, they will continue doing it and chalk it up as a cost of doing business.
Seems 15,000 people dying from poison gas is pretty violent to me. No? I mean, people died.
People also die from old age, but I wouldn't call aging 'violent'. 15,000 people died to criminal negligence. (It's the Bhopal disaster, in case you were curious where I came up with that scenario). It wasn't violence, it wasn't force, it wasn't intended... it was sheer greed and stupidity that led to dangerous corners being cut, leading to a major accident. Jail is more than justified.
Yea, so there's the Car thing. I think car thieves suck, but again, it's just property. Locking someone up for decades doesn't seem to make any sense to me.
Nice straw man, there. Show me where a car thief gets 'decades' in prison, and you might have a point. The usual sentence depends on jurisdiction, but even the harsher states it is only 5-10 years, and that's a "5 years, get out in two with good behavior" scenario.
You seem to think that people should be locked up for behaving in a certain way - because that behavior is a "gateway" to other crimes? Such a tired argument..
Nice second straw man... Where did I say that? Please, show me, I'd love to see where I even IMPLIED that. What I said is that there are non-violent crimes which deserve prison time... because the activities are detrimental towards society as a whole, and alternative punishments generally are not disincentive enough to deter somebody. I'm not advocating the death penalty, here, I'm saying that if somebody harms society through their actions, a prison sentence which will deter the activity and not simply be written off as 'cost of doing business', prison is a reasonable punishment. I then proceeded on this premise to list some examples of why I feel this way.
If you want to argue this with straw men, however, I'm sure I can come up with some doozies.
There should be a separated prison for malware authors. If you throw them in jail where violent people are then they will get tortured by other prisoners and I don't think they deserve that.
The problem is that most of the world has a very simple disconnect between "stuff on computers" and "stuff that affects them". These folks did nothing to anyone that isn't using a computer. Therefore, for most of the population of the world there was zero impact. Nothing. No difference.
Now, for a very small minority of people (a few millions out of 6 billion) these people caused trouble. In no way does this justify in the minds of the rest of the population of the world that there should be any laws against what they did.
For example, if you go outside your house and step on some ants I am sure the ants being stepped on would like there to be a law against stepping on ants. The rest of the ant population wasn't affected and neither was the rest of the human population. So there are no laws against stepping on ants, even if to the ants being stepped on it is a huge life-ending tragedy.
So for these guys they affected some computer users in a mysterious place outside of the real world. Good luck with convincing anyone that this is all that important.
In the US you don't get any law enforcement attention until you cause provable damages in excess of $25,000. And if you participate in the "crime" by giving away your password through some trojan program the other person isn't going to be taking all the punishment for stealing from you.
Face it, you live in a different world than most people. They don't understand your world and you don't understand why yours isn't important to them.
I don't see why these people don't deserve being locked up. Spammers are responsible for severely damaging the usefulness of email, as well as requiring millions of hours of trying to clean up after them, time that could be used for much more productive tasks. And there's still the huge waste of bandwidth from spam. Spammers from where I'm looking are among the scum of the Internet, along with e.g. the makers of malware and those stealing your credit card numbers.
We are all God's parents.
There aren't privacy laws that they can nail them with?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
Yeah, making everyone who ever commits a crime completely insane through years of isolation is a great goal for our justice system..
So, since when does "Violent Crime" only equal murder?
Prison isn't just used for serial criminals, although usually you don't get prison time for non-violent offenses on the first offense. But you will if you cause enough money in damage. To put it briefly, it's all about money..
I believe there's other ways of punishing people besides continuously filling up the prison system. Ways to punish people and have their punishments benefit the community. Prison often has the opposite effect of behavioral "correction."
I'm really not sure where you could get off saying I'm blaming a victim? I haven't even talked about that. And if you think the only reason to put people in prison is to make someone else (the victim) FEEL BETTER, then perhaps you need to re-evaluate your position and look at what's better for society as a whole instead of temporary feelings.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
There are several points to prison. As well as punishment, there is also rehabilitation of criminals so that they are less likely to repeat their crimes.
In violent societies, there is also the protection of the criminals from self appointed vigilantes. This is done by giving the criminals a sufficiently unpleasant time that morons feel that they don't need to do anything else.The more advanced the society, the less this is needed.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
And yet another person claiming prison is a deterant. It's NOT. No criminal thinks they are going to get caught. It doesn't deter anything. People still get murdered, people still sell drugs, people still steal cars - even with the MASSIVE sentances given to drug dealers and car thieves.
It. Doesn't. Work.
You are simplifying my argument to hold up yours and that's weak, real weak.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Thats fine that they dont get jail time, as long as they are turned over to the victims of their crime to do as they see fit. I say tie the bastards to a tree in the wilderness and say 'I hope to hell you have a lot of good friends looking for you, because you can only live 3 days without water'. Then just leave them there to contemplate life, death, the afterlife and/or make peace with their god. It will be a very long 3 - 5 days.
Yes, these people should be punished. But I agree with Spain's prison/court system when they say that prison is for violent crime.
Punishment aside, prison (in this sense) is a method of restricting disruptive peoples' access to society, thus eliminating their ability to disrupt society. These people are certainly disruptive to society. Your argument, therefore, must be that there is a more appropriate method to restrict their access to society besides imprisonment. I agree, in theory, since it is via electronic access, rather than physical access, that they have proven themselves a threat. If you can effectively deny their electronic access to society, then perhaps that is a viable solution. Imprisonment is a nice failsafe, though: in prison, their life is controlled, and thus their electronic access is controlled.
However, don't forget that while their vector is electronic, they have demonstrated themselves to be willing of crossing the mental threshold and engaging in harmful activities. Don't pretend that just because their crime is electronic that the impacts of this crime are any less real. They have stolen identities, causing financial damage to institutions and multifaceted damage to those individuals. Financial damage costs money to recover from. That money could be distributed amongst the populous (via fines, increased service rates, etc.), or burdened upon a few unlucky individuals (potentially ruining their lives), but there is a cost. Their botnet compromised millions of machines (if even one in every thousand crashed because of them, this is still substantial data and time loss), provided platforms for cyber-attacks, and burdened millions with spam messages. At a scale of 13 million machines, I wouldn't be surprised if some lives were lost.
I am assuming here that they're not stupid. They were perfectly aware of all of this. They knew the damage, pain, and mayhem that their actions were causing on a widespread level, and yet they went ahead and performed them. They have demonstrated that they are capable of inflicting significant harm to others for personal gain. While their current vector was electronic, I can understand why society (Spanish and as a whole) might want someone who has demonstrated this will to be removed from it.
I didn't mean anything critical; I'm talking about Dreamweaver or something. Just sprucing things up, and monitored carefully.
But you will if you cause enough money in damage.
So how much jailtime will bank execs face?
A little money: Jailtime/community service
A lot of money: Prison
A whole hell of a lot of money: Government bailout.
If prison and death penalties was an effective deterrant - why are there SO MANY PEOPLE in our prisons, and SO MANY PEOPLE getting murdered every year?
Different AC here. Did you even think for a second before you spewed forth the stupid question above? Prison and the death penalty are quite effective deterrents *for most people*.
There is a subset of the class "people" who will not be deterred by the idea of prison. So we send them there. What would you have us do instead? Do you have any solutions? Or are you simply complaining?
There is a subset of the class "people" who will not be deterred from crime by the death penalty. Folks who get the death penalty generally aren't nice people. They didn't get the death penalty for littering or jaywalking or not cutting their grass. They've typically committed one or more murders, often with exacerbating circumstances such as extreme brutality, torturing or raping the victim, killing a law enforcement officer, etc. If the prospect of death won't deter them from such things I don't really know what will. If death won't deter them at least it will make damn sure they don't do it again.
Do you have any better idea of what to do to deter them?
Because get rich quick is not a sociopathic behavior, no matter how you see it, so should be dealt with differently. Following your line of reasoning, every crime no matter how small or large should be treated the same, throw them in jail.
Hijacking somebody's computer, and using its resources for yourself, however IS sociopathic: You are taking something which does not belong to you, and knowing it is wrong you do it anyway. To hell with the spam, I'm talking purely about the botnet here. There are plenty of 'legal' ways to spam, there are no legal (or moral, or ethical) ways of creating a botnet of zombies. As somebody else in this thread said, "Prison is meant to protect society from the people being imprisoned as well as serving as punishment and deterrent. If there is no need to protect society (or conversely, protect them from revenge/vigilante attacks) then seeking other forms of punishment that are less costly seems to me to be a good idea.", And I agree with that completely. However, what constitutes a 'need to protect society', is what we're differing on.
Nice straw man, there. Show me where a car thief gets 'decades' in prison, and you might have a point. The usual sentence depends on jurisdiction,
When racism is involved.
35 years for a black and white TV.
"And yet another person claiming prison is a deterant. It's NOT. No criminal thinks they are going to get caught. It doesn't deter anything."
If a criminal is in prison, they are effectively prevented from committing further crimes, except maybe against their fellow convincts. Keeping habitual offenders away from the civilian population is a pretty good deterrant.
There's other ways to punish people and have them be productive to society, instead of rotting in prison.
I am amazed at your thrift and foresight. Instead of rotting in prison, they can be productive to society as fertilizer, rotting outside of prison!
"insufficient cyber-crime legislation" -- Money was obviously stoled from people's bank accounts, shouldn't that be sufficient to prosecute the thiefs?
Nope no prison for them, just take them out back of the courthouse and put a bullet in each ones head. Simple, done and over with.
Those people disrupt and financially ruin thousands of peoples lives, fuck em.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
>"Great, how does that help against spammers?"
Most of the sort of people who send spam like to go out after curfew. Take that away and they're going to be miserable.
I think they should tattoo "spammer" on their foreheads too - so people can spit on them in the street.
No sig today...
That's a total straw man. Just because some people still commit crimes when there are punishments doesn't mean that the punishments aren't deterring anyone. For some people, say those who are starving to death, or those who believe they're invincible, no amount of deterrent will keep them from committing crimes. For the average person, however, I would hypothesize that lengthy prison sentences and the stigma of a criminal record are quite effective deterrents.
The only way to definitively settle the debate would be to conduct some experiments or do some sort of meta-analysis on past data regarding crime rates and severity of criminal punishments. Anything else is just armchair filibustering.
Theres a difference between my geek rich quick scheme of 'The Pet Rock 2' and breaking into someones house and using their PC without permission to scam millions of other people out of money, likely stealing personal information from the infected machines along the way.
All crimes are treated as crimes. The level of punishment is adjusted based on the effect of the crime.
Throwing a soda can on the ground is a crime and comes with a small fine cause its very likely to do anyone any serious damage.
Throwing 12 million soda cans on the ground is an entirely different story. At that point, yes, you throw them in jail, after you've made them pick every single can up with their teeth.
You don't throw everyone in jail because 'they committed a crime', no one anywhere is suggesting that. People do tend to get pissed off when you do something on a massive scale to millions of people and then you get a slap on the wrist.
Personally, I'd execute all of them if found guilty. They won't commit the crime again and I promise you that will deter a few others from doing it.
Alternatively, to be 'fair', we give them a slap on the wrist. One for each PC infected, given by the owner (or designated hitter) of the infected PC. Thats fair is it not? Its less than they would get for breaking into someones home and infecting their PC. So ... > 12 million slaps. Yep, lets see how well they survive that one.
A little perspective goes a long way.
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Just let us know their names and release them back into the population. All the 20-somethings who spent countless hours cleaning malware from their relative's PCs will make short work of them. Seriously, as I sit there trying every method imaginable to delete gynopdul.dll from the system32 folder I just daydream about what it would be like to shoot these assholes in the groin with a shotgun.
Heck, I hear Spain is nice this time of year...
How about this - Prisons are not meant to be used for revenge? How about.... the justice system is not meant to be used for revenge? If I go ahead and kill someone, do you lock me up as part of revenge? In America, this seems to be true, there's just no way anyone would ever think for a moment beyond what first comes up in their minds and you'll hear the mob shout out "ELECTROCUTE HIM!".. It's. just. wrong! What do you think happens to people who get jailed for minor crimes? Do you think jail time is going to make them any -less- criminal?
As a matter of fact, "minor crime" does not refer to murdering someone :)
Better than the criminal academy system we have now. What's your alternative?
Are you sure you know what that word means?
Extradite them to the US and put them on trial here for crimes they've committed on US based PC's.
After they've served their time here, send them to the next country where they've committed crime for a new trial there.
No, you seem to not realize that people need to be punished to deter future crime of this type.
prison = punishment,
punishment != prison.
Cool...now that all the hackers know where to live if they need to operate a botnet,
I welcome our new botnet overlords....
Probably more could be done, but it's a start, and definitely better than "send everyone to prison forever".
Forcing someone to work is slavery. And we don't approve of that sort of thing in civilised places.
Yes, because all of the statistics on reform are proof that prison works.
Quote from "Blow": "I went into prison with a bachelor's degree in weed, and came out with a master's in cocaine."
The Spanish system is too lax in many aspects, even terrorists that have killed dozens of people can get out of jail in maybe 20 years. By the way, there's also a recent case of a teenager who raped and burned alive a retarded girl, and he's now (like ~6 years later) out of prison and commiting crimes like car theft, just because he was underage he is now out of prison. The maximum time you can spend in prison is 30 years (or 40 for terrorism), and the reductions apply to that time, not the time you were sentenced to (so for instance you can be sentenced to 200 years, but reductions apply to a 30-year period so you'll probably be out of jail even sooner than 30 years).
Probably more could be done, but it's a start, and definitely better than "send everyone to prison forever".
I see no reason that our solutions are mutually exclusive. I agree with what you say here, but I still feel we need to isolate criminals from each other while incarcerated so that they have less opportunity to share information and do not develop a sense of comradery. A big part of our violent crime problem is that prison gangs keep close ties to their outside counterparts. A gang-banger who gets out of prison after 10 years goes right back into his old gang, usually as a hero. Imagine how different it would be if he got out, and everyone he knew had moved on. Instead of going back to his old contacts, he'll have to find a real job.
Unless every single one of those computer's is physically in Spain, couldn't they be extradited? Or does Spanish law make that hard/impossible?
If a criminal is in prison, they are effectively prevented from committing further crimes, except maybe against their fellow convincts. Keeping habitual offenders away from the civilian population is a pretty good deterrant.
You seem to be describing punishment, not deterrence.
Something /.ers don't understand is that the majority of the prison population has antisocial personality disorder. The same people that are the best soldiers, the best spies, the best businessmen, and the best politicians-- are the career criminals. Sending them to prison does nothing except ruin any possibility of a legitimate, law abiding future. Sending them to prison gives them contacts and makes them more advanced criminals. Someone suggested solitary confinement. Are you serious? Do you know what that does to someone? When they get out you'll have an extremely dangerous individual. If I sell a bag of weed, I'll go to prison along side of gang members, coke and meth dealers, etc. I'll likely come out as one of them. Do you understand the concept of a cycle? Historically, tougher punishments lead to a better class of criminals. Russian gulags bred the Russian Mafia; many American street gangs have their origins in prisons. Also, many prisons are privatized in America and this disturbing trend says one thing: People are profiting off of others going to prison.
But after a few years of isolation, most criminals would go (clinically) insane. Who gives a "real job" to insane people with criminal background?
Secondly, in most "real jobs" you have to interact with people. If only to just take orders from the boss, take salary, make (feeble) salary negotiations etc. By your solitary confinement, you have robbed the criminal of all ability for reasonable inter-person interaction. Even if he does not go clinically insane, he is definitely not fit for human interaction. I am appalled at the inhumanity in you which made you suggest this "solution".
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
So then explain how you propose to prevent prisoners from perpetuating the culture of crime? saying 'focus on jobs' is just hand-waiving. It doesn't address the fact that a large portion have no interest in ever having a legitimate job. Isolation breaks the cycle. Perhaps it would be maddening, but I'm pretty sure it's no less humane than subjecting them to a constant threat of injury, murder, and ass rape.
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
Quote from your GGP post:
Instead of going back to his old contacts, he'll have to find a real job.
Quote from parent post by you:
saying 'focus on jobs' is just hand-waiving
It is you who said 'focus on jobs'. That was what I was answering. You pretended your "solution" would make them get jobs. I just showed that it is false: insane people get no jobs.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
People doing life without parole might not fear anything but the needle almost by definition have nothing to lose by misbehaving in prison.
Yeah, but you're still talking about giving spammers read and write access to web server files. I can't see how it could possibly end well. It would take just as much or more time to verify everything they did than to just do it yourself.
To me this is like taking an embezzler and putting them in a bank to work off their sentence.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
And yet you still offer no solution. My approach would make them get real jobs, or at least make them start over from scratch, rather than just joining up with their old gang. I'm still waiting for your solution to the problem. And please, no more red herrings.
My approach would make them get real jobs, or at least make them start over from scratch
You are yet to tell me who gives jobs to insane people with criminal background. But that would make your argument hand-waving because it would be akin to saying 'focus on jobs'. Not sure if you understand what you are posting but I sure hope you do.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Word processing then :)
That's funny. :)
I still have to disagree even though it was jest. When someone starts messing around with other people's lives it's a serious thing that can't be tolerated in a society if that society is to be/remain stable. The punishment needs to fit the crime, at least in my book. Letting someone do what they're best_at/like_the_most, as a form of punishment, is hardly a deterrent.
And, yes, I think deterrence works, if it is applied every time. The reason it doesn't work in our society is because the deterrent's are applied haphazardly/randomly. This haphazard application of punishment/deterrence has been proven to only increase negative behavior as it causes the perpetrators to believe they won't get caught/punished "this time". It's like any intelligent parent soon learns. If you want to correct your child's negative behavior you can't do it by correcting the child only every so often. You have to to apply discipline every time the negative behavior happens.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
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