Slashdot Mirror
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."
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)
I was expecting the Spanish Inquisition.
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.
You didn't really undestand the summary. Prison's in Spain are for those who are a physical danger to society. Conning someone out of their money wouldn't land you in jail either, nor would pickpocketing or unnarmed theft. They are non-violent offenders, and there are certainly punishments for those kinds of offenders, it's just that they don't generally involve prison time.
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
"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.