Botnet Spammer Gets Just 18 Months For Being Odd

itwbennett writes "Thirty-three-year old Scottsman Matthew Anderson was sentenced this week to 18 months in prison for orchestrating a malicious Trojan campaign in 2006. The reason for his relatively light sentence? He apparently wasn't seeking to maximize profit like any normal, red-blooded hacker. Also, his timing was good. His arrest in June 2006 predated by a matter of months the Police and Justice Act, which would likely have resulted in a harsher sentence. By comparison, David Kernell, who snooped in Sarah Palin's email, got a year in prison."

Comments

Welcome to planet Earth

[Anonymous Coward]

Thirty-three-year old Scottsman Matthew Anderson was sentenced this week to 18 months in prison for orchestrating a malicious Trojan campaign in 2006.... By comparison, David Kernell, who snooped in Sarah Palin's email, got a year in prison.

Matthew Anderson and David Kernell live, committed their offences and were tried in different countries to one another. Why on earth would you expect their sentences to be comparable?

Next.. libel laws in England harsher than in the US! Owners of internet gambling sites that are lawful in other countries face imprisonment in US! Producing the same drug can get you anywhere from a governement contract to a stern warning to imprisonment to execution depending on which country you pick. Hello, welcome to the world.

Re:18 months light "by comparison?"

[mikaelwbergene]

From TFA: "Anderson will be up for parole after half his sentence has been served and faces punishment other than a £5,000 ($8,000) fine. By comparison, the US youth who hacked the email account of Sarah Palin in 2008 recently received a year in an open prison for much less serious hacking of a small amount of private data from one person." They're not simply comparing the time, but the punishment based on severity of said crime. One figures out Sarah Palins email using simple methods and gets a full year. The other orchestrates a malicious botnet attack and only gets a little longer at a year and a half. In that sense, he is being punished quite lightly.

Re:Anderson's not weird. He's you

[DNS-and-BIND]

I suppose we all forget how many people went to jail even back then. I knew at least a half-dozen, personally. PS did people use the word 'phracker'? I don't seem to remember that one. You sure you didn't just invent it?