EU Countries Closer To Mandatory Minimum Sentence Cap For Hacking

angry tapir writes "Hackers would face up to two years or more in prison no matter where they live in the European Union under a new draft law approved by the European Parliament's civil liberties committee. The proposed rule would prevent E.U. countries from capping sentences for any type of hacking at less than two years. Meanwhile the maximum sentence possible for cyberattacks against 'critical infrastructure,' such as power plants, transport networks and government networks would be at least five years in jail. The draft directive, which updates rules that have been in place since 2005, would also introduce a maximum penalty of at least three years' imprisonment for creating botnets."

Comments

a floor, not a cap

[stenvar]

That's a sentencing floor, not a sentencing cap. A cap would limit the maximum sentencing possible.

Re:Nice concept

[Anonymous Coward]

wrecking the economy? Not so much.

Yeah, because the US company Goldman Sachs totally didn't wreck the EU economy and business sitting in one country are totally not doing business in other countries. They also totally don't hide in tax havens and never would do evil tricks to prevent the cops from catching them.

Re:USoE

[Dogtanian]

Why, because of clickbait lie? Read the damn story.

To be fair, the summary *doesn't* actually lie.

Even without having checked the comments, it's undeniably obvious that many Slashdotters would skim the summary, see the "two year" figure with respect to "hacking" and "sentences" and jump to the wrong conclusion. And my suspicion is that the editors knew this very well, so yeah, it's probably "clickbait" in that sense.

But if you're paying attention to what the summary actually says, it never claims that there's a minimum two year sentence for "hacking"; it says that there's a minimum limit on the maximum sentence.