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

Nice concept

[Anonymous Coward]

When we talk about debt its every country for himself. When we talk about corruption and murder is every country for himself. Talk about hacking ... OMG now we are a union of countries?

Re:Nice concept

[Big Hairy Ian]

Can we impose the same minimum cap on sentencing for banking god knows they do far more damage in a day than hackers will in their entire careers.

Re:Nice concept

[fustakrakich]

Yes. All you have to do is to vote for politicians that will implement it.

Unless...

[Errol backfiring]

Unless it is done by governments or influential companies, I suppose. On the other hand, no exceptions will be made for investigating journalists.

Define "Hacking"

[StoneyMahoney]

The Compuworld article uses the term without revealing it's definition as stated in the EU draft law. Is this because it's loosely defined by the EU itself to act as a catch-all act in the future? That idea chills my bones.

Re:USoE

[Luckyo]

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

Minimum sentence can be a fine, or nothing. But maximum sentence cannot be less then two years for hacking, and five years for hacking of critical infrastructure. Not to mention that European Parliament is a democratically elected legislative branch of EU, directly elected by member states' citizens. It's the most and arguably only democratic branch of EU.

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.