Slashdot Mirror
Proposed Penalty For UK Hackers Who "Damage National Security": Life
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from The Guardian: Government plans that mean computer users deemed to have damaged national security, the economy or the environment will face a life sentence have been criticised by experts who warn that the new law could be used to target legitimate whistleblowers. The proposed legislation would mean that any British person deemed to have carried out an unauthorised act on a computer that resulted in damage to human welfare, the environment, the economy or national security in any country would face a possible life sentence. Last week the Joint Committee on Human Rights raised concerns about the proposals and the scope of such legislation.
If you attack an industrial system at a utility and make a bunch of people sick or die, even if it was "unintentional" you should get life
...and you almost certainly would, with no changes required to current law. Well...I don't know about the UK, but in the USA if you cause the death of another human being, that's homicide. There's a spectrum from Involuntary Manslaughter up to Premeditated Murder. Using a poison or a machine to do it doesn't change anything.
So you can get rid of the "injuring people" argument. This law would only change what happens when nobody is physically harmed.
Instead of ending a politician's career, end his life. The penalty is the same, so why bother with the lesser crime?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.