Slashdot Mirror
China Sentences Bank Cracker/Thief to Death
Many submitted this brief Excite News item: two Chinese brothers pulled a $87,000 bank robbery by cracking the bank's computers. One brother talked and got off. The other got a death sentence. Slashdot reader malroth commented, "Now MAYBE theft of $87,000 constitutes a crime worth execution in China, but i find it hard to imagine. This is sheer speculation, but i presume that what ticked off the Chinese judiciary was the hacking part of the crime."
I was a grad assistant several years ago, and we all had cubicles in a large common area. The mainland Chinese grad assistants were absolutely abhorred that they had to worry about theft in their cubicles. One Chinese student said to me "In China I could leave everything on my desk all day and never worry about coming back and finding it stolen. If someone stole my calculator and got caught, they'd be shot in the head." He was proud of this and felt it was the "right" way. It was interesting that he was as disgusted by theft as I am by capital punishment.
I wonder whether, if neither brother had talked, the appeal would have been sucessful. If so, this looks like a classic instance of the prisoner's dilemma being acted out in real life.
I expect that they got death because they stole from a state bank. They didn't have much choice, since (almost?) all banks in China are run by the government, but had they instead stolen from an american or other foreign bank, I bet that they'd have gotten off more lightly.
The punishment probably did not have much to do with the fact that it was a computer crime -- rather the Chinese government probably saw robbing from them as close to treason.
Play and design text adventures online.
Erm, they probably still do -- in numbers, and in ruthlessness. They normally don't allow one to, say, appeal for 10+ years if they decide to shoot you; and celebrity fan appeals don't mean squat -- as they shouldn't. For instance, according to the "Death Penalty Information Center", an anti-DP site, the total number of executions in the US from 1976 to 1998 reached 500. That's 22 *years*. See their report for details... that's a vastly lower per-capita rate.
Remember that this is a country which essentially celebrated the UN Anti-Drug Day by executing narcotics traffickers. Life has a significantly lower value there.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
They'll shoot you for tax evasion, and about 67 other offenses, at least.
Literally.
See Amnesty International's report on the death penalty in China.
It is most emphatically not the computer aspect.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
As it was a Chinese State Bank (I doubt that there are privately owned banks in China, but with the SEZs, Special Economic Zones, I have no idea, and haven't really kept up), it was a crime against the state.
In a Communist Nation, is there any greater crime that stealing from the state? As everything is owned "by the people," his robbery was a crime against the people of China. That, arguably, is a capital crime.
In a Western Nation (private ownership), when you steal from someone, there is a criminal and civil element. Ultimately, you stole from a single individual, and while the state has a vested interest in protecting people from each other, it isn't the victim, which warrants a lesser penalty.
In a Communist Nation, everyone is supposed to work towards the common good. Someone betrayed that trust by taking from the community instead of contributing to it. Arguably, that warrants the death penalty.
Mostly playing Devil's advocate here,
Alex
P.S. I don't advocate the Communist mindset, but I'm giving my view on how you have to treat the crime based upon that philosophy. I realize that China does not live up to the Communist ideals, but I'm going to assume that it writes its laws with them in mind.
I really doubt that the amount of money involved has anything to do with them passing the death sentence. Consider that China is a country where an all-powerful elite (the communist party) has access to all resources. If you look at most other (post)communist countries, corruption is rampant and reaches into (the) high(est) levels of government. While I'm no great expert on the Chinese situation, the little I hear about this seems to point at the fact that China is as bad (corruption wise) as all/most other (post)communist countries.
...
... welcome to the 3rd millenium ...
As such the dollar amound involved is not a big deal. If it were, a large number of Chinese officials would be very scared (of course they have their connections, but you get my point). What probably scared the Chinese (govt.) was that hacking is not only a threat to their fincancial system but much more: Hacking is (in their eyes) a threat to national security. In countries like China, an amazaing amount of (seemingly trivial) things are classified as state secrets. Hacking has to potential to attack this secrecy at the core and distribute whatever (sensitive) data world wide at the press of a button. It challenges the supreme access/control of the elite (communist party) over the flow of information; a bit No-No in the eyes of this very elite. No, governments do no like you divulging their secrets and China, having the type of government they do, is almost certain to be one of the countries most pissed off by this
In an ideal world, there would be no secrets. In our world, (if you're in the wrong place) you get shot (or at least thrown into jail (if you're lucky))for divulging (so called classified) information
[From FHM magazine...] Apprently in 97, they executed a 1,876. Capital offences include pig theft & VAT receipt theft. One women was killed for sticking thorns into the buttocks of passing cyclists.
Also, they are killed in public, with crowds of 20,000. "[They are] shot in the back of the head - to service the rpadily growing shoot-to-order organ tranpslant business."
Even worse than their summary execution, arguably, is their vast sytem of Logai, which are miserable torture and prison camps. This is their version of the Gulag, for those of you who read Solzhenitsyn. People are sent there to be worked to death, so that we in the US can buy cheap Made in China shoes. You can be sent there for life if you do so much as go to Mass at a Church that is not State-sponsored. Do you want a source for that, too? Harry Wu, a high-profile Chinese emigre who tours the US showing his photos of the Logai and telling about his experiences there as a prisoner, where he saw men tortured and executed for such crimes as being a Catholic priest.
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
First of all, I don't believe in the death penalty. Over here (Greece) nobody was sentenced to death for decades, and the last couple of them are serving for life instead of being executed.
However, one must distinguish between the two schools of thought when it comes to punishment:
One school of thought thinks that criminals must be punished as much as required so that they are corrected or something.
The other school of thought thinks of sentences are more effective if they're used as means to make people think twice about comitting a crime.
I'm not gonna argue about which is better or which increases the happiness/lawfullness quotient of a society, but consider this example:
Illegal parking is a Bad Thing. Usually you merely get a ticket for a few bucks or something, right?
Now consider Illegal parking in front of a fire exit or something. Is it sufficient to merely issue a parking ticket to that offender? If a fire occured on that building, many people could die simply because he decided that he could ignore the sign and risk the lifes of other people until he got his job done across the street or whatever.
Followers of the secnod school of thought would probably propose very radical punishment for such a crime, say 5 years or someting. This of course doesn't make sense to the followers of the first school of thought, since its to severe a punishment (unless a fire really occured and people really died because of the offenders negligence)
Now, assume that the law said that if you park in an area designated specificaly as a fire exit and thus block it, you'll be sentenced to no less than 5 years, fire or no fire.
You'd be a bloody fool and asking for it if you parked there, and deserve to do 5 years. Extreme laws like this can save lifes, since I fail to imagine a moron go what the heck, I'll park here, I might get 5 years for that but so what. In that light, severe penalties (defined by law) aren't fascist - they serve a purpose.
So, don't think of punishment just as a *correctional* measure for the criminal, but think of it as a *proactive* measure to reduce criminal activity.
I mean, would you consider stealing 87,000 bucks while in China now? Hell no!
Think.
-W
. . . how many of the shocked posts here are from libertarians and conservatives who applaud Draconian punishments in the USA . . . ?
If "an armed society is a polite society" (of which I am not at all certain, but that's another argument entirely), then that's because such a society has a potential death penalty for all manner of anstisocial behavior, right?
------------------------------------
Incidentally (this is somewhat off-topic, but I'd like to hear what people think of it), the most valid objection to the death penalty even in cases of the genuinely serious crimes where it's used in the USA (e.g. murder etc.) is that it's real hard to apologize afterwards if you got the wrong guy. But as it happens, the death penalty in the USA is applied only in cases where the crime is particularly horrific, which seems goofy. A more evil crime doesn't make any given suspect more guilty. It's a non sequitur. From what I've read, I've gotten a sort of anecdotal impression that the likelihood of the criminal committing similar crimes in the future isn't even a major consideration (IANAL: Hard data on this point is very welcome). Well, I can't see much sense in any of this. If you ask me, evidence of a very strong likelihood of repetition along with horribleness-of-crime should be required even to consider execution, and then once it's being considered, there should be a more stringent standard of proof required of the prosecution. Our legal architecture only provides one definition of guilt: "Beyond a reasonable doubt". IMHO that's not enough when you're going to kill somebody. For the death penalty, you should have to prove guilt beyond even an unreasonable doubt, beyond any damn trace or shadow of a doubt whatsoever. If you can't prove guilt with that degree of certainty, default to life in prison w/o parole. In some cases, we're more certain than in others. Demoting that to a boolean value is not a good idea when the punishment is irreversible. If you set your kids on fire and people see you do it, fwwht, off with your damn head. But not all cases are like that.
We already have a kludgey imitation of this with the appeals process, but we can clean up the implementation and save everybody a lot of money and time.
I'd like to see a rational discussion about this, but unfortunately China was mentioned and we all know what means on Slashdot.
First and foremost, I DO believe in the death penalty. I feel that fear of death can be the only cure for some criminals, and that oftentimes the prison system does such terrible job of rehabilitation, it would have been more cost effective to put them down in the first place.
A good example, however fictional it might be, is _The_Shawshank_Redemption_, in which the lead character Andy makes a statement something along the lines of "You know, when I was on the outside, I flew straight as an arrow, but I had to come to prison to learn how to be a criminal."
It may seem like a bad example, but for any of you that don't have any first-hand experience with ex-cons, or prison systems (I've been to jail, briefly, and had my share of run-ins with the law when I was younger, and almost a handful of my friends have been in a little deeper), it's more often than not the truth. Sending people with criminal mentality, often criminal by necessity (at least in their minds) into an environment predominately gang controlled and replete with organized criminal activities can be the WORST thing for them.
Now I'm not saying that they deserved the death penalty, I don't consider theft a capital offense, especially not electronic theft, in which nobody can "get hurt" physically, but in a Communist environment, the traditional goal is for people to work together, for the common goal of the people. In a sense it's like stealing money from your father so that you can buy a bike he might have bought you for Christmas had you not stolen from him in the first place. (Bad analogy, let's move on)
The biggest question in my mind would be the interrogation tactics used to convince one brother to rat out the other. Not all families are close, I understand that, but if I were close enough anyone to commit electronic crime with them, I would have to feel like I could trust them with more than my life. Maybe the initiator overlooked this, maybe he made a bad judgement call, perhaps. Not having any insight into the matter leads me to speculate a scenario with hot lights, hot pokers, and even hotter tempers belonging to Chinese officials.
True, I could be completely full of shit, but I don't know. If anyone knows better, let me know. I'm not above looking stupid, I promise.
First off, let's get two things straight about the Chinese legal system. They didn't execute hackers in China because China is "scared" of hackers, nor is it because China is some "evil communist" country who routinely puts people to death because they don't embrase our democratic form of government.
The Chinese civic system of punishments stems from the Chinese Legalist school of thought, a philosophical system which was instrumental in setting up the dictatorship of Ch'in in 221B.C., and in unifying China around the same time.
The cornerstone of Chinese Legalism is the accumulation of the power necessary to rule what (and is) the largest country in the world, using stone-age tools. Legalism's aim of controlling such a large mass of humanity (at a time when Plato was extolling the virtues of a city-state whose size never exceeded about 5,000 people) was done through a system of rigerous and intensive set of laws backed by generous rewards and severe punishments. In short, Legalism extolled the virtue of setting up a system of well-defined laws that everyone could understand, and dealing out severe punishments to those who violated the law.
"Legalism", while not as fully embrased by the Chinese as Confusianism and Taoism, does make up one of the three pillars of Chinese civic philosophy. It's been around for a couple of thousand years, and is the reasoning why littering (i.e., dropping a wad of paper on the ground) is punishable by prison time, and why thieves are routinely put to death.
You also have to keep in mind that our more "humanist" approach to punishment has only evolved in the last hundred years or so. It wasn't all that long ago when we in the west were dropping thieves into a 50-foot pit onto a stone floor and leaving them to rot without food or water. (In fact, the Hollywood image of a castle dungeon is rather inaccurate--most dungeons were nothing more than stone pit 50 or more feet deep where prisoners were literally dropped. The ones who didn't die due to the force of impact with the stone floor died for a lack of water.)
The principle difference between the United States and Chinese philosophy are threefold: first, our stated goal in punishing a criminal is to rehabilitate--this stems from the Judeo-Christian need for redemption. The Chinese use punishment not to rehabilitate but to set a harsh example to others who would break the law.
Second, as we are trying to achieve redemption of the criminal, we set punishments which "fit" the crime--a modified form of "an eye for an eye" where we make habitual litterers pick up trash, and make thieves pay back their victim. In China, as their goal is to set an example, they create punishments which indicate to the public how unacceptable the crime is. Thus, putting first time litterers in jail, or putting thieves to death.
Third, as we are a common-law country, our laws evolve as we struggle to find a balance between maximizing freedom and creating stability. This is because in the United States, we are a country "of the people" where citizens are presumed to have entered into a "compact" to get along with each other. In China, Legalist philosphy has authority stemming from a central figure, so their ultimate goal is not to balance freedom with cooperation, but to create stability and peace. Thus, even if you execute the wrong person for theft, it's okay--he set an example for everyone else.
Chinese Legalism has been around a lot longer than Karl Marx. And it's been around a lot longer than computer hackers.