Australian youth faces 10 years jail for accused Anonymous hacks
scmagazine.com.au
scmagazine.com.au
We geeks are especially at risk. ("Look at that github profile, he even has the codes, hacker, hacker! Burn!")
Doesn't it make for a warm feeling in the tummy to know that you can spend the rest of your life being the best friend of Jammal, sharing a cell and a bed with him, without doing something illegal?
Fortunately we developers are hard asses who are used to murder, rape, and robbery. Oh wait...
The article was really brief and vague. Are you sure this is the case?
From what I understand, the title is not completely descriptive: the kid has a maximum possible sentence of 10 years if he is convicted.
"The suspected hacker faces a maximum of 10 years jail time if convicted and will face court again on May 17."
I obviously have no way of really knowing what exactly happened without more information, but just assuming that random programmers are at risk for getting arrested is a bit of a stretch -- even if there is a "New World Order" as you say, it needs good programmers too...
It will be interesting to see what actually happens at the end of this, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a sentence to community service and parole for some time.
Especially, nowadays, when tech savvy people has more ways to spread rebellious views than the general population, this is a good control mechanism for those in power.
He said "can throw you in prison for 10 years" You say "maximum possible sentence of 10 years"
Exact same thing.
Be in the accused's position, and then argue the difference.
I was refuting this:
> Welcome to the New World Order where they can throw you into prison at will with supposed evidence which truth content can be hard to verify even by experts.
That statement assumes that he will be convicted and the judge will deliver a severe sentence, which is not necessarily a valid assumption since there's barely any information provided. It's possible he may simple get a community service sentence with parole, since he is 17.
And yes, the government "can" throw you in jail if you are found guilty and if the judge decides to, but neither of those "if's" have been decided yet.
Emm, how is this different than the "Old World Order"? I mean, then, they could put you in prison at will, period (the king, the local sheriff, the lynching mob, etc). They didn't even need any evidence to be verified.
Each and every day Australia starts to look more and more like the United States (no offence to those who live in the US). I live in Australia and find it highly alarming that a youth who didn't steal any personal or financial information could be sent away for 10 years, comparatively you could rape someone in Australia and if you plead guilty you would get sentenced to basically the same amount of years.
How does a victimless computer crime which potentially only resulted in a little bit of downtime and wasn't malicious in that information was stolen equate to the same as raping someone? It doesn't add up.
Disregarding semantics, I completely agree that the potential punishment is not at all proportional to the crime in this case.
To think that a computer crime where not even any "sensitive personal or financial information was stolen" can be considered at par with kidnapping is harsh.
Reporters use the maximum statutory sentences to report on yet-to-be-convicted people for maximum headline sensationalism. Very seldom will somebody, especially a first-time offender, actually be sentenced that. For example, in my jurisdiction the maximum statutory sentence for rape is 12 years; yet prison terms of a few years are common. The reasons the maximums are set so high is to allow leeway for the judge for especially egregious cases.
Do you know why? Because the actual sentences these folks tend to end up with are often similar to folks convicted of homicide, rape, violent robbery, etc. One of the Steubenville rapists was sentenced to around 2-4 years, for example. And he is the same age as the accused here.
The idea that the punishment for rape should be similar to the punishment for white collar crimes where no one was materially injured is preposterous. The system is broken in a very fundamental way and jabbering on about the subtleties of the difference between maximum and expected sentences is not contributing to the discussion in a meaningful way, in my opinion.
Normally, if a youth do a first time offense, and its a Misdemeanor (which vandalism is grouped as), the act is generally punished by a small monetary fine. Even trespassing, ie unlawful access, is a Misdemeanor.
Society need to stop treating things "on the Internet" different from actions "not done on the Internet". vandalism and trespassing is no different if its done to a store, or a webshop. If the police house wall was spray painted, or their website defaced, why should the first one give a small fine and the other several years in prison? It makes no sense.
What theory of justice would that fall under?
Once again, I can't agree. That is not the only consideration taken into account. Absolutely not. That doesn't even begin to skim the surface of what's taken into consideration in sentencing and during the trial.
Here's a classic counter-example to this assertion.
PersonA steals prescription medicine to sell so he can buy more drugs to deal. PersonB steals prescription medicine so he can sell them and pay for his wife's dialysis.
That's the same crime, and let's say they're both first time offenders. Would they be treated the same? No. It's called mitigating factors. PersonB has more mitigating factors than PersonA, and is therefore not treated the same.
Is stealing a wallet with $10.00 worse than wiring $10.00 from someone else's account? I could easily argue yes in some circumstances. If you have your wallet stolen by someone, there's a much greater chance that you will come to physical harm. Getting $10.00 stolen from your PayPal account does not afford you this same risk. I believe that's pretty fair to say. Now, seeing as one has the potential to cause financial and physical harm and the other only has the potential to cause financial distress, should both crimes be treated the same? Should both perpetrators be punished with the same sentence if convicted?
That being said, industrial espionage is a serious thing, and at that point the distinction between a "cyber-crime" and a "real-world crime" begins to diminish.
My logic still holds up, doesn't it? Am I still missing something here?
We're talking about tagging a police station. That's a direct affront to the authority that (arguably) establishes a respectable degree of order and attempts to ensure peace (lack of violence). A person who expresses contempt or animosity towards those who (in general) attempt to ensure peace seems to be a person that would perpetrate violence...right?
Why is this wrong? (I'll just throw in a little something to tell you I have an idea of what I'm talking about). I grew up in the projects where undercover police would ride around in taxi cabs and basically sit like homeless people near subway entrances. This is a very tense environment, and I've seen many people arrested with a fair amount of force by the police. I also saw the remains of numerous gunfights a few times while coming home from school. Now imagine tagging a police station in this kind of environment. It's quite a task isn't it? Certainly a person who spends their time coding could be considered less violent prone, right?
It is very natural for kids and teens to test their boundaries and try to get as much access and control over any system that they could get into. And from a kid perspective it doesn't feel like a particularly dangerous or wrong thing to do. Hacking into stuff feels just like an elaborate and very rewarding game. Game that requires specialized knowledge and skills, but a game nevertheless. I think we all remember the feeling.
But in reality this is not a game. Damage that can be done by an accident involving a such a game/hack that goes awry can be catastrophic. That includes loss of life and likelihoods of a large number of people.
Examples? Say, can a hack interfere in a subtle way with remote surgery? Or with hospital power supply? Or chemical plant? The answer is unfortunately, yes. Our systems a networks are not secure enough and not kid-proof. And probably will never be. So there must be some policy that discourage kids from hacking into stuff that matters. And yet it should be friendly, because it is preposterous to put people in jail for 'games' that are very unlikely to cause any harm most of the time.
Then say they throw their rocks not at some store window, but at a power station. Maybe at a hydroplant (those turbines do not like large rocks), or a solar plant (glass!). Maybe its at a electrical substation (a wet/icy stick or metal rod between two lines will cause shorts and break things).
The damage from such actions can be catastrophic. Life and livelihood can be lost for a large number of people. What if the power for the hospital gets interrupted, or the chemical plant?
This leaves us with a simple question then. Should we send teenagers that throw rocks and sticks/rods in jail for up to 10 years? Is jailtime a proper method to discourage kids from throwing rocks at power stations? In my society, that's has not been the current approach, and we have not had much failures from kids throwing rocks at power stations (or hacks for that matter). Schools, proper parenting, and after school activities has served the role of prevention.
But. A normal kid would not feel any wrong when he/she is breaking in into some computer network. It is again just instinct. To a kid it feels like an awesome and elaborate game with no consequences (and 99.999??% of time there are no consequences and no harm done).
Natural instinct? No, it's upbringing.
And a lot of kids have shitty upbringing. It doesn't even have to be of the "father was an alcoholic, beat mother etc" kind. It can be "I had a perfectly good family that bend over backwards to satisfy my ego" type, or "I got most of my intra-personal skills off of TV and the internet", type.
I was mostly replying to the parents part about kids "throwing rocks at cars, hospitals or power stations", not to just a kid throwing some rocks at some building a few times in his teenage years or getting on in a fight or two etc (which is perfectly normal).
Upbrining and after-school activities tend to be the best way in teaching kids not to cause damage where society is most vulnerable. Of course, improving the infrastructure so no website defacing will leak sensitive information or turns of the power to the hospital is also useful. Most Electrical substation tend to have a fence.
But 10 years for a 17 year old. Can't seem to wrap my head around that.
Hacking and network security is a relatively shallow and yet specialized skill. Relatively shallow, because it doesn't require years and years of studying, like, say theoretical physics or modern math. And specialized, because your regular developer is not necessarily stays current with all the latest security practices and exploits.
Because of that properties a determined teen can outmatch skills of people maintaining and designing the system by orders of magnitude. And with that kind of mismatch in skills, what can really stand against that kid?
Frankly, I'd rather see them go to jail for several years than have to convert my car into a tank or see every foot bridge wrapped in thick steel mesh.
For example, what is the punishment for crashing a car? Well, it depends on the context and circumstances. Sometimes there is no punishment. But what if the crash occurred due to being intoxicated? What if the crash was into another car? What if people died or were seriously injured in the crash?
It's not as though "hacking", "unauthorized access", and "web sites" are each monolithic things for which the seriousness of an act is independent of context and circumstances. There are just as many different levels of seriousness when it comes to the online world as there are in the real world. What are the consequences for property trespass in the physical world, for example? Well, it depends entirely on context and circumstances. If someone merely wandered into another person's land in order to pick berries or something that is very much different than, say, breaking and entering in order to commit robbery, for example.
It used to be less case-to-case when there were mandatory minimums. These were basically algorithmic processes to output a time range for imprisonment during sentencing. Judges had to abide by these sentencing tables. Since then, they have been abolished and judges are now empowered to make the decision themselves based on the facts of the case.
There are situations in which the outcome is not decided case-to-case. These situations are called "strict-liability" where if you commit a violation, you are punished no matter what. Thankfully, these aren't crimes. Usually, it's if you double park, you're getting a ticket. It doesn't matter whether you had the intent.
Sure we see a few cases like this every month or so, but if all the teenagers committing similar acts were actually caught; whether it be of malicious intent or just pure curiosity, the numbers would be staggering. Things really need to change, and the law needs to put more effort into understanding these breaches, along with how easily obtainable this kind of knowledge is on the internet.
I was under the impression that the US had the market cornered on this type of nonsense. Apparently we have competition.