Hacker News Reader

Comment by InclinedPlane | Hacker News Reader

Doesn't. Fucking. Matter.

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.

View on HN

Agree. Here we got a juvenile offending doing vandalism to a website. (The suggested claim).

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.

Think about what you're writing. There's a huge difference. One is writing a few pieces of code. The other exists in the physical world. That means the person spray painting the police station ("house") effects a greater magnitude of real-world consequences. For example, a person who is willing to tag a police station is more likely to be involved in violent behavior involving lethal weapons than the prankster who changes a few lines of code. The one and the other are NOT the same. Saying they are is a really dangerous idea...think about why. How could you possibly treat the street hood and the 17 year old prankster in the same way...

What theory of justice would that fall under?

"So long both teenagers are first time offenders, then the justice system should treat them the same."

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.

By your 'logic', logging into a SCADA system and opening a dam is less serious than graffiti? Or, changing the header of Amazon.com to say 'FUCK YOU', causing customers to go elsewhere and cause real monetary losses is less serious than graffiti? Because one is 'virtual'? How can you claim that some act has more severe consequences, just because it's in the physical world? Is stealing a wallet with 10$ worse than wiring 10$ from someone else's account?

Good points, roel. I want to say something about my "logic." I compared two similar scenarios. You're comparing industrial sabotage to tagging a wall. It's not fair to say that because this comparison fails, my logic is wrong is it? You set it up purposefully to fail. It's kind of straw-man-ish.

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?

So long both teenagers are first time offenders, then the justice system should treat them the same. Its true that the crowd surrounding a street hood tagger is likely to be much worse than the prankster, but we don't normally add harsher punishment depending on the people the accused hangs around (except in regard to conspiracy charges).

I'd have to disagree that a tagger would be more likely to be involved in violence simply as a result of being a tagger.

A tagger who has the nerve to tag a police station is more likely to be involved in violence than a fairly educated 17 year old adolescent who codes. Why is this not reasonably fair to say? I don't understand.

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?

I'm curious, how can you discourage kids from hacking into core infrastructure and accidentally breaking things?

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.

Imagine a few kids throwing rocks or sticks at buildings. A rather petty crime, normally punished by a small fine for first time offenders and youths. No reason to throw them in jail for several years right?

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.

No. A normal kid wouldn't throw rocks at buildings. It is just instinct. So there are natural instincts that prevent kids from throwing rocks at cars, hospitals or power stations.

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).

>No. A normal kid wouldn't throw rocks at buildings. It is just instinct. So there are natural instincts that prevent kids from throwing rocks at cars, hospitals or power stations.

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.

Jeez, I'm pretty sure I threw a few rocks at buildings in my teenage years, but I don't think that means my upbringing was shitty (it was about as good as possible, IMO). You're demeaning a lot of people's families if throwing a rock at a building (or something equivalent) is your litmus test for having a shitty upbringing.

Heh, yes, I didn't mean that.

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).

I recommend looking into (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandalism#Research_into_vandal...). Play vandalism and Malicious vandalism looks to match most kind of website defacing and stone throwing vandals. Throwing a metal bar at a electrical substation to see sparks go off could be done either out of anger or play.

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.

how about we work on making that infrastructure kid-proof, instead of demolishing the kids?

Yeah. That. But let's make sure we understand the point of his example. The whole point of the law is to take trials on a case by case basis. More often than not there is no broadly sweeping rule that will dictate the outcome of the case. The phrase "a rule sweeps too broadly," is common in legal parlance. (I studied law for 4 years. I have some experience with this). The kids who cause more damage will get a heavier punishment. That is simply just. What is unjust is robbing them of a huge chunk of their lives. Justice is about contextualization. We have to ask questions like; is it reasonable that they should have known better? Did they intend to bring down a power plant? Did they mean to cause bodily harm?

But 10 years for a 17 year old. Can't seem to wrap my head around that.

Difficult. What system can really stand against a determined 17 year old with some ten years of experience, including a few years of hacking and network security?

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?

If our systems aren't able to stand casual, playful attack, they have absolutely no chance at surviving a real, concerted attack. And there's plenty of evidence that the latter happen all the time nowadays.

That's one of the reasons we have fences and security cameras everywhere these days. I personally don't care for it. For example, I noticed a case a few weeks ago where three juvenile were arrested for throwing objects off a bridge into traffic, including one lump of concrete that weighed 50 pounds. Nobody was hurt, fortunately, but it wasn't for lack of trying and they did damage several vehicles.

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.

Why are you divorcing actions from context and circumstance? Those are how we determine the seriousness of a crime and the legal repercussions of it.

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.

Exactly, the beauty of the law is that almost always, the outcome is decided on a case to case basis.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com