5 ms·

15 years in prison for a 26 year old who made 40.000 USD by hacking and pleaded guilty? This is nothing more than a morbid joke. The justice system's goal is to

15 years in prison for a 26 year old who made 40.000 USD by hacking and pleaded guilty? This is nothing more than a morbid joke. The justice system's goal is to rehabilitate, not obliterate one's future.

TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago
And $17.5 million damages to pay!
tzs 13y ago
> 15 years in prison for a 26 year old Why is his age relevant? Would you be OK with 15 years if he were 30? 50? > who made 40.000 USD Why is how much he made relevant, rather than how much he cost his victims? If I steal millions in precious gems from you, but only sell them for hundreds, would you argue that my crime is only a misdemeanor?
- jamra 13y ago
  I would make no such claim, however, 15 years is still too large a sentence. I believe that you can send enough of a message with a five year sentence.
- homulilly 13y ago
  Destroying someone's life for losing rich corporations some money, even if its through theft, is unconscionable.
- nnq 13y ago
  Even having a sentence dependent on "how much he cost his victims" is very wrong imho. The sentence should only depend on how violent the crime was, how much effort was made to avoid being caught and how "malevolent" or carefully planned / premeditated it was. Maybe it should matter how much of the stolen money he actually spent (simply because money spent by a criminal tends to get into other criminals' hands and fuels crime by the process of being spent), or whether any company actually went out of business because of the losses, but even this stretches it quite a bit... The value of money is relative. Stealing $100M from a hedge fund or a bank could have very little impact on society as a whole. Doing an armed robbery for $1K on the other hand is actually very dangerous because things can get easily out of hand and innocent people can easily get killed. Now, whether the criminal stole the $100M by pointing a gun at someone's head or threatening to kill someone's family in exchange for some access codes, or he just "hacked" them, that tells you a lot about how dangerous the thief actually is to other people, what other crimes he would be capable of committing and whether he can actually be "rehabilitated" or not, and this is what the sentence should be based on. (Yeah, I know this is not how the the US legal system works, and I get that there are current advantages to the way it works now, mainly being good-enough at deterring large scale white-collar crime, but still, I think it's just plain wrong...)
mindslight 13y ago
No, the justice system's goal is to keep the people who work for the justice system employed. > The important thing in these cases isn't so much: How did they get in?” O’Neill said. “It's: Where did the data go? Mhmm. No need to worry about the actual longstanding blatant flaws that allow for any of this. Let's just hope to catch some low hanging fruit with poor opsec so we can pretend that we're controlling the problem. These problems could go away overnight if banks required more authentication than just an account number to withdraw money.
- jamra 13y ago
  It kind of makes you wonder how many bad guys are getting away with these kinds of crimes.
jamesaguilar 13y ago
Rehab is not the only possible goal of a justice system. Deterrence is another valid goal.
afarrell 13y ago
The system's goal is to prevent crime. Rehabilitation is one of the ways it tries to do this, but that is generally directed at people with socioeconomic or mental health issues. Someone who just decided they wanted to use their economically valuable skills to steal? What can be done to rehabilitate them? See http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=60 http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=60 for more on the roles of punishment in the criminal justice system.
- nnq 13y ago
  It's quite different from "real world stealing". For a hacker, he only steals information and sells it. The actual money is siphoned out further down the chain by the people that buy stolen cc numbers and actually milk them... Most of these "hackers" are just stupid kids that think along the lines of "hey, I just stole these bits of data from there and then sold them to this other guy for profit". Some even do it simply for the "high", as an antidote for depression or other mental issues, they could probably make even more money by simply finding a decent job that matched their skills set. These kids are 99% harmless to society because they would never commit any violent crimes like an armed robbery or even a purely financial crime that would involve directly stealing from someone they can identify. Now, put them in jail for XX years, maybe even parole them and force them to work for a lowest payed wage for gov agency ABC (cough, helping it spy on its own citizens, without the risk of "crying wolf" like ES did, cough) to keep their "conditional freedom" (though this probably only happens for the most skilled of them), and at the end of it you will have transformed them into pissed off anti-social criminals that are ripe to engage in real violent criminal activities or ripe for recruitment by teorist cells... From society's point of view, this is like smoking harder in order to cure your lung cancer...
homulilly 13y ago
This is US prisons we're talking about. The US prison system is a business so they have a vested interest in keeping people in prison as long as possible in as shitty conditions as possible.

TazeTSchnitzel 13y ago

And $17.5 million damages to pay!

tzs 13y ago

> 15 years in prison for a 26 year old Why is his age relevant? Would you be OK with 15 years if he were 30? 50? > who made 40.000 USD Why is how much he made relevant, rather than how much he cost his victims? If I steal millions in precious gems from you, but only sell them for hundreds, would you argue that my crime is only a misdemeanor?

jamra 13y ago
I would make no such claim, however, 15 years is still too large a sentence. I believe that you can send enough of a message with a five year sentence.
homulilly 13y ago
Destroying someone's life for losing rich corporations some money, even if its through theft, is unconscionable.
nnq 13y ago
Even having a sentence dependent on "how much he cost his victims" is very wrong imho. The sentence should only depend on how violent the crime was, how much effort was made to avoid being caught and how "malevolent" or carefully planned / premeditated it was. Maybe it should matter how much of the stolen money he actually spent (simply because money spent by a criminal tends to get into other criminals' hands and fuels crime by the process of being spent), or whether any company actually went out of business because of the losses, but even this stretches it quite a bit... The value of money is relative. Stealing $100M from a hedge fund or a bank could have very little impact on society as a whole. Doing an armed robbery for $1K on the other hand is actually very dangerous because things can get easily out of hand and innocent people can easily get killed. Now, whether the criminal stole the $100M by pointing a gun at someone's head or threatening to kill someone's family in exchange for some access codes, or he just "hacked" them, that tells you a lot about how dangerous the thief actually is to other people, what other crimes he would be capable of committing and whether he can actually be "rehabilitated" or not, and this is what the sentence should be based on. (Yeah, I know this is not how the the US legal system works, and I get that there are current advantages to the way it works now, mainly being good-enough at deterring large scale white-collar crime, but still, I think it's just plain wrong...)

mindslight 13y ago

No, the justice system's goal is to keep the people who work for the justice system employed. > The important thing in these cases isn't so much: How did they get in?” O’Neill said. “It's: Where did the data go? Mhmm. No need to worry about the actual longstanding blatant flaws that allow for any of this. Let's just hope to catch some low hanging fruit with poor opsec so we can pretend that we're controlling the problem. These problems could go away overnight if banks required more authentication than just an account number to withdraw money.

jamra 13y ago
It kind of makes you wonder how many bad guys are getting away with these kinds of crimes.

jamesaguilar 13y ago

Rehab is not the only possible goal of a justice system. Deterrence is another valid goal.

afarrell 13y ago

The system's goal is to prevent crime. Rehabilitation is one of the ways it tries to do this, but that is generally directed at people with socioeconomic or mental health issues. Someone who just decided they wanted to use their economically valuable skills to steal? What can be done to rehabilitate them? See http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=60 http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=60 for more on the roles of punishment in the criminal justice system.

nnq 13y ago
It's quite different from "real world stealing". For a hacker, he only steals information and sells it. The actual money is siphoned out further down the chain by the people that buy stolen cc numbers and actually milk them... Most of these "hackers" are just stupid kids that think along the lines of "hey, I just stole these bits of data from there and then sold them to this other guy for profit". Some even do it simply for the "high", as an antidote for depression or other mental issues, they could probably make even more money by simply finding a decent job that matched their skills set. These kids are 99% harmless to society because they would never commit any violent crimes like an armed robbery or even a purely financial crime that would involve directly stealing from someone they can identify. Now, put them in jail for XX years, maybe even parole them and force them to work for a lowest payed wage for gov agency ABC (cough, helping it spy on its own citizens, without the risk of "crying wolf" like ES did, cough) to keep their "conditional freedom" (though this probably only happens for the most skilled of them), and at the end of it you will have transformed them into pissed off anti-social criminals that are ripe to engage in real violent criminal activities or ripe for recruitment by teorist cells... From society's point of view, this is like smoking harder in order to cure your lung cancer...

homulilly 13y ago

This is US prisons we're talking about. The US prison system is a business so they have a vested interest in keeping people in prison as long as possible in as shitty conditions as possible.