Destroy a life, but don’t destroy the system
From a hacker’s perspective, I really couldn’t care less about Gary Mckinnon. It’s my understanding he used some pretty juvenile… I hesitate to use the word… “noob” techniques to break into a few NASA machines here and there. The media are making him out to be some super hacker when in actuality he can’t be that great because he got caught (it’s worth noting that I couldn’t have cared less about the fate of Kevin Mitnick, either.. I didn’t rally behind the whole “free kevin” bullshit).
But no, the thing that strikes me as odd is this: the US government are wasting who knows how much money trying to extradite him to the USA. They will then put him on trial, where he could potentially face up to 60 years in prison.
Now contrast this to a friend of mine, who lost his sister to a drunk driver several years back. The idiot who killed his sister was just sentenced recently, and received three years.
Rapists and child molesters frequently receive jail terms that don’t enter into double digit territory, and typically those that do are repeat offenders.
So what’s the moral of the story the justice system is sending our way? Taking a life is one thing, but messing with the system is just completely unacceptable. Am I the only person on earth who finds it blasphemous that the legal system cares more about something intangible… intellectual property, which can always be replaced, than it does about a life - which can never be repaired or replaced?
If you want my honest opinion, it’s in NASA and the military’s best interests that all criminal laws protecting their computer systems be stricken from the book. NASA builds the computer systems that go to space, the moon, mars, to have over-engineered fault tolerance. There are so many checks and balances to ensure that failure is not an option - why can they not do the same for their terrestrial computer systems?
And as far as the military’s computer systems go, well shit… if some high school aged kids can break into your network and the only thing stopping them is the threat of jail time, what possible hope can you have in time of war?
No. Destroy a life, and pay your debt to society for maybe a quarter of a century. Attempt to destroy the system, and rot for eternity.
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Montpelier, IN 47359, USANavigation: Older Entry Newer Entry