HACKERS

I’m not an advocate of passing a lot of laws. I think there are far more citizens in prisons than need to be there. But something needs to be done about hackers. See this:

Jan 28, 4:55 PM (ET)SEATTLE (Reuters) - A federal judge sentenced a teenager to a year and half of prison on Friday for releasing a variant of the Blaster worm that was used to attack more than 48,000 computers.
Jeffrey Lee Parson, 19, appeared in U.S. District Court in Seattle, where he was also ordered to perform community service, pay restitution and be placed under supervision for three years following the sentence.

It’s time we called these people what they are. They are internet terrorists. Whether or not their goal is to cripple communication and commerce and disrupt private lives, that is the result of releasing these viruses on the internet.

This 19-year-old young man was caught and got 18 months in prison. Did the punishment fit the crime? Further down in the story is this:

Attorneys from Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, a Seattle suburb, said that damages could easily amount to more than a million dollars.

So the clown got 18 months for a million dollars worth of damage. That works out to about 1800 dollars a day. That doesn’t seem equitable. That asshole will never see the day he can earn that much. Why not sentence these domestic terrorists to a length of time in proportion to the damage they have caused? In this case ten years would amount to $100,000 a year. Still not enough but a hell of a lot better than a lousy 18 months.

I’m sure that giving them sentences like that would discourage a lot of the hackers.