Lawyers Say Hackers Are Sentenced Too Harshly
from the the-scary-computer-hacker dept
Anyone following lawsuits against anyone caught illegally hacking knows that the “damages” caused are always vastly inflated and the risks that the person poses are exaggerated (remember how Kevin Mitnick was kept in solitary and not allowed to make a phone call, after the judge was convinced he could start a nuclear war by whistling into the phone). Now a group of lawyers, including (not surprisingly) the EFF and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers have come out saying that people in computer crime cases are being sentenced too harshly. This is in response to a request for comments by the “US Sentencing Commission” on how convicted computer criminals should be sentenced. Hopefully, reasonable, well-thought out position papers such as this one will have a stronger impact on the Commission than the typical fear-mongering that those who don’t understand the technology often spread about the “dangers” and “costs” of hacking.
