Joel Rivers wrote: > > What civil liberties are we giving up? Since when is hacking, > virus-writing, and website defacing a civil liberty? We have the right to research whatever we like. If code is speach, then virus writing is a civil liberty. Defacing someone else's website without permission is a crime, and should remain so, with a reasonable punishment attached. As always, people should be punished after they do something wrong. Not because they have tools that might enable them to do so. Not because they know how. Not because the want to. Only when they do, IMNSHO. > I > will agree that life imprisionment is a little harsh for defacing > a web site but I think that harsher penalties hopefully will serve as a > deterent for this type of behavior. So, if speeding, jay walking, and giving an MP3 to a friend are declared terrorist activities, retroactively, you won't mind turning yourself in when the bill is passed? Are you deterred yet? Mind if we slap a GPS on your rental car, and send the feds around if you do 66 in a 65 zone? > > I'll say that the "increase in government surveillance authority" is the > primary area of concern in regards to "losing civil liberties" in this bill. > If anything, this is the area we should be focusing our concern, not on > harsh penalties for those who are attempting illegal behavior. There are several areas that could be argued there. First off, is harsh punishment a deterrent? For computer break-ins, there seems to be little evidence to say that it is. Second, are the punishments appropriate? Does anyone really think a web site defacement should get a worse punishment than a murder? Third, is anything being made illegal that isn't already? I think you'll find that it is. No one should put up with something they should have a right to do being made illegal. Fourth, is there a chilling effect that will cause more harm than good? I think you'll find there is. Now, a note about this discussion from my position as moderator... This is clearly a political discussion, and it is off-topic except at the moderator's discrescion. Some I allow, some I don't. This one is pretty bad, and deserves some discussion. It's also timely. I apologize in advance to those who simply want the technical discussion, as your mailbox will be flooded for a day or two. I wish I could say that this is simply a US problem, but the US has an unreasonable amount of influence on other countries in these areas. People may have noticed that vuln-dev has been unusually quite for a week or two. There are obviously many reasons this might happen, and it does happen normally from time-to-time. I have to wonder, though, if current legislation doesn't play a small part. BB
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon Oct 15 2001 - 12:59:26 PDT