Are Hackers "Terrorists"??

[SARGE]

This is dated from September but haven't heard anything about it. Seems knee-jerked to me. Life in prison for spam mail?

http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/13792.html

[Lain]

I heard they were thinking about passing a bill in congress that would make it possible to try hackers as terrorists, but it seems to be more of a scare tactic to me. I suppose when you are a greedy bastard in congress who has stock in some .com flop you want to make sure some 14 y.o. hacker is gonna go to the detention center for a long time.

[pcoopers]

I'm a Daddy. My teen and pre-teen boys want to know how things work. We sit around and do the lessons found in Hackman tutorial. We diddle with programs, including hacking the Windows 98SE system. Maybe someday, my boys will be on the team develops the OS to supplant windows. For this, yes, Bill Gates would send us to prison.

In my defense, I only agree to the EULA during installation out of coercion. If I disagree, Billy boy won't allow his OS to run for me.

Yes, law enforcement is going crazier, and people in general are supporting the craziness. Rest assured, things will get worse. And don't for a moment think it will pass. Income tax was a temporary measure, remember?

[morriswindgate]

As crazy as it sounds, most hackers are only out to find security issues. If it wasn't for hackers then there probably would not be anything called a Microsoft Security Update. It has long been known that hackers who found security hole in MS products have relayed that info to Microsoft and other computer outlets. Don't get hackers confused with warez and virus/Trojan people.
As a matter of fact there is a site that is all about security issues that is ran by hackers to let people know what programs are susceptible to exploit and how to defeat it.

[aym]

Maybe you should ask: "Are Terrorists Hackers?"

[SARGE]

Once upon a time, when Reno was covering for Slick, my sons informed me of "things they knew how to do". I sat there wide-eyed and jaw dropping. I asked where/how they learned those things and they said, "gosh Dad, it's easy". I told them I didn't want Reno kicking our door down, so they must cease and desist; they did (I hope). Long way from blowing things up.

[Statica]

I for one would like to see the classification of a Hacker as a Terrorist. Let's step away from the gruesome images of the Al Queda and other such whackos, but you know what .. if you were to look at it, a Hacker is a Purveyor of Terror. We have to spend an inordinate amt of resources to protect ourselves from these "Terrorists", we spend billions of dollars in futility in protection devices and schema; we spend countless processor hours and digital resources (bandwidth, CPU, RAM ...) trying to establish protection devices; we spend untold man hours trying to recover from the handiwork of hackers and virus creators and the like.
We have as a society evolved to the structure where we consider information as $; and this is probably the only way to protect it .. strong classification of what a hacker is .. be it the introverted kid or the mercenary programmer.

A hacker as a friend who finds out security glitches is a bit strong, IMHO. Yes there are loads of people out there who check and recheck lines of code for vulnerabilities, but they are not out to bring the system down as an exploit. That is a different set of people, who help pompous corps realize that their products are as thin as a soap bubble.


Doubt whether any legislation will help .. am still fuming over the legislation requiring spammers to put up a "way out of the subscription"
Now my spam is about 10 lines longer cos they have to quote the law, and give a useless email address to unsubscribe.

[HAL9000]

Originally posted by Statica .. am still fuming over the legislation requiring spammers to put up a "way out of the subscription" Now my spam is about 10 lines longer cos they have to quote the law, and give a useless email address to unsubscribe.

Yea, like the one I get for a Loan package. At the bottom of the spam they say:

"We strongly oppose the use of SPAM email and do not want anyone who does not wish to receive
our mailings to receive them. Please click here to be deleted from further communication
Click Here to unsubscribe from future promotions."

The strongly oppose, but I get that same e-mail from 10 different e-mail addresses a day!