Evidently they’ve caught the hacker responsible for the DoS attacks in February. My question is, “Is he being punished enough? And if not, what should his punishment be?”
This is from the Chicago Tribune.
So, whaddaya think? Is a slap on the wrist enough? Personally, I don’t think so. Should we let him off easier because he’s “only a kid”? I don’t think so. But I don’t know what to do with him, either. What should be done with this kid?
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
Criminally not much can be done to him. What is the Canadian law say when it comes to parental accountability and civil actions. I know that here in the States generally if a kid commits an act of vandalism often times the parents can be sued in civil court for the cost of the damage. That actually sounds pretty ok.
I think they oughta do the same thing they’ve done with Mitnick:
Keep him away from all technology more advanced than a toaster for 8 or 10 years.
(N.B. I think that was too much punishment for Mitnick, whose situation was different from this. But this kid sounds like a snotnosed spoiled little hacker-wannabe…I have no sympathy for him. “mafiaboy,” Indeed! snort )
He should be punished like any other vandal is punished. What is the punishment for a kid that TPs someone house, or does a “doughnut” on someone’s lawn, or plays mailbox baseball? Of course, the financial loss to the companies is much greater.
mafiaboy likely faces a maximum custodial sentence of two years, no more. He may be liable to pay compensation or restitution.
I’m going from the press reports, which suggest that mafiaboy is charged under section 430 of the Criminal Code of Canada:
The normal punishment for this offence is set out later in the section:
However, mafiaboy is under 18, so he would be a young offender, prosecuted under the Young Offenders Act of Canada. The substantive offence is the same, but the punishment is different.
The court can also impose a custodial sentence, under section 20(1)(k):
Since the base penalty in the Criminal Code is 5 years, as a young offender the maximum would be 2 years.
(Note that there is no guarantee that if convicted, he would face the maximum, or any custodial sentece. The judge could use one of the range of non-custodial options available under section 20.)
The Crown could apply to transfer a youth to adult court, where the adult sentences would apply, but the courts normally only grant those applications in cases like murder .
I suppose there may also be a question of extradition to the United States.
If he were sued civilly in Quebec, the lawsuit would be under the Civil Code of Quebec. It’s been a while since I looked at the Civil Code, but I don’t recall any express provisions for parental civil liability. It may be implicit in the section dealing with fault, however.
Thanks for doing your bit to advance the cause of human knowledge.
Yeah, but then there’s the psychological thing. Screwing up e-Bay or Yahoo has literally world-wide consequences. People get scared–even the SDMB got real nervous about jokes about spamming the SDMB, witness the recent OgreFade/Urge thing. I have to wonder, if this kind of thing keeps up, are the Powers That Be going to get nervous enough so that they start regulating the Internet? “Well, we can’t have this sort of thing, we’ll have to have licensing…” etc. Like when somebody abuses the privilege at the library by razoring things out of magazines, so the librarian puts all the magazines behind the counter, so you have to ask for them.
Shouldn’t something more drastic be done to Mafiaboy and all the others, something that sinks in to the hacker community? Is there anything that COULD have a cautionary effect on all the frustrated adolescent hackers and crackers out there?
I’m reminded of the saying, “Justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done.”
If you TP somebody’s lawn, and you get caught, usually they make you clean it up yourself, or else you have to do “community service” like pick up trash along the highway for a Saturday afternoon. Is there anything comparable for kids like Mafiaboy? Would that keep them from doing it again?
I also think that saying it’s Yahoo’s fault for having such lax security is kind of like blaming the guy whose mailbox got stolen for “keeping it right out there where kids could get at it.” Will the ultimate result of Yahoo & Co.'s tightening up security be that the Internet becomes licensed, with websites being like TV stations? When people get frightened, they start passing laws to fix what frightens them.
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
What is he, fifteen years old? Make him do community service - say, doing some computer programming for a local charity or something. If you’re really mad at him, make him do a lot of community service. Then, when he’s done, wipe his record clean.
That gives him something useful to do, may well turn him in a better direction than he was heading before, and doesn’t mark him forever.
Well, criminal as the act, he did do a vital service. Why, you ask? He showed the back door to the companies. Sure, he should punished, but not to the extent of being someone named Butch’s “special friend” in the state pen. Companies pay hackers to get into their websites and systems to make them more stable when a fault is detected. Think about what would happen if someone with a real agenda found out how to take down Ebay and Yahoo. Still, anyone who chooses the stupid name of “mafiaboy” with no regard if they’re even Italian, much less of Canadian residency, should be picking up cans on I-90 for the next five years. Strange justice? Hey, it works.
“I know you’ve come to kill me. Shoot, coward, you’re only going to kill a man.” -Che Guevara, Oct 9, 1967.