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Lesser crimesLesser crimesPosted May 30, 2005 17:25 UTC (Mon) by copsewood (subscriber, #199)In reply to: Lesser crimes by man_ls Parent article: Underground showdown (Register)
Sorry, but only a fool, illiterate or bigot would consider any kind of theft worse than murder. I also think you would also have extreme difficulty persuading any likely jury or legislative assembly that this was the case. That doesn't mean all juries when lynching was common in certain backward places (particularly the US south in the first half of the twentieth century) were as literate as they now are, nor that all juries now are as well educated as they ever will be. However, when well-educated juries refuse to convict in particular cases, progressive legislators have to take notice. We can also expect laws concerning computer crimes to follow a patern of growing maturity, as computing and networking issues become better understood by the public at large and elected representatives.
It is the responsibility of those who believe that what would otherwise be a lesser crime is neccessary to prevent a greater crime to educate the jury when and if their case comes to trial. The point I was making is that this principle has been successfully applied in many areas previously - and there is every reason to believe this will happen again in other areas. The chances of a defacer ever coming to trial for defacing a phishing site is pretty minimal anyway, assuming the police put onto this kind of job have the sense not to go after totally the wrong target.
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Lesser crimes Posted May 30, 2005 23:08 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Sorry, but only a fool, illiterate or bigot would consider any kind of theft worse than murder.Agreed. Unluckily the world is full of fools. Who is to convince them that the "lesser crime" principle does not apply to them? Furthermore, in a legal environment where file sharing carries a bigger penalty than manslaughter, who sets the scale? I don't know. Even if in the phishing case the morality is quite clear (you deface a site thus preventing gullible people to lose their life savings), I would not like the idea to become a doctrine.
Just war and authority theory Posted Jun 2, 2005 9:17 UTC (Thu) by copsewood (subscriber, #199) [Link] Please see the Wikipedia entry on just war theory . The only sense in which defacing a phishing site might not meet these criteria is in that: "war can only be waged under legitimate authority". Of course it would be better to be able to refer a properly constituted law enforcement agency to the phishing site with the authority to close it down and prosecute the perpetrators, but I guess you will appreciate the practical difficulties of communicating across multiple jurisdictions using multiple languages in order to achieve this. Also the defacement is proportionate in these circumstances. The doctrine of just war concerns actions which can result in the death of many people. There is scope for arguing the case about "due authority" when those who should be able to act as due authorities are unresponsive and uncommunicative. The Wikipedia entry on authority is also relevant, in the sense that official authority has to be capable of appropriate action to be generally recognisable as such.
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