U.S. Computer Criminals
to Get Longer Sentences
(From SANS News Bites, Vol. 5 Num. 40, http://www.sans.org)
People convicted of cyber crimes will begin receiving harsher
sentences in November . Under the new guidelines, developed
by the US Sentencing Commission, most computer crimes are punishable
by sentences of between 1 and 10 years; if the offense threatens
or results in injury or death the prison sentence is 20 years.
Virus and worm authors will see a 50% increase in length of prison
sentences; sentences for those convicted of breaking into government
systems or systems connected with the nation's critical infrastructure
will be double what they were before.
[Editor's Note (Schultz): This is a very positive development.
Cybercriminals have not been getting sentences that are proportional
to the magnitude of the crimes they have been committing. (Schneier):
I worry whether this is going to be used to increase the threat
for crimes that are only peripherally computer-related by tying
them to computer use. It's already a problem that damage amounts
in computer-related crime are often based on numbers plucked from
© 2013 Happy Hacker All rights reserved.
in 4th edition now!