Discussion on:

Poll: Is 25 years in prison too much, not enough, or just right for the TJX hacker?

U.S. Prosecutors will request a 25-year sentence for Albert Gonzalez--who pleaded guilty to stealing credit and debit card numbers. Is that too much, not enough, or just about right? Take the poll and let me know.

Original post and poll:
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/itdojo/?p=1604

It just shows where the courts priorities are. Those guilty of first degree premeditated murder usually get out in 7 years, but messing with a corporation -- now you're in trouble

He didn't hurt the corporations as much as he ruined the lives of countless innocent people.

And are they paying restitution?
Theft is theft regardless of whether what was taken is secured or not, but when there is a expectation of security which is not only unmet, but disregarded, then there is more than one guilty party. What do you think would happen to a bank that left the vault open, alarm off and the front door unlocked.

Don't forget the scale of his body of work. 7 years is for a single premeditated murder, his work is more in line with the works of Charles Manson, a serial killer, or in his case a serial con artist.
Manson - currently serving life in prision.
In comparison 25 years for the body of work is a short sentence compared to what could be if there were not a plea bargin.

it is an improper comparison as a life is priceless and no money in the World can bring it back to life.

7 years for murder and 25 for theft, shows the real American way!

...is that murderers should get far more time than they do, as there exist many activities that are treated worse than murder by the court.

"Maverick"?

Or, have all your studies beaten you into the ground?

...and yes to the second, though I should recover sometime soon.

Recover.

This place needs mind and eyes young, fresh, and impertinent like yours.

...is young, and only in a relative sense.

It's far too dangerous for me to claim the others. (Though there's no doubt my doom- if planned and plotted- will come despite any and all preventative measures that I could possibly implement.)

None of this matters, of course, if I misinterpreted the intent and/or body of your reply.

I disagree purely because I don't think they (murderers and rapist) should even land in jail.
At least, not for long.
It shouldn't take that long to "dispose" of them properly.
It takes a lot less space to store a coffin or an urn than it does a criminal and much cheaper to feed too!
Oh allright, we'll only castrate the rapists.
That should appease the liberal "oh but what about their human rights" whiners.
And on that, their "human rights" should be revoked the instant they decided to "not play nice" with society.
Opinions, of course, may vary.

Have my sincerest condolences for your warped thinking.

Col

Thats why sentencing is sometimes not in proportion to the crime. You could kill a man, rape a child, peddle drugs to teenagers and get less than 25 years. Justice was supposed to be blind.

Meaning: if you put him away for more than a few years, he will be out of touch with reality in the computer business and will therefore be useless. However, parole him to the CIA or FBI ... or a Credit card company and use his current attributes and he may well be able to 'repay' his debt to society in an appropriate way.

I also lay a large part of the blame on the companies whose systems were compromised: Micro$osft in very large measure for using the public (and making them pay through the nose for the 'privelege') to 'test' their half-boiled software at their own risk (read the eula), and those companies that had not installed the latest patches...

According to this article:
http://www.crn.com/security/224200273
at the time of his arrest, Alberto Gonzales was being paid $75,000 a year by the US Secret Service to work as an "undercover informant" at the very time he was ripping off 45,700,000 credit card numbers from TJX.

The man is incorrigible. 25 years is not enough, IMO. If he had succeeded in sequestering the money he made selling the credit card numbers in an off-shore account, he can get out afte 25 years and still have a fine pay day with his ill-gotten goods.

According to this article, the authorities found $1.1 million buried in the backyard of Gonzales's parents -- who knows how much money he succeeded in sequestering away somewhere?

He was already an informant. Keeping him active is just giving him more opportunity.

is a huge security problem, regardless of the OS. By the way, if your going to bash Microsoft and not spell the name, at least get it right "Micro$oft".

As for him being productive, I would say that he deserves the 25 years if he was using knowledge gained as an informant.
There is also a big difference between an informant and a consultant. Keep in mind that as the mastermind, he may not have even had the skills to do this, just the plan and knew who did have the skills.

Give him a choice, 25 years or get handed over to the people who's lives he made a living hell when he compromised their credit and debit cards. 25 years would be sounding good.

Just hand him to the angry mob with their torches and pitchforks why don't you. Maybe you could take him out back, throw a noose over a tree and give that boy a public hangin'

Yes, the dark-ages were so much fun and just so wonderfully civilised.

... for the corporate idiots who ran confidential customer information over unsecured wireless networks.

I have zero sympathy for thieves. And only very slightly more for "victims" who left the windows up and the doors standing wide open.

Although in this case, the true victims are the customers whose identities were stolen through a combination of Gonzalez' malice and TJX's abysmal stupidity.

Why do these tax evaders who do more dammage to the economy evade justice.

http://www.whistleblowers.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1010&Itemid=141

it's the American way!

If your name is Albert Gonzalez, and you plead guilty, you get 25 years.

If your name is ALBERTO GONZALEZ, you lie to the congress about torturing prisoners, say that habeus corpus is "quaint," and help create more martyrs to fight against the US, killing more of our military, then DENY it, you get nothing, nada, nill, zilch.

Something is severely wrong with this picture!

The guy is no physical threat to anyone. There's no reason for him to get years of room, board, medical on the taxpayers' dime. There's no chance for him to make restitution. Slap a anklet on him, use the savings to pay a probation officer, bar him from computer use, give him a minimum wage job picking lettuce, and let him start paying back.

Give him a job doing whatever, and give him $2 an hour out of the $7.50 and let the rest pay back the defrauded people and the cost to keep him.

$5.50 an hour...12 hours a day...26 days a month...for 300 months...around $500,000 he'd be able to pay back...

That's a start. lol

he'd get in the prison laundry. I'm feeling generous; kick in a tent and sleeping bag. After 3 years of good behavior, he can apply for a Coleman stove. After 4 years, he can apply for the fuel for it.

There is more to consider than what was taken from the consumers. I don't know about other companies, but we were put on "full alert". All other product work was put on hold as we had to review every system to ensure we were locked down. While we had all ready gone through the hardening procedures as part of normal process, we still had to verify every box to ensure none had been missed. That was downtime for every IT person in our company. I can only imagine how many other companies were prompted to go into lockdown mode. While it is a good exercise to do, it is disruptive when it is not done in a planned way, but rather as a knee jerk reaction to an incident elsewhere. So while they can put a dollar cost on the perceived loss from stolen credit card info, there is really no way to tally the "real" cost as many companies do not report these kinds of efforts and the costs involved. We really need to come down on guys like these and the spammers, or there really is no deterrent. Can you imagine how much faster the Internet could be if we lost those billions upon billions of spam messages clogging it each day?

And to imagine that we all are in some way providing impetuous help to the process.

You think probabtion will keep him off the web? Off computers? Cell phones?

This is the same thing that prevents punishment from being a deterrent.

Throw him under the jail, for about 100 years and tell everyone that is convicted after him will get sent the same place for +10% of the previous.

make the punishment hurt, and some will be deterred.

You think punishment will act as a deterrent? Only for those already inclined to be law abiding. It clearly had no deterrence in this case; why would it deter others? White collar criminals are ego-driven, convinced they're smarter than the authorities and CAN'T be caught.

No, I don't think probation will keep him off the web. I do think someone with this high an e-profile can be kept off the web, at least to the extent he can do additional extensive damage. I think any additional damage he would do be less than the cost of incarcerating him for 25 years; use the savings for direct compensation.

Cell phones? He can't get one without a credit card, and that ain't happening. He's not going to have enough money to even go pre-paid. He won't be able to afford a system of his own, or an account with an ISP. This leaves him with publicly available systems in libraries and the like. Those should already be locked down pretty well; if not, they've got bigger problems than this one guy.

You don't think this guy will be able to con a cell phone or internet account because he doesn't have a credit card? I think that's a bit naive. The cheapest solution is a bullet. Less than $1. The fact is, with the psychological makeup, ego and lack of morality of this guy, nothing is going to prevent him from re-offending.

Well, the cost of housing him for 25 years would indeed be a financial burden on my tax dollars. The dangers of letting him stay out, shackled, watched, "in a tent" or whatever would be dangerous, and probably, eventually as big a danger to the net and all that entails, as he was before he got caught. Trash like him is smart enough to be able to circumvent most any "surveillance" that is foisted on him. Eventually, after a couple of years of being a "rehabilitated citizen", his watchers would relax, and he would be back at it, or he would flee to Bumfuck Egypt and find more like-minded trash, and start all over again.
My choice? Put him in a dark hole, lock the door and throw away the key. Oatmeal and lunc hmeat for the next 50 years is too good for him and his ilk.

out after 7 years. Seems the US values money more than life.

"Cell phones? He can't get one without a credit card..."

Not necessarily, as I purchased two without one- without a plan, but perfectly functional.

"He won't be able to afford a system of his own, or an account with an ISP. This leaves him with publicly available systems in libraries and the like. Those should already be locked down pretty well; if not, they've got bigger problems than this one guy."

1. He could simply steal someone else's internet.
2. They (public systems- at least around where I live) do have bigger problems than that one guy.
3. If all else fails, he could potentially someone to help him.

I'm with you, except that even under this plan, he'd still be on the taxpayers dime. The guy does need to put some roof over his head, and some food in his belly, and under this plan how long do you think before he'd qualify for welfare? The real solution is to make jail less cushy (and thus less expensive). And definitely find a job for him during the day where he can contribute back to society for all the damage he's done. If you want to send him out picking lettuce during the day and then put him in a cell at night, I'm good with that.

I would use his knowledge to help companies and governments to better protect themselves. Make the guy work for free rest of his life for society and help protect our networks. Put an ankle bracelet and watch him like a hawk

How would you propose to stop him from using a computer? Tell him NOT to do it again? That's like telling a pig it can't roll in the mud any more. It just isn't going to happen. Sorry.

With all due respect, you're perspective is seriously naive. You obviously haven't been a victim of identity theft. It will make your life pretty unpleasant for a (potentially) very long time.

White collar or not, this guy cares about nothing but himself; his weapon of choice just happens to be a computer instead of a gun.

The only deterrent IMO is an application of force; detain him for the max time allowed by law.

Do you really think someone with that level of intelligence would be around the US long picking lettuce? Maybe if they asked him to promise, you know cross my heart hope to die kind of promise he'd stick around. Yeah maybe if he said he was sorry....

I suspect for the $80K it will cost annually to lock him up that someone could find some form of e-banishment, but y'all push for long sentences if you prefer.

damage and he should be put away. The physical threat is only further removed, pushed back a bit, not so obvious - what about the damage when 20,000 people find their identities stolen and their bank accounts empty? That's pretty life-threatening I'd say. Suddenly no bills can be paid, medical insurance premiums can't be paid, mortgage bill, foreclosure, out on the streets, mental stress and anxiety, hungry children. No physical threat to anyone? There's a special place in h*ll for these guys, and the computer botnet guys.

I agree! Why put him in Club Fed on our dime? Make him suffer by actually breaking a sweat doing menial labor. How about cleaning the grease traps at McDs or running a "honey sucker" (septic tank truck)?

I wish there was some consistency. When murderers and rapists get less it disturbs me. Kinda like that TV evangelist yrs ago who got 17yrs. Yes what he did was dishonest, wrong and immoral, but.. again he got more than quite a number of violent criminals received, before and after. I don't mind seeing con men going to prison, I just think there should be balance.

I think they could solve it a lot easier by putting him on probation and court order to never touch a computer for the rest of his life. current prison systems have enough REAL criminals to deal with like rapists and murders.

How many people did his actions cause a $$$ loss? That number in years should be added to his sentence. He should be denied any computer access in prison, so he can't devise another scheme to defraud.

Take a step back and think how much time 25 years actually is. When he gets out it will only be to be imprisoned by a old body and likely into a world that will think twice before hiring him. Its way too much. 5-10 years would be appropriate. Even then that's a hell of a lot of time but at least he would have a chance to enjoy some of his remaining young life. You minus well execute him any longer then that.