Discussion on:

Juvenile cyber-delinquency: Laws that are turning kids into criminals

In a society hell bent on making everything a crime/felony with zero tolerances (there are no more mistakes, it is a crime period), We have condoned our children to a future where everyone is going to be classified as a criminal. Today, things are considered a punishable crime, even as a minor, that stays on your record forever that when I was young would have just sent me home to my parents for a but whopping. No wonder we have so many people can not find work, outside of other reasons, there are many that with no malicious intent made a simple mistake but due to less giving laws now was made a serious crime and a felony which stays on their record and employers now search for and do not hire these folks even though the so call ed crime was 30 years ago when they were 16/17 of ages and has been a model citizen since with a loving family to support.
Sometimes I think we have fallen back to living like peasants under the emperors rule.
Next we will be told what not or can say (opps, happens now already)
Then, what we can or can not wear, What we can not read in a public library (too late again)
Sounds a lot like the Communism we were once against

We have got to get back to sperating out the simple mistakes people make from the malisious crimes and really bad people in our legal system, this is not the meaing and intent behind declaring independce for liberties, freedoms and justice.

Many of our laws actually conflict with this intent. As long as do not directly or some other means prevent someone else from their freedoms and liberties then no law should prevent me from mine, and then have justice when it does but only then and for that purpose only!!!

Time to Declare independence again from the same reasons now we did before!!!

well put. But I think you meant we have "condemned" our children to a bleak future.

maybe "consigned"

conned/owned would sort of fit too, and it's a homophone to "condoned"

Probably not what mwclarke1 meant, but it's clever.

might just work, as well.

hear hear, er, here also!

Laws should not be written to make people criminals. Your not a criminal because what you did harmed someone else, your a criminal because an arbitrary law says you are.

The focus on due process also plays into it. The judicial system has removed the power for a judge to decide a case and penalty based on it's own merits. Privatizing the prison system has ensured that business interests lobby for minimum sentances and mandatory jail time for everything. The judge has been reduced to hearing the case, accepting the verdict and reading a stock penalty off a menu.

Let's not leave the politions out of the discussion; they all claim to be "tough on crime" because when the next vote comes around, they don't want to be slandered by the oposition as "soft on criminals". "Tough on Crime" doesn't work. "War on Something" doesn't work. The War On Drugs has been an abismal failure that mis-directs immence finances and resources away from actually solving the problems with drug use; problems that could be solved at much lower financial and societle cost. The populartion of inmates encarserated for possessing a single stick of a crumbled dried weed that grows naturally pretty much everywhere in the world is absolutely insane. Get caught with a doobie, go to prison with rapists and murderers.. oh.. right.. for a minimum sentance of long enough to develop into a real criminal if you survive Con University without being stabbed to death over looking to long or looking to little at another inmate.

Rational thought has been completely tossed out with any form of justice system in exchange for a legal system that doesn't solve the actualy problems causing the increase in offenders. And this is supposed to inspire hope for the survival of future generations? Aperently the law makers get a free pass on the good drugs given this line of thinking they seem to present.

How can a nation that has the highest rate of incarceration per capita in the world call itself "free"? The US has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's prisoners. This began to happen when the War on Drugs was escalated in the late 1980s, when petty victimless drug crimes could sometimes earn greater punishments than crimes of violence.

All of this has not made us a better nation, or a freer nation. And from what I sometimes read in the comments section of political websites, there are plenty of people who would gleefully incarcerate more of their fellow citizens for petty infractions if they had the power. How did we ever get so hateful of each other?

Cheap shot, I know.

I'd say it happened in baby steps; slowly and methodically taking each next step while lulling the public to sleep. Poor education and retoric ensures that the public does not think critically about it's government. Privatization of government systems and corporate interests insure that maximizing profits outweighs public interest (encarceration pays better than rehabilitation).

The government's petition website seems a complete farce. "legalize pot" was in the first three petitions and when it hit the minimum signatures the goverment coughed out a boiler plate response regurgitating policy based evidence rather than allowing any discussion of fact based evidence. And of course once a petition is responded to, it's frozen from collecting any more signatures so that pesky surfs can't continue to be represented. (I did not that the petition the day after was "actually take these petitions seriously and allow open discusson")

It's not all the US though, the UK gov is completely beyond any rational discussion of the drug issue to the point that there own lead scientific expert was pushed out for not following the political agenda (he's now presented research that an affective anti-depresent could be derived from magic mushrooms but the gov won't allow further reasearch because the medication is derived from a "bad" natural source instead of a pharmacutical company lab). And our gov here came very close to rational thought until your gov pushed them to drop all discussion of even decriminalizing pot. Highly adictive substances like alcahol and tobacco are "ok" but less harmful and less addictive substances remain under prohibition.. hm...

It's a mess all around really. Everywhere got an elite minority spending most of it's time worrying that someone is enjoying there life differently than the puritans and governments would like.

At least not the kind of education that would make it into government schools. The failure is a moral one, which topic is hotter than a third rail in public debate.

There won't be any targeted discussion of moral right and wrong in public school as long as there's a federal funding component, due the strings attached.

And forget the remainder of our (so-called) "culture" encouraging moral behavior... popular culture is actually the cause of the juvenile black hat phenomenon.

You can also leave out the parental component, they're asleep at the switch for the most part.

may be part of the solution. Is that what you think?

`

Yes, parents are, in general, both oblivious and apathetic to what their children are doing. Now, nobody get uptight and cry out, "not me!" If you truly do care and are involved with properly bringing up your children, then you are a rarity, to be commended, and you're not part of the problem.

But we can't simply "leave out" the parental component. It is the foundation for how a child learns what is right and wrong. A child develops much of his or her personality core by the age of six. That in itself rules out the education system as the only solution. Parents' first responsibility is to provide for their children - and not just food on the table and a roof over their heads. Parents are the ones who must instill in their children a proper work ethic, a proper respect for their fellow man, a proper respect for authority, and a proper sense of right and wrong. I know some parents who think it's hilarious that their two-year-old has somehow learned to give people the finger and to swear, even though neither parent does those things. They tell me, "They don't even know what it means, and they'll grow out of it." No, they won't! Before long, they'll figure out what it means, and if their parents simply laugh at it now, they are teaching their child not that it's disrespectful and unacceptable, but that it's funny. If parents see their child doing something wrong, no matter how the child learned it or whether the child even knows it's wrong, the parents have a responsibility, if they care at all how their child will grow up, to teach them that it's wrong, why it's wrong, and that there are consequences for doing it. Obviously, if the child didn't realize they were doing something wrong, you can't very well discipline them for it, but once you do tell them there are consequences, then if they continue to do it, you do have to discipline them, otherwise you will be, in effect, teaching them that "I didn't mean any of that, it's really OK, nothing will happen to you."

Sure, the school system can - and should - teach students about the laws of the land, about what is legal and illegal, and how those laws are evolving because of technology opening up new ways of breaking them. But it's that core sense of right and wrong that is paramount. If a child doesn't understand the difference between right and wrong, then they're not going to care whether something is legal or illegal. And parents simply have to start teaching their children about right and wrong right from the start. If they wait till their children are school-aged, they'll be fighting an uphill battle. If they leave it up to the school system entirely, then they'll lose the war. Those few hours in class cannot compete with the constant pressure from popular media, friends, and even video games - pressure to push the boundaries and break the laws, and to not care that it's wrong.

Children are only inquisitive if the object of focus , is unavailable...
It is hardly acceptable for the ones that continue to police the web to even be found caring...about their own situation or a child's...when the judicious thing is to incarcerate children in prisons for life...That's the policies of politicians that do not care for children men or women...they care about financial things, economics and the the legality to accomplish the acts necessitated...to allow them to be quickly to become millionaires...
Children need a separate web not attached to commercial accounts or government web servers. Then there is no excuse for the justice department or the IRS DEA, etc to lead them into another path called hacking or cyber war...while they read the pages of the Hollywood styled pages.

"Then there is no excuse for the justice department or the IRS DEA, etc to lead them into another path called hacking or cyber war"

Hacking itself is simply self directed learning by doing by a personality that is inquisive of a topic down to details other's do not bother with. It's DIY learning and creation. I would love for my children to be self directed learners who would rather discover there topics of interest rather than zombie out in front of TV show reruns.

Now, to be clear, I don't mean the mass media mis-representation of "hacker". When what one means is criminal acts the correct term is Criminal and that behavior should not at all be encouraged.

It is the kids that have the Hacker mindset towards learning that will move society forward; the inventors who will create the next big thing, the researchers who will improve the current thing's design flaws.

To Hack; to understand a given topic through a compulsion to learn through hands on experience and need to share what one has learned with other's to build on the existing knowledge base.

And, sadly, this kind of self directed curiosity is usually beaten out of kids by the end of early schooling in the persute to manufacturer office drones. One does not graduate the current education system; one survivies it.


The idea of a children's internet has been discussed over the years. Should kids have a children's only internet where all records are expunged at age of maturity when they graduate to the grown ups area.. it's an interesting idea though implementing it does have several challenges not the least of which is how do you limit kids access to it? If I think of a solution along these lines before other's do, I'll certainly share it for public consideration. Until then, responsability will have to remain with parents knowing how to use the tools the kids use and what the kids are doing when using those tools.

An MMORPG, actually.
To be featured: Games that introduce CLI, games that introduce scripting in various formats (from the very gamy to the very realistic), games that let them use a virtual machine and virtual compiler to write programs... that their mobiles can run!
Then the kids can have quests to check code submitted by their peers (actual and/or simulated) for bugs, weaknesses and malicious functionality... getting credibility awards for doing a good job.
When a user shares a malicious app (as will likely happen sooner or later, it can be used as a learning material; showing players how the bad app was propagated, what social engineering is like, how to resist it, how to build a network of trusted peers, how to decide which privileges to allow an app.

And if the kids won't go there, I sure as hell will!

Age of consent vs. age of culpability

I find it outrageous that the American judicial system can rule that in most states you???re not responsible enough to consume alcohol until you???re 21, yet can be sent off to war at 17 or are responsible enough to be tried as an adult in a court of law before you even hit puberty.

I find that the ludicrous amounts of so called ???damages??? suffered by corporations in a lot of hacking cases are complete ???B.S.???, hyper inflated projections, usually without a single shred of evidence to support they???re supposed loss of earnings or productivity.

It???s these crazy damages which justify the harsh penalties handed out to minors on IT crimes??? case in point with the fines and potential jail time for passing on copyrighted music and movies.

It???s seen again and again across the board???.juveniles running unguided through life, getting into small scrapes, being massively over punished, and thus alienated from society and pushed further into a less desirable lifestyle including crime.

Where are the parents? Why aren???t they being questioned on their parenting methods? Since when has it become not only OK, but the de facto standard for parents to out-source their roles and responsibilities to technology?
???Oh, my child watched a violent move and then attacked another kid, TV is too violent!???
- Ok, where the hell were you when they were on their own watching violent movies without getting parental advice on perspective?

???Oh, my child spends 10 hours a day on World of Warcraft and then hacked the Pentagon???
- Ok, why the hell didn???t you create a healthier balance with school/life/computers for your child? Why didn???t you promote the kids obvious intelligence and skills in IT in a constructive manner, rather than consigning them to search online for the friendship, guidance, communication and praising that they so obviously needed?

Kids are like puppies, if they turn out bad, its not their fault ??? they???re an empty vessel waiting to be filled, trained and developed??? it???s the parents failing, and they should be held responsible.

some people can have all the attention and guidance and still turn out "bad". Others that are neglected/abused can still turn out just fine.

.. all that mental health budget has been redirected toward the prison system so we can lock those people up rather than provide any real form of treatment or rehabilitation.

There are truly bad people.. but there are not nearly as many of them as the encarcerated population count would suggest. Consider other places that show a lower encarceration rate, lower and more humanely treated prison population and higher rehabilitation. There be something rotten here.

A criminal by any other name...

"Hacking itself is simply self-directed learning by doing by a personality that is inquisive of a topic down to details others do not bother with. It's DIY learning..." ???
So is dissecting frogs, kittens and puppies. And I'm telling you now, those kids rarely turn out right.

Are you seriously trying to tell us that being curious is a sign of sociopathy? I don't want you anywhere near the legislature, pushing them to pass laws that would (for instance) criminalize the act by children of reading source code. Screw that. What are you -- a malignant narcissist?