Why 'Cyber Crime' Should Just Be Called 'Crime' 368
netzar writes "CAUSE executive director Neil Schwartzman, in a post on CircleID, urges governments and law enforcement to treat cyber crime as what it really is: 'crime': 'When someone is mugged, harassed, kidnapped or raped on a sidewalk, we don't call it "sidewalk crime" and call for new laws to regulate sidewalks. It is crime, and those who commit crimes are subject to the full force of the law. For too long, people have referred to spam in dismissive terms: just hit delete, some say, or let the filters take care of it. Others — most of us, in fact — refer to phishing, which is the first step in theft of real money from real people and institutions, as "cyber crime." It's time for that to stop... This isn't just email. This isn't a war. This isn't "cyber." This is crime.'"
Re:As soon as they ... (Score:1, Informative)
In other words, the act is intended to double as a threat to the rest of the community? Is that what you mean?
Re:As soon as they ... (Score:1, Informative)
terrorism (using some definitions) requirea an intended political change. what's the po.itica of your proposed violence?
Re:As soon as they ... (Score:3, Informative)
Since I happened to stumble on it during a brief foray on google, I thought I'd mention that the FBI reported [fbi.gov] that 16.8% of hate crimes in 2008 were committed against whites, and more hate crimes were committed against Christians than against Muslims (8.7% vs 7.5%). (I lumped Catholics and Protestants together for the anti-Christian percentage; it's possibly higher depending on what exactly "Protestant" means and what groups are included in the "anti-other religion" percentage.)
So far I've found no evidence of a law stating hate crimes are not possible against a particular group of people, while I've found references to several laws that explicitly do not mention any particular group of people.
If you meant to say that a prosecutor would find it difficult if not impossible to convince a jury that "he hates whites" or "he hates christians" was the motive for a murder, that's a separate issue entirely, and it's possibly true, but you said "according to the law", so...
Re:As soon as they ... (Score:1, Informative)
No, terrorism is something slightly different. Terrorism is creating terror in a group as a mean to obtain something else.
A hate crime is a crime motivated by hate.