LulzSec Hackers Sentenced To Short Prison Terms 104
mask.of.sanity writes with news of the jail sentences for three members of LulzSec. From the article: "Three members of the hacktivist group LulzSec have been sentenced to a total of six years in prison. Ryan Ackroyd, Jake Davis and Mustafa al-Bassam were charged with attacks on the Serious Organised Crime Agency, Sony, Nintendo, 20th Century Fox and governments and police forces in a 50-day spree in the summer of 2011. Davis was sentenced to 24 months in a young offender's institution and he will serve half of the sentence. Al-Bassam received a 20-month sentence, suspended for two years and 300 hours unpaid work. Ackroyd was given a 30-month sentence; he will serve half. Cleary also pleaded guilty to possession of child abuse images following a second arrest on October 4, 2012. He will be sentenced at separate hearing."
The Guardian has a short article on the remaining loose ends in the story of LulzSec.
Re:Six years is not a short term (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Six years is not a short term (Score:5, Insightful)
at least they didn't download some music or a movie while they were doing this. They may have had to pay millions in restitution as well...
Re:Six years is not a short term (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Six years is not a short term (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is exactly what the criminals were hoping you'd say. Rather than say "each received sentences of 15-24 months," it packs more punch to word it ambiguously, and leave people feeling sorry for these punk kids who "got sentenced to up to 6 years in prison! For minor crimes!"
"24 months in a young offender's institution and he will serve half of the sentence" = 12 months in juvie. Poor kid, he'll have to leave his mom's basement for a year.
"20 month sentence, suspended for 2 years and 300 hours unpaid work" = keep out of trouble, and do 300 hours of community service over the next 2 years, and he doesn't go to prison at all.
"30 month sentence, he will serve half" = 15 months in prison. The harshest of the penalties, and still a pretty fucking light sentence.
Rape can get you imprisoned up to and including a life sentence in the UK [cps.gov.uk], Not sure where you get that there's a "maximum of 5 years" for rape. In fact, the most lenient of the "starting points" and "typical ranges" list 5 years at the LOW end of the punishment, before aggravating/mitigating factors are considered.
tl;dr: fuck your idiotic ignorance of the law.
Re:Six years is not a short term (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't you mean billions of dollars? If you're going to pull figures out of your ass you might as well go big.
Re:Six years is not a short term (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering a trillion dollars worth of security fraud goes completely unpunished, this is way out of scale.
Re:Six years is not a short term (Score:5, Insightful)
The 2008 financial crisis caused the destruction of far, far more wealth than *ALL PROPERTY CRIME PUT TOGETHER*. If we chose to do "only one thing and suspend everything else", that is prosecute the criminals behind the 2008 financial crisis, and ignore all other property crimes, we'd still be ahead of where we are now.
Re:Short prison terms? (Score:5, Insightful)
Only in the US could this be considered a "light" sentence, but then this is where we (collectively) are into "lets-always-mete-out-totally-disproportionate-punishment-to-individuals-hoping-that-it-might-make-others-think-twice".
Not every country shares US values of callously destroying individuals to give the Law a veneer of menace.