This week the PBS website was hacked with a funny message, a fake news story about Tu Pac being still alive, and the revelation of a bunch of usernames and passwords. Apparently this was in retaliation to PBS's wikileaks documentary, which the hackers disagreed with.

Those are the facts here. So should these hackers be caught, what is the crime? It's clearly illegal, but is the punishment closer to a federal offense (creating fake news could be a serious problem) or closer to holding an illegal protest (which is a small fine and a night in jail). No real harm was done here, no permanent damage and while revealing usernames and passwords is annoying; the PBS login info doesn't contain anything like credit card info.

I see this kind of hacking closer to graffiti and public protests than I do "real crime." It's hard to compare this to something like robbery, such as the PSN hack last month which stole thousands of credit card numbers and caused millions in damages. However, it should be noted that it's a very small leap to go from a funny news posting to, if they had left the site alone, and posted a "real" news story that caused people to actually panic. Orson Well's War of the Worlds caused that kind of panic and was redone by a group in South America - only this time the result was even more pronounced, with people committing suicide to save themselves from the alien invasion. This was followed by a major legal battle to hold the communications company liable for their deaths (Third degree murder in this case).

Where do you see the line being drawn? Was the attack on PBS a peaceful way to protest their coverage (or miscoverage, depending on who you believe) of the WikiLeaks story? Could there be a better way to draw attention to the dissenters that would have been less damaging? Who is liable for the breach of security? Should PBS be held accountable for any damages that may occur or should the hackers?

The laws around the internet are just being formed still. A lot of you who are not old enough to vote yet will be very involved with the creation of these laws: We should all pay very close attention to internet security, as it will massively be impacting our lives over the next century and likely beyond.

What are your thoughts on web based hacks? Let us know!


Words from The Fool:

I don't know if this stat is still true, but back in college it was reported that the average bank looses $50,000 USD/day to hackers. You think the days of robbing banks ended with Bonnie and Clyde? Think again! Bank robberies are not only more common than ever, they're usually unable to catch the thieves. Your passwords don't really protect you, but don't worry: Amaranth Games doesn't keep any of your credit card info. No fooling.

I really don't think these hackers that post the fake news story were committing any real crime. I see it more as a practical joke/protest than a crime.

However, I do think there is a fine line between protesting and committing a crime. The attack on Sony was definitely a crime and the hackers should be held accounted if caught.

Hacking into is a crime. Even they did it and seen as a protest, i don't think they simple are. Those hackers. They must be have another motive, and the motive should give them something good.

Who knows there is something behind the scene?

I don't know. I 'hack' (as in fiddling with supposedly non open source stuff. nothing malicious from my end and I don't put my stuff up) so I don't really see it as a crime as long as its not hurting anyone. Much.

I mean, technically gamers 'hack' closed source games like borderlands to make mods and stuff, and I don't find that to be a crime.

I think anonymous is going about it the wrong way with their wikileak defense. By attacking other places, it makes wikileak seem more evil than sympathetic.

As for where the line is, my version of it is: as long as the hack isn't really hurting anyone/their property, it's fine.

I think it was hilarious. The number of people who thought Tupac was alive under CIA's (Why, the CIA?) witness Protection was hilarious

well, people believe the earth is flat (note the present tense. yes people right now believe the earth is flat) so anything's possible.

Quote:

I've met Flat-Earthers.
I've met Young-Earthers too who believe the Earth is 6000 years old even though there is proof it's over a 10000 years old. Fundamentalists will be Fundamentalists

@theone: lies! of course its the devil's fault that all of our equipment says the earth's well over 4 billions years old! He gotPoseidon's his creepy pitchfork after all >.>

@KTC:

@all: I think that this is mildly a crime. It's not the most severe, and is closer to a protest than to being a huge crime. This was an example of some nasty people who took their protest a little too far. I think that it would have been worse if they had hacked a large website with all sorts of Credit Card info, but since this wasn't that situation, they shouldn't be severely punished. Maybe a lecture, but not too much.

It's the hackers fault that they got in trouble, they decided that they should make fake news(Illegal) by hacking(Illegal) and they do deserve to be punished, about the statement where you compared it to graffiti. I disagree. Hacking is a crime that is used alot more than for making a mark, just because they didn't use it for anything worse doesn't mean that they won't. They have the ability to do harm with something they have showed skill in.

hackers (ones who do it illegaly) are just plain stupid and idiotic. good greif! they should but taped to the ceilling for crying ouyt loud! with duck tape.

@bbd: wait, it's their own foolish fault for what exactly? keep in mind that none of these hackers (not even the psnetwork hackers) have been found.

And no, there's no 'yet' there. A good hacker would be able to cover their tracks sufficiently and with the internet, hackers can be from places that neither playstation/PBS have any control over.

@binas: actually, they are quite brilliant. I've done backwards programming before (with AP which is open source) and its very hard. If I'm having difficulty with a small lil thing like AP, I can't imagine what's it like to crack something larger.

Of course, I'm not condoning all the hackers actions, but intelligence should be recognized from where it is.

Sides there's a silver lining here:
PBS/Sony/others will finally beef up their security. I mean seriously Sony, no encryption and really lousy security for such valuable data? Am I just being a geek and the only one who finds this utterly stupid in this day and age?

"LulzSec", the hacker group, really live up to their name by drawing attention to how weak PBS/Sony's security was.

I dont think there's a legal hacking They all do it illegally. Anyway, the question isn't if it is illegal or smart, but rather if it is an acceptable way to force people to take notice.

Throwing paint on people wearing fur was apparently mildly acceptable (still illegal)... but blowing up two buildings in NYC is not acceptable. Both were done to bring attention to issues, but clearly one is more OK than the other. Figuring out where an attack like lulzsec lies is an important issue. Worth thinking about anyway

@thefool: wait, did you just compare maliciously killing a bunch of innocent people to throwing paint on already dead animals?

Killing people to prove your point is never right.

but still i want th ones who do it illegally to dangle from the ceilling by their underpants. or tapped. they still use the latest top secret things to hack in (they could have stolen the top secret things! ).

@binas: I assume you would also want to punish the people who use the hacked things also?

A lot of these days has been hacked, uploaded, or leaked these days. Movies/music are downloaded, games are hacked to be playable by all, iphones are jailbreak, even the supposedly unhackable ps3 was broken into.

punishing all those people...well let's just say that the US tried to do something and it failed miserably lol.

Well, let's say as long as it's not our thing which they hacked into, it won't be much problem XD

But it surely a big pain for anything got hacked. Especially for commercial ones.

@shed:

"But it surely a big pain for anything got hacked. Especially for commercial ones."

only for the owners. There's plenty of people who would exploit the hack/crack/etc. without guilt.

@KTC:
Yeah. Precisely.
It's hard to say if it's bad, since there're more people who're 'happy' with the hacked application. Free and easy get, etc.

Ignoring everything above me because I don't have time to read it right now, I think that there does need to be some sort of punishment to these hackers in order to protect the public from the same thing again as well as to prevent escalation. However, I would never set it on the same level as terrorism and it is a lot closer to the level of graffiti and such. The posted information was, if not harmful, insensitive, and fully illegal. The hackers should be fined and perhaps given a few hours of community service, but they should definitely not be too severely punished.