A 21 year-old man in the US has been sentenced to nearly 5 years in jail after being caught profiting from a netowrk of computers he had cracked, to control pop-ups, spam and denial of service attacks. This means he had managed to break into PCs, servers and netowrks, to create his own "network" of machines that he could them use to do what he wanted. He was eventually caught as he managed to infect (and was detected) the Weapons Division of the US Naval Air Warfare Center and the US Department of Defense.

Nobody can defend this person BUT again it begs the question about computer security and the complete failure of people to take responsiblity for keeping their own front doors controlled. In fact it raises the question whether people who do this sort of thing are actually crimnals at all.

Most people would consider that this person broke the law. If somebody walked into your house and read a book , or opened a window and handed out leaflets to buy sweets from Freds Sweet shop, they would also be breaking the Law ... wouldn't they? NO! It is a genuinely worrying prospect that our 19th Century (at best) judicial system, led by headline driven knee-jerk legislation is going to be sending people to jail for matters they simply don't understand.

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