Policies, Hacking, and the Punishments!

In a recent discussion post that I submitted for class, I had to create an issue-specific security policy (ISSP). This strictly relates to an overall security policy for a specific area of a business, in my case it was for a home network.  Within my policy, in the limitations of liability section, I stated in a way that any violators of the policy would not be supported by me or the home if any laws were broken.  This encompassed any user that would be using the computer or network in my home.

A student commented back to my post asking me even if my daughter had brought in her husband, and he were to break the law while on my network and it was traced back to him, that I wouldn't even defend him.  Well, it didn't take me long to answer.  I might be called cold-hearted for this one, but I would not defend him.  I have a feeling someone might comment asking about others in the immediate family and if I would defend them.  The short answer there is that I wouldn't have to.  My household completely understands what they can and can not do while on the Internet.  I made it a point to teach them early and I keep pounding it into their heads on the outcome if they were to get caught doing something illegal.

The punishments are too big to be caught doing illegal things such as copyright infringement or hacking.  Though, I am not 100% certain that these are legit, I came across some of the punishments on an online site. I can say that from what I have read about and seen on the news, the sentencing is pretty close to what they are getting.  For copyright infringement, it depends because the violations are vast, but it is 5 years in prison for first offence and 10 for the second.  For hacking or unlawfully accessing systems, it also varies but 5 years is the minimum.  Breaching national security equals more than 10 years.  Financial information hacking equals 5 years.  Hacking and installing malicious code equals 10 years.  Threatening to harm a computer equals up to 10 years.  Some of these offenses even come with getting your privileges to use computers in the future taken away (Federal Crime Lawyer, 2010).

Again, I am unaware how accurate these are now, but those punishments should be enough to steer anyone away from doing any illegal acts while on a computer.  Thing is, it doesn't.  There are still people out there that do it on a daily basis.  I wouldn't want my network associated with such a crime.  I would not want to be considered an accomplice to the crime either.  This is why I stated it the way I stated it in the limitations of liability section of my policy.  I advice those of you who do not have a policy create on right away to protect yourself from things such as this in the future.

Reference:

Federal Crime Lawyer. (2010). Overview of federal computer crimes. Retrieved June 18, 2012 from  http://www.federalcriminallawyer.us/2010/11/04/overview-of-federal-computer-crimes/