Once again the powers that be are overacting to the activities of a loner with a PC. I am not going to question whether Ryan Cleary has done all that the authorities say he has, but I am going to question whether their response to his actions is appropriate.
We live in the age of the Internet and of cybercrime. We have seen deliberate cyber-terrorism from China. Every day there are new phishing alerts. What I cannot understand is why when every schoolchild is aware of the threat posed by those who want to steal private information via the Internet, Governments don’t bother to try and protect themselves and us. The Gary McKinnon case revealed that those responsible for the security of the United States couldn’t be arsed to protect files with passwords. The problem is that rather than owning up to their own criminal incompetence government agencies prefer instead to dump on those who have exposed them.
It is the nature of geeks that they want to explore and test things whether hardware or software. As long as we have geeks with Internet access they will try to get into anything just out of curiosity and to test their own abilities. As long as we have organisations that offend the values of these folk they will attack them. What is worse is that there are others – criminals and governments – whose attacks are more malicious and aimed at undermining security, freedom or performing theft. Cybercrime is wrong, it is crime, but what is more reprehensible is the failure of those who should be protecting our freedoms to put in place the protection their systems and websites need. As well as a crime of unlawful access, failure to protect sensitive material should also be a crime.
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