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A comment on Colonial Pipeline Paid Hackers Nearly $5M in Ransom. Parent comment

Re:Colonial Pipeline Paid Hackers Nearly $5M in Ransom by koheripbal on Thursday May 13, 2021 @05:55PM (#27147984)
Imagine making it illegal to hand over your wallet to a mugger holding a gun to you.

All you are doing is incentivizing companies to not report these attacks.

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Re:Colonial Pipeline Paid Hackers Nearly $5M in Ransom by freshair on Thursday May 13, 2021 @06:13PM (#27148153)
If the mugger isn't bluffing, then he'll get your money one way or the other. This makes it different from paying ransoms.

Furthermore, a corporation's bottom line is not truly comparable to a human life. However it is my understanding that paying ransoms to save human lives is technically illegal to. If paying a ransom to save your family member's life is illegal, then corporations paying ransoms to protect their finances should certainly be illegal.

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Re:Colonial Pipeline Paid Hackers Nearly $5M in Ransom by FDSGSG on Thursday May 13, 2021 @08:38PM (#27149281)
>However it is my understanding that paying ransoms to save human lives is technically illegal to

You are wrong.

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Re:Colonial Pipeline Paid Hackers Nearly $5M in Ransom by freshair on Friday May 14, 2021 @10:39AM (#27154793)
I did some more research and it seems I am substantially correct; paying a ransom to a terrorist organization is illegal.
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Re:Colonial Pipeline Paid Hackers Nearly $5M in Ransom by FDSGSG on Saturday May 15, 2021 @09:00AM (#27164801)
Substantially correct? Paying ransoms is legal except for a very limited set of payment recipients.
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Re:Colonial Pipeline Paid Hackers Nearly $5M in Ransom by motbob on Thursday May 13, 2021 @06:24PM (#27148264)
Not a good analogy, for two reasons. First, workers who don't have equity in a company don't really have a gun to their head even if the existence of the company is at risk. The real "gun to the head" is the threat of jail time. Second, it has historically been difficult to convince dozens of people to coordinate with each other and do something illegal for little to no personal gain.
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Re:Colonial Pipeline Paid Hackers Nearly $5M in Ransom by mrtesthah on Thursday May 13, 2021 @06:17PM (#27148184)
It would in incentivize more people to fight back rather than acquiesce, and therefore likely reduce the number of muggings.
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