Hacking is already illegal. What could governments have done to prevent this?

What they could, and are discussing doing, is defining Hacking as terrorism. I heard this from my own congressman's mouth and that's why this scares me. Because there were a log of Senators and Congressman subscribed to Stratfor and this is exactly the type of incident that might push them to act.

> What they could, and are discussing doing, is defining Hacking as terrorism. I heard this from my own congressman's mouth and that's why this scares me. Because there were a log of Senators and Congressman subscribed to Stratfor and this is exactly the type of incident that might push them to act.

I'm not a US citizen and I don't live in the States, even though I am a huge admirer of how your political system was first set up (the Founding Fathers and all that), but all I want to say is that if you, as a citizen, have started to be afraid just at the mere mention of something possibly passing into "terrorism" territory only because one of your elected represantives hinted about that then it means they've already won.

He's not saying he's scared of "terrorism", he's scared that they'll call it terrorism and use it as a club against People They Don't Like.

English is my mother tongue, but that's what I wanted to say, actually, that we shouldn't be afraid of people tagging random stuff as "terrorism", we should do something about it, otherwise we're just potatoes or vegetables waiting for bad things to happen.

No, I get that. I think the person you replied to was saying the same thing. =)

With respect, it's an awful question. Awful because some politician might read it and think - yes, what can I do to prevent it?

Introduce SOPA/PIPA/a variant thereof, and takedown/prosecute anyone hosting this content.

"More laws!! Think of the children!"

For example, they'd make anyone possessing, downloading, reading, printing etc any of these emails a 'terrorist' and imprison them indefinitely.

I'm not afraid of that happening in my country. I doubt it would happen in the US either. And even if it did, there would still be hackers, still doing the same thing, and still getting away with it.

They'll clamp down regardless. If anything maybe they'll try a little quicker this way, but they'd also run the risk of shooting too quick.