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Re:US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for ... by smsm42 on Monday May 27, 2013 @12:54AM (#5773476)
The proposals that allow select private companies to deploy destructive software which would land other people in jail very quickly is that crazy. Notion that it is somehow OK to kidnap my property because somebody thinks I owe them some money is that crazy. We have courts and due process for that. We can see how they are abused by copyright trolls (see Prenda Law case, for example, but there are many more). I can't even describe how much more abuse will be invited if cyber-criminal tactics would be made legal for them. It is that crazy and more, and no amount of moral panic about supposed foreign spies who steal all our R&D can justify any of it.
Re:US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for ... by socillion on Monday May 27, 2013 @01:18AM (#5773549)
Quotes from page 80:

"Informed deliberations over whether corporations and individuals should be legally able to conduct threat-based deterrence operations against network intrusion, without doing undue harm to an attacker or to innocent third parties, ought to be undertaken."

"he Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and law enforcement agencies should have the legal authority to use threat-based deterrence systems that operate at network speed against unauthorized intrusions into national security and critical infrastructure networks."

Apart from the proposal that starts "In the future..." and ends "The Commission is not ready to endorse this recommendation", that's as crazy as it gets.

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edit: after reading the boingboing article I see it's about 20 words and two out of context paragraphs.

The first paragraph specifically states that "such measures do not violate existing laws on the use of the Internet." It is simply recommending this as a measure to protect corporate IP, not as something that should be changed.

The second paragraph is immediately followed by noting that such actions are currently illegal, and then recommending deliberation on whether it should be made legal.

Re:US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for ... by smsm42 on Tuesday May 28, 2013 @12:40AM (#5778103)
I'm not a lawyer but I suspect locking somebody's computer up does violate the laws, as it is an unauthorized access to a computer system and a property damage.

>>> that's as crazy as it gets.

Not really. If you read recommendations on page 81, it does not explicitly endorses, but consistently hints at the law as inadequate in areas where it prohibits discussed offensive techniques. See "second" and "finally" parts where it does not explicitly says the mentioned tactics should be allowed but again strongly hints the changes in the law should be made, and implies allowing such methods are those changes.

Re:US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for ... by seandhi on Monday May 27, 2013 @01:33AM (#5773575)
Maybe we have a different understanding of how this would work. My understanding is that the malware would not be deployed to remote computers. Rather, the malware would be embedded in files that were never meant to be distributed outside of your network. You are either in possession of those files or not, and whether someone believes that you have them or that you owe them money is not really relevant.

The issue of IP theft is not simply moral panic. There are national security implications, as we saw in the Chinese attacks on defense contractors.

(Not that I believe that embedded rootkits would have been helpful or anything)