BBC fails to understand mens rea

[James Firth]

Wendy M. Grossman wrote:
>
> I think the least risk optiopn is not to have done it in the first
> place. If I were one of the affected people I would be LIVID.
> 

If you're talking about the BBC caper then I agree completely, however I
believe we were discussing the wider issues if a 3rd party attempted to
disable a botnet.

There are clearly benefits for society in doing this and I'm not even sure
there's a moral argument against. The machine has been compromised, the
damage has already been done and the machine is now causing problems for
other people and society in general in terms of spam and potentially more
serious criminal activity.

The only issue I can see is one of trust - if there was a proper authority
(i.e. ePolice responsible to government and ultimately the electorate) then
I would support auto-cleaning of machines.  It could be done jurisdiction by
jurisdiction by IP address locator so there wouldn't be the need for
international agreements.

James Firth