BBC fails to understand mens rea

[Wendy M. Grossman]

James Firth wrote:
> 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 idea I've generally had is to block the effects - sending spam, eg.

> 
> 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.

The issue I can see is function creep - it seems to me so likely that a 
system set up for general social benefit would eventually be coopted by 
copyright police or some other such "public good".

wg