From: Government Technology

Early this week the European Union (EU) mandated national maximum sentences of at least two years in prison for attempting to illegally access information systems.

In addition, according to the UK Telegraph, “The maximum penalty for attacks against infrastructure such as power plants, transport or government networks will be set at five years or more, higher than the current tariff in most member states….”

The global coverage of these EU legal changes has been enormous, with numerous editorial perspectives clearly supporting the new regulations that add teeth in fighting cybercrime.

These developments also come at an interesting time – shortly after the allegations by Edward Snowden that the US spied on European nations and businesses.  These new EU regulations also include “cyber-snooping” as a prohibited action.

Do stronger penalties deter cybercrime?

However, many experts believe that tougher penalties do little to deter criminal behavior in cyberspace, since most hackers think that they will never be caught by law enforcement officials. In fact, some experts actually think these changes make things worse, since white hat hackers will lose their ability to help.

For example, this techdirt.com article makes the case that tougher new laws are misguided:

“…Simply ratcheting up punishment does little to stop malicious hacking, as hackers rarely expect to get caught. So it does little to nothing to actually helping to stop online crime. What does help is having security researchers and others exposing and fixing vulnerabilities. But, if you create massive new penalties for “cybercrime” and make the rules amorphous enough that those security researchers may get charged under them for trying to help, you do create fewer incentives for them to actually help.

End result: more malicious hacking, and fewer people willing to actually help protect and fix vulnerabilities….”

Under the new EU rules, companies that hire hackers to steal secrets or benefit from malware or botnets
will be liable for any offences committed on their behalf.

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