> Even if you had the worst of the worst hacking tools sitting around on your system, it should be the actual use of those tools against someone else's machine for which you have no permission to access that creates the offence.
It's not quite that simple. Consider firearms. You might argue it should be the use of a firearm — to threaten, maim, or kill another person — that ought to be legislated against, not mere possession. Plenty of people disagree, as exemplified by the numerous democratic countries around the world where possession of a firearm is illegal in one form or another.
The obvious retort — the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument, if you will — is that possession of a tool alone should not be illegal because mere possession is not inherently harmful. That's the point you seem to be making here.
Indeed, both hacking tools and firearms can, in addition to their more obvious harmful uses, also be used to alleviate and even prevent harm — authorised penetration testing being the obvious example in the former case.
Nevertheless, plenty of people are willing to forego those benefits in the case of firearms; why not the same for hacking tools?
Firearms are fairly well defined. Hacking tools are not, and most likely will not be well defined by the legislation. Is ping a hacking tool? Wireshark? tcpdump? a hex editor? telnet? all are used in hacking, but also have legitimate uses.
You might be interested to know that trivial metalworking can construct a piece of metal (known as a sear) that becomes legally classified as not just any firearm, but a heavily regulated machinegun -- because when placed in the corresponding firearm, replacing its original sear, it can make the firearm capable of full-auto fire.
The ATF also considers soda bottles to be suppressors, aka silencers, if there are any suspicious circumstances. Same for any metal tube that's threaded or otherwise easily attached to a firearm barrel. ("Silencer" is a misnomer; they are not silent; they generally reduce noise by roughly 20-30 dB.) Even possession of (1) a gun, (2) a soda bottle, and (3) duct tape, in close proximity, would motivate the ATF to charge you with a firearms crime. Unlike many european countries where such devices are sold without a license and it's considered rude to hunt without one, in the U.S., hysteria over organized and gang crime caused many things to be irrationally banned or strictly regulated, including suppressors and switchblades. [2]
There's also the "rifle" vs "short barreled rifle" classification. The term AR15 is a category of firearms that can range from stockless (nothing to rest against the shoulder) and very short barreled (circa 5-8"), to long range variants that have shoulder stocks and barrels 22" or more. If you buy a rifle variant of an AR15 and buy a short barrel, you've committed a crime. The receiver (the central metal piece that accepts the ammo magazine), because it was originally part of a rifle, is forever classified as a rifle receiver. By converting it into a handgun-like firearm, legally speaking you have converted it into a SBR, or short-barreled rifle, which requires beaucoup paperwork in order to be legal.
In contrast, if you start with a handgun-classified variant of the AR15 [1], no special paperwork is required.
tl;dr : there are some absurd classifications of objects as firearms, or firearms as more heavily regulated types of firearms, that a reasonable person would not understand or comprehend.
Regardless of the merits of firearms classifications, those distinctions are documented, and firearm design doesn't change nearly as quickly as computer technology. It seems unlikely that there can be a reasonable classification of "hacking tools" that would ever make the criminalization of mere possession make sense.
But gun laws are backwards and make little sense when considering the violent crime statistics (e.g. the US has plenty of gun crime while Canada has comparatively little even though both have a gun carrying population). Guns don't kill people, people do. Anti-gun laws don't stop killings, they just give gangs and the police a monopoly on the most violent type of crime.
Gun laws are one of those things where intelligent, well meaning people replace reality with their model of reality and end up with a backwards system which does nothing to address the root causes. Hint: the root cause of violent crime has a lot to do with inequality, not the number of guns in someone's basement.
Anti-gun laws don't stop killings, they just give gangs and the police a monopoly on the most violent type of crime.
And that's a bad thing? I suspect the number of casulties from six-year-olds shooting their classmates and teenage rampages would drop significantly if it weren't so easy to get at daddy's gun...
Gun laws are one of those things where intelligent, well meaning people replace reality with their model of reality
In contrast to all these omniscient people who don't argue from their mental model of reality?
and end up with a backwards system which does nothing to address the root causes.
Only because it doesn't address the root cause does not mean you should stop treating symptoms.
>And that's a bad thing? I suspect the number of casulties from six-year-olds shooting their classmates and teenage rampages would drop significantly if it weren't so easy to get at daddy's gun...
>In contrast to all these omniscient people who don't argue from their mental model of reality?
Some models are better than others.
>Only because it doesn't address the root cause does not mean you should stop treating symptoms.
In my opinion, it is by far more important to resolve the root causes of problems than it is to duct tape them in an effort to partially stop the bleeding. I thought this was obvious. Humanity has a bad habit of going for quick fixes where none exist and that is the root cause of many of the problems which plague us. Instead of thinking about "saving the children", how about we stop treating each other like crap and encourage people to cooperate not because a stick is being held over their heads but because they actually want to?
Besides, if violence begets violence then are we even duct taping the wound by using oppression to treat oppression or are we reinforcing those pesky root causes even further? Consider that the system which enforces these laws is inherently unfair in that the rich have orders of magnitude more leverage than the poor. How is reminding people who have stepped over that line and taken the inequality into their own destructive hands that they live in an unfair system going to help anyone? The duct tape has a sting of it's own.
I'm sure that the casualties from shootings would indeed go down. Casualties from knife injury on the other hand...
But guns are far superior tools than knifes if your intent is to kill. If the body count goes down, that's a win in my book...
Some models are better than others.
No argument there, but you haven't convinced me that yours is the better one.
how about we stop treating each other like crap and encourage people to cooperate not because a stick is being held over their heads but because they actually want to?
Because our monkey-brains are not wired for that. We're at least partly subject to the whims of the blind idiot god of evolution, and being an asshole has been a sound strategy for a long time and still largely is. Education can help with that, but is no cure-all.
Besides, if violence begets violence then are we even duct taping the wound by using oppression to treat oppression or are we reinforcing those pesky root causes even further?
There are many countries with stricter gun laws than the US, and I'd be surprised if most of their citizens would feel any more oppressed than their counterparts in the US.
How is reminding people who have stepped over that line and taken the inequality into their own destructive hands that they live in an unfair system going to help anyone?
How is restricting access to personal firearms a reminder of an unfair system if it applies equally to all citizens? Also, do you have any data on support of stricter gun control laws by income? It's nice to speculate about the opinion of the downtrodden masses, but some facts would be even better...
and cars are more superior tools than guns(how many died in car accidents this year? 10's of thousands?), but you don't see cars being outlawed... this tells us it's more an emotional reaction than a logical decision.
I think the difference, from the perspective of the regulator, is that a firearm is a tool with a limited scope of use, and that certain firearms (pistols) have a further limited scope of use that makes their existence noxious. In the US, the 2nd amendment makes this a controversial issue -- not so in most other jurisdictions.
Possession of burglary tools or drug paraphernalia is typically a modifier used to punish ill-intent. If I'm a carpenter walking home from work with a saw and hammer in my bag, I'm not going to be arrested for possessing burglar tools. If I'm trespassing on someone's property in the middle of the night with a crowbar, on the other hand, I'll probably be prosecuted for possessing burglar tools.
"Hacker tools" is sort of in the middle. A sysadmin with metasploit on his laptop is no different than a carpenter with his hammer. The Level-1 helpdesk technician pinched for stealing passwords is using it as a tool for doing "bad" things. The complication is that the line between "hacker tool" and "legitimate" software is thin or even overlapping.
So why criminalize possession if possession will only ever be prosecuted in the context of some other crime? If prosecutors or legislators think they need longer punishments for those crimes, why not just extend the sentence for the base crime, rather than tacking on a bunch of technical crimes like "possession of things we don't like"?
I think that the legal theory is that possession of certain items is indicative of bad intent.
If I carry x quantity of illegal drugs, I'm a user getting charged with a misdemeanor. If I carry x + y quantity of illegal drugs, I'm presumed to be a drug dealer.
I'm just explaining the thought process -- not agreeing with it. Unlike drug sales or burglary, the most important tool for hacking is whatever is in your head.
People using firearms often results in unintentional harm, just as people using 'hacking tools' does.
You forget to turn your packet sniffer off when on a public network, you accidentally port scan the wrong IP address, etc.
Obviously the use of hacking tools is unlikely to result in death or serious injury, but they cause real harm. Ask Stratfor what harm hacking tools can do...
Banning things is always a difficult and dangerous proposition, no matter how much harm those things can cause if misused.
For guns, knives, drugs, and other more routine contraband, law enforcement action required to maintain such bans have their own costs. Law enforcement can at best selectively enforce such laws, because contraband is almost always hidden. As a result, privacy erodes as politicians and law enforcement want more ability to discover who has contraband.
If something is harmful enough and also rare enough or requires substantial skill to procure, like nuclear weapons or biological weapons, then there's the argument that banning those things improves the safety of society. I am not convinced that the legality really matters; the economics of procurement provide a strong barrier to random ideologues and nutcases from procuring such weapons, and if they can anyway it's doubtful laws would stop them; there's also much more opportunity for anyone along the logistics chain to notice something strange about their buyer and report it to someone, even if the transaction were legal. That can't be done with firearms or knives with thousands being sold a day. However, the consequences of nuclear and biological weapon use is so horrific that despite the economics, it still might be in everyone's best interest to leave them effectively banned.
... and then half the scrolling length of this discussion thread was about guns. Great job!
Actually it's not your fault, it's just HN terrible threading algo again. Can't we just do what Reddit does and collapse things a littlebit? Because it seems there's always some top comment (not always the top-most) that dominates 90% of the discussion. And frankly it's very hit-and-miss whether that dominating comment is on-topic or not.
We could have so much more interesting discussions here on HN ...
Firearms are reifications of information, while hacking tools are information left incorporeal. Arguments founded on their equivalence are as devoid of meaning as those equating bits on a computer to cars on a lot.
Consider the following question: how long does a wire have to be before its ability to transfer information to me places that information in my possession? From both a philosophical and legal point of view, this question seems to permit no satisfying answer.
"Indeed, both hacking tools and firearms can, in addition to their more obvious harmful uses, also be used to alleviate and even prevent harm" they also have non-defense uses (Hunting, sports or network analysis in the other case). They are probably used for those things more than for criminal purposes.
I don't have to say that I am on the fence on certain aspect of gun control. Rules regulating storage (I'm from Canada) are in my view valid. So are rules on certain classes of guns. At the same time, any gun can kill so some of the restriction might not be useful but like I said I'm on the fence on a lot of these things.
Gun laws are only stupid in America because we have a Constitutional right to them. If the laws didn't get challenged based on their constitutionality, they'd be a lot more sane because they'd be a lot more broad.
Really many eu countries have liberal gun laws compared to the UK and the only reason that the UK doesn't is that the government panicked in the 20's around the time of the general strike and brought in gun laws to restrict ownership of guns before that we had effectively a similar second amendment right.
Self defense is a legitimate constructive use of a gun. Target practice is also legitimate constructive use, unless you also consider martial arts to be not constructive. Hunting, particularly for those who eat what they kill, or hunting varmints, is a legitimate constructive use, ethics of hunting being extra-topical and not relevant in a discussion specifically of firearms.
Maybe 99.99, maybe 99% of guns are also used or possessed for those good reasons, or simply collecting. Suppose 100 homicides a day are carried out in the U.S, although last I looked it's somewhat less than that. How many guns are used at firing ranges and for hunting? Perhaps 10,000, perhaps more.
That's true about knives. Yet the UK has banned carrying any knives other than non-locking pocketknives in public, even for utility. [1] The problem with no lock, is that the blade has a tendency to snap shut on your fingers.
I think an even better example are construction tools. Hammers, drills, saws, wrenches, grinders, welders, measuring tape, stud finders, etc. A bunch of these items can be used to break into various secured places and injure or kill someone. But most of the time, they're not, they're used to build or modify things. Most people don't think of a wire testing tool or a saw as a serious weapon and will see the ridiculousness of regulating away ping, wireshark or python.
> guns are not a good example. there is no way i can use a gun for constructive purpose.
That tells us more about you than it says about guns. It says is that you're either ignorant or a thug.
We can easily distinguish the two. How many people have you assaulted? If 0, you don't know that folks who use guns criminally have a history of other criminality. If not...
> think of a knife. 99.99% use the knife for good reasons.
Not really. I use and own many knives, and would never use one on a person, even in self-defense. No one wins in a knife fight. I use knives for cutting food in the kitchen, but also for cutting fishing line, rope, slicing through grass and undergrowth to get to the soil, shaving down wood to fit where I need it to fit, etc. Knives are a tool.
I use a gun to kill. That's its only purpose. Hunting/killing and target practice for hunting are the only things a gun is useful for. I can't use a gun to help me with the crops, to fish, or while working in the garage.
Knives can be used to construct. Guns can only be used to destruct. Not saying guns have no legitimate purpose (I use one for hunting many times per year), but that legitimate purpose begins and ends with killing or practicing to kill. It's a long leap from taking the life of a deer to taking the life of a human, but you use the exact same tool in the exact same way, the only way it can be used.
So are we ruling out target practice for the sake of target practice? I go shooting around once a month for the sole purpose of making a steel plate ring. I have no intention of hunting animals or killing a human being with the firearms that I use; The sole purpose is recreational target shooting. Of course, in a wild scenario such as home invasion that would be a different story, however the same can be said of any object used for defense purposes, be it a knife, pipe, flower pot, etc.
And lets be honest here, you would most definitely use a knife in self defense if it came down to that. It's a preposterous argument to say that in a life or death scenario, you'd opt for a lesser source of protection in order to not use a sharp object.
> And lets be honest here, you would most definitely use a knife in self defense if it came down to that. It's a preposterous argument to say that in a life or death scenario, you'd opt for a lesser source of protection in order to not use a sharp object.
Really?! Well, I guess it's different if, thanks to your gun laws there's a good chance the intruder might be carrying a firearm. No scratch that, if they got a gun, then you're still screwed with a knife.
First, do you know where to hit them to disable them at once? If not, you're now standing really close to a really angry, bleeding intruder.
Second, even if you do, they now bled on the walls, the furniture, everywhere. Have fun cleaning that up.
Third, you just killed a person. You can't really "disable" someone with a knife, either you kill them or you don't.
My advice? A big stick. Like the wooden handle of a broomstick or something. Keeps people with knives at a distance, you can hit them, poke them, and pin them to the ground while you call the police. (stick locks below the chin, behind the jawbone, base of the neck, pushing backwards. very uncomfortable)
I would not use a knife. There is an extremely high possibility that I would be injured by my own knife just as easily as I would be injured by the knife of my opponent. If someone held a knife to me and demanded my wallet, I would give it to him. If someone held a knife to me and demanded my life, I would attempt to disarm him/her with my hands, not my knife. Blades are dangerous in ways that guns can never be.
I covered target practice in "practicing to kill". Whether or not you intend to do so, a gun is used for killing, and practicing with a gun is practicing how to use a tool designed for killing. I understand this may not be your view, but this is reality the way I see it.
If that's true, the designers aren't very good because most guns aren't that useful for killing. Seriously - .22 is basically a joke for killing people.
> Hunting/killing and target practice for hunting are the only things a gun is useful for.
Unless you're claiming that hunting is "not constructive", you're disagreeing with "there is no way i can use a gun for constructive purpose."
> I can't use a gun to help me with the crops, to fish, or while working in the garage.
So? You can't use golf clubs or a book on python for any of those things either. Oh, and you can use a gun to kill fish. (You then scoop them up with a net.)
Do you honestly think 'hacking tools' are used primarily with good intentions (i.e. as part of authorised penetration testing, interception of network traffic, etc.) and that nefarious use is the exception?
Obviously it's nigh-on impossible to measure, but I'd suspect it is the other way round...
Problem is mostly with classification. Is ping a hacking tool? Is cmd.exe a hacking tool? (black window sure looks dangerous...) Is g++ a hacking tool? If not, can I carry around source code of a port scanner and a compiler on the same laptop? Is that the same as transporting disassembled gun?
(Any debugger is a killer cracking tool too)
I predict a big market for tetris clones with port scanning functionality...
I suspect that a fair number if not a majority of MEP's would like that. I think many are still are in the PTT mindset where the national phone company (owned by the state) provided all these sort of electronic services.
Of course people like me would still work for the GPO or DBP or ATT and have cool email addresses like c=uk cn=maurice - but subs like the rest of you would have email addresses that looked more like phone numbers.
BTW I used to have root on on the UK's ADMD - in internet terms this is the equivalent of having root on .com
> And there are very few countries that explicitly ban all fire arms even the Uk which has very stringent laws still allows shotgun licenses.
I'm from the UK myself, so I'm aware my perspective on firearms might be skewed somewhat.
Nevertheless, in my experience there seem to be very few people who see the restrictions on the possession of firearms as a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water.
There are plenty of people who, although acknowledging that more widespread firearm possession may have certain benefits, would nevertheless rather live in a society in which firearms are few and far between.
It's not quite that simple. Consider firearms. You might argue it should be the use of a firearm — to threaten, maim, or kill another person — that ought to be legislated against, not mere possession. Plenty of people disagree, as exemplified by the numerous democratic countries around the world where possession of a firearm is illegal in one form or another.
The obvious retort — the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument, if you will — is that possession of a tool alone should not be illegal because mere possession is not inherently harmful. That's the point you seem to be making here.
Indeed, both hacking tools and firearms can, in addition to their more obvious harmful uses, also be used to alleviate and even prevent harm — authorised penetration testing being the obvious example in the former case.
Nevertheless, plenty of people are willing to forego those benefits in the case of firearms; why not the same for hacking tools?