On Tue, May 08, 2001 at 12:27:30PM -0400, Franklin Lian wrote:
that news couple of years ago both in English and Chinese. The hacker actually was executed for stealing millions of dollars from a bank he used work for, NOT for HACKING. According to Chinese law, any criminal commited to crime that evolves more than $100,000 (the exact number might be wrong) can be sentenced to death.
I don't want to debate this here, because it's really far from topic, but understand that the reason why American hackers portray that as death for hacking is because it's so very easy to make nearly any hacking fit that criterion. Kevin Mitnick caused very limited physical damages, but the courts accept that it was many millions of dollars in intellectual property damages. Leaving aside all questions of what happened and how much the realistic amount is, the fact is that someone facing a Chinese court for hacking can go in not knowing if they're facing trial for a non-crime, or for a capital crime, with the final decision on that being basically up to the informed whim of a judge. That's scary. Whether it's wrong or right (and I have a very strong opinion on that, but it's not on topic here), it is scary. So from a certain point of view, it's not a myth.