[Operational] Internet Police

Fri Dec 10 17:40:44 UTC 2010

On Fri, 10 Dec 2010 12:14:20 EST, Lamar Owen said:
> Identity theft can cause loss of life due to the stress of mopping up afterwards.

Oh, give me a *break*. This is well off the end of the slippery slope.

My car got totaled in a rear-end collision a few weeks ago.  If I get so
stressed dealing with my insurance company that I die of a heart attack, does
that mean the guy who ran into me is guilty of murder? And for bonus points, is
he guilty of *attempted* murder if I *don't* have a heart attack?  No - in most
jurisdictions, if I expire of a heart attack as an unforseen and unpredictable
*direct* result of somebody's actions, that would maybe be manslaughter, not
murder.  And death during "mopping up afterwards" is *so* convoluted I don't
think you could even get a win in a civil trial, where the standards of
evidence are a lot lower than in criminal cases.

Similarly, identity theft isn't committed with the *intent* that people will
keel over - that's an unforeseeable and unpredictable result.

On the other hand, *real* terrorism usually involved the *intent* that you're
going to have some very messy corpses and/or fragments thereof.

Let me know when you have a documented case of a DDoS launched with
the *intent* of causing dead bodies in the street for the 6PM news crews,
so that the populace is in fact terrrified.

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