My CS 404 Thoughts

The idea of hackers breaking into computer systems has been highly romanticized since even the earliest instances, and especially so since the early to mid-nineties, when movies like "The Net" and "Mission: Impossible" were seen by millions of viewers and brought "hacking" to the mainstream consciousness. This creates a major problem. What should be done with "hackers" who get caught? In my opinion, existing punishments (when it is extremely hard to catch a "hacker" in the first place) are not an effective deterrent. The young man in the movie from Wales who stole hundreds of thousands of credit card numbers was left to his own devices while awaiting trial (with his computer still plugged into the web). If he had broken into an actual physical building and stolen the same information in some kind of tangible form you can bet he would be singing a different tune. The teenager who illegally accessed NASA and other government files was sentenced to 6 months of house arrest. With this lack of deterrence, it is no surprise that these "hackers" think that they will never be caught. It is much easier to think you won't be caught when you are not afraid of the consequences of your actions. I think that we need to make the deterrent strong enough that they are afraid of it, so instead of "They will never catch me..." these miscreants start thinking "What if they catch me?". Until we do, we will have to rely on making our individual computers harder to break into than someone else's and hoping that this makes it not worth the "hacker's" time.