One point that I think needs to be made is that Internet anonymity is not a privacy right. As stated in the article, "The company declined to identify the Affinity customer who set up the Internet site, citing privacy restrictions." I would guess that 3/4 of this type of hacking would go away if the people knew they could not hide behind some Internet moniker.
Privacy is the right to be left alone, and to protect data about yourself. Anonymity is the desire to be unknown, and therefore, unaccountable for your actions. It's that lack of accountability that gives most people the courage to do that which they wouldn't even consider signing their name to.
I wonder how we would respond if someone called for a contest, where the winner was the person who could spray paint the most store front windows in a given amount of time. But now, using technology, we can do that to hundreds of storefronts in just seconds. Would the same person who sits comfortably behind an anonymous moniker and from the computer hacks hundreds of sites go out in broad daylight with a can a spray paint and display the message on dozens of store front windows? In some cases, sure, but I do believe they would be the exception.
What is the difference? One very real difference is anonymity. It’s hard to remain anonymous walking down the street while deploying your can of spray point. It’s interesting that even if you wore a costume and a ski mask, no one would consider taking that ski mask off to see your face as an invasion of privacy. And yet, we scream for civil right violations when someone wants to take off our Internet moniker mask. Secondly, there is the notion of physical property. We don’t seem to consider the website to be the same as the storefront window. But one is physical, and the other is not. Is this the same phenomenon that some think that stealing music is okay because you’re not taking a physical copy? It’s not okay to use spray paint on the storefront glass, because it physically exists, but it’s okay to spray point the storefront website because it’s not physical in the same sense.
We need to change the general notion that "the computer is just a machine". As the technology as evolved in a wide variety of areas, the computer has become more than a machine, it has become and extension of an individual or business; a new store front for the retail e-business. We need to protect that storefront from vandalism just as surely as if it were a large sheet of glass.
Today in many ways, the Internet is essentially a lawless environment, with its civility based solely on its users. I’m sure that sociologist are having some real fun studying human behavior in this environment – one without boundaries, not perceived to be physical, and basically anonymous.
What then needs to be done is to identify and prosecute the hackers for their crimes. Make it clear that a website will have the same degree of legal protection as a glass storefront window. You break the glass, you pay for it. You break the site, you pay for it.
Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein