Punishment fits the crime anybody?
IN THE BLUE CORNER:
A bloke who's pissed off because his company didn't get some business (diddums etc) hacks and deploys malware inside a critical US Military system with the intent to cause real damage, by crippling what sounds like a single point of failure for the US navy undersea operations. Resulting, if he was successful, in significantly higher risk of loss of life, damage to US Navy property and last but not least, significant reduction in US threat response and warfighting capability.
He gets 12-18 months and a fine.
IN THE RED CORNER:
Gary McKinnon, a bloke apparently motivated by a bit of curiosity over alien technology, bumbles his way around the internet until he finds a poorly protected backdoor which enables him to have a look inside some systems with sensitive data and, (unfortunately for him), get caught.
He's looking at extradition and a 45 YEAR jail term.
Good to know justice is balanced and fair.
Oh and while I'm at it, if I understand correctly one sixth of the US fighting superiority in the combat cube, namely undersea, is prone to a single point of failure (and yes, I count the 5 computer systems as one, because this guy could infect them all more or less simultaneously).
Is it just me, or doesn't this smack of mindless stupidity? What happened to backup, resiliency, redundancy etc?