You keep getting buried because you've hitched your wagon to the wrong horse. Your core argument seems to be that punishment for hacking is often disproportionate to the crime committed.

For example, poorly written laws make even simple port scanning a risky activity. I agree that this is ridiculous, but you needn't defend HTP here in order to take that position. If anything, HTP are to blame for the overreaction from policy makers. They are having a very difficult time distinguishing between mischief and mayhem.

The law should take context in to account. If you were caught exploring an old, abandoned warehouse, you might end up with a misdemeanor trespass charge (hopefully), but if you're caught probing a corporate server, the current climate seems to dictate that you'll land a felony in short order. You've got groups like HTP to thank for that because of their extortion activities and willingness to leverage the well being of innocent people in their trivial games.

> Being in an underground hackers crew is much fun and possibilities to learn things for young men who are smart and different than their friends. Those guys and gals are the future top-class engineers at Google and other IT giants and I want them to continue hacking and growing personally and professionally, not rotting in the prison.

Or the next members of the many criminal syndicates on the internet who steal/harass/blackmail with little regard of the consequences.

This is the world stage, so objectivity is hard to find, but there is a substantial amount of posturing from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that shows a pretty aggressive stance toward Israel, if not open contempt [1].

That's really besides the point though. Anyone who seeks to boil "right and wrong" down to a simple principle that applies in all cases is holding simplicity above practicality. "Simple principles" are no more sustainable than utopian ideologies. The reality is that right and wrong are subtle and contextual. Bringing Stuxnet in to the Linode discussion is just an effort to sidetrack the topic.

Any way you slice it, HTP has dragged "innocents" in to the fight. It's not right when governments do it on the world stage. It's not right when thugs and gangsters do it by terrorizing neighborhoods with gang violence. It's not right when crackers do it during their internet turf battles.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad_and_Israel

That statement is untrue. Among journalists I know of, the one who has studied this the most and reported on it in the most detail is Gareth Porter.