Ah but you see here is the kicker (and I totally understand your point).
When designing systems you must severely reduce the ability of "nasty" agents to take advantage and exploit you for personal gain.
We should also enforce standardized punishment for those that successfully exploit the system.
LIBOR left the gate wide open! That's 10x more important than punishing any one person that just walked in (and they should be punished - I don't disagree). But focusing on the people is the wrong mental attitude to adopt.
I keep hearing things like "So and So has $100 million dollar salary and he should be punished for bringing the house down". I really want to hear things like - "Who the bloody hell let this happen in the first place?".
That's all I'm saying. Punish hackers all you want but if you want true robustness you must rectify the exploits present in the system.
Ok, agreed that fixing the system (which isn't itself an easy thing) is more important. But punishing the perpetrators of the actual crimes isn't only important for this single problem; it is also very important as both an example for others that could be tempted, and an encouragement to honest people. The OP was against the justifications that are put forward to somehow save those people, not against also changing the system.
When designing systems you must severely reduce the ability of "nasty" agents to take advantage and exploit you for personal gain.
We should also enforce standardized punishment for those that successfully exploit the system.
LIBOR left the gate wide open! That's 10x more important than punishing any one person that just walked in (and they should be punished - I don't disagree). But focusing on the people is the wrong mental attitude to adopt.
I keep hearing things like "So and So has $100 million dollar salary and he should be punished for bringing the house down". I really want to hear things like - "Who the bloody hell let this happen in the first place?".
That's all I'm saying. Punish hackers all you want but if you want true robustness you must rectify the exploits present in the system.