So how come financial hackers exploiting vulnerabilities in the tax code and making these sandwiches never do jail time, while computer hackers regularly do?
Someone hacking a single-player video game, to give them increased stats or something, won't do jail time. Even when it's a multiplayer game, someone finding a hack that benefits them is unlikely to face jail time.
Hacking is a crime if you're gaining unauthorized access to a system, especially a remote one. I think hacks involving money and personal user data have different criminal classifications as well.
And that's ignoring the massive number of hackers ("researchers") who actually get paid to do it (many of whom started out doing illegal things).
If you simply mean "not paying your taxes" then this is a crime that is frequently prosecuted and is not particularly clever or a hack.
You appear to be conflating the two for some reason.
If you mean, "unauthorized access of a computer system", then yes, that is unlawful and would possibly be one reason why some people are prosecuted and sent to jail.
Nit:
>> For example, there’s a corporate tax trick called the “Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich.”
This has not been a thing since 2020.
No, I'm just abstractly (like TFA) considering hacking to be an activity where a system (code or financial law) is brought outside of its intended use.
> "exploiting" loopholes
Anyway, why aren't there bounties for finding loopholes and why aren't they fixed as soon as possible?
It is legal to hack a system if it does not break the law (I can use a fork as a screwdriver if I want to), but it is illegal if it breaks the law (I can use the fork as a weapon and break the law).
A loophole is legal. It may feel like it should not be, because it allows to work around the law. But it is legal.
Breaking into a government website is illegal. However if the code on their server was part of "the law", it suddenly becomes legal?
Otherwise we could replace judges by computers who just evaluate logic statements in the book of law.
Logic statements that evaluate to legal or illegal is the ideal when it comes to laws, judges are only necessary when logical certainty isn’t possible.
Anyway, I'm ok with a more logical, objective interpretation of the law, but then also the loopholes in the law should be treated as code exploits: it should be possible to report them and then they should be fixed asap.
You don't break law by hacking it, that's the point. A loophole is not illegal, it's a workaround.
That's because Schneier defines hacking in the original sense of the word, subverting or misusing a system to get a desired, but unintended, result.
The computer "hackers" doing jail time are not hackers by Scheier's definition.