Comment by danpalmer
6 years ago
It's not clear exactly what happened here, but hypothetically...
If the state/public office did _not_ agree to it in contract, but if the individuals doing the breaking in a) do it for a living, and b) were operating under the knowledge that they had a contract enabling them to do so legally... what happens to them?
In this case they committed a crime, to them everything including past experience led them to believe it was explicitly not a crime. Obviously the contracting company would be ultimately at fault (at least morally so), but the person messing up the contract isn't going to go to prison for burglary.
How would this likely be resolved? Would the burglary case be dropped and it be turned into a criminal negligence case against the company? If not, how do we effectively protect physical penetration testers like this?
IANAL, especially in American law, but mens rea is usually a neccessary element for criminal liability.
Hadnt heard of the term before:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea
It's okay, there are a number of people in this thread who haven't. The interesting part is, legally, how there are two separate parts: intent (I intended to do this action, why car accidents are not murder) and knowledge (I knew, or should have known, this was a crime).
In this case, they could not form mens rea because, to their knowledge, they had permission to "break into" the building. Like when you lock yourself out of your house and hire a locksmith to "break in". The locksmith has intent, but no "criminal knowledge" because you gave them permission.
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