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Obama Admin Wants Hackers Charged As Mobsters
GovTechGuy writes "The Obama administration wants hackers to be prosecuted under the same laws used to target organized crime syndicates, according to two officials appearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning. From the article: 'Associate Deputy Attorney General James Baker and Secret Service Deputy Special Agent in Charge Pablo Martinez said the maximum sentences for cyber crimes have failed to keep pace with the severity of the threats. Martinez said hackers are often members of sophisticated criminal networks. "Secret Service investigations have shown that complex and sophisticated electronic crimes are rarely perpetrated by a lone individual," Martinez said.'"
Obama doesn't apply the same standard to the Teamsters and Jimmy Hoffa Jr.
How about charging their fellow sociopaths - in the Administration & Congress - as mobsters?
I didn't realise being a mobster was a crime. I thought you actually had to commit a crime while in the mob to be charged; hence nailing Capone on tax evasion.
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
Seems like when they find that the electronic crimes are not perpetrated by a lone individual, then they ought to be able to target them appropriately.
I worry, however, that this sort of thing would be used to justify ruining the life of some poor dumb kid whose knowledge was larger than his wisdom.
While people breaking into those systems should be prosecuted, so should the government security people who failed to protect that infrastructure. In different words, the threats are so "severe" only because the people responsible for protecting the infrastructure aren't doing their job.
That's strange, every time the FBI make a statement about an arrest, the cracker is likely a late teenager, not a tough outlaw biker... Oh, wait, I forgot, terrorism, child pornography, 9/11, fanatics...
Ok, I'm convinced, it will a good law to protect our safety.
Also starring Johnny Depp and Joe Pesci - Robert De Niro is KEVIN MITNICK
How is printing money from thin air not the same as mobster?
is a loaded word. If this law is used only against criminal enterprises or other "gangs" of criminals, it'll be fine.
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
what a fucking trash president! He's exactly the same as Bush. No change at all. We all fell for your shit the first time, but what's the difference between some christian theocrat republican and this clown? I wasted my vote....never again.
That is what this is about, make no mistake. Here most people now that 'anonymous' are mostly kids from 4chan, doing what kids and teens in general do... get pissed about injustice and morally wrong things. Hell I have one trick I have been using for years now and it is working great. If you want to know if something is fair or doing justice? Ask a child! They know! In the news, the public that doesn't know 4chan and the truth behind this non-organization, is being told that this is a group of people that know each other, that make plans, that gather together... For evil and to monetize on it... We all know that is bull. But the general public doesn't. This is just another step in that direction. Let's call them mobsters.... In the meantime however, on the background there are still the wikileaks cables burning. If these guys are so upset about crimes, they would have resigned a long time ago since well... their own jobs consists mostly out of committing crimes on a global scale. They know it, I know it and I'm pretty sure that deep in your heart, you know it too.
...being used against organized crime. News at 11.
Seriously, most cracking and virus-creation is for the money these days. It's the new bootlegging. Is this supposed to be controversial?
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
I didn't realise being a mobster was a crime. I thought you actually had to commit a crime while in the mob to be charged; hence nailing Capone on tax evasion.
The RICO act, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corrupt_Organizations_Act, changed that in 1970. In particular leaders who directed or assisted those who actually committed the crime were now also part of the crime.
Obama just showed that he's even worse than the worst president of the 20th century, Jimmy Carter.
I'm guessing Jimmy will be buying everyone drinks tonight and high five-ing anyone within walking distance.
It's better than being treated like a terrorist which is how a lot of people would like to see hackers tried as. Though I don't think laws regarding organized crime should be used unless there is an actual organization involved or clearly working for an organization.
No doubt some poor schmuck doing something ordinary like buying chewing gum will end up in prison for life when this law gets twisted around by police and prosecutors.
Organized crime is whatever the state deems as not serving the state's best interest, even though the state is corrupt. This might include soccer moms, activists, anti-war demonstrators, whistleblowers, children who make unpatriotic drawings and other subversives. The only thing you have to prove is people working together and you have yourself a veritable crime syndicate.
YES!
Rather than the maximum sentences for cyber crimes have failed to keep pace with the severity of the threats, it seems that in many cases the problem is that hacked party's network security has failed to keep pace with the value of the data.
If a thief breaks a company's car window (where there's a sign that says "Credit card numbers stored here!") and steals a printout with a million credit card numbers, everyone will say the company was stupid for leaving the printout sitting on the car seat.
Yet when a hacker exploits a well known (and easily eliminated) SQL injection vulnerability to do the same thing, suddenly the hacker is escalated to "organized crime" level?
The problem here is that hackers aren't the ones breaking peoples kneecaps and murdering. There should be no law targeting group crime. It's unnecessary.
Seems like when they find that the electronic crimes are not perpetrated by a lone individual, then they ought to be able to target them appropriately.
Note that the RICO act also requires the crime to be of a certain nature. For example extortion, theft, fraud, counterfeiting, money laundering, and obstruction of justice seem to be the relevant ones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corrupt_Organizations_Act
I worry, however, that this sort of thing would be used to justify ruining the life of some poor dumb kid whose knowledge was larger than his wisdom.
Given the preference for using underage kids in the drug trade since they can't be prosecuted as an adult, I'd say that underage hackers will not be under the sort of risk you suggest.
hahahahahahaha.
thank you for expressing your desire so honestly and directly. its refreshing.
Read radical news here
Whenever someone is promoting a law that is overly broad they always assure the public that it will only be used to go after the meanest, most terrible, and reprehensible people. Next thing you know the law is being used to prosecute small fry. My favorite example is teenage girls being charged with distributing child porn for sending pictures of themselves to friends.
Martinez said hackers are often members of sophisticated criminal networks [...]
He also added that "Hackers are a grave threat to the national security and that they need more funding..."
You've got to be kidding. Jimmy wasn't that bad, he was just stuck with a shitty economy, and he wasn't terribly effective. His death blow was when he failed to deal with the Beirut situation effectively.
That totally pales in comparison to several other presidents. The worst one in my book was Lyndon Johnson, who's responsible for destroying the American economy in the 70s because of the Vietnam War, plus the deaths of over 50,000 American citizens in that atrocity, plus countless Vietnamese. He's not quite as bad as Stalin who's responsible for 20-30 million deaths, but the Vietnam war probably killed about 1 million total, and most of the blood of those are on LBJ's hands.
His stupid Great Society program also helped to wreck the economy and create generations of inner-city blacks stuck in poverty, and is probably responsible for the destruction of the African-American family.
Nixon wasn't very good either; he also kept up the Vietnam war, plus he pushed the War on Drugs.
Reagan pushed deficit spending to levels far beyond what they ever were before in history. We only forget about that now because Bush and then Obama have raised the bar so much with their spending sprees.
What the heck did Jimmy do that was so bad? Nothing I can recall. Being ineffective isn't remotely as bad as what these other jerks did.
Obama is pretty bad too, but nowhere near as bad as his fellow Democrat LBJ.
Some are mobsters. When you look at how false antivirus malware proliferates and fleeces the unsuspecting public and even holds their computer for ransom. You can't help but see similarity in how they operate in function and philosophy to organized crime. They will undoubtedly push this through with this in mind. Of course without limits on who is eligible every 12 year old with a LOIC download could find themselves with punishments far in excess of their crimes. Make no mistake many who support this intend to use this on the civil dissidents of anonymous every bit as much as cyber gangs of card cloners or bank hackers. To the detriment of liberty for us all.
Did anyone read the second half of the article?
Experts have warned that without some sort of enforcement mechanism [to compel compliance with Department of Homeland Security cyber security standards] companies will not take the necessary security precautions. [Democratic Senator] Blumenthal echoed that stance, suggesting the administration "consider some kind of stick as well as a carrot."
Industry has argued that resources are the main limitation and argued for incentives such as liability protection for firms that experience attacks.
Are you shitting me?
The government wants companies to actually secure their/our data and the response is "sure, if we're not liable for any break-ins"
Off the top of my head, the government has indemnified vaccine manufacturers and nuclear power plant operators.
For some reason, I don't see cyber security as being in remotely the same league.
If anyone else can think of other industries indemnfied by the Federal Government, don't be shy about responding.
I'm willing to bet that nothing anyone brings up will be remotely similar to indemnifying private companies for poor computer security.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
the 'organized syndicates' you talk about operate out of china, russia, and there is nothing in hell's depths you can do to them. unless you start third world war.
Read radical news here
Defacing a website: Trivial
Stealing money from people over the internet: Serious
But can our government tell the difference? I don't think so, yet.
expandfairuse.org
while bankers that have stolen BILLIONS, are friends? Hmmm. You crackers need to hire a lobbyist.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
what about hackers in russia? where it's easy to pay off cops and get a way with it?
No, it's been proven over and again that group crimes are different, and usually worse, than crimes by an individual. It's been proven for a long time that when groups attack people and our rights, the law must attack the group - not just members of the group. It's necessary.
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make install -not war
Im gonna say the punch line is: Disclose Govt Corruption and/or Ineptitude: Mob Law Enforcement.
"Hacker" != "cracker". (We've allowed far too much confusion and conflation of those terms already, and it's time it stopped.)
.. really. I'm sort of convinced -- it's fairly plausible that people like Martinez just don't know the first thing about what they're talking about, which is dangerous in a far more clueless and haphazard way, and really honestly don't know the difference between people like me and people who crack into things to vandalize or steal data from them -- but there's a nagging voice in the back of my mind that hints that maybe people like him do know the difference, and it's no accident that they're conflating and confusing the terminology because it's hard to hide things from people who educate themselves outside the system.
We're getting dangerously close to the idea of "person in possession of unsanctioned knowledge == criminal and/or terrorist" here. I refer to myself as a "hacker" on a regular basis, but what I mean by that is that I enjoy recreational computing and coding for the fun of it, and occasionally repurposing hardware or building my own in the possibly insane belief that as a self-educated techie I can do it better than most people with engineering degrees. That, to me, is being a hacker.
And I'm not entirely convinced that that isn't what reframing "hacking" as "organized crime" is about
And defacing websites may be a way for people whose message has been blocked from every other possible channel to communicate their ideas. So is it really the same as mob drug dealers selling heroin to teenagers? Is it certain there's no baby in that bathwater?
Possibly moot points. But I am a hacker. And I am not a criminal. Get it right, people.
The idiocy of politicians seems to rise to greater and greater heights.
"complex and sophisticated electronic crimes are rarely perpetrated by a lone individual"
This ridiculous statement is entirely redundant. It's like saying "organized crime is rarely committed by an individual". But what is fathomlessly ridiculous about this proposed legislation is that it imposes tougher penalties on ALL hackers, including graffiti-artist teenagers and undergrad pranksters, not because the punishment does not fit the severity of their crimes, but because there are criminals also called "hackers" that actually do commit serious crimes.
This is akin to giving a motorist jail time instead of a $50 speeding ticket because they could have used the car to commit vehicular homicide.
I disagree with applying this law to hackers, but I have been saying for a while that Wall Street should have been tried under RICO Act. That would allow to put at least half of the scum in jail, along with confiscation of property. Some justice would have been served.
What about all the patent trolls? shouldn't they be classified as mobsters too? After all, aren't they behaving in the same way?
C|N>K
RICO has been used to charge groups of people who are involved in a crime - including those who ordered the comes but did not commit them - hence the racketeering moniker. While it aims at traditional mob related activities; it was not necessarily intended to only be used that way. rather, it allows increased penalties for multiple crimes, seizure of assets and civil recovery by victims. Given the nature of some computer crimes, RICO seems a reasonable tool to use against computer criminals. As side effect of RICO is it puts a lot of pressure on defendant sot settle because of the extra penalties it applies if convicted.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Pretty much everything else samzenpus posts is a right-wing hit piece, so it's hard to know what's true, what's spin, and frankly, when it comes to his editorial standards, what's just complete utter absolute bullshit.
As a Software Engineer within the USA, what new secret blacklist have I found myself a member of. I know I may never know if I am truly on the blacklist, or if it actually exists within the FBI. However, I have to wonder if being a Software Engineer today is like being a communist 50 years ago. Do I get a little membership card? Should I be jailed and ostracized for understanding some technology, out of fear or ignorance? Inquiring minds want to know!
That totally pales in comparison to several other presidents. The worst one in my book was Lyndon Johnson, who's responsible for destroying the American economy in the 70s because of the Vietnam War, plus the deaths of over 50,000 American citizens in that atrocity, plus countless Vietnamese. He's not quite as bad as Stalin who's responsible for 20-30 million deaths, but the Vietnam war probably killed about 1 million total, and most of the blood of those are on LBJ's hands.
Maybe it's time we humans figured out that being the aggressor in any multi-national conflict is a good way to ruin the economy...
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Whatever the intention of the proposers of this legislation, they will undoubtedly be pressure to use it to classify uploading a torrent as a criminal conspiracy -- it involves groups of "hackers" in a "conspiracy", it causes millions of dollars of harm (according to the RIAA). Thus they can be charged under the amended RICO.
Clearly the answer is to demonize what we can't understand. The next thing that will happen will be making "hacking software" illegal to possess, nevermind that all of them have perfectly legitimate applications. Of course though, none of this matters since the real cracking groups operate out of countries which aren't the US, Australia and Western Europe, while these laws will be used to create even more destruction of rights.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
can they prove the network has not become self aware?
"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion...." - Bertrand Russell.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I've never been arrested in my life and now they're going to charge me as a mobster all because I hack! Unreal. Ok. I can't believe they are outlawing free software, learning and the likes. This is so screwed up.
Interestingly enough, we already have something that could be used to increase the penalties for illegal activity.
Conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor is a felony.
This means that getting together with your friends to hang out, and then deciding together that it would be nice to acquire a small amount of marijuana is not a misdemeanor, as the law books state, but a felony because you involved your friends. The best part? You don't even have to actually acquire the green stuff, simply planning with someone else to go buy some makes you a felon.
Therefore, being asked or told to do something one is aware is illegal, and then doing it, could result in being charged with a felony instead of a misdemeanor charge. This could turn graffiti, stealing a pack of gum, spitting on the sidewalk, etc, into a felony charge... simply because it was done by more than one person.
--
Remember, kids, it's only illegal if you get caught!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
but oh, won't you think of the children!!!!
If anyone knows about organized crime, it would be the gangster from Chicago... "The Land of the Voting Dead".
It's been proven for a long time that when groups attack people and our rights, the law must attack the group - not just members of the group. It's necessary.
Huh. That sounds more like "make war"...
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Go finish your mayonnaise sandwich, your sister is waiting in the bedroom.
Tea Partiers are more like unions
Not always true. It worked out pretty well for the Romans for many centuries, before corruption finally got too much to bear. Still doesn't make it right though.
No, it's been proven over and again that group crimes are different, and usually worse, than crimes by an individual. It's been proven for a long time that when groups attack people and our rights, the law must attack the group - not just members of the group. It's necessary.
The problem with that is hacker groups forms spontaneously, often from an IRC chatroom, or on 4chan, or flashmob style such as the case with the MasterCard attack or a group like Anonymous.
pics or it didn't happen. ;)
From TFA:
...electronic crimes are rarely perpetrated by a lone individual...
Rarely implies that sometimes it is.
Get off my presidential lawn!
We do need to raise taxes on the rich, among other things.
They've been raised. Taking more away from "the rich" (the definition of which BTW will eventually encompass you if left alone) will mean that they will just leave, taking all the money they have with them. Why wouldn't they? If we simply shoot "The Rich" and take all the money they have, it does jack and squat to reduce the debt we have going. That should tell you a little something about how important taxing "The Rich" is vs. addressing the actual problem: spending.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Teabaggers don't care about lower taxes any more than anyone else does. While Bush/Cheney and their Republican Congress were busy running up $TRILLIONS in debt and destroying the economy that could pay it off, Teabaggers were busy voting for them.
That's delusional. As a matter of fact you seem as delusional as you claim the tea party is. You are precisely what you criticize, you merely are of the opposite polarity.
In reality the origin of the tea party lies with those conservatives who were quite critical of the spending of Bush and the 2000-2006 Congress.
Also the current economic crisis is quite the bipartisan screw up. For example Clinton and a Democratic Congress deregulated wall street. Democratic Congressmen Frank and Dodds defended Fanny/Freddie (gov't backed lenders) as healthy institutions when in reality they soon needed gov't bailouts.
Many of us have been arguing for a while now that computer crimes shouldn't be treated any differently from other crimes. Stealing credit card numbers is theft, whether you do it by breaking and entering a storefront or by SQL injection on a website. Vandalism is vandalism, whether you've defaced the front entrance to the New York Times building or the front page of their website.
Too many concerned public officials are trying to put computer crimes in their own category, as if they're somehow more terrifying and dangerous because a computer was involved. And contrariwise, many geeks seem to feel that crimes are not crimes if you use a computer to do them. Both of these positions are wrong. Prosecute the crime, not the tool used to commit it.
So this article is about government doing the right thing. They're treating people who organize for the purposes of committing computer crime as organized criminals, and prosecuting them accordingly, rather than trying to invent some new crime for the situation.
And for those of you who are posting "oh, so uploading a torrent is being a mobster now?", you're not paying attention. To prosecute under RICO, you must establish both that crimes were committed, and that a group was organized for the purpose of committing them. A prosecutor would be hard-pressed to convince a judge that a dude in his dorm room is an organized group.
You voted for Bush and Cheney twice, Teabagger.
Sexual based insults! How witty! Can we then feel free to call you Asslicker?
After all, you are the one sucking at the rear of the Democrats, voting for them regardless of what they do. Regardless of them doing the same exact things (many of them doubled down) that Bush and Cheney did...
But I guess you dislike torture, while lovin' drone strikes that maim or kill slowly insurgents instead of getting them a little freaked out? Nothing like dying in the rubble of a collapsed building, so much better than a dip in the pool...
Personally I think you are an ignorant barbarian, but that's just because I'd rather have a government that spent and taxed sanely instead of pretending one party was a God that I would revere without question, so you'll have to excuse me if your faith-based approach to voting leaves me rather cold and seems to bring up the question of your own sanity.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Meanwhile, another one of your liberal messiahs has destroyed a young woman's chance at a normal life: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2034697/Lonely-Monica-Lewinsky-trying-play-Bill-Clinton-affair.html
Let's be clear here: Obama is not, and will not be remembered as the worst president ever - nor as the worst in recent history.
But dammit, he's probably the most _dissappointing_ president in recent history. Nobody expected Bush jr. to be anything but the incompetent warmongering buffoon he proved himself. Nobody expected great things of Clinton, but he wasn't really any worse than expected either. Hell, Bush Sr. was actually a pleasant surprise.
But Obama was the last great hope for the US, and he has turned into the worst sort of lying, deceitful, two-faced power monger. It's not that he's a dirtbag, it's that he actually came across as someone who gave a shit--until he got elected.
My US friends, I'm sorry for you. Really.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
I haven't heard that any of the Anonymous releases have exposed anyone's criminal or even immoral activity. Mostly they've been releasing credit card numbers, haven't they?
Even when it comes to Wikileaks, the last time I asked someone to actually point to a released diplomatic cable that revealed wrongdoing by the US government he came up blank. So, can you do better? I'd also accept another Wikileak release, it doesn't have to be the cables. (It does need to reveal wrongdoing by the person or people who the leak was taken from; for example, I'm not interested in diplomatic cables saying that the diplomat thinks person X is committing crimes but can't prove it.)
Also:
1) IE really did suck. Netscape sucked too, but IE sucked harder and only crushed Netscape because MS exploited their market position. Whether MS built their monopoly ethically is a legitimately debatable question, but that MS exploited their monopolistic power to crush market competition is indisputable.
2) You seem to make the common mistake of assuming the State is the Government. Business governs America. Our government is a conduit through which market power mediates social control.
... was a good idea? 80+ years later after *Constitutional amendment* abandoning it?
Is it only because "your guy is in the Big Office" that you are so pro-law-enforcement?
In my book, you harm or defraud someone, you have to pay back, but if the "harmed" person actually wanted to use your product, get the government out of it, regardless of the current ruling party.
Yes, Prohibition and bootlegging *can be* controversial, if you give it a little bit of a though!
Sincerely,
Paul B.
He wants computer criminals that operate in networks to be charged as organized crime
Like they should be, because they are in fact organized crime.
Sometimes people forget that computer criminals do more business than traditional mobsters.
Apparently all other imminent threats to America have been addressed, there is full employment of the American populace, all terrorist threats throughout the world have been eliminated, etc etc etc.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Wanna go grab a beer sometime? I'm buying.
If they are going to include the frick'n writers of the virus that rooted one of my XP machines last week-end resulting in a wasted sunny September day restoring the system - I AM ALL FOR IT! - Throw the bastards away and keep them out of circulation.
In fact, if you consider the cumulative "loss of life" of thousands of people repairing virus intrusions I would think that capital punishment is not out of line.
I'm all for expanding the use of the rico statute. It seems like there are more than enough leaders of both the republican and democratic parties to justify classifying them as corrupt organizations and shutting them down
Probably not - RICO laws would be used to go after the leaders who didn't directly hack the computers, but just funded, ordered, and profited from the crime. The "poor dumb kid" would only get caught up in it if he was part of an organization, in which case he probably wasn't poor or dumb in the first place (and still might be able to plea bargain by informing on his higher ups...)
These laws aren't for the evil hackers or terrorists. They are for the American People.
The American People are the TARGET
Be wise to keep this in mind, and when the government does it's insane broken logic bit, it all starts to make sense.
The laws are the way they are because the Establishment wants the laws this way.
If they wanted to arrest banksters, it would have already been done.
Nothing short of a full financial reset is going to stop this shit now.
Roman wars were generally cheap. At worst the Romans stood to lose some soldiers and their gear. The US and friends knew that they couldn't have a "real war" in Vietnam* and so tried to win with minimal man power** and throwing cash at the problem. In some battles in Vietnam the US dropped more bombs in a few weeks to months then fell on Germany in the entirety of WWII. Doing the war on the cheap also meant the US had to attempt a war of attrition instead of securing the country side and using normal counter-insurgency tactics. Unfortunately for the US and friends Ho Chi Minh and friends where willing to sacrifice every man, woman, and child in Vietnam to achieve victory.
* Due mainly to needing to keep large amounts of forces in Western Europe and not wanting to piss off the Chinese into doing Korea II.
** Refusing to declare a war meant enlistments couldn't be lengthened, which meant people rotated through units on an individual basis. This was devastating for morale and unit effectiveness.
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
The RICO laws were meant to target the Mafia, a criminal organization whose participants may be able to deny specific participation in any particular crime of the organization at any time but whose contributions are central to the operation of the organization. Basically, there are thirty five specific crimes that if one organization violates two within ten years, it is considered a corrupt organization. Members of such an organization can be charged under RICO. But it has also been ruled to apply (most recently) to a housing management company which was alleged to have harassed tenants whose rents were subject to government price controls. (That company settled for millions.)
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Nobody expected Bush jr. to be anything but the incompetent warmongering buffoon he proved himself.
Wow, that is amazingly uninformed. War was not an issue in the 2000 election. Bush Jr.'s plan was to focus on eduction reform, trade reform (in particular with China), etc. 9/11/2001 changed that plan. Are you so uninformed that I need to point out that 9/11 was not Bush's idea?
It's been proven for a long time that when groups attack people and our rights, the law must attack the group - not just members of the group. It's necessary.
Huh... Now I know I'm taking a nosedive into the usual anarchist slashdot crowd with this, but isn't that what corporations and our current governing system are doing?
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
Hehe I like how that's your "favorite example"...
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
It wouldnt surprise me to see them use this in cases like Anon. That way u catch the 17 y o ddosing mastercard and can charge him with anything associated with the Anon collective(hacking the Arizona law enforcement for example). Do this once or twice(handing out those heavy sentences to someone hardly involved) and the cost of being one of Anon's sheep gets steep enough people stop doing it. Granted i dont know much about RICO, but the instant i read the headline, thats what popped into my head.
Let us not forget that every time they make a law it gets abused and twisted and is often times not even used for its original intended purpose. Such as the Dept of homeland security which primarily does drug busts now instead of catching terrorists. Or how about that law they created that allows them to take away your vehicle if you use it to commit a crime, and now they use it to take away your vehicle for speeding. It seems almost every time a new law or department is created it's not for the good of the people but rather simply a waste of tax dollars.
Experience shows that really works - just like trickle-down economics.
The Romans had this habit of actually conquering the land and giving it to soldiers. The soldiers fought better because they could get rich and have nice estates and the land was going to be part of the empire and pay back the debt soon. No modern state can do that now unless it can take all the rest of the world in a war at the same time. Imperialism is not an option anymore.
Also of note that the Romans went to great length to justify every war of aggression so that it could be considered "just". From "did not pay us a tribute" to "did not respect our gods" to "called our moms fat", every war was seen as a just and proper retribution for a horrible crime.
We'll never know who the worst president was, with apparently unprovable, but circumstantially supported, stuff like this: http://articles.sfgate.com/2008-12-05/news/17131315_1_lbj-library-nixon-s-associates-peace-talks
Of course not. In general politics lags behind technical reality by 20-30 years. So the mindset of the 80's is still at work. As the saying goes, "the wheels of democracy move slowly. But sometimes it's deliberate."
Om, nomnomnom...
Define organization. Especially in the context of hackers where organizations are often not much more then leet labels which the members bestow on themselves... And even if the kid doesn't consider himself a member of Anonymous, prosecution may still claim that his style of web site defacement matches Anonymous', so he should be tried as a member...
How about prosecuting banksters under the same laws used to target organized crime syndicates?
It wouldnt surprise me to see them use this in cases like Anon. That way u catch the 17 y o ddosing mastercard and can charge him with anything associated with the Anon collective(hacking the Arizona law enforcement for example). Do this once or twice(handing out those heavy sentences to someone hardly involved) and the cost of being one of Anon's sheep gets steep enough people stop doing it. Granted i dont know much about RICO, but the instant i read the headline, thats what popped into my head.
Yeah because it worked so well for drugs, and for everything else right?
You canont stop political actions with law enforcement. I'm not saying everything Anonymous does is political, but the core of their organization is political and cracking down on them will only gain them support.
Think I'm wrong? Watch and see.
Here's the full quote... "Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."
Now what was it that you were saying about the requirements of physicality relative to location in bounded space?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
DAs and LEOs then hold solemn meetings about online safety, warning girls and their parents of danger of being prosecuted--though they themselves are the only ones leering at and terrorizing kids!
LBJ was certainly worse then carter, probably our worst president in history after Lincoln who for some reason gets a monument despite trashing our Constitution. You are correct that under
Regan we saw deficits rise to greater levels than and prior point in history but the rate of growth was actually lower than it was under Carter! So this Liberal Myth that Regan was so terrible for our nation fiscally is true only if you accept that Carter was worse. I will accept that Regan was bad for the national deficit situation but if we want to demonize the man and his policies we need to recognize that the proposals from this nations left are in fact not alternatives and um try something that is actually new.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Hehe I like how that's your "favorite example"...
If you are trying to insinuate that the GP is supporting child porn (which is neither here nor there) for legalisation then you may want to complete your high school English classes before participating, your reading comprehension needs work. Either that or take a job as a politician, you've already got the "single out a reinterpretation to sidetrack everyone on a more easily fought issue" part worked out.
A 16 year old (girl or boy) sending a picture of their self naked to someone else (on their own free will) and having the law add them to the sex offender registry and wack them with a fine (pictures of their own body) is a perfect example of bullshit law prosecuting victimless crimes. No one was hurt, no one needs mediation or help and yet this bullshit law allows prosecutors to fall like a ton of bricks for no decent reason.
It gets better when they wise up and use this as a weapon too, an under-age person can send pictures to someone else using Pictures over SMS then call in an anonymous tip, even if the message wasn't read and is just sitting in the inbox, that is still enough for the receiver to receive jail time and sex offender registration. This works with any push technology like email as well, just get the file on to the other persons system and they're screwed.
Charge hackers as mobsters when they start charging lobbyists with the same crime.
Regan we saw deficits rise to greater levels than and prior point in history but the rate of growth was actually lower than it was under Carter! So this Liberal Myth...
Untrue. The deficit was reduced during Carter's presidency. Even if it were true, you don't explain why you believe the rate of change of debt is more important. But anyway, it's not true, at least according to what I was taught, and the internet sources I've just checked.
"Has the rule of law degenerated into the rule of lawyers?" (Niall Ferguson)
"...My favorite example is teenage girls being charged with distributing child porn for sending pictures of themselves to friends."
When in fact that should be something we logically shouldn't punish, nay, we should be ENCOURAGING.
-Styopa
The overused term "ignorance is bliss" applies here. If he/she is smart enough to hack then they are smart enough to know the law. If the kid is under age then the Parents should be legally responsible.
Things would be so much different with a Republican in the White House.
/Sarcasm
But how do you define that group? Are the people who work completely legal jobs for them part of the group? How about their families? Or a person that's friends with one member of the group and sometimes visits him at his place of 'work'?
And another thing, which groups will share this collective responsibility? If a part of a political party commits crimes, does the whole party bear the legal responsibility for them? Or a corporation?
Whether or not Lincoln was a bad President depends on whether or not you believe that preserving the Union was worth the damage he did to the Constitution. However, I would contend that his two immediate predecessors were significantly worse because they were each President at a time when bold action may have defused the slavery issue without leading to Civil War. Actually, in all probability Franklin Pierce was the one who most could have prevented the Civil War. If he had refused to recognize (or at least withdrawn his support after it became clear that it was illegally elected) the illegally elected pro-slavery Kansas government, it would likely have resulted in less heat between the abolitionist and pro-slavery factions. This may have resulted in a more peaceful abolition of slavery.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Did you forget who has the guns? (More specifically, the special right to employ violence not only in defense, but offense?)
Since the dawn of organized coercion, he who has the guns (and the special "right" to employ them as a business model) makes the rules.
...Slashdot's version of the filthy, unwashed homeless guy spouting bullshit on the streetcorner. Say "teabagger" another dozen times. It's totally not old and tired yet. (infinite facepalms)
Meanwhile, after the left was sobbing about inflammatory rhetoric post-Giffords shooting, there's a video game where you can kill Sarah Palin, Nest Gingrich and other conservatives. Nice.
Go fuck your mother's skull, Doc, you useless sack of pig shit.
when you wish to cloak state criminality under the guise of legality anything breaching that boundary must be mercilessly suppressed. We wouldn't want our most august public and private figures subjected to scrutiny by the undesirables, would we?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
However, you are correct about Fox News leaning heavily to the right. Concurrently, the other networks lean heavily to the left.
This means the other networks tried to ignore the TEA Party movement, hoping it would just go away. Since it aligned ideologically with Fox News, they were the only ones to put it on national news initially, until it became too big for the other networks to ignore (or, rather, until they figured out an angle they could use to discredit it).
It's about taxes, government finances.
In fact, they've been criticized by religious conservatives for not using their high profile status to push a religious agenda.
...The Obama Administration should be the world's leading expert on mobsters.
My favorite example is teenage girls being charged with distributing child porn for sending pictures of themselves to friends.
Mmmmm that's my favorite too *fistbump*
I worry, however, that this sort of thing would be used to justify ruining the life of some poor dumb kid whose knowledge was larger than his wisdom.
In any other circumstances everyone here would be saying "if you can't do the time, don't do the crime" or something similar. But because it might involve teenage geeks going to prison, suddenly everyone's up in arms about the rights of the accused.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Initially it was Bush vs. Gore.
Gore? No way in hell. He revealed that he didn't give a damn about our privacy or civil liberties when he tried to get our personal crypto under government control. Mr. "Earth in the Balance" we need population control who has four kids? An elitist "do what I say, not as I do" type if I've ever seen one.
Then it was Bush vs. Kerry. Yeah, right.
Bush was a big disappointment from a conservative point of view. Fiscal responsibility (not even counting Iraq/Afghanistan), illegal immigration, expanding federal government, further encroachment on state sovereignty, medicare drug program, Patriot Act, and so on, massive failure across the board.
Except that defacing a website is exactly trivial. There is time and money lost while the server(s) are down while the IT staff make sure that nothing more serious transpired.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
If a business doesn't immediately concede to terms favorable to the union that basically guarantee unionization, the union will unleash an extortion package to pressure the company into caving. This includes stuff all the way up to flooding an emergency room with fake patients in order to hinder operations, and having their friends in government put pressure on the business.
SEIU is famous for this.
That is not a BAD thing, that is a GOOD thing. Maybe that would stop other morons who have cost thousands of people (myself included), literally billions of dollars in total in time/effort/money.
Just because there's no body count or a destroyed building you can point at doesn't mean harm hasn't been done. This might be the first thing this administration has done that I DO approve of.
You canont stop political actions with law enforcement. I'm not saying everything Anonymous does is political, but the core of their organization is political and cracking down on them will only gain them support.
Cellmate A: I'm in here for political crimes
Cellmate B: Really? Whaddya do?
Cellmate A: I hacked some thirteen year old camwhore's facebook account and got her expelled from school.
Cellmate B: Come and suck my dick, you little shit.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Until it turned out he wasn't a right-winger. Then he was just crazy.
Should have read "Except that defacing a website ISN'T exactly trivial."
Need more coffee....
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
My favorite example is teenage girls being charged with distributing child porn for sending pictures of themselves to friends.
Is that actually true, or just another urban myth?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I'm not sure that he will go down in history as a disappointment. I think that history will be viewed through the same rose-colored glasses that people used when he was elected. There was absolutely no basis for putting any hope in Obama for the election, but that didn't stop people, the media, and the country as a whole from believing in him anyway. In a similar way, I think that history will NOT view Obama as a terrible failure of a president, even though it should.
This is already happening actually. Consider the fact that although Obama is, in fact, a lying corporatist corrupt statist failure of a president, and is not some Great Hope or Change, nobody is blaming him for anything. Nobody is blaming him for the economy, and most tellingly, nobody is blaming him for the TSA. The TSA, its continued existence, its increasing scope, its cancer-machines, and its other abuses, is practically the civil rights story of the decade, and practically everyone hates the TSA, but nobody blames the TSA on Obama, despite the fact that Obama can stop it whenever he wants to. When federal agents raided Gibson guitars, nobody blamed it on Obama, despite the fact that Obama wields enough power in the executive branch that the Fish and Wildlife service should be his responsibility.
Contrast this with the presidency of Bush Jr (another terrible president), where everything he did was rightfully blamed on him and his character. Patriot act? Blamed on Bush. Katrina? Basically blamed on Bush. Wars in the middle east? Rightfully blamed on Bush.
Now consider Obama. Failure to follow through on his campaign promise to end the wars? Mysteriously not blamed on Obama. Failure to follow through with his early-campaign promise to revisit marijuina laws? Forgotten, and not blamed on Obama. TSA installs scanner machines and gropes people, outraging the nation? Not blamed on Obama. Biggest economic collapse and funneling of trillions of dollars of wealth from the American middle class to the bankers? Not blamed on Obama. Increasing the national debt by a staggering amount and demanding an increase to the debt ceiling, while basically admitting that he intends to spend every penny of the increase? Not blamed on Obama. Obama signs the Patriot Act renewal? Nobody seems to notice or blame Obama.
I think the issue is that people elected him president but didn't actually want him as president; they just wanted a black wannabe Marxist in the white house for the novelty of it all. Therefore, they don't hold him responsible for what rightfully are his own failures as a president. It's as if people subconsciously have just accepted that Obama is a puppet, and therefore it doesn't make sense to hold him responsible for the abuses of the Federal government that should fall at his feet. Meanwhile the war on drugs continues, the TSA abuses continue, our economy continues to worsen, our spending continues to increase, and overall the executive branch is running around with a torch burning houses and Obama just continues getting away with the "these aren't the droids you are looking for" deflection that got him elected.
Somes they're true, sometimes they're not. Sometimes they're just too broad, sometimes they twist things a little far in over the top rhetoric.
Civil rights activists as terrorists? Probably not true. Other liberal activists as terrorists? Definitely. The environmental and animal rights movements are notorious for terrorist-like activities.
Liberals as socialists? Maybe a bit broad, but a large swath of the modern liberal movement includes major elements of socialism.
Atheists as heathens? I consider that a compliment.
Women who get abortions as murderers? Factually correct most of the time, ending another's life not out of self-defense. But way over the top rhetoric in any case.
The TEA Party has never advocated terrorism. Of course, it appears you consider criticism to be terrorism if done against your side. Grow a thicker skin.
Ain't that the truth. Unfunded mandates? Respect state sovereignty! People want to grow pot in their back yards? Federal supremacy! But the liberals do the same thing, just on different issues.
Obama just showed that he's even worse than the worst president of the 20th century, Jimmy Carter.
If you think Carter was worse than Nixon, Reagan or George W Bush, you're a fucking retard, or a rabid right wing shite-bunny - but I repeat myself.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The only thing you have to prove is people working together and you have yourself a veritable crime syndicate.
Er, there also has to be serious crime involved too.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
This means that getting together with your friends to hang out, and then deciding together that it would be nice to acquire a small amount of marijuana is not a misdemeanor, as the law books state, but a felony because you involved your friends. The best part? You don't even have to actually acquire the green stuff, simply planning with someone else to go buy some makes you a felon.
Probably wise to choose your friends carefully then if you're going to do something (however trivially) illegal with them. It's called common sense.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
What happens when that group is the law?
In the US, you primary new candidates, then run them against the incumbents, and take over the government. It takes only 2 years to completely change the House of Representatives, which can block the government from doing anything, and which can impeach any judge, congressmember or executive. It takes only 4 years to do that plus change the majority of the Senate, which can convict on impeachment and remove the guilty official, and change the president. After which the new government can then do new things.
That is America's democratic republic. We saw it exercised in 2010 by the Teabagger Republicans. Which demonstrates that the people must also use the media to inform themselves and others about how reliable the candidates are, and who else is supporting them. When Republicans insisted that corporations get "rights" to spend unlimited and anonymous money electing their chosen representatives, the people should have refused to vote for Republicans. And no, Democrats are not "just as bad", even if there are a minority of Democrats who are just as bad. Republicans have a smaller minority who aren't. The choice is excruciatingly clear.
So the question really is: "what happens when that group is the people?" Because enough Americans are slavish mob wives that we are repeatedly stuck with mobsters in government.
--
make install -not war
Wilson was worse than Johnson. He got us into WW1. The income tax and the the Federal Reserve gave us the First Great Depression, and his stupid League of Nations gave us WW2.
Gibson is accused of importing wood that is, by law, banned from import. The wood that was allegedly illegally imported was seized as evidence. This isn't the car used to transport drugs being seized, this is the drugs themselves.
Normally it would be returned if it was found not to violate the law. But this brings up a different subject from forfeiture, in that often the government doesn't like to give back what is siezed. It is very common in gun seizures, where the government admits the person committed no crime, doesn't claim the guns are subject to forfeiture laws, but simply refuses to release them back to the owner.
One of the things I'd be curious about is how this is going to affect the way crimes are investigated. Do law enforcement agencies have greater powers of surveillance over RICO suspects? Does this also affect which agencies are allowed to do the investigations? This could also open avenues to prosecuting, for political reasons, people who haven't actually committed crimes. Julian Assange didn't hack into anything, but if the DoJ can convince a judge that he was part of a "racket" with Manning, perhaps they could get a prosecution to move forward, allowing discovery and surveillance that would previously be closed to them. It'll be interesting to see how this strategic shift actually gets used. At this point, I'm wary of any of this administration's law enforcement aspirations.
IT's about time someone saw the similarities and acted on it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
noun/mäbstr/
mobsters, plural
A member of a group of violent criminals; a gangster
Dumbass
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The soldiers fought better because they could get rich and have nice estates and the land was going to be part of the empire and pay back the debt soon. No modern state can do that now unless it can take all the rest of the world in a war at the same time. Imperialism is not an option anymore.
It is, it's just not quite as blatant as that. Now, the soldiers get screwed with poor pay, stop-loss policies if they get sick of fighting, and crappy medical care at VA hospitals, while the government sets up puppet governments in the countries they conquer that are friendly to their corporate buddies that want to mine the resources there.
Have you been living under a rock or something?
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/01/kids/
I'd post more links, but you need to learn how to use Google. :)
Thanks, I had forgotten to mention him. I really wonder what things would be like if we had just stayed out of WWI and let the dumb Allies lose. Germany would probably be a more powerful country now, but Hitler never would have happened, perhaps Stalin would never have happened either, and we could have avoided some giant wars and maybe even the Cold War.
They're just debating the legality of the wood itself. They also haven't begun forfeiture procedings. They're holding it for evidence.
You need to say teabagger a few hundred more times. That should take care of the one or two people left in the known universe who still take your toxic, brainless, idiotic, pig ignorant, serial-bomber style ramblings from your filth encrusted brain with a molecule of seriousness.
You realize you are the laughing stock and village idiot of Slashdot, right?
Many of Bush's inner circle are members of Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neo-conservative think-tank that promotes an ideology of total U.S. world domination through the use of force. Back in 1998, PNAC sent an open letter to President Clinton urging his administration to implement a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power.
In that time frame Saddam was occasionally shooting at US aircraft patrolling the no fly zone, playing cat and mouse with UN weapons inspectors, supporting an attempted assassination of a former US president, etc. Of course there were people, both republicans and democrats, who advocated taking him out. Clinton had to occasionally order a military strike against Iraq for one thing or the other. Clinton stated that it was US policy to remove Saddam, to have regime change in Iraq. Of course the military would have a plan for invading Iraq, they would have been negligent not to have such a plan. Given that Gulf War 1 was a relatively recent event at that time having an invasion plan may have been a minor effort.
To be honest at that time it would have been a surprise to have people in any administration, republican or democrat, who did *not* advocate regime change in Iraq.
It was a joke, Anonymous Coward. Lighten up.
We know Fox, that's easy. ABC insiders admit they're liberally biased, with little political diversity from the leftist viewpoint. CBS with Wallace and Couric, and don't forget Rather and his partisan hit piece on Bush. CNN? Well, in studies, Democrats tend to view the network favorably and think it's not biased, while Republicans tend to think it's biased liberal. That's a clue. We have a liberal bias because reporters tend to be biased liberal even if the management isn't. The only thing that's going to counter that is something like Fox management dictating a more conservative viewpoint.
After the election the Washington Post ombudsman flat-out admitted they had been blatantly pro-Obama in the election.
In fact, it's just easier to sit back and look at the big picture for the bias. During the 2008 election, ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS and CNN were all fawning over Obama, while Fox was pushing McCain.
Question: Soldiers are still dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why is the press not clamoring for coffin shots as they were during the Bush administration?
As of last year, more troops had died in Afghanistan under Obama than under Bush. Why do we not constantly see the current tally of dead in the news as we did during the Bush administration?
I dont know that you can really apply the label "hacker" to either Manning or Assange, which makes your punchline fail.
I'm surprised Bush didn't try to get detention of hackers as part of the Patriot Act.
Who needs RICO? We'll just make you disappear, Soviet-style.
But because it might involve teenage geeks going to prison, suddenly everyone's up in arms about the rights of the accused.
Depends on how the judge hands down the sentencing. If they get tossed in maxsec with all the buff murders and rapists, then fuck yes I'll be up in arms about it. Toss 'em in a minsec cut off from the world where they can learn their lesson, don't throw them to the wolves to be some 300 pound black man's bitch.
Cool post bro, highfive \o
or else he will end up like JFK.
New Economic Perspectives
Oblig Simpsons:
Chief Wiggum: Okay, you just bought yourself a 317, pointing out police stupidity... Or is that a 314? Nah nah, 314 is a dog uh, in, no or is that a 315?... You're in trouble pal.
Welcome to the realities of criminal law. Along the lines of "when the only tool you have is a hammer..." it can be tough to keep up when times change faster than the law can. Someone does something that doesn't neatly fit within the existing framework and prosecutors face pressure to "do something about it" and they apply the only tool they have. The alternative is legislating the hell out of everything until the criminal code is beyond comprehension. There's already something like 4,500 federal offenses that you can go to jail for, let alone state and local crimes. Even the Department of Justice couldn't figure out how many federal crimes exist on the books. Can you imagine if legislators decided to enumerate everything?
I don't claim to have the answer but be careful what you wish for when complaining about laws that are overly broad.
Corrupt politicians are even a bigger threat. Capital punishment is the obvious answer.
Like in Bush's, and now Obama's, Amerika they "preemptively" arrest acitivists and community organizers....... 'Nuff said.
Let's be clear here: Obama is not, and will not be remembered as the worst president ever - nor as the worst in recent history. Dood, I wouldn't be so sure of that -- sure, he's got competition from Bush #2, #1, Reagan and Clinton (the four neocons preceding neocon Obama --- and let's not parse words, these ain't neolibs, they ARE ALL NEOCONS!) --- but Obama HAS continued and expanded upon Bush's policies, increased foreign assassinations by UAVs, "preemptively" arrested anti-war activists and community organizers, appointed the most neocon-ridden administration possible (Wall Street lobbyists, Monsanto lobbyists, pharmaceutical industry lobbyists, etc., etc.), and, oh yeah, been awarded the Nobel Prize for liberating pollution! (Actually, the Swedish Central Bank's International Prize in Economics in Memory of Nobel)
Just like we ruin poor dumb kids lives who commit other dumb crimes they wouldn't have committed if they were older like joining a gang, murdering somebody for a pair of shoes, etc etc.
Basically what I hear in your comment is "How dare middle class suburb kids be expected to follow the law and then be prosecuted when they fail .. the outrage!!!"
De Oppresso Liber
Except that defacing a website steals money from people.
My favorite example is teenage girls being charged with distributing child porn for sending pictures of themselves to friends.
Is that actually true, or just another urban myth?
Yes it has actually happened. Slashdot covered it at the time: http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/03/30/1249237/Is-That-Sexting-Pic-Illegal-A-Scientific-Test
So this Liberal Myth that Regan was so terrible for our nation fiscally is true only if you accept that Carter was worse.
This is bullshit and you're a partisan hack. Carter paid down the debt.
Hackers kill people all the time!
Twinstiq, game news
I just hope that the punishment does fit the crime though, as someone (script kiddy) trying to get unto someone else's computer does not get a 25 year term, nor someone who has created one of the worst botnets to steal credit cards, would get 2 years...
You canont stop political actions with law enforcement. I'm not saying everything Anonymous does is political, but the core of their organization is political and cracking down on them will only gain them support.
Cellmate A: I'm in here for political crimes
Cellmate B: Really? Whaddya do?
Cellmate A: I hacked some thirteen year old camwhore's facebook account and got her expelled from school.
Cellmate B: Come and suck my dick, you little shit.
If you want to try and imply that all hackers are child pornographers, that's not going to work either.
The people who hack big corporations for political reasons, who happen to get caught, chances are it wouldn't be about hacking a Facebook account. If we are going to start treating script kiddies like mobsters then we have a problem because millions of teenagers are doing dumb stuff like that.
And I don't think tougher laws are going to stop it from happening.
Yeah, maybe some of the idiots involved with Anonymous and LulzSec deserve to get into trouble, but I would hardly put them into the same category as Al Capone and Albert Anastasia...
It's one thing to use a small-time charge to take down a big fish (eg: the tax stuff with Capone) but it's quite another to do the reverse. As far as I know, "Kayla" hasn't whacked anyone. Frankly, I don't find the crimes comparable other than having some multi-party organization component to them and even then, Anonymous, isn't close to being La Cosa Nostra. It's like using terrorism charging against vandals.
Well, RICO laws have never been *successfully* prosecuted in cases that have not involved economic gain. For example, it was used to prosecute leaders of the Catholic Church who covered up child molestation, as well as abortion clinic protesters blocking patients from entering. Neither suit was successful, and in the second case the US Supreme Court decided it.
So, if the "organization" was profiting from their hacking, I say fuck 'em, that's a criminal syndicate. If they were just defacing web sites for political purposes (or to be dicks), well, it's still criminal, but not racketeering. In any case "organization" and "racketeering" operations are described in detail in the Act, so no need for me to define it :)
Not only do I think they will use this in cases like Anon, I think the law is being pushed BECAUSE of cases like Anon and LulzSec. Not to mention the identity theft rings and the botnet masters. But the botnets and ID theft have been around for years, and it's only after the Anon attacks came in that this law gets proposed. Maybe this was in the pipeline already, but it certainly has more support now than it would without Anon, etc.
There's a core of Anon that is politically driven, but there are enough people in it for the lulz that there might be some effect of this legislation. Anon wouldn't be killed off, but their DDoS attacks wouldn't be so effective without the non-political hangers-on/trolls. And those are the ones likely to drop off if the risk gets too high for the joke to be funny anymore.
As you say, we will watch and see.
We are the 198 proof..
Banking.
oh.... then you are now prosecutable under RICO. congratulations.
these are exactly the laws taht Bradley Manning, and the unnamed Cambridge Associates are being charged under. the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Incompetent people. Yes.
Now you're getting it.
Do you really excuse all sorts of incompetence on the basis of the stupidity of the victims?
expandfairuse.org
Ok, you win...at being an arsehole.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
you're an idiot.
cower in my shadow some more behind your chosen adhesive strip severer based pseudonym, feeb.
you're completely pathetic.
They are supposed to return it when things are over, but then they can extend things forever, so they never have to return it.
One woman just had her legal guns siezed by local police, no charges filed. She demanded them back, they said go to court. She got a judge to order their release, the sheriff ignored it.
Fucking lobbyists....
The Administration needs to conscript these TALENTED criminals for a decade of mandatory national service (paid) to a cyberforces branch of the US military and give the Chinese their come uppence
This means that getting together with your friends to hang out, and then deciding together that it would be nice to acquire a small amount of marijuana is not a misdemeanor, as the law books state, but a felony because you involved your friends. The best part? You don't even have to actually acquire the green stuff, simply planning with someone else to go buy some makes you a felon.
Probably wise to choose your friends carefully then if you're going to do something (however trivially) illegal with them. It's called common sense.
Please forgive the late reply, I've been somewhat busy for the past week.
The issue I was describing has nothing to do with choosing your friends carefully (everyone knows "it's only illegal if you get caught"). The base problem is that it is illegal to discuss perpetrating a crime in the first place, and the "criminality" of that discussion is higher than the actual crime.
Think about it this way: If you get pulled over for speeding, you get a citation. If the laws concerning conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor were applied to moving violations, you would go to jail (instead of being issued a ticket) if the officer who pulled you over had a reasonable suspicion that you intended to exceed the posted speed limit.
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