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.'"

Comments

While they're at it

[Cornwallis]

How about charging their fellow sociopaths - in the Administration & Congress - as mobsters?

Re:While they're at it

[Man On Pink Corner]

I only wish they would run the country like mobsters running their day to day operations. Mobsters usually deliver the paid-for product. Mobsters don't pretend they're doing God's work. Mobsters don't go out of their way to start gunfights with uninvolved parties, and they don't irradiate their own customers in the name of "security." Mobsters keep two sets of books like the government does, but unlike the government's, one of them reflects reality. Someone who loses 22 C-130 cargo planes full of Mob cash can expect to be held to account for it.

We aren't run by mobsters, we're run by idiots. This is why I have no patience for people like Warren Buffett who prattle on about how taxes need to be raised on "the rich." Why? So the government can lose 23 C-130s full of $100 bills next time?

Re:While they're at it

[artor3]

We do need to raise taxes on the rich, among other things. The fact that the government isn't efficient doesn't mean we should reduce our revenues. That would just make us inefficient and broke. This isn't a company where it can go out of business and be replaced by a new one, at least not without massive suffering and bloodshed.

We should try to get the government to run more efficiently, but we should also pay our bills in the meantime.

Re:While they're at it

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

I only wish they would run the country like mobsters running their day to day operations. Mobsters usually deliver the paid-for product.

So does Congress. We just happen not to be their customer, except once every two to six years.

Mobsters ... but only if there are more than one

[jgreco]

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.

Wikileaks + anonymous + civilian obedience

[santax]

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.

Re:Wikileaks + anonymous + civilian obedience

[Grishnakh]

Don't be so hard on yourself. I only saw one now/know error in your whole post, despite lots of nows and knows. Your English seems perfectly fine. One error is easily attributable to a simple typo; maybe you didn't hit the 'k' key hard enough. It's only when you make the same dumb mistake over and over and over that you look like you're illiterate. This isn't a college English essay here, so perfection isn't necessary (though this shouldn't be construed to say that totally sloppy writing is OK either).

You remind me of non-native English writers who ask forgiveness for their English writing, when their writing is frequently 10x better than the crap that our (America's) younger generation is putting out.

I thought the problem was security?

[hawguy]

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?

Re:Mobsters ... but only if there are more than on

[hrvatska]

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.

Yeah. clueless morons.

[unity100]

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.

So, crackers are terrorists, .....

[WindBourne]

while bankers that have stolen BILLIONS, are friends? Hmmm. You crackers need to hire a lobbyist.

Re:Too bad

[causality]

Sorry Tea Partiers are more like terrorists.

For what? For peacefully working within the political process to support leaders whom they believe represent their interests? That makes them terrorists? Oh right, they don't agree with you.

It's already becoming a trend in the media to label as "terrorist" anyone who disagrees with you. It's the new "racist" just as "racist" was the new "communist", "communist" was the new "uppity dark-skinned person" and that was the new "witch".

Congratulations. You are a useful idiot who is taking his place as a part of a system of oppression. I know you didn't arrive at the conclusion that "Tea Partiers are terrorists" by your own independent examination of the actions of Tea Party supporters. I know that because it isn't possible. Their peaceful participation in the political process is the exact opposite of blowing things up and murdering civilians in order to advance a political agenda. That means you are the recipient of some carefully crafted brainwashing, propaganda, whatever you want to call it. Like all such recipients, you will excuse and defend what you now consider your own original idea. Again, congratulations.

You really have no idea the forces that are behind your passionate beliefs or just how dangerous this really is. Once the label of "terrorist" is applied so carelessly, you are now in a world where anyone can be considered a terrorist. Once that happens, you're only a baby step away from suspending their civil liberties at will. As long as you get the childish satisfaction of making someone look bad because you disagree with them it'll all be worth it, right? At least until you become the next terrorist. But don't worry, whoever calls you that will enjoy it as much as you did when you imagined the tables could never be turned on yourself.

That saying "first they came for the Jews, but since I was not a Jew I did not stand up .. .. .. then when they came for me, there was no one left to stand up for me" was written for people like you. It was intended for the early stages of this kind of monstrosity, when it looks innocent enough, when you can still comfortably call "tin-foil hatter" instead of "prophet" anyone who can see what's coming, when it's embryonic and could still be easily stopped. After that time, it's too late and must run its course. Not that this means anything to you, I'm sure.

Re:Huh?

[hey!]

As somebody else pointed out, look up RICO. What I'd like to do take issue with your implicit assumption that *being* a mobster does not do the kind of harm that is obviously criminal.

Suppose you join the mob as their computer geek. You help them encrypt their records and all kinds of other things people in general have a right to do, but you do it with the full and explicit understanding that you're helping the mob kill and rob people. None of the things you do all day long like check the mail server logs for hackers or generating crypto keys for the hitmen is illegal in itself. And because you're a consummate professional, you fix things that the really sensitive information is safe even from you. If one of those hitmen murders somebody, you had no specific knowledge that specific murder was going to take place, so you can't be prosecuted for the murder. You *did* intentionally participate in the murder by helping the hitman do his job. It's possible the murder might not have taken place without your help (e.g., that the cops would have found the unencrypted contract on a laptop). But your criminal intent is effectively "laundered" so it can't be attached to any single crime.

I think that kind intentional contribution to many crimes without specific knowledge of any would be the point of applying something like RICO to black hat hackers. Let's say you're part of a hacker gang that steals identities. You don't necessarily participate directly, but play a supporting role knowing that this is what's going on. Although you knowingly play a critical role in stealing thousands of identities, you don't can't be implicated in any single instance of theft because you didn't know that individual theft was going to happen. So you acted with criminal intent, participating in thousands of thefts, but because that theft can't be tied to any one of those thefts you can't be charged with identity theft. That's because you're not an identity thief, you're an identity theft *racketeer*.

That's what's going on here. They're going to go after criminal hackers using racketeering laws that were designed for just that purpose. How many years have we been saying that putting "cyber-" in front of something doesn't make it a new kind of crime? Same goes here. Bringing up Capone here is quite apropos. Saying anyone charged with tax evasion is being charged as a "Mobster" would be logically equivalent to saying that anyone charged for racketeering is being charged as a "Mobster".

Re:Too bad

[bky1701]

Once the label of "terrorist" is applied so carelessly, you are now in a world where anyone can be considered a terrorist. Once that happens, you're only a baby step away from suspending their civil liberties at will. As long as you get the childish satisfaction of making someone look bad because you disagree with them it'll all be worth it, right?

Why do I get that feeling you sit perfectly quietly as the right wing labels civil rights activists as terrorists, liberals as socialists, atheists as heathens, and women who get abortions as murderers?

People like you may like to ignore it, but the right has brought on being labeled by their own labeling of everything they disagree with, since the colonization of North America. The Tea Party and their supporters advocate terrorizing those they disagree with, and mass scale slander against those they dislike, yet there are always plenty to defend when those people- when those terrorists- are called what they are. Tell me why is that.

Why can the right go unscathed in labeling huge swaths of people as "unamerican" and worse for centuries, and yet it is the liberals who are constantly attacked for calling a tiny group managing to control national politics through propaganda and force terrorists? How many times are Republicans called terrorists on total - and how many times is Obama alone called a socialist?

I'll tell you why I think it is. Because just like fiscal conservatism, just like rhetoric about personal rights, and just like patriotism, political correctness is a tool that fascists learned artful use of. They obey it exactly when it suits them, and decry it whenever it does not.

You betray your own biases too obviously, and yet already many here in comments have jumped upon your bandwagon to defend the indefensible. How easily people are taken in by appeals to their own values, even when the goal of the appeal is against their own interests.

Sad perspective from a foreigner

[swordgeek]

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.

Re:Compare this to the debt resolution

[Rockoon]

Because printing money doesn't kill people.

The hell it doesn't....

Printing money has literally lead to a WORLD WAR.