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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.'"
How about charging their fellow sociopaths - in the Administration & Congress - as mobsters?
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.
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.
That was back in the bad old days when the government actually had to get a constitutional amendment to ban things, before they discovered that the interstate commerce clause allowed them to make any law they wanted.
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.
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.
There are laws against belonging to a criminal organization, under the RICO Act. Those laws were introduced in the 1970s, long after Capone's time, precisely because going after mob leaders for tax evasion isn't a good strategy (after Capone, they started paying their taxes), and neither is letting the leader get away simply because he didn't get his hands dirty.
The RICO Act requires an organization to commit a pattern of certain crimes before it can be charged with racketeering. Among those crimes are theft, fraud, and money laundering, all of which can be applied to organized groups of hackers. It seems completely reasonable to apply the law in this way. Of course the Slashdot anarchists will decry any law enforcement whatsoever.
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.
There are some computer crimes that don't fall on the RICO Act's list, such as theft of confidential information, or spreading a virus with the intent of causing at least $5000 of damage, or bringing down a computer system on which public safety relies.
Obama wants to add those to the RICO list.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
.. .. .. 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.
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
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
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
Because printing money doesn't kill people.
Money is voodoo. It's a completely abstract promise that someone will do something for you in the future, because someone else did something for you in the past. Whether it's printed according to some government formula, or passed around from rare materials gradually mined from the ground, or carved into huge stone discs, creating money is always based on some willingness to believe something that can be proven only by waiting and seeing.
That is not what mobsters do. Mobsters don't deal in abstractions. They rob, wound and kill in a very immediate demonstration of value given and taken.
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make install -not war
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.
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".
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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
Its amazing to me how this short-term arguments can be made and people will still believe them. I would like to invite you to not look at just the debt chart, but to try and see why was that money needed.
You will find that it was necessary to get some loans to pay for wars, broken banks and other failing financial industries like inssurance companies because Mr. Bush deemed necessary to not investigate nor have them report anything: you name it. War contracts, shady trading and stupid ass lending for houses, that all happened in Bush's era and it is WHY YOU CAN SEE THAT SPIKE IN THE DEBT CHART.
Just because Mr. Bush and the republican party (today led by the most stupid people ever in american politics since the prohibitionist party) didnt pay for what they spent in their time, it doesnt mean that the huge debt spike should be attributed to the current administration. It shouldnt.
NO SIG
Now for the actual reason they want to use those organised crime Rico Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, rather than the lie put forward by those two "seeming' dipshits Associate Deputy Attorney General James Baker and Secret Service Deputy Special Agent in Charge Pablo Martinez, it's because they can ramp up the "conspiracy" chargers when no actual crime is committed and the evidence is all circumstantial.
Basically about kangaroo courts targeting people who can not afford a proper legal defence and where judges and juries will fall under the bullshit baffles brains, of tons of techno-speak evidence without any real substance.
This is the government version of the blackmail recruiting drive, where cowards turn states evidence under threats of extended prison sentences for any kind of criminal fantasy they or the fed handlers can dream up, into targeting anyone they want to.
Sick stuff, some cop shoots and kills an unarmed person and, it's a slap on the wrist versus some script kiddy participates in a DDOS protest and it's life in prison and you have two government dipshits stand up and try the lickspittle mass media shuffle to make it sound all proper and acceptable.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
The Tea Party is a creation of Fox News. I remember their creation while many seem to gloss over this fact. They are just another element of how we are goosestepping towards Fascism ever so quickly these days. We have our modern version of the Gestapo with a strong police state/prison industry to enforce whatever mandates are handed down to us. Both sides of the political coin are corrupt as can be; it's a matter of how you want screwed over, not if you will be screwed over.
If you monitor Rightwing web traffic and comments, you can see a major spike in the angry tones. We aren't even into the official election year or it's cycle and the political rhetoric is turned up on 11. Imagine how this is going to play out when this election doesn't play out the way these people want. I will be shocked if we don't see outbreaks of political violence before the election. It's all classic fascism in play; a quick study of the definition of it and it's history will chill your bones. Once you understand this element, things really start crystallizing clear. You have to step back, clear your head of preconceptions and look at the big picture.
These 24 hour news channels are epic propaganda outlets. If you look at the history of propaganda, and its modus operandi you will find disturbing similarities with these current propaganda outlets. Fox News has shifted into high speed, low drag with theirs, and their impact has been impressive. I have followed them since their creation, for it was interesting to see a Rightwing perspective after years of CNN's far Leftwing propaganda. Obama though has frankly made them snap. I have watched them go from "Fair and Balanced" to "Fairly Unbalanced" since his election. Their objectivity, trying to present a "balanced" approach to news has crumbled to dust, taking with it a huge audience down the Rightwing path.
Now they tote far Rightwing talking points and methodically craft their propaganda to suit a target audience. The Tea Party was their creation. It was incredibly partisan of them to create them, now they step back from it as if it wasn't something they created; as if this was some "movement" created out of thin air. It wasn't, they nurtured it, broadcasted it, provided web support and still keep them in the limelight.
People seem to forget about the shooting in Arizona, where a Rightwing nut job shot up a Congresswoman and part of a crowd. People forget how Sara Palin had "Gun Cross hairs" literally on her web site that had that Congresswoman targeted. Her people made changes to that site immediately after the shooting. The Tea Party has a history of violence to it that isn't making national news yet. Here is a local news cast about some on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5pdwTQ4xA8
Tea Party violence is amazing to research. I watched one video of a woman getting her head stomped on at one incident. Only blind political partisanship will ignore the signs of where this movement is going. It's symptomatic of a bigger picture though; which is a serious step towards Fascism. All the piece of this puzzle are here if you look.
Take the Red Pill.
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.
Great Intellect...
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
Because printing money doesn't kill people.
The hell it doesn't....
Printing money has literally lead to a WORLD WAR.
"His name was James Damore."
Education is a good, just like bread or living accommodations. In absence of government intervention, the cost of education is set in the market by the individuals, it's basically about how many dollars are chasing the same goods. Once government got involved it became impossible for a person of limited means just to work part time and in the summer to afford full prices of tuition, but don't worry, the government was there to give out student loans.
Well that's exactly the problem - now the amount of dollars that was chasing education (or health care/insurance) has gone up dramatically from what was available to students, who were willing to work part time/summers and from just people who could afford education costs independently, to amount of dollars that could be transfered from government to the education institutions and the students were used as collateral in this money transfer.
This stopped being about students the moment government got involved with money and regulations. This became about the education providers, who now could secure their income via government programs and lobbying of government officials say to increase education loans. Same with health insurance, etc. Any time government money and regulations get involved, prices go up and quality suffers, because there is no competition for quality of students. In fact with the guaranteed student loans, there is a perverse incentive to pass as many students as possible without failing them, so the quality of education went down dramatically (marking on a curve, teaching to a test, etc.)
The new money chasing the same amount of education made it possible to bring prices up dramatically, pricing out anybody who didn't want to take on all those loans. But this also created a bubble in education - now you have to get more and more of it, because people are coming into the system, who are told they can't go on without higher education, they are told they won't find ANY jobs now without a bachelor in something. This creates another perverse effect of having students in the system, who shouldn't be there.
Simultaneously the minimum wage laws made it basically impossible to hire people as apprentices, this destroyed ability of people to learn by getting hired for very little money.
How great would it have been for tens of thousands of people not to go to universities, but to go train on a job, earning little but NOT getting into all sorts of debt, and then spending 4 years making almost no money, but learning what they need to do work?
You can't handle the truth.
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.