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.

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.

So, crackers are terrorists, .....

[WindBourne]

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

Re:Too bad

[alexborges]

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.

Re:Too bad

[rtb61]

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.