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Hacker Threatened With 44 Felony Charges Escapes With Misdemeanor
An anonymous reader writes: It's no secret that prosecutors usually throw every charge they can at an alleged criminal, but the case of Aaron Swartz brought to light how poorly-written computer abuse laws lend themselves to this practice. Now, another perfect example has resolved itself: a hacker with ties to Anonymous was recently threatened with 44 felony counts of computer fraud and cyberstalking, each with its own 10-year maximum sentence. If the charges stuck, the man was facing multiple lifetimes worth of imprisonment.
But, of course, they didn't. Prosecutors struck a deal to get him to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor charge, which carried only a $10,000 fine. The man's attorney, Tor Eklund, said, "The more I looked at this, the more it seemed like an archetypal example of the Department of Justice's prosecutorial abuse when it comes to computer crime. It shows how aggressive they are, and how they seek to destroy your reputation in the press even when the charges are complete, fricking garbage."
But, of course, they didn't. Prosecutors struck a deal to get him to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor charge, which carried only a $10,000 fine. The man's attorney, Tor Eklund, said, "The more I looked at this, the more it seemed like an archetypal example of the Department of Justice's prosecutorial abuse when it comes to computer crime. It shows how aggressive they are, and how they seek to destroy your reputation in the press even when the charges are complete, fricking garbage."
Remember, haxx0rz rule at Wired.
This is from rt.com (English-language Russian news); it explains where the $10,000 figure came from, and sheds light on what the Wired story claimed was Salinas merely logging in an filling in a couple online forms with garbage text:
According to Special Agent Nguyen, authorities narrowed in on their target that January after investigators linked an attempt to breach the site of Hidalgo County with a computer within a residence where Salinas was staying. Salinas “made over 14,000 attempts to log into their website server,” Nguyen charged, in turn slowing down the system for administrators and visitors alike and eventually requiring the county to hire tech specialists. In all, the hack is alleged to have cost Hidalgo County $10,620.32, according to the Sept. 2013 complaint.
Nguyen said the IP address of the computer used by Salinas was responsible for those thousands of attempted intrusions, and a search warrant executed a week after the hack occurred ended with the FBI seizing his laptops and recovering forensic evidence that linked him to the attacks.
Salinas was interviewed by FBI Special Agent Christopher Wallingsford several months later in September 2012 and admitted during that meeting and at a later one that he used a program on his computer to attempt to gain administrative access to the site, but that his efforts were to test the network’s security.
*sigh* as always, we have this and that said, no citation. Anyone got a LINK to what he actually DID (excuse me, what he was accused of specifically)
Not sure of full details, but I got this much:
18 counts of cyberstalking: filling out a public contact form on the "victim's" website with junk text.
15 counts violating Computer Fraud and Abuse Act: scanning sites for vulnerabilities using commercial available scanning tools.
Not sure what the other 11 counts were.
The only charge he pled guilty to was a violation of the CFAA, downgraded to a misdemeanor, for trying to log in to the Hidalgo County website server 14,000 times, causing a slowdown that prompted them to hire specialists.
That systems exists in a lot of European courts. It is very bad because in that situation the defendant almost never has a reason to cooperate. At best they plead no contest. Since you never get a full confession you have no check on whether people did the crime.
But in the current US system you get confessions in about 10% of the cases where we know that people were actually innocent (the innocence project tracks this).
We don't have plea bargains in Sweden and on balance I can't say I look forward to having them. If they were ever introduced I think they should be capped at (say) max 10% or 15% or some such. I.e. none of that "I'm seeking 99 years in prison, but I'll settle for six months" as is currently not uncommon with US prosecutors. By stopping the prosecutor from lowering the sought penalty more than a reasonable percentage, you could balance the system to where it would be both worth to cooperate, but also not possible for the prosecutor to extort the defendant by skewing the risk/reward calculation to the extent that is common today.
P.S. And of course, in Sweden, if the state prosecutes you, they pay for your defence (i.e. the lawyer of your choice, reimbursed at a proper rate), and prosecutors are appointed, not elected. Last place I want a bloody politician...
Stefan Axelsson