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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."
But he still need to pay ten thousand dollars?
So the prosecutors 'won' in the end...
*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)
Also, this was TEXAS. You know, file a troll lawsuit/get out of murder charges for being a rich drunk kid/get skewered for being a racist that's not white by the courts . . . who's surprised?
Prosecutors are no longer interested in evenly applying the law in a sane manner.
They're interested in high profile retribution which is intended to send a message which says "don't mess with us, or we'll do this to you".
And, somehow, at the CEO level when there's massive fraud and malfeasance ... absolutely nothing happens.
Because the justice system is dependent on how much money is in your bank account, and who your friends are.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
They wouldn't be doing it, if they — the prosecuting agency(ies) — faced non-trivial monetary loss for every charge, that did not hold up in court...
To keep it harder for entities — both private and governmental — with large legal budgets to initiate frivolous proceedings, the loser must pay winner. There is no such thing currently and even winning a suit can leave one with thousands of dollars in debt. It must become automatic and not require a separate lawsuit by the winner to recoup his legal costs.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I'll be the first to admit that they throw everything they think will stick at a defendant. Read through any criminal proceeding and you'll see that most of the trial is about the prosecution getting a little bit out of control and being rebuked by the judge. It's actually funny.
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.
Sounds like the prosecution using a winning strategy. They got him to plead guilty to what they wanted him for anyways.
Prosecution apparently knew he could have won in court, so they charged him with a ludicrous number of felonies so that he would be too scared risk taking it before a judge and jury. Which is bullshit, and difficult to call justice. They just, de facto, broke the sixth amendment by intimidating him into declining a fair trial.
Of course they're going to say he could have gone to court, but no sane person would risk many decades to possibly life in prison when they could get off with a fine.
But would YOU want to have a judge who can't operate his cellphone without an accident judge you on the base of laws written by people who don't have much more of a clue concerning the matter in a case where exactly these things play a key role? Supported by 12 douches whose primary concern is to get out of the whole mess as quickly as possible, no matter how.
You sure as hell take the deal, knowing that you have NO chance in hell to a fair trial.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Looks to me they got themselves a mole/stoolie
Jack of all trades,master of none
Throw a bunch of stuff on the wall and hope something sticks. Prosecutors don't really care what that is as long as it's something and they "win".
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
When the word plea bargain is spoken all I hear is "forced confession" in keeping with traditions of the worlds leading jailor the United States of North Korea.
People should simply be charged with whatever the crime they are accused of committing... It just isn't the act of using coercion to force a desired outcome alone it is all the second order effects this practice asserts on the whole system turning everything to shit.
Maximum sentences are allowed to pierce the stratosphere because nobody notices when insane sentences are merely threatened but not actually handed out.
Laws are intentionally written in broad terms to be used as a weapon yet again nobody cares because it does not happen.
And before you know it in all ways that matter we are back to kings jailing the peasant fools they happen to dislike.
BRING BACK THE FUCKING TAGLINE: NEWS FOR NERDS, STUFF THAT MATTERS.
Also, FUCK BETA.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
AND FUCK FILTER ERRORS.
The consequences which follow from a $10,000 fine and a guilty plea to a federal misdemeanor hacking charge are not trivial.
His usefulness to Anonymous is at an end --- the collective will be wondering about how much he had to offer in exchange for a plea bargain.
Pleading down to a misdemeanor is common enough for a first offender. But that is a card you can play only once.
It counts as a "win" and his percentage goes up.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
97 percent of the people in federal prisons never had a trial--their cases were settled through plea bargaining. Like this one was, except this guy was lucky enough not to end up behind bars.
If the charges stuck, the man was facing multiple lifetimes worth of imprisonment.
Bull****. Federal sentencing guidelines almost never ask for "fully stacked" sentences. Instead, you wind up with X months for the "top count" and a significant "discount" of additional time for each additional count that is either proven or conceded. For a single count, the maximum sentence is almost never handed out unless there are other factors in play. So let's say this guy did admit to all 44 charges and accept a guilty plea on all 44 counts, and that there were no other factors that counted for or against him under the sentencing guidelines. The guidelines would probably recommend that he get a few years for the first count, a year or two more for each of counts 2 and 3, and a month or two for each additional count, likely resulting in a sentence in the 10-15 year range.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
People should simply be charged with whatever the crime they are accused of committing.
I agree, in that prosecutors shouldn't be able to threaten charges of more grievous crimes as a bargaining chip. But one problem is that even the truly applicable charges can compound just as quickly; even given a reasonable prosecutor, the law allows and sometimes requires that they file multiple charges for the same crime.
I'll give an example. About 10 years ago, I was called for jury duty and selected for a case. I was dismissed during voir dire after expressing favorable opinions about firearms, but I was around long enough that I got to learn a bit about the case, the defendant, and the charges. In a nutshell, some guy got pulled over for a traffic violation and the cop subsequently found a gun and a blunt in his car. It was his bad luck that the traffic stop took place near a school.
For this, there was a laundry list of charges; something like:
Everything he did, he was charged for again because the event took place near a school. Having some weed got him 4 misdemeanor charges (the cigar portion of the blunt was "paraphernalia" so they charged for that in addition to the weed). Having one handgun on him got him 4 separate felony charges. And here's the one that blew my mind, there was another charge worded something like "going armed during the commission of a felony." The felony he committed was being armed; it's a felony for a convicted felon to have a gun. So because he was armed while he committed that crime - yeah, seriously! - they tacked on another charge.
Wrap your head around that one:
Because you were carrying a gun while you were carrying a gun, we're going to charge you again.
It's like people who get arrested for resisting arrest; the circular logic is a complete perversion of justice. IIRC, it was that "going armed during the commission of a felony" charge that threatened the longest possible sentence out of all the infractions, and it was a completely bullshit charge to begin with.
Anyway, my point here is that the problem runs deeper than the prosecutors. The problem begins with the laws themselves. There are a lot of prosecutors out there who don't go overboard and reach for the stars, charging a jaywalker with murder or what have you. They don't need to, most of the time; the "legitimate" charges will stack up to enormous sentences all by themselves. We aren't going to get away from that until we revisit the vast corpus of shitty laws out there, especially the ones that require mandatory charges and leave no discretion to the prosecutor.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
That's the whole point in throwing the book at someone and then extracting a plea deal.
Without plea deals the system would grind to a halt.
Without criminalizing forms of speech the system would be freer to deal with actual crime. The legitimate powers of government reach actions only, not opinions.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
You think? So you haven't had the appropriate discussion with a tax professional familiar with expatriate situations, then. You're in for one seriously depressing conversation. Some locations are worse than others due to local issues in the country of desired residence (the UK is one of these, for instance... your in-country tax load would be very high, starting with VAT and petrol and employment of UK+US tax specialists and going downhill from there -- read this and weep), but you will soon find out just how hard Uncle Sam has worked to make your choice to reside elsewhere a very, very difficult one to follow through on after just a short taste of the many US tax-related downsides, never mind what your ultimate destination country has in store for you.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It all stems from the fact that the government never actually is held responsible for its mistakes.
I would argue that it's not the government itself, but the guilty people within the government that should be held accountable. If a cop beats someone up, the department/city gets sued and pays, not the cop himself. Nothing's going to change until those individuals that are willing to go outside the law have some real skin in the game.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Any citizen of the Commonwealth that is accused of a major felony crime by way of an incitement or probable cause hearing by the State, and in which the state subsequently withdraws the complaint (or portion thereof) before trial, the case is dismissed by the court prior to trial OR the citizen is found not guilty of the major felony crime at trial shall be entitled to claim all costs and expenses related to or extending from the trial (including lost income) against the general fund of the commonwealth.
So the super rich are cemented as untouchables in law by the simple fact that any government short of federal isn't going near charges against them with a ten foot pole. And even federal would be up in the air depending on charges. I agree, for nearly all cases the above would be an improvement...but at the same time it would permanently close other doors when it comes to leveling the playing field of the legal system.
Every blanket solution has problems like this, which makes me lean towards case by case solutions. That leads to a "who watches the watchers" kind of argument. I don't think that there can be a real solution without trust, and that trust has been beaten and abused so much that nothing is left. At this point everyone is kind of looking around and thinking, "Yeah, this is screwed up" but has no one to put faith in to fix it. It's a broken system behind a broken system. You have to start at the root of the problem; the people's relation to their government. People need to become more involved and government needs reform. It's a huge system designed specifically to keep sudden change from sweeping through it, which becomes a double edged blade in this case. It's also hard for most people to even grasp the scope of our current government and all of the tangled webs between local, state, and federal.
If you back up even further the problem expands to encompass our entire society. People don't trust people. People fear people. People blame people. People hate people. You have negative reinforcement from all sides. You have cities divided into something akin to war zones. Police are seen as the bad guys more often than not when they step in. Ditto for government. A lot of people just don't care, or pretend not to. Of those that do care, very few make it to a place suitable to making change and of those even less make the trip unscathed.
I've lost my point in the downward spiral, so I'll just end it there.