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Hacker Threatened With 44 Felony Charges Escapes With Misdemeanor

Posted by Soulskill on from the my-days-of-not-taking-you-seriously-are-certainly-coming-to-a-middle dept.

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."

4 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. Duh ... by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Duh ... by Stargoat · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Ten years ago I would have said you were a crank. Five years ago I would have ignored the comment. But this country has gone seriously down hill over the past decade and a half.

      Corporate fraud and malfeasance is a major issue. Even things corporations do legally should be of paramount concern to the people of the US. There needs to be a disassembly (not continued over-regulation, which are two completely separate things) of the finance structure in the US, starting with the repeal of GLBA and the reinstatement of Glass-Steigel.

      --
      Hoist Number One and Number Six.
    2. Re:Duh ... by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Ten years ago I would have said you were a crank.

      In all honesty, ten years ago I would have said I'm a crank.

      But, the reality is, over the last bunch of years, we're seeing much more "victory at any costs" coming both from the legal system and the politicians. Facts and the law are secondary to agendas and posturing.

      We're seeing more and more examples of "the law and your rights are too damned inconvenient so we're going to ignore them".

      We see Federal law enforcement lying about their secret spying capacity and going to great lengths to conceal it.

      We see those same entities writing a hand book for how to commit perjury to about where they got their evidence in order to get a conviction and gloss over some of the shadier bits about how they operate. Effectively it's a "how to frame someone we believe is guilty but didn't legally obtain the evidence".

      The companies who caused the economic meltdown? Bailed out, and forgiven so we don't introduce any more instability, totally ignoring what amounted to billions of dollars worth of Ponzi schemes.

      The legal system has been co-opted to serve the interests of commercial entities, who more or less write laws which governments pass for them.

      And, increasingly, we see the governments of Western nations getting together to do this shit to all of us.

      So, yeah ... not so long ago I would have been a crank. But, not so long ago, none of this stuff was real, it was the stuff of fiction.

      I keep saying, what was fantastical fiction 10-15 years ago is commonplace. And if it keeps going that way, we're pretty much fucked.

      In my mind, we've pretty much reached the point where the surveillance state being in partnership with (and in some cases working for) an oligarchy or corporations who don't give a shit about anything but their own profits, and who have the means to change and control anything which they find inconvenient.

      It doesn't seem like there's enough tinfoil on the entire fucking planet to NOT end up sounding like a paranoid loon when you look at what's actually happening.

      I'd like to go back to a nice normal "slightly crazy" like before. But the world doesn't seem like it's trending in that direction.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  2. Need automatic "loser pays" in jurisprudence by mi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's no secret that prosecutors usually throw every charge they can at an alleged criminal

    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.