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Kentucky Anonymous Member Indicted Three Years After FBI Raid (arstechnica.com)
A federal grand jury has indicted "KYAnonymous" -- more than three years after FBI agents raided and searched his home -- and charged him under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes an article from Ars Technica:
After The New York Times published an account [late in 2012] of a horrific rape against a teenage girl in Steubenville, Ohio, an online vigilante campaign was started...the campaign targeted local officials who the vigilantes felt weren't prosecuting the rape investigation seriously because the alleged perpetrators were high school football players... Two teenage boys ended up being charged, and when the case went to trial in March 2013, the two were convicted of rape and sentenced to one to two years in prison.
The indictment says Deric Lostutter "knowingly and intentionally joined and voluntarily participated in a conspiracy" to "harass and intimidate and to gain publicity for their online identities," according to the Lexington Herald-Leader. "If convicted in the Kentucky case, Lostutter could face a maximum penalty of 16 years in prison (no more than five years on each of three counts, and one year on a fourth)..."
"The federal search warrant of Lostutter's home listed 'Guy Fawkes masks' among the items agents were looking for."
The indictment says Deric Lostutter "knowingly and intentionally joined and voluntarily participated in a conspiracy" to "harass and intimidate and to gain publicity for their online identities," according to the Lexington Herald-Leader. "If convicted in the Kentucky case, Lostutter could face a maximum penalty of 16 years in prison (no more than five years on each of three counts, and one year on a fourth)..."
"The federal search warrant of Lostutter's home listed 'Guy Fawkes masks' among the items agents were looking for."
3 years after collecting evidence?
What, was the Grand Jury out for coffee?
The sad thing is they're going for more time than the real offenders.
I say we tell the Kentucky US Attorney about more serious crimes that could be occurring in her jurisdiction. Ones that would be a better use of taxpayer monies.
But trying to get people to investigate it is 15 years?
15+ years for cybercrime vs 1-2 years for gang rape? Makes total sense...
15+ years for cybercrime vs 1-2 years for gang rape? Makes total sense...
Rape, like other violent crimes, is almost always prosecuted under state law. Don't like the sentence? Talk to your your state legislature. Risking a felony conviction under federal law? Never a good idea.
Maybe, just maybe this guy broke the law. But the law he broke is wrong, unconstitutional, and should be overturned.
Problem is, the guy needs a few $100k and the ability to stay in jail for a few years until this hits the supreme court.
...you probably shouldn't use the abbreviation for the state you live in as part of your handle.
The same Trump that you're alleging that about, yes. I'd be curious about your thoughts on Hillary Clinton's deliberate and sustained campaign to destroy the reputations of women who allege - in good numbers, and with lots of other people chiming in - that her husband is a serial abuser of women (and his official power in the process) and rapist. Do you inject your defense, or offense, at Hillary's role in preserving her own prospects of political power by smearing the women her husband assaulted ... into other threads here on /.? No? Why not?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
One or two years for rape, 16 years for embarrassing politicians into taking action on said rape. The priories of our "justice" system never cease to amaze me.
Rape someone instead of getting the feds to investigate the rape. You'll be doing less time.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If the justice system fails to do what the public feels is "right", it usually leads to vigilantism.
And the amount of vigilantism I get to see in the US leads me to the conclusion that there is REALLY something going VERY wrong with it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
1-2 years for rape, up to 16 years for making sure authorities do their bloody jobs right?
The real point here is not what was done but the mistakes that were made. Admit nothing, deny nothing, the only answer, we will discuss this in court, and to ensure you do not get refused to answer all over the place, answer questions with questions, never answer questions just seek clarification of the questions, the motives of the questioners and the basis for the questions (when they claim you are not answering the claims, state clearly that you legally are answering those questions). What is happening here is those who did not want to prosecute the original case because the rapists were protected and the victim was a nobody, now want revenge. Note they waited until after the real criminal were released so their penalties could not be reviewed whilst they pursued greater penalties against those that exposed the corruption.
I actually think the prosecution is a scam, designed to bait individuals into playing 'Anonymous' and then targeting them, it's a trap. Otherwise why dredge it up three years later.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Gang rape doesn't pose a threat to our corporate overlords, but hacking and cybercrime does.
I'll repeat what I posted earlier.
In the American federal system, crimes of violence are almost always prosecuted under state law. You don't like the sentence for rape, you complain to your state legislature. Crimes with an interstate or foreign dimension are usually a federal responsibility.
The geek might have noticed that the everyone else was asking the FBI to take the lead in investigating the police shootings of two black men last week --- which ought to have told him who has credibility when it comes to standing up for the little guy.
Stop trying to think; you're quite simply no good at it.
Makes sense. After all, we know you can't hack corrupt politicians unless you wear a silly plastic mask.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
They only got 1 to 2 years because they were 16 and 17 and were tried as juvenile (not adult) and so got only up to the point they reached adulthood. The other guy was 18+ at the time of the fact. This is the difference and explain everything.
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After The New York Times published an account [late in 2012] of a horrific rape against Alayna Macaluso in Steubenville, Ohio, an online vigilante campaign was started...the campaign targeted local officials who the vigilantes felt weren't prosecuting the rape investigation seriously because the alleged perpetrators were high school football players
In 2016, the vigilantes would have been given an imprimatur to destroy the town, as exemplified by the recent Stanford case.
The prevailing attitude at Stanford is that disputed consent only favors the woman, and that Turner's hometown must be made to pay for his actions.
If it was at a prestigious university, they'd not even need a rape case to destroy the person. Washington & Lee used Title IX to wreck someone's life.
The worst parts of it are that no crime occurred, that due process wasn't served, and that there was no legal charge - just straight intimidation.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
Sounds like its far worse to give a govt official a hard time, than is is to rape a girl.
Two wrongs don't make a right. We really need prison reform. It should be about reform, not retribution. Go ahead, mod me down.
Now, if you really want to punish this so-called nerd, how about ban him from using a electronic devices for life? Or would that be cruel and unusual treatment?
Vigilantism (Adj when describing something) - done violently and summarily, without recourse to lawful procedures
This action of bringing awareness, is not that. Perhaps harassment, but not vigilantism. Word choice colors your argument.
Then say it to those people that he is failing to reach. What IEO PAC supports him?
I'm as anti-religion at the next guy but does die the death actually mean get killed, or just fail to go to heaven? We have to cherry-pick more intelligently than they.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
But trying to get people to investigate it is 15 years?
1. Anonymous didn't "get people to investigate." This was a feature story in the New York Times, and subsequently spread across newspapers across the US.
2. Sixteen years is the maximum possible sentence, if the hacker were convicted on all counts and for some reason the judge gave them the maximum sentence and made the sentences consecutive. That's not the way real sentences happen. More likely, since it's a first offence on a non-violent crime, would be a short sentence of a few months at most, followed by probation. Check the sentencing guidelines here: http://www.sentencing.us/
3. The sentence for the rapists was relatively low because they were under juvenile sentencing guidelines. The law has an odd belief that when a crime is committed by somebody under 18, they should not be put in jail for decades.
Guy rapes girl gets 2 years. Guy rapes computer and could get 16 years. Thank you FBI :)
The same Trump who didn't fly on the "Lolita Express" like Bill Clinton did 26 times in full knowledge of Hilary Clinton.
The same Trump who did fly to Epstein's "sex slave island" and called him a "terrific guy".
Colors it how? I think I was pretty clear that I'm against this individual, or any individual, deciding for themselves how a case should go without the benefit of due process, and acting on it. If that wasn't clear before then I am stating it now. I'm making no claims about being impartial, I am stating unequivocally that I think this was a negative action.
Further, I don't know where you're getting your definition that vigilantism requires violent action but Oxford says no it doesn't.
Yep, we have one candidate whose husband is a rapist and abuser of women, and she viciously attacks his victims.
We have another candidate who thinks a guy with a sex slave island is a terrific guy.
Great choice we have here.
When the system ends up giving us these as our two choices, you know the system needs to be completely overhauled because it can't get much more broken than this.
Is vigilantism a real crime? If so, then it is unnecessarily so, since other crimes are usually committed in the act of committing vigilantism. But at any rate, vigilantism does not appear to be the crime the person is being charged with.
Where is your evidence?
NIV is a little better at translating than the KJV, obviously. Here's the full start to Matthew 15:
"Then some Pharisees and teachers of the law came to Jesus from Jerusalem and asked, "Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don't wash their hands before they eat!"
Jesus replied, "And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, 'Honor your father and mother' and 'Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.' But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is 'devoted to God,' they are not to 'honor their father or mother' with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites!"
Vigilantism is the common name, not a legal term, for any of a set of actions which are illegal. There aren't any laws specifically against "vigilantism," by that name, but it is none the less illegal. Many other common names for crimes are like this. Rape, for example, is not illegal by that name, but it is none the less illegal to commit rape.
Hey, look! Another fine example of a Hillary supporter, showing their true colors and their inability to articulate any support, whatsoever, for their favorite lying, corrupt candidate. So nice to see consistency from the liberal camp. Nothing if not predictable, especially in their hatred of guys. Would be funny if they weren't so toxic.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
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I don't go running to a dictionary as if it was prescriptive rather than descriptive. You said that vigilantism was a "real crime". Dictionaries do poorly when it comes to the meaning of two words together like that anyways, but in my book a real crime is a crime which has a law on the books specifically by that name. In the jurisdictions I frequent, assault is a real crime but the real crime when people say they have been assaulted is battery. The crime of assault is threatening to harm another person.
I don't go by that book. Things in my book can be crimes even when there is not a law on the books specifically by that name. I gave the example of rape, in addition to vigilantism. Stealing would be another example.
Laws require greater specificity than these common terms give, but the common terms do represent real crimes: laws are made to address the common-term understanding of criminal activity, rather than the other way around. So starting from the initial position that vigilantism should be illegal, the lawmakers then craft a set of laws which insure that all of the actions with which vigilantism can be expressed have been addressed. The resulting laws don't say they're against vigilantism, they say they're against lynching or harassment or whatever, but the effect and the goal are the same.
One to two years for rape, 16 for protesting rape. If that's not the most fucked up priorities, then go ahead and keep voting Democrat and Republican.
Not only does that not make sense to me, it doesn't make sense in regard to freedom. The original story was about the CFAA law. I don't even want to know what "common-term understanding of criminal activity" you think that law was meant to address. On the other hand, I am a bit curious what "common-term understanding of criminal activity" you think criminalizing copyright infringment was meant to address.
Laws are meant to deal with problems. It has nothing to do with whether or not there is a common term for any given activity that has been criminalized. The law is supposed to let people know with great specificity what they can and cannot do in exercise of their freedoms.
In an ideal world, there would be no civil or criminal problems. In a lesser ideal world all problems would be civil.
Copyright was addressed by civil law and then some people got it into their heads they wanted there to be criminal penalties. There can be citizen's arrests that aren't crimes, too.
I suspect that lynching and... Wait... many if not forms of harassment aren't even a crime, and you'd be hard pressed to even get civil redress for at least some. When trying to figure out why lynching might be a separate crime, I went not to vigilantism, but to murder. They didn't go to either murder or vigilantism and figure out all the different ways someone can murder/be a vigilante and pass laws for each and every one of them, see lynching and then go, oops I guess we missed one of them. Lynching was already a crime of murder or attempted murder. Where lynching was made a separate crime in the American south, according to my reasoning juries probably did some of that jury nullification type of thing and legislators thought something new had to be done. My guess is that lesser sentences might have been imposed to encourage juries to convict. I haven't actually seen the sentencing rules, at first had it in my head that they wouldn't be available or hard to compare to the original statutes for murder and when I finally worked my mind around that, ran straight into news articles about laws used to arrest some activists that (in my head again) I think will probably drown out legal results and are something I want to look into to boot. So, I'm finding it hard at the moment to hold up my end of speculation.
I'm not sure where you're going with the copyright talk, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act isn't about copyright. The person in the article is being tried for accessing a computer without authorization. You don't want to know what "common-term understanding of criminal activity" I think that law was meant to address? I'll tell you anyway: part of it was meant to address accessing a computer without authorization.
I... am having some trouble interpreting your replies, I have no idea why you feel this way, but to try and clarify:
Lawmaker A: "This person was trying to take the law into their own hands! Harrassing someone they decided was guilty, trying to stir up a mob. There was even talk about lynching!"
Lawmaker B: "That's terrible, we can't have vigilantes acting outside the law. Lynching is already illegal, no need to do anything there, but they're going to get away with the harrassment, since there's nothing currently on the books preventing them from doing it in the way that they did it."
Lawmaker A: "You're right, this will take a new law about harassment. Let's get on that. It'll help me score some 'tough on crime' points with my electorate..."
Is that any better? If you start from the principle that vigilantism is wrong, then it just comes down to recognizing when it happens and when it might happen and making laws to address those instances. Likewise rape, likewise theft, and so on.
Minor point: Harassment is generally not considered behavior bad enough to criminalize and too many people see it as their right to do so under the right circumstances for that to change. When sexual harassment comes up, it is usually a tort, a civil matter.
With the CFAA, my thinking was that the law had to be updated because being authorized to access a computer was significantly different from authorization to a physical property that some judge determined that those laws didn't apply. I suspected you had some other overarching concept besides authorization in mind in the same way you seem to think vigilantism is an overarching concept that makes harassment a crime, which as I've pointed out, usually isn't a crime. The odd thing is that the two examples you are giving for vigilantism are examples where the majority of the local people don't usually see it as a crime, but the just punishment of someone not knowing their place and it happens too far from other people for them to care. Sometimes (maybe a lot of the time) there is a special interest group when people of a group are unjustly targeted, but those aren't going to be impressed with the law being promoted as part of a tough on crime stance. Starting from the principle that something is wrong allows people to criminalize things that have no business being criminalized and that is at least one of the points I am trying to get across to you. I understand that the CFAA doesn't have to do with copyright but copyright infringement is one of the things that recently went from a civil matter to a criminal matter and I was at least a little bit curious as to what you might think the overarching principle might be. Harassment is not a real crime in either use of the phrase.
Starting from the principle that something is wrong allows people to criminalize things that have no business being criminalized and that is at least one of the points I am trying to get across to you.
Really? Here I thought you were just very very passionate about semantics for some baffling reason.
Okay, so if that's your real argument here then how do you suggest laws be made? I'm not clear on how that would work, since this is how it's always done: "Murder is wrong! We should make some laws about it. Also stealing. Also people who take too many items through the express lane." Lawmaking is inevitably reactionary.
Your quibble over harassment is unimportant to the argument, but there certainly are forms of harassment which are illegal. Less so in the United States than in many other places. This demonstrates the need for specificity in lawmaking, which shows why there's a difference between common speech and legal speech, but it doesn't really change anything. Laws about harassment still stem from the "harassment is bad" principle.
At some point of in time someone decided, "Murder is a problem. We need one law." At another point, "Manslaughter is a problem." Not because somebody sat down and said "Let's try to outlaw evey wrongful death." If I understand correctly most stuff that causes cancer is still civil law, not criminal. And in fact I seem to remember saying that in an ideal world, civil court action was the recourse. However, I acknowledge that sometimes things can get to be too big of a problem for civil law. In that case, the piecemeal approach is the best. Problem is, people are looking to have the state do their dirty work for them as with copyright. The Pokemon Go situation is interesting since trespassing is mainly a problem that I see should be pretty solidly in the realm of civil law, but the tone being taken in warnings is one of it being a crime. I find it sad that law has come to be so strongly associated with crime.
" I think I was pretty clear that I'm against this individual, or any individual, deciding for themselves how a case should go without the benefit of due process, and acting on it."
In the steubenville rape case, due process failed, period. This man took justice into his own hands, and is being punished for it by cowards.
"Anonymous didn't "get people to investigate."" Anonymous got anonymous to "investigate". There's a difference