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US Piles New Charges on Marcus Hutchins (aka MalwareTech) (bleepingcomputer.com)
British cyber-security researcher Marcus Hutchins, who has been credited with stopping the spread of WannaCry, is now facing four more charges related to separate malware he is alleged to have created. BleepingComputer reports: According to court documents, the new charges are for allegedly creating another piece of malware and for lying to the FBI. Hutchins had previously been accused of creating and selling the Kronos banking trojan last year. But in a superseding indictment filed this week, U.S. prosecutors claim Hutchins also coded and sold another piece of malware called the UPAS Kit. According to US prosecutors, UPAS Kit "used a form grabber and web injects to intercept and collect personal information from a protected computer," and "allowed for the unauthorized exfiltration of information from protected computers." The U.S. government claims Hutchins sold this second malware strain in July 2012 to a person going by the online pseudonym of Aurora123, who later infected US users. Hutchins expressed disappointment on the development, tweeting, "Spend months and $100k+ fighting this case, then they go and reset the clock by adding even more bullshit charges like 'lying to the FBI.' We require more minerals." In a subsequent tweet, he requested people to help him with the cost of legal proceedings.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...
"Lying to the FBI" is what you get charged with when they can't find anything else.
Hell, they'll even manufacture a claim of "witness tampering" over a one-minute phone call and a text saying "We need to talk".
The "Lying to the FBI" (or other lying to cops) charge is one of the several reasons you Never Talk to Police.
See the above video for a law professor's lecture on many more.
Instead you ALWAYS exercise your Fifth Amendment privilege to remain silent. ESPECIALLY if you're innocent. ANYTHING you tell them "can and will be used against you".
Even if it's true, somebody else may have told them something conflicting - through error or malice - and the police and prosecutors may then decide you're lying. Bingo: Both a criminal charge and the burden of proof switches from them proving you're guilty to you proving you're innocent.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The Constitution applies to all people on US soil, not just citizens.
*allegedly* I understand that the lying new-speak fascists and bible-banging evangelical death cultist fucktards now run the US, but we still have the concept of "innocent until proven guilty"
You've ... got a little froth right there ... on the corner ... thought you might want to know.
They typically have to go through a formal process with allies like the UK. And the UK is less and less inclined to extradite when the possible sentence in the US is disproportionate to the crime.
And lately the sentences are getting stiffer and stiffer for even petty crimes and it has nothing to do with public safety, health, or morals. It's all about the money! Tougher sentences mean more prisons which need more services and that means more money to the corporations that profit from the providing those services. Furthmore, law enforcement equipment providers make more money providing equipment and services.
On the flip side I know a CA shyster, one of his most lucrative fields is 'uncopping' a cop. If you have high five figures to spend, he will just go at the cop administratively and legally until his is unbondable (claiming he is working 'pro bono' for all people that fill out a complaint against said cop).
Then his employer will fire him and he will be a mall cop. Then whichever rich person this cop helped convict gets a new trial. All during this process the cop doesn't even know who is paying the bills to end his fun.
As corrupt as that process is, it's about the only check left on cops power.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The Constitution applies to all people on US soil, not just citizens.
Except the ones accused of being terrorists, or knowing terrorists, or living in an area where terrorists were once suspected to also live. They don't get rights. Especially not the parts about "speedy trial" and the right "to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation" (6th amendment).
You're Canadian I take it (the reason I'm guessing that is because most Canadians think it was a war of conquest on the part of the US, and they also think it was Canadians who burned the White House, but the joke's on them: Canada had no actual Army, it was all British Army, and Canada only had defensive militia, which quickly fell once the US went on the offensive.)
So while they might teach that in Canadian schools, that's not what happened. During the Napoleonic wars, England raised a naval blockade to prevent America from trading with France (as well as many others) without provocation on our part, and stepped up their efforts of pressing American merchant sailors into service for England's war effort. England then supplied natives that were raiding American settlements (which also resulted in Tecumseh's death and the fall of his nation, and to further retaliation against other tribes on the part of the Americans) as England also had the goal of annexing much of our territory at the time.
That really isn't a nice thing to do, and our means of fighting back included an invasion and occupation of some of Canada (mostly the populated regions, mind you, which was easy to do given England's lack of defense of upper Canada, which allowed us to hit lower Canada from the north) with the intention of forcing England to negotiate, which England wouldn't do as they refused to recognize the sovereignty of the US. Then we also defeated of the British invasion of the southern states.
In the end it was mostly a stalemate, but the US came out with a better political position, which maked it a favorable outcome for the US:
- It reasserted Independence for the Americans (at the time, England still considered the US to be theirs, and US citizens to be the king's subjects, which Canada remains to this day, mind you)
- The US was able to negotiate an end to England's impressment of Americans.
- The US did not lose any territory.
And by the way, impressment was England's version of slavery, which they also did to Canadians (before US involvement with this war, Canadian men in Nova Scotia would get picked up by press gangs, beaten if they tried to escape, and were never heard from again, meanwhile Canadians were happily serving their English masters) as well as England's own. Sailors that were pressed into service didn't get any pay, were forced to serve much longer than those who enlisted (in reality, there was no set end of service date for them, they just served as long as the captain made them) they had to do all of the worst work, they didn't get shore leave, and England only pretended to pay them.
It's actually complicated. Sentences on a state level tend to be trending downward. There's been backlash against thoughtless "three strikes = life sentence" laws and against excessive drug sentencing. Marijuana is also trending towards legalization on the state level.
Federal sentences are probably staying the same. The Obama admin did a bit to mitigate the excessive ones, Trump may undo this good work.
The problem isn't that sentencing is getting harsher, as much as that it's generally overly harsh in the US, even with the recent attempts to fix the problem.