Obama Admin Wants Hackers Charged As Mobsters 568
GovTechGuy writes "The Obama administration wants hackers to be prosecuted under the same laws used to target organized crime syndicates, according to two officials appearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning. From the article: 'Associate Deputy Attorney General James Baker and Secret Service Deputy Special Agent in Charge Pablo Martinez said the maximum sentences for cyber crimes have failed to keep pace with the severity of the threats. Martinez said hackers are often members of sophisticated criminal networks. "Secret Service investigations have shown that complex and sophisticated electronic crimes are rarely perpetrated by a lone individual," Martinez said.'"
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
I didn't realise being a mobster was a crime. I thought you actually had to commit a crime while in the mob to be charged; hence nailing Capone on tax evasion.
That was back in the bad old days when the government actually had to get a constitutional amendment to ban things, before they discovered that the interstate commerce clause allowed them to make any law they wanted.
RICO act (Score:5, Informative)
I didn't realise being a mobster was a crime. I thought you actually had to commit a crime while in the mob to be charged; hence nailing Capone on tax evasion.
The RICO act, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corrupt_Organizations_Act [wikipedia.org], changed that in 1970. In particular leaders who directed or assisted those who actually committed the crime were now also part of the crime.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
There are some computer crimes that don't fall on the RICO Act's list, such as theft of confidential information, or spreading a virus with the intent of causing at least $5000 of damage, or bringing down a computer system on which public safety relies.
Obama wants to add those to the RICO list.
Re:Compare this to the debt resolution (Score:4, Informative)
Because printing money doesn't kill people.
Money is voodoo. It's a completely abstract promise that someone will do something for you in the future, because someone else did something for you in the past. Whether it's printed according to some government formula, or passed around from rare materials gradually mined from the ground, or carved into huge stone discs, creating money is always based on some willingness to believe something that can be proven only by waiting and seeing.
That is not what mobsters do. Mobsters don't deal in abstractions. They rob, wound and kill in a very immediate demonstration of value given and taken.
Re:While they're at it (Score:1, Informative)
further restrict our online privacy.
They want to make more criminals. Yadda yadda yadda law enforcement make-work program for otherwise unemployable combat vets coming home. Those of you in certain states like California are used to being bombarded with news of squabbles over union pensions and union this and union that. The teachers' union is obviously the most evil, according to the local Fox syndicate, and so they deserve to be cut first and hardest because its their fault you're too busy reliving your own failed childhood dreams to properly raise your own damn kids. But, it's funny how the prison guards' union was never mentioned through it all.
Look at the bigger picture. Your corporate leadership wants to kick out all the expensive, skilled personnel and replace them with cheap [wikipedia.org] foreigners [visapro.com] who will Autocad for peanuts because it beats the hell out of working in a shit-ridden shoe factory. The angry displaced born citizen workers, desperate when their unemployment and savings run dry, will then be jailed for terrorist threats because some plainclothed cops overhead them [wlcentral.org] badmouth the government in a coffee shop, and their jailers will be all those predominantly minority combat vets and/or desperate immigrants who still believe in a god and find a roof over their head and drinking the government Kool-Aid preferable to shitting in a stool pit in some Nicaraguan villiage square. It's a make-work problem that solves itself!
Re:Too bad (Score:5, Informative)
Its amazing to me how this short-term arguments can be made and people will still believe them. I would like to invite you to not look at just the debt chart, but to try and see why was that money needed.
You will find that it was necessary to get some loans to pay for wars, broken banks and other failing financial industries like inssurance companies because Mr. Bush deemed necessary to not investigate nor have them report anything: you name it. War contracts, shady trading and stupid ass lending for houses, that all happened in Bush's era and it is WHY YOU CAN SEE THAT SPIKE IN THE DEBT CHART.
Just because Mr. Bush and the republican party (today led by the most stupid people ever in american politics since the prohibitionist party) didnt pay for what they spent in their time, it doesnt mean that the huge debt spike should be attributed to the current administration. It shouldnt.
Re:Too bad (Score:5, Informative)
Now for the actual reason they want to use those organised crime Rico Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, rather than the lie put forward by those two "seeming' dipshits Associate Deputy Attorney General James Baker and Secret Service Deputy Special Agent in Charge Pablo Martinez, it's because they can ramp up the "conspiracy" chargers when no actual crime is committed and the evidence is all circumstantial.
Basically about kangaroo courts targeting people who can not afford a proper legal defence and where judges and juries will fall under the bullshit baffles brains, of tons of techno-speak evidence without any real substance.
This is the government version of the blackmail recruiting drive, where cowards turn states evidence under threats of extended prison sentences for any kind of criminal fantasy they or the fed handlers can dream up, into targeting anyone they want to.
Sick stuff, some cop shoots and kills an unarmed person and, it's a slap on the wrist versus some script kiddy participates in a DDOS protest and it's life in prison and you have two government dipshits stand up and try the lickspittle mass media shuffle to make it sound all proper and acceptable.
Re:Right Idea, Wrong Application (Score:2, Informative)