Krebs: 'Men Who Sent SWAT Team, Heroin to My Home Sentenced' (krebsonsecurity.com) 209
An anonymous reader quotes KrebsOnSecurity:
On Thursday, a Ukrainian man who hatched a plan in 2013 to send heroin to my home and then call the cops when the drugs arrived was sentenced to 41 months in prison for unrelated cybercrime charges. Separately, a 19-year-old American who admitted to being part of a hacker group that sent a heavily-armed police force to my home in 2013 was sentenced to three years probation.
Sergey Vovnenko, a.k.a. "Fly," "Flycracker" and "MUXACC1," pleaded guilty last year to aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Prosecutors said Vovnenko operated a network of more than 13,000 hacked computers, using them to harvest credit card numbers and other sensitive information... A judge in New Jersey sentenced Vovnenko to 41 months in prison, three years of supervised released and ordered him to pay restitution of $83,368.
Separately, a judge in Washington, D.C. handed down a sentence of three year's probation to Eric Taylor, a hacker probably better known by his handle "Cosmo the God." Taylor was among several men involved in making a false report to my local police department at the time about a supposed hostage situation at our Virginia home. In response, a heavily-armed police force surrounded my home and put me in handcuffs at gunpoint before the police realized it was all a dangerous hoax known as "swatting"... Taylor and his co-conspirators were able to dox so many celebrities and public officials because they hacked a Russian identity theft service called ssndob[dot]ru. That service in turn relied upon compromised user accounts at data broker giant LexisNexis to pull personal and financial data on millions of Americans.
Sergey Vovnenko, a.k.a. "Fly," "Flycracker" and "MUXACC1," pleaded guilty last year to aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Prosecutors said Vovnenko operated a network of more than 13,000 hacked computers, using them to harvest credit card numbers and other sensitive information... A judge in New Jersey sentenced Vovnenko to 41 months in prison, three years of supervised released and ordered him to pay restitution of $83,368.
Separately, a judge in Washington, D.C. handed down a sentence of three year's probation to Eric Taylor, a hacker probably better known by his handle "Cosmo the God." Taylor was among several men involved in making a false report to my local police department at the time about a supposed hostage situation at our Virginia home. In response, a heavily-armed police force surrounded my home and put me in handcuffs at gunpoint before the police realized it was all a dangerous hoax known as "swatting"... Taylor and his co-conspirators were able to dox so many celebrities and public officials because they hacked a Russian identity theft service called ssndob[dot]ru. That service in turn relied upon compromised user accounts at data broker giant LexisNexis to pull personal and financial data on millions of Americans.
3 years probation (Score:5, Insightful)
For what is essentially attempted murder?
Re:3 years probation (Score:5, Insightful)
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No that's not his fault but he knowingly placed everyone involved in danger...
Re: 3 years probation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: 3 years probation (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree that American police break down doors in far too many instances when they shouldn't, but you need to quit being so dramatic. They got a credible report of a hostage situation - they SHOULD roll up armed. And despite the press amplification of every single case (if the racial makeup is correct) the odds of an unarmed person getting shot by police are extremely low.
Re: 3 years probation (Score:4, Insightful)
1
Re: 3 years probation (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree that American police break down doors in far too many instances when they shouldn't, but you need to quit being so dramatic. They got a credible report of a hostage situation - they SHOULD roll up armed
The correct response to a reported hostage situation is absolutely not to have a bunch of over-armed thugs in mall-ninja gear kick down the door. The correct response is a negotiator, a sniper, some normal cops in vests, and patience. You know, how SWAT teams worked before the cops starting playing soldier.
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That depends entirely on the situation. In the case of an active shooter (which is what most of these calls claim) the police are obligated to storm in to save lives. After Columbine these policies were changed because if the police had moved in immediately they would have saved a lot of lives. Instead they did what you suggest as the standard procedure at the time, but that procedure doesn't work with a shooter whose aiming to kill people and doesn't care if they live or die. In that situation the only way
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"Reports of" an active shooter mean fuck-all. Mass shootings are incredibly, vanishingly rare events. The false-positive rate is over 99%. Yes, you want cops in vests, just in case, but there's no rational excuse to go in gangbusters until there's first-hand evidence that it will do more good than harm.
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While the police reaction was justified, the situation so often turns to the "wrong" target dead, that 3 years of probation for exposing someone to this kind of danger is a joke.
It shouldn't be that the police doesn't react to reports of hostage situations. It should be that nobody ever knowingly, falsely reports such a situation - for fear of the consequences.
Re: 3 years probation (Score:5, Insightful)
While the police reaction was justified, the situation so often turns to the "wrong" target dead
You appear to have contradicted yourself.
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No, he didn't. You appear to be looking in a funhouse mirror.
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No, I really look like this.
A police response that 'so often' kills innocent people is not justified, especially based on a single fucking phone call.
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As long as the number of people saved exceeds the number of people wrongly killed, then the intervention is justified. Accidents happen always. Currently, they happen excessively often and it's a worrisome trend which should be corrected, but only when SWAT kills more innocents than would people SWAT is called to, it needs to be dissolved entirely.
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You appear to have omitted alternative threat responses that don't require everybody in the house to be shot.
You know, basic shot like working out what the situation is before bursting in, shooting the dog, throwing grenades at the kids and risking the lives of everyone in the building.
I stand more chance of being shot by the US police than I do by a criminal and I don't even fucking live in the US
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I'm arguing that responding to a report of a hostage situation and treating it with full seriousness of actual hostage situation, dispatching the designated unit and handling the situation according to the procedures without shade of assumption this is just a stupid prank is the correct course of action. "Dispatch did nothing wrong."
I'm absolutely not arguing that the designated unit is best for this kind of work, or that the procedures - or behavior outside of these procedures - is any good. Simply put, SW
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Walking up to the door of a home with a hostage inside is usually the way the hostage gets killed. So, if you believe the possibility of a hostage situation is real, that's the last thing you do. Unless you enjoy killing hostages. You probably do.
Bargain (Score:3)
The thing is, the hostage is the only bargaining chip that the criminal has.
They won't automatically shoot the hostage at the slightest police apparition, that would be them losing they only hope for a way out.
They would rather *threat* to shoot, and try to see what they can leverage to try to save their asses.
But once the hostage is dead, they'd lose all mean for negociations.
So the most likely way the situation unfolds would be :
*bang* *bang* *bang* "This is the police. Open the door, we have a warrant"
*k
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Channeling Canada here?
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They got a credible report of a hostage situation - they SHOULD roll up armed.
They got a report. Was it a "credible" report? No. They dealt with the situation appropriately.
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Credible does not mean "real".
It means "likely to be real".
Real can only be determined AFTER you show up. Credible determines IF you show you up - and to a lesser extent how you show up.
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You seem to not understand what credible means. Somehow, I find that entirely believable.
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A phone call of "oh there's a hostage at 123 Apple Lane, Anywhere, USA" is not a terribly credible report, especially if the phone call did not come from the area code of the city involved.
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It may not be his fault- but he is fully aware of this fact - and directed them against an innocent person. That amounts to attempted murder with a deadly weapon.
Just because the weapon in this case happens to be the police changes nothing - using the police as a weapon isn't even new. Ever heard of "suicide by cop" ?
Re:3 years probation (Score:5, Interesting)
It looks to me like Eric Taylor's sentence wasn't for the swatting incident, and it was a plea bargain.
http://www.washingtontimes.com... [washingtontimes.com]
From the linked article:
A teenager hacker was sentenced in D.C. federal court Wednesday for a slew of cybercrimes committed against President Trump, Michelle Obama and former CIA Director John Brennan, among others.
Mr. Taylor and multiple co-conspirators are accused by the government of illegally obtaining personal information from high-profile victims and publishing it on a website, Exposed.Su, in 2013. He pleaded guilty last year to related charges and was sentenced at 2 p.m. Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss in Washington, D.C., The Times has learned.
Allegations against Mr. Taylor and others charged in the conspiracy were filed under seal, and Wednesday’s sentencing hearing was not listed on the court’s website. Details of the sentencing were confirmed to The Times by individuals familiar with the case but not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.
Because everything is sealed, I suspect that the defense attorney's threatened to use the trial to dump into the public record everything that Eric et al had stolen, and that would be harmful to the high-profile people they hacked. Hence the light sentence and plea bargain.
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I knew it was going to be a plea bargain. District Attorneys are lazy anymore and would rather give someone a light sentence than risk a not guilty verdict. They bring up a dozen scary charges and then act like they are doing a favor with a deal. If people stopped doing plea deals the courts would grind to a halt with backlogged cases.
All the outrage over the rapist Brock Turner getting six months? He agreed to a plea deal and so did the victim. The judge could only sentence for the lesser crime he agreed t
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> The judge could only sentence for the lesser crime he agreed to.
And you conveniently forget that, that lesser crime is liable for a sentence of up to 10 years. To give 6 months on a crime with an up-to-10-years sentence requires very, very strong mitigating circumstances. A judge who does that is effectively saying "this person has pled guilty, or technically broken a law, with no malicious intent and his actions really shouldn't be a crime but since I'm forced to punish him I'll give him a rap on the
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For what is essentially attempted murder?
Absolutely correct, this is attempted murder, and should be handled as such by the legal system.
Reckless endangerment (Score:5, Informative)
The offender wasn't *trying* to kill Krebs. So not attempted murder.
Krebs didn't die, so not manslaughter.
The offender did act in a way to create a dangerous situation with no regard for the fact that Krebs, other people in his home, or police officers could be seriously injured. That neatly matches the definition of "reckless endangerment".
Had someone actually died, it would match the definition of "depraved-heart murder", which is second-degree homicide in many states. Depraved-heart murder is killing someone through actions not actually *intended* to kill them, but by reckless disregard for their safety.
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Thank you for a new phrase for my daily vocabulary exercise, "depraved-heart murder". Now I just have to work the phrase into three sentences using different tenses.
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Had someone actually died, it would match the definition of "depraved-heart murder", which is second-degree homicide in many states. Depraved-heart murder is killing someone through actions not actually *intended* to kill them, but by reckless disregard for their safety.
One really messed up part of our judicial system is that punishment is often more interested in the results of the perpetrator's actions instead of the intent. There is no sane reason why attempted murder and murder have different punishments, since the intent was the same. Similarly, there should be no difference in the punishment for depraved-heart murder and reckless endangerment.
That's an issue. One reason for the difference (Score:2)
I agree it's an issue. The difference in penalties may be too great in many instances. There are of course a couple of reasons sentences are, and should be, different.
Keeping closest to the viewpoint you brought up, many things are dangerous. Heck, MOST things involve some risk. Consequences should fit the actual risk. Suppose I shoot off some fireworks in the middle of some soccer fields, full of short green, moist grass (which doesn't burn). Another person shoots off fireworks in their apartment complex
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Buying a butcher knife with the intent to use it on someone is attempted murder
In what jurisdiction? Doesn't seem to be US, UK, Australia, ... ?
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Buying a butcher knife with the intent to use it on someone is attempted murder
In what jurisdiction? Doesn't seem to be US, UK, Australia, ... ?
More like a component of "conspiracy to commit murder" in the UK I'd have thought. I think you actually have to physically try to kill someone for it to be attempted murder.
I used an incorrect example (though conspiracy) (Score:2)
You're right, that would probably be "mere preparation" and therefore not attempted murder. Though as someone else pointed out, if TWO people go get the knife, there's conspiracy to commit murder.
Anyway, a very weak attempt is an attempt.
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Had someone actually died, it would match the definition of "depraved-heart murder", which is second-degree homicide in many states. Depraved-heart murder is killing someone through actions not actually *intended* to kill them, but by reckless disregard for their safety.
One really messed up part of our judicial system is that punishment is often more interested in the results of the perpetrator's actions instead of the intent. There is no sane reason why attempted murder and murder have different punishments, since the intent was the same. Similarly, there should be no difference in the punishment for depraved-heart murder and reckless endangerment.
But then you would end up with people being put in prison for pure thought-crimes.
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It varies a lot by state (and even more outside the US). The intent to kill isn't a hard requirement for attempted murder - sometimes the line is drawn at an intentional action that could reasonably cause death. Seems like the sort of charge an ambitious prosecutor might try on.
Also worth noting: if maliciously calling in a fake 911 call is a felony, then in most states it would be murder if someone actually died as a result.
Good point, report with false name felony in CA (Score:2)
While a bogus 911 is a misdemeanor in the two states I checked (California and Texas), using a false name on a police report is a felony in California. That may apply. As you suggested, that would trigger the felony-murder rule.
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>which generally carries a much lesser penalty.
Where the hell is THAT true ? In practically every legal system in the free world attempted murder carries the EXACT SAME penalties as actual murder.
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I'd call it "reckless endangerment", not quite as severe as attempted murder but still a serious felony. Its doing something that a reasonable person would realize places others at risk of harm or death, even if that wasn't the intent.
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Is reckless endangerment directed at a single person?
There's wire fraud and causing severe mental distress involved here.
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>It was this way LONG before Trump came to power.
True - but don't think for one second that he does not fully intend to capitalise on it, and make it worse so he has even more to capitalise on.
Cosmo the God AKA (Score:2)
Cosmo the Cumbucket
Seriously, this sentence seems absurd. I thought "on a computer" was supposed to add orders of a magnitude to a sentence.
Deport the Ukrainian (Score:2)
SWATing needs serious consequences (Score:5, Interesting)
The US needs to force phone companies to update the ancient VOIP protocols with some kind of security certificate/trust system to eliminate spoofed phone numbers and crack down on SWATing. In an act where Krebs or one of his family members could have been killed, this kind of behavior needs to be treated like attempted murder, not some prank. Even under the best of circumstances, the family pet is often killed by the SWAT team to avoid injury.
With a security cert system, the phone network would refuse to route any calls without a valid certificate, and valid certificates could be traced back to a credit card/drivers license/IP address all tied to that certificate number, as well as a physical device and it's actual IP. I am sure there are still ways to circumvent it, but it would be a good starting point, and would catch most of the script kiddies, which is where 90% of this SWATing comes from.
Fly by night shady companies that refuse to collect this information or programs of the same nature simply wouldn't be able to place calls at all. For the same reason that it should be illegal to protest with a mask concealing your face, it should be illegal to obscure/spoof your identity through the phone system, and attempting to do so in and of it'self should be a federal crime with heavy penalties (I am looking at you telemarketers).
Re:SWATing needs serious consequences (Score:5, Insightful)
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I did telephone support for a small ISP for less than a year and we would often spend an hour or more holding grandma's hand while we walked her through setting up a PPP connection in Windows 98.
Out of curiosity, what is the management rationale for reducing call time? To me, that directive seems to be directly at odds with actually helping the customer you are there to support.
Re: SWATing needs serious consequences (Score:4, Insightful)
Why should it be illegal to hide your face during a protest?
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Because it's harder to investigate criminals that way. If you're taking part in a protest but being anonymous, what are you actually doing there?
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Not being retaliated against by the powerful whoever that you're protesting?
Re: SWATing needs serious consequences (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, imagine doing something like dressing up as a Native American and looting a ship in a harbor....
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Why should it be illegal to hide your face during a protest?
Ask the KKK.
Literally.
The KKK is why those laws exist in the first place.
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As others have stated, those hiding their identity during protests are usually doing so to avoid identification so they can commit crimes during their "protesting". It is already illegal in Washington DC, but it should be illegal (and enforced) nation wide.
Re: SWATing needs serious consequences (Score:2)
So as an example, a gay man working for a homophobic employer would not be able to take part in a gay rights demonstration for fear that his employer would dismiss him should he appear on TV? I'm sure there are plenty of similar hypothetical situations where this can be considered a bad idea even where the government is not involved.
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Actually it is illegal for an employer to discriminate in that way and they can face serious sanction if they do.
The more likely scenario these days is someone participating in a pro marriage or pro life march being discriminated against, as multiple CEOs have been targeted and lost their jobs because of their religious beliefs. Either way, it is pointless to march with a mask on. It indicates that you support your cause, just not enough to put your name/identity at stake.
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Because more often than not lately, peaceful protests very quickly become not-so-peaceful with a lot of illegal activity like vandalism, violence, looting etc.
No. It is just that you do not notice the vastly more numerous peaceful protests, for the reason they get comparatively scant coverage, even if the peaceful protest is much larger.
A thousand people can peacefully march in Berkeley, CA and you would never notice. 50 people hold signs in a financial district like SF, and one of them smashes a window, and it is about 1000X more likely you notice that.
There was something like 5000 people for the anti-Trump Impeach on the Beach rally in SF about a week ago. D
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By the way, a white man is several times more likely to be shot by a black man, than the other way around
That is demonstrably false, there are lots of statistics available on the interwebs. If you were to say that, for any given shooting incident, it was more likely to be a black man shooting a white man than vice versa, you would be correct, but that does not change the fact that a larger percentage of the total black male population will be shot by a white man than the percentage of the white male population that will be shot by a black man.
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Hmm, OK, I guess I see what you were saying now, not that the other guy was wrong, he is 100% right, I crunched the numbers and a white person is statistically like 11X more likely to be shot by a black person (1/93,000) than a black person is to be shot by a white person (1/1,000,000). So you were wrong and he was not lying.
Lets re-visit the numbers that you listed above. 189 black people murdered by whites out of 37.7M is 1 in 199471. 409 white people murdered by blacks out of 197.7M is 1 in 483374. So, by the statistics that YOU provided, a black person is 2.4 times more likely to be murdered by a white person than a white person is to be murdered by a black person. I was not wrong, and he was lying.
Further, your assertion that "a larger percentage of the total black male population will be shot by a white man than the percentage of the white male population that will be shot by a black man" is meaningless for the purposes of this discussion
No, it is not. This discussion is about the words I was replying to: "By the way, a white man is several times more likely to
Likelihood by race (Score:2)
By the way, a white man is several times more likely to be shot by a black man, than the other way around. It's not some 20-30% difference. It's several hundred percent more likely.
This is getting really off-topic, but that statement is ridiculously far off. Murder is quite well traced by the FBI, so let's take it as a proxy for shootings. The FBI has this nice table [fbi.gov] of 2013 statistics (other years would be broadly similar).
From the table we can see that there were 409 murders of whites by blacks. With a white population of roughly 200 million, that makes about 2 parts per million. We also see 189 murders of blacks by whites. With a black population of about 40 million, that mak
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Not sure about the cross racial violence proportions, but it is a sad fact that 50% of all murders in the US are committed by young black men who are only a few percent of the population. The vast majority of victims are other blacks (80% plus). The root cause of this travesty is the degradation of the nuclear family and the loss of fatherhood brought about by the welfare state. Until we as a society realize how demoralizing welfare is and work to get everyone a job who needs one (the welfare to work pro
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This would not be a new surveillance tool. The VOIP digital signature/trust cert would be run by private industry, but when the government comes to the phone company with a warrant, or if you call 911, that information is readily available and accurate. In theory you are already identified when you call 911, unless you are spoofing or otherwise manipulating your information.
Re:SWATing needs serious consequences (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice idea but it seems like it wouldn't work with a lot of services. You can sign up for various VOIP accounts for free and they obliged to provide emergency service for safety. IP addresses are easily masked. Even credit cards are easily bought for a few Bitcoins and someone can always use a payphone.
A better, simpler solution would be to not send in armed police, fingers on triggers because of a single phone call.
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We have devolved as a society. I believe trust and civility are necessary for a successful society, trust is all but gone now. Shit, we have a President that lies his ass off about any subject he doesn't like.
I do worry about the future for my son. Are we going to leave some shit storm for future generations to deal with?
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Nice idea but it seems like it wouldn't work with a lot of services. You can sign up for various VOIP accounts for free and they obliged to provide emergency service for safety. IP addresses are easily masked. Even credit cards are easily bought for a few Bitcoins and someone can always use a payphone.
A better, simpler solution would be to not send in armed police, fingers on triggers because of a single phone call.
Unfortunately, it is completely unrealistic to expect the police not to be anticipating a fight if you supposedly call them threatening to kill someone or blow up something etc. That is just not the real world.
Yes, there are ways to circumvent any system in theory. However, those VOIP sevices (which I have used myself in the past) would be required to get a scan of your drivers license, credit card, and their software/hardware would take that information and integrate it into your IP or IP route (or somet
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Re: SWATing needs serious consequences (Score:2, Insightful)
Kid was too rich and white to get a real sentence.
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Try telling that to the family of somebody killed in a riot.
I'd tell the family that I as sorry for their loss, but if they pressed the issue, they would have to be told that removing basic constitutional protections cannot be justified by such a situation. The 'grieving family' has been the tool to justify a number of bad/harsh laws. It's on the same level as "think of the children."
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Not sure how someone would die for lack of 911. That is like saying you didn't connect your phone to your phone line and that is somehow the phone companies fault that you can't call 911. Current phone technology is not perfect either, but that doesn't mean we give up trying to improve it.
As part of the setup if you want a VOIP phone system (which are predominantly business phones BTW) you have to put in your information and get it verified and digitally signed by a trusted source. No system is perfect,
Too lenient (Score:5, Insightful)
People who are charged with uploading songs, movies, and academic journals to the internet (with no financial gain to themselves) are threatened with decades of prison time and absurd financial penalties. These people deceive SWAT teams and recklessly endanger lives and get probation? Misplaced priorities, folks. The so-called swatters should receive more severe penalties, in my opinion.
Plea deal (Score:2)
The guy took a plea deal from the DA. The judge can only sentence for this lesser crime.
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The judge can sentence to the original charge regardless of any deals made with a lawyer.
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And yet somehow it never happens.
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People who are charged with uploading songs, movies, and academic journals to the internet (with no financial gain to themselves) are threatened with decades of prison time and absurd financial penalties.
People are "threatened" all the time with ridiculous penalties for all sorts of crimes, it's what happens to "cut a deal" so they can avoid the expense and bother of a trial, but I've yet to hear of the person actually serving a 30-year sentence for just sharing some songs on the Internet.
And the cheerful part... (Score:3)
How supremely comforting.
In related news. (Score:2)
No where does it say what happened to the heroin.
Will of the People (Score:3)
And now people like this are in charge of our elections.
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This is what it always seems to boil down to, with people like you--your desire to enjoy the suffering of others.
You should really think about what sort of person that makes you.
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Really Detroit? More votes cast for HilLIARy! than registered voters in the precinct? [detroitnews.com]
The article says nothing to back up your claim, and in fact the most likely explanation of what it does cover would be slack marking of the role and not voter fraud, but do continue your incoherent rambling. I'm sure someone gives a damn, somewhere, what you think.
Yesh (Score:2)
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Perhaps, even if we ignore the hundreds of thousands of people who kill themselves withe drugs. Even if we ignore the the thousands who are killed accidentally by drug users. We are still talking murder, bribery, extortion, slavery, smuggling just to get those drugs to your street corner. If you bought illegal drugs, you are paying other people to murder, enslave, and commit most crimes on the books. Why should that not come with a life sentence? Just because you are white collar and can pay others to commi
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The article is nit about drugs but about cyber crime and SWATing ... you coukd at least 'glimpse' over the summary.
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So he was guilty of harboring Katniss Everdeen? Then again, that's the sort of response that happened in that story as well.
Re:The real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Every single one of the problems you cite about drugs is due to their prohibition, or at the very least exacerbated by it.
Exactly the same things happened during alcohol prohibition, but for some reason you people are too stupid to see the correlation and instead continue to think that doing more and harder of the same will get you different results.
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So what is your point? Since the world and the laws are not perfect, if you kill someone, as a necessary but unfortunate side effect of ignoring these laws, that you are a righteousness and just person?
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Decriminalize hard drug use and have the government sell/give away safe, vetted drugs to addicts (or administer doses in government run centers). Making drugs hard to get enslaves addicts to dealers and causes the situation we have now. Legalize marijuana, sell it like alcohol and tobacco, tax it, make money off of
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Every single one of the problems you cite about drugs is due to their prohibition, or at the very least exacerbated by it.
Exactly the same things happened during alcohol prohibition, but for some reason you people are too stupid to see the correlation and instead continue to think that doing more and harder of the same will get you different results.
Not quite. The medical problems are still based in chemistry. physically destructive drugs like Heroin and Krokodil are still going to destroy bodies even when decriminalised.
I largely agree with your point, but you only harm your own argument by ignoring the glaring fault I pointed out above.
You're probably thinking largely of Marijuana and LSD (the least destructive of the illicit drugs) possibly up to MDMA, cocaine and amphetamines. Here I think your point remains valid. However it gets into a gre
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> Not quite. The medical problems are still based in chemistry. physically destructive drugs like Heroin and Krokodil are still going to destroy bodies even when decriminalised.
Heroin is actually one of the SAFEST drugs you can take in terms of physical destructiveness. If you can actually get pure heroin in constant supplies and known quantities.
Krokodil wouldn't even exist except for prohibition [wikipedia.org].
>. You're probably thinking largely of Marijuana and LSD (the least destructive of the illicit drugs) pos
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variations in quantity* and quality
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You underestimate their intelligence. They are the ones making money on it. See?
You just fell for more of their propaganda.
QFT. As they say, "follow the money".
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Perhaps, even if we ignore the hundreds of thousands of people who kill themselves withe drugs.
Suicides are usually with prescription drugs, so I assume you're talking about accidental deaths. In that case, far, far more people kill themselves with cars than drugs. Are you against cars too?
We are still talking murder, bribery, extortion, slavery, smuggling just to get those drugs to your street corner.
Or some dude growing it in a back-woods pot farm. Either way it's a silly point because you could argue muc
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>alcohol during prohibition
I really wonder at your point here, assuming that the alcohol distillers during prohibition were as bad as the Mexican Mafia, how is this an argument? Yes, murdering people, and hiring people to murder people for you is wrong, even if it is the only way to get alcohol or heroin.
Sometime in the future we will be able to grow organs on demand in vats, that does not mean that right now, just because cheap, legal, plentiful organs do not exist that forced organ harvesting is right.
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You ignored all my points about the locally grown stuff, which was very much a key part of the argument. You don't actually appear to want to discuss, merely sermonize.
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Which is why blood diamonds are illegal, and widely considered immoral.
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Come on AC. The editors even managed to put the answer to your question in the summary. Yeah, you had to read the entire summary and sus out the bad grammar and dodgy phrasing. But hell, we can't do everything for you.