Congress plans to make computer crime law much, much worse In the wake of the tragic suicide of Aaron Swartz, there have been many calls to reform the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act used to prosecute him. Work is currently afoot for "Aarons Law" legislation, which simplifies and brings a measure of sense to the law, but now the House Judiciary Committee has begun circulating an update …
"without realising it is your actions that drew their attention and give the authorities all the excuses they need to impose stronger controls on the Net in the first place"
Controls that you applaud even though you here suggest that the rationale for them is an excuse? Odd. But as this is just more of the same 'don't make me hurt you' abuser logic you defend in the rest of the thread ..perhaps not so odd after all
"....Controls that you applaud even though you here suggest that the rationale for them is an excuse? Odd....." Not really. It's a bit like a nice quiet neighbourhood, where all the neighbours are well behaved and so there is little need for visible policing. The suggestion of putting up surveillance cams in such areas, or having patrolcars out all hours would be treated with surprise and would be considered unneccessary, and any politician suggesting it would garner little support. But if some scum moves into the area, and they and their mates start dealing drugs and breaking into cars and homes, mugging the peaceful folk or using scams to steal their money, and suddenly the good neighbours start clamouring for more police and all the surveilance they can get! And suddenly those same politicians that would have been unwanted before are riding high. That's exactly what has happened to the Internet, and it is why ordinary people will support more and more draconian laws.
".....But as this is just more of the same 'don't make me hurt you' abuser logic you defend in the rest of the thread ..perhaps not so odd after all" Well, it's more like don't make me expose you to ridicule by pointing out the illogicality, melodrama and ranting in your posts.
"That's exactly what has happened to the Internet, and it is why ordinary people will support more and more draconian laws."
Yep. I understood your point when you outlined it earlier with one sentence. The problem is you support it despite your theory modelling it as disengenuous
".... The problem is you support it despite your theory modelling it as disengenuous". There are plenty of historic precedents for the inevitable increase in sentences for persistent crimes. Sentences are set, the politicians look to see if they are working as a deterrent, and if the rate of the crime in question does not decline they will seek to increase the deterrence value by increasing the sentence. There is little else the politicians can resort to and will eventually and inevitably lead to licensed, monitored and strictly controlled access to the Internet in general. The Anonyputzs and other hacktivists are happily digging their own graves and are simply too stupid to realise it, and it is amusing to see them now whining about "draconian measures" and "persecution".
I have a German petrolhead friend who gets all misty-eyed about the good old days when he could blast down any autobahn in Germany without worrying about posted speed limits. He grumbles about speeding fines and blames the idiots that drove irresponsibly for leading to the inevitable limits set on many autobahns. But he supports the Autobahnpolizei when they pull over some nutter being stupidly dangerous on the roads, and he supports the idea of driving bans for those that persistently speed. When the courts reach the stage that hacktivists and computer crims are banned for life from using computers, subject to a return to jail for any infractions, then the Anons will find they get little sympathy from the common man even if computing represents their only income.
"As the Attorney General Eric Holder admitted in recent Congressional hearings, no one is actually going to get sent away for the long prison terms proposed. Instead, these types of laws are designed to give prosecutors a strong negotiation position with which to threaten suspects and avoid all the expense and hassle of actually holding trials."
this sounds very much like Stalin's "Give me a man, I will find an article". What other proof is needed that lawmakers are driving USA to become a Stalinist state?
Anonymous, because sadly I plan to travel to this country. Hope I will be able to return!
"....What other proof is needed that lawmakers are driving USA to become a Stalinist state?....." I really think you should do yourself a favour and go and do some reading into some of the horrors perpetuated in Stalin's USSR before you post any more melodramatic shrieking. Seriously, you're only making yourself look ill-informed.
I lived in a Stalinist country for some 30 years, and I've been in communistic prison twice. I do understand how this works, much better than you do.
Here is history lesson for you, free (since I already paid for it):
The state wants to have a catch on everyone. It does it by developing laws which are occasionally, or perhaps often, ignored, by large portion of population. There is a scale that some laws are easier to comply to, thus making it more difficult to apply this particular catch to arbitrary person, but the penalties are also more severe (think gulag, or indefinite stay in a "closed institution", or having ones children taken away). People generally do ignore these laws, or expect benign punishment if they happen to break them occasionally. Mostly, they are right, since many laws are not enforced (some are even designed as such). However, in the "right" circumstances, the force of law can be felt with full impact, or it is threatened so. This can used to compel certain people to do actions they would not have otherwise wanted to do (say, disclose names of "cooperators"). In this article, the intent is clearly on the side of the state apparatchik (called "senator" in this particular location on Earth). Thus, without doubt, this is Stalinist method at work.
Now read this and pray tell me, are we there yet? Obviously, it is not only US legislators, but also UK ones, which are perpetuating this state of affairs. The difference is of course, whether people have a say in making the laws of the country or not. This is however not as straight cut, as you might like to believe - for example, find an alternative to two main parties in the US, or find a party in the UK which would stand up to green agenda.
One more thing, in case you still do not get the difference: the Stalinist regime is not about how many people are persecuted, or how. If you are lucky, like I was, you will eventually get over it and carry on with your live.
The Stalinist regime is a system which allows those in power to persecute those who are not, in a clear disconnect of proportions between the crime and the punishment. This basically means that you can be severely punished for small things, or perhaps even imagined ones, at almost any time. It's about making you live in fear.
The trouble with increasing the penalties and punishments for "hackers" under the CFAA is not unlike the banking crisis. We send out the wrong message and encourage the wrong behavior, we are saying it is okay for companies like AT&T to be lazy with security and that the mere act of accessing a public system is now a crime. Just as we're saying it is okay for bank CEOs to mess up, they'll get a nice bailout and carry on.
The emphasis should be on punishing companies and businesses that are lazy and outright sloppy with system security; in 2013 websites should not be vulnerable to simple SQL injection attacks and passwords shouldn't be stored in weak hashes (much less in outright plain text).
"....The emphasis should be on punishing companies and businesses that are lazy and outright sloppy with system security...." Punish the victims for having crimes commited against them? So I suppose you blame car owners for not having good enough car alarms when their cars get nicked and propose they should be sent to jail instead of the car thieves? Whilst there should be laws on data retention and protection ( and there already are), it is ALWAYS the criminal that should be punished, and the skiddies and wannabe hackers are just that, criminals.
"So I suppose you blame car owners for not having good enough car alarms when their cars get nicked and propose they should be sent to jail instead of the car thieves?"
No, I would blame the car manufacturers for selling a defective security product and not the real victims, the customers who lost their cars.
"....No, I would blame the car manufacturers for selling a defective security product...." If you had half a clue you would know the two most common forms of car theft are now breaking into the owner's home to steal the car's keys - no failing on the car maker's part, just an easier method of stealing the car - and carjacking. Once again, stop making excuses for the criminals.
"So who are the happiest people in the world, as measured by Legatum? Norway takes the crown. Norway ranked 1st overall on the 2012 Legatum Institute Prosperity Index. It also ranked 1st in Social Capital and 2nd in Economy....The United States is a nation in decline. Last year the land of the free and the home of the brave came in 10th place in the annual rankings of World’s Happiest Countries. This year the U.S.A. has slipped to12th. "http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2013/01/09/the-worlds-happiest-and-saddest-countries-2/
And this.
"The proposed revisions to the 1986 CFAA would have enabled Department of Justice prosecutors to add another 60 years prison time to the possible sentence Swartz could have faced, bumping up the penalty for some crimes from five years to 20. Other offenses have also seen their potential punishment rates get a boost."
Finally.
"OSLO — Convicted of killing 77 people in a horrific bombing and shooting attack in July last year, the Norwegian extremist Anders Behring Breivik was sentenced on Friday to 21 years in prison — fewer than four months per victim — ending a case that thoroughly tested this gentle country’s collective commitment to values like tolerance, nonviolence and merciful justice."
"Mr. Breivik.... will live in a prison outside Oslo in a three-cell suite of rooms equipped with exercise equipment, a television and a laptop, albeit one without Internet access."
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/world/europe/anders-behring-breivik-murder-trial.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Local Dupe, if you bothered to look, you might realise the Norweigean economy is flush with oil money, hence the happiness. Try to make some extrapolation between that and their prison population and sentencing is just whimsical. And as for adding to the time Swarz would have served, the advice is don't do the crime if you can't do the time, and Swarz proved he couldn't even wait to find out the lesser time, so grumbling about possible added years is pretty pointless.
The correct answer, Matt, is "Rosamund Pike equals Happiness."
That Jaguar F-TYPE V8 S (495 hp 5.0 liter V8 0-60 in 4.2 sec) you have your eye on is just going to break your heart. Maybe your sternum, too.
Your 2006 VW Beetle is still sporty. Have it repainted if you want to get more attention.
"The correct answer, Matt, is "Rosamund Pike equals Happiness."....." Hmmm, I'm willing to put that hypothesis to the test. :D
"......That Jaguar F-TYPE V8 S....." Sorry, that otherwise very handsome tourer has an auto box, and I'm too much of a purist to touch it with a bargepole. Besides, I've got to the age where I want to do my long-distance touring in comfort, hence the SUV, and keep the sportscar for the fun down country roads or on track days.
".....Your 2006 VW Beetle is still sporty....." WTF? No model of the Beetle has ever been sporty! Maybe in California they consider it sporty but then they have many a strange idea out there.
Hmm. A 1960 Austin Healy Mark I w/removable hard top and two tone paint (red on top and black on the bottom?). Raise the bonnet and there's an immaculate perception. Not a speck of dust or spot of oil. You could eat off the cylinder head although Matt would probably frown on that. Everything of Matt's is just as perfect as his comments. He doesn't enjoy failing everybody. It's his bounden duty.
One day Matt is going to fail the whole wide world. But if you're nice to him, he might get you a good seat. :-)
"......A 1960 Austin Healy Mark I....". No thanks. An out-dated chassis at its time of release. The version with the 3-litre engine was a brute, a "real man's car", but you spent most of your time trying to stop it diving into the nearest ditch.
".....Not a speck of dust or spot of oil....." That's because the BMC engine had dribbled all the oil onto your drive overnight!
"....Everything of Matt's is just as perfect as his comments...." Everything of Matt's is not as perfect as Matt's comments, but thanks for the vote of approval for the comments. Oh, were you trying to be sarcastic? Hmmm, another area you need to work on. However, I would suggest you focus on your history and technology before brushing up on sarcasm as the massive gaps in the former are really more pressing problems.
".....One day Matt is going to fail the whole wide world....." Now what have I told you about that Napoleon complex of yours? Not everyone thinks they have the right to rule the World like you do.
"....powder blue Triumph Spitfire....." SCHWING! Whilst your guessing games are mildly amusing, I have to point out they are just more of your usual diversions. I find it very hard to believe a reflexive hater of The Man like yourself hasn't got something to bleat about Congress's plans to smack skiddies harder, or is it just that you're still waiting for your herder to tell you what to think?
How unkind of you, Matt, to say I am a hater of The Man.. If The Man is reading this, He knows I am a lover of The Man and provide Him with all the succor I can.
"Congress's plans to smack skiddies harder" is just an indication of the desperate straits the government finds itself in. If Congress enacts these stringent penalties, we will have new tech versions of the Sedition and Espionage Acts, both of which became laws when war threatened us. Now war threatens us again, with economic skirmishes and war games going in all quarters of the globe. And don't forget North Korea's nuclear gambit. While our Matt thinks: "Let Congress pass these harsh measures and let the courts sentence some 20 year old to 50 years in prison and then I can be off in my Spitfire. Off to Highlands for a fortmonth or three.
"Now what have I told you about that Napoleon complex of yours? Not everyone thinks they have the right to rule the World like you do."
I don't want to be Napoleon any more. I wanna be the Prince of Verona. You know, "Two households ALIKE in dignity" That would be your household and Julian's. And I'm the Prince.
And as far as ruling the World is concerned:
Posts by Matt Bryant 5630 posts • joined Monday 21st May 2007 21:39 GMT
It looks like you're doing a pretty thorough job.
"..... If Congress enacts these stringent penalties, we will have new tech versions of the Sedition and Espionage Acts....." <Yawn> Melodrama, hyperbole, but still no sense at all. I know the Anonyputzs all like to think they're a combination of Rat from The Core and Batman, that they are somehow "great players in The Game", but the truth is they are minor annoyances and petty criminals, nothing more.
Matt, you yawn at your own peril. You ought to stop.
And with respect, I'll stick with The Alien and Sedition Act, "passed in 1798 by the Federalists in the 5th United States Congress in the aftermath of the French Revolution and during an undeclared naval war with France, later known as the Quasi-War." and The Espionage Act "passed in June 1917, which provided penalties of 20 years imprisonment and fines up to $10,000 for those convicted of interfering with military recruitment.Congress responded to a growing fear that public criticism of the war effort would make it difficult to conscript the needed manpower for American participation."
Can you think of any undeclared wars today, Matt? Currency, Trade, Oil, Adopted Children? Is all hunky dory in the international relations portfolio of Matt's world?
"20 years imprisonment and fines up to $10,000." 20 years in the slammer was a lot more effective deterrent back in 1917 when the life expectancy of your average trouble maker was probably on the wrong side of 50.? And $10,000 then is close to a million dollars today.
The declared and undeclared wars then and now are different (and there were no computers back then), but the raison d'etre of all these laws remains the same. Fear.
"....,but the raison d'etre of all these laws remains the same. Fear." Well, duh! Of course the idea of a sentence is to install fear in those criminals too stupid to otherwise be deterred. If there was nothing to fear from punishment then there would be no deterrent value. That covers everything from speeding fines through to murder, including e-crimes committed by dumb skiddies and career e-crims. Your problem is you cannot see beyond the (minority) politics you associate with the actions of your skiddy buddies to realise those actions are still illegal and will be punished.
"the idea of a sentence is to install fear in those criminals too stupid to otherwise be deterred."
I hoped you'd see, boychick, that I was I was referring to the fear of governments, their legislators, administrators and military. No such luck. From your perch high above the sixth cataract of denial, you saw what you wanted to see, and then read me Dr Johnson's definition of deterrent.
Does public punishment count as a deterrent? Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki deterrents to continuing the war another week? Or were they punishment? Is public punishment also a deterrent? Did Lidice tell potential assassins "Uh Oh. Better not"?
Did you think you were the Gustav Gun of The Register, pal? No, you're just a spitball and a straw. http://www.worldsbiggests.com/2010/02/gustav-gun-largest-gun-ever-built.html
".... I was referring to the fear of governments, their legislators, administrators and military....." These are civil offences and civil punishments.
"....Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki deterrents to continuing the war another week?...." Besides the idiocy of comparing the civil offence of defacing or DDoSing a website to the wartime dropping of the atomic bombs, the bombs did force the Japanese to abandon their determination to resist further, so your point is also wrong as well as stupid.
"....Did you think you were the Gustav Gun of The Register, pal?...." Nope. Guns don't tend to point out the blinkered silliness of people like you.
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"If Congress enacts these stringent penalties, we will have new tech versions of the Sedition and Espionage Acts, both of which became laws when war threatened us. Now war threatens us again,"
So, did I know that "These are civil offences and civil punishments" or not?
Or maybe you were referring to Hiroshima and Lidice?
I'll google the Israeli bulldozing of Palestinian houses in the Occupied Territories owned by families with a member who has been determined a terrorist by the IDF to see if these are civil offences and punishments? Or military?
No one cares anyway. The Great Powers and their regional dupes, like Israel and North Korea, do whatever their overlords permit them to do, And they do it with impunity.
Fortunately, only you, me, and your recent friend Igor are reading this thread. And as for you winning the argument -- in a pigs eye!
Hackers are threats. Governments are afraid of threats. So they pass Draconian laws with unusually harsh penalties to discourage them. THE MORE AFRAID THEY ARE, THE BROADER THE LAWS AND THE HARSHER THE PUNISHMENT. D'OH.
What part of this is too complicated for your baby brain to understand?
".....threat....." Threat!??! ROFLMAO! Please do explain what threat the Anonyputzs are to anyone other then themselves? What they have actually done other than mindless and minor Internet vandalism? What massive "threat" did Aaron Swartz provide other than the a bit of petty copyright theft? Sorry to burst that big bubble of grandiose self-absorption, but you guys are not Internet James Bonds or real-life Lisbeth Salanders, you're just skiddies wasting bandwidth.
"What they have actually done other than mindless and minor Internet vandalism."
"What massive "threat" did Aaron Swartz provide other than the a bit of petty copyright theft?"
Then why were they treated with such unsparing behavior and threatened with such outrageous sentences by the prosecutors?
It seems to me that no one knows how deep the hacker's colonoscope eventually will go. And the government isn't bent over waiting to find out.
".....Then why were they treated with such unsparing behavior and threatened with such outrageous sentences by the prosecutors?....." Who says they are outrageous? You see it's actually just like dealing with kiddies - the first time they do something stupid you might send them to their room for the afternoon, they do it again then you up the punishment in the hope they get the message, so you ground them for a week. The problem is you and your skiddie chums are really thick and the message didn't get through with community sentences and harsh words, and the e-crims are using your skiddie activities as cover, so the grown ups are having to use stronger sentences and it seems (from the volume of the whining) that you and your Anonyputz buddies are finally starting to get the message.
Watch Matt Bryant whizz far, far away from where he was in less than 10 hours.
MB 4/10/13 13:10 GMT: "Please do explain what threat the Anonyputzs are to anyone other then themselves? What they have actually done other than mindless and minor Internet vandalism?"
MB 4/10/13 22:40 GMT: (Matt is asked: "Then why were they treated with such unsparing behavior and threatened with such outrageous sentences by the prosecutors?.....") Matt replies "Who says they are outrageous?"
Only the civilized world, Matt. (We know you consider them a scurvy lot.)
Maybe it's well that you're whizzing away. "Tomorrow to fresh galaxy clusters and pastures new." I'll bet you can meet some new sheeple to twitter. To tweet? To bleat?
".....Only the civilized world......" LOL, more denial! As shown in the thread about the attempt to vote Manning a Nobel Peace Prize, the Anonyputz and associated numpties are not "the civilized World", they're not even half of one percent of the "civilized" World, they're just a tiny minority of shrieking, whining, wannabe, socialist and skiddies.
But I don't see what you're whining so hard about - even when the sentences were lower, all it took was the chance of going to jail for "dedicated Internet warriors" like Sabu to start crying and grass up all his buddies. Seems it's quite common when the skiddies get a taste of the steel bracelets for them to ditch their "ideals" and save themselves a little jail shower action (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/07/hacker_snitches/).
You are old enough, so you say, to have grown children. Some even apples who have fallen far from your tree. Hackers and cyber trespassers.
Are you going to now, like Saturn, devour them?
Or, if they are caught, will you attempt to find them mercy, when you will not countenance any mercy for the sons of other fathers?
Think on it, Sir. Are you prepared to see your own son rowed out to a hulk, soon to be towed to the Bermuda Triangle? His mother overcome with grief?
Heartlessness is its own punishment.
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