Regarding Marcus Hutchins aka MalwareTech
doublepulsar.com
doublepulsar.com
1. If evidence proves afterwards that the handling of the arrest was just and for good reason, then I'll admit my fault and apologize. My error in overreaction will mean nothing in the long run.
2. However, if my overreaction is correct but I withheld it, it would be far too late to point out errors by the government later on. News moves too quickly in this age to call out bad actors later. Now is the appropriate time to make as much noise about the potential abuse of power by the government.
3. The government's handing so far shows that they too understand this principle. They are acting in a way that best suits them and are using the fact that reasonable people are going to say exactly what you said to drag this out. At the very least, this practice of theirs without statement is worth calling out.
So my question for all of those who side with your stance is, will you be willing and able to drum up news in major outlets if he government turns out to have acted unjustly?
https://twitter.com/ChristyNews3LV/status/893603855266492416
Google is failing me.
In either case, I'm not clear what alternative is being proposed.
I would preferred they found him insane and ordered mandatory treatment for the rest of his life.
This might sound weird but it's not really IMO: being found insane was the only thing he feared.
As soon as he was sentenced to life in prison it was pretty clear he wouldn't appeal to a higher court. From what we know about him it seemed he would be fine with death penalty as well but Norway doesn't have that option.
Oh - and for why Norwegians are happy to let him have a playstation 2: I guess a good reason is that it makes it much harder for him to claim that he's being "tortured" etc. : )
Why do people outside Norway keep bringing it up anyway. They weren't there, they don't have friends or relatives who were there. Yet while almost everyone who lives in Norway either knows someone who was on Utøya or has a close relative who knows someone who was there we mostly get on with our lives and ignore him.
You've got it backwards. I only brought it up after the person I replied to finger-wagged America about how it needs to be more "ethical" in how it treats criminals; I wasn't trying to tell Norway what to do. The same type of person that tells Americans how we need to deal with firearms despite not living here or being familiar with our culture or rights.
The purpose of my example is that I believe just as it's possible to be cold and cruel to criminals that are locked up, it can be quite cruel to victims' families to give the criminal excessive creature comforts after they've violently snuffed out their familymember's life. I mean for god's sake we have to set some limit or else we might as well just turn them back out on the street again.
In addition, in most first-world western countries, many folks are detached from death and violence so that when we hear of a murder, we have a very abstract view of it. Why don't you actually watch a 10-year-old boy be stabbed to death[1], and for one minute try and imagine the fear and pain of that boy in his last moments, the heartache that will destroy his whole family, and if you're such a big fan of restorative justice, why don't you imagine this guy living next to the playground of your children's school when you let him out? Now if it's possible, try to amplify the brutality of that single murder by a factor of 77 in the case of Anders Breivik and try to justify to yourself all the creature comforts he's given.
I'm not saying we need to go back to biblical "eye for an eye" punishment, but on the same token we can't be excessively lenient on criminals who have no hope for restorative justice either.
[1]: https://forum.deathaddict.com/threads/cctv-captures-a-man-st...
1) Legislators do not have the time to come to this situation with insight into how the cybersecurity community works. There are simply too many fields of human endeavour and people have to specialize to get things done.
2) This is not an issue like Abortion or the 2nd amendment. Senators can and do change their minds based on input from experts. See Sen. Lindsey Graham's approach to encryption[1]
3) Harm to the US ability to collaborate with its allies is a thing that senators will care about, especially hawks. Right now, they likely have two threats top-of-mind: ISIS and the Iran-Russia-Assad alliance.
The quick change in tone in the post is telling, by the way -- it goes from being skeptical that he was involved in a crime at all, to quibbling that not much money was stolen anyway, and if you're going to prosecute over such a tiny thing you should do it in a different country than the one where it was stolen.
And yes if you go to a different country, be aware of their laws.
"The punishments are way out of proportion to the crimes."
Don't go to the US.
http://kottke.org/13/06/you-commit-three-felonies-a-day
Also Dr. Ferris.
Yup, or rather, try to stay within your own jurisdiction.
Right now, SHA2017 [1] is going on in The Netherlands. There's also the CCC, Chaos Computer Congress in Germany. Besides that, there's also a Camp called CCC every other few years. Someone from the UK could've stayed in the EU, but didn't.
Pretty soon that won't matter either way.
They have done that before with UK citizens charged with online crimes, Richard O'Dwyer is an example of that
Compare that to being convicted without a fair trial, being sent to a labor camp, and running the risk of being sent home in a body bag.
I understand hyperbole but let’s not kid ourselves, NK is one of the worst places in the world to draw government ire.
No if he goes to trial it will be a trial with humans on the jury but that will be as close to his "peer" group as it will be
1. They will not be from his nation, but will be Americans
2. Most of them will likely be Computer illiterate, as the prosecution will excuse anyone that even owns a computer
3. They will like be older and outside of age peer group
No it will not be a jury of his peers, unless simply being of the same species is all you consider to be a "peer"
>>he’s not likely going to receive the max sentence, and even then he likely wouldn’t serve the max sentence for a nonviolent crime (he’d be paroled).
The max sentence will be used to extort a guilty plea, happen every day to innocent people
Parole is still considered in service to your sentence, you have massively diminished rights and you are not considered a "free person" while on parole, you simply are serving your time outside the confines of a cage. Given this is a non-US citizen that complicates parole as he would unlikely be allowed to leave the US while on Parole.
On this being a nonviolent crime, nonviolent crimes in the US Legal system are often punish more harshly then violent crimes, Many nonviolent crimes have mandatory minimums, where as almost no violent crimes do. Saying this is a nonviolent crime so it will be "easy" or the punishment will be lessened is factually incorrect when talking about the American Legal system
It's like saying that drug dealers should be judged by a jury made up of drug dealers and users.
I don't think you understand what a "peer" means in this context.
Trial by jury of your peers was implemented to prevent the church and royalty from judging the commons.
Or to be more exact it's one of the first marks of separation of power; people who make up the law aren't the ones who also judge you.
>Trial by jury of your peers was implemented to prevent the church and royalty from judging the commons.
I understand the purpose and you seem to have taken my comment to mean something it does not.
It is also ironic that you mention the church because given the geographic location where this trial will likely take place Ultra Religious people will likely be involved.
Further while I do not believe the jury should be made up solely of computer experts, I also do not believe computer experts should be excluded simply because they are experts in the subject matter of the trial which is what happens.
My biggest problem is around the process of jury selection.
Thus he is not facing 40 years for a $2000 sale only. Some of the arguments of his defenders are so ridiculous they defy belief.
Can someone explain what this means? Is there a news article somewhere explaining the flood of cases created by AlphaBay? Why haven't I heard of other's being prosecuted?
It's quite likely that they've used it to either directly compromise or unmask real world assets of it's users beyond what would be possible from just reading some logs.
See Operation Bayonet, which became public on july 20 2017:
https://www.europol.europa.eu/newsroom/news/massive-blow-to-...
Wikipedia might have more information as well. Regarding AlphaBay:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaBay#Seizure_and_shutdown
What I personally found interesting about the whole story (which was widely covered in Dutch media, since the police is (rightfully, IMO) proud of their accomplishment) is how the Dutch police were able to keep a darknet site called Hansa running for nearly a month after the servers were seized. The German police arrested the administrators, while the Dutch police moved the servers to Dutch territory, and made them operational again. They then tried to keep the site running, so they could analyse the logs, traffic, and visitors.
Interestingly, the Canadian AlphaBay administrator was residing in Thailand and was logged in at that moment to keep the site running because there were some (artificial) technical difficulties. I'm curious how those were started. If you don't want to confiscate the server, but know where it is, it should be doable to -for example- do massive traffic shaping on the link to make it seem like there's a DoS attack.
This guy is doing 20 years.
But if he wrote the trojan and if a lot of people had their life turned upside down (identity theft and credit report issues aren't fun) I don't see why he shouldn't go to jail, for quite a while.
then again this is the same government who says the Constitution doesn't apply 100 miles in from the border (where a significant percentage of the populace lives...)
Incidentally, the rights of the accused are stronger in the US than in any other jurisdiction in the world. He has the unqualified right to remain silent and to a jury trial in which illegally gathered evidence is excluded. He would have neither of those in the UK.
1: http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/a_to_c/confession_and_breaches_o... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_silence_in_England_an... 3: http://www.bailii.org/eu/cases/ECHR/1996/3.html#para45
In the UK, police can use your silence at time of questioning to cast doubt on future exculpatory claims that you make. In the US, the government can never make that argument in court. So in the US, the best course of action is, without qualification, to remain silent until speaking to a lawyer. In the UK, doing that can be presented as evidence of your guilt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_silence_in_England_an...
The United States is the only country to take the position that some police misconduct must automatically result in the suppression of physical evidence. The rule applies whether the misconduct is slight or serious, and without regard to the gravity of the crime or the power of the evidence. “Foreign countries have flatly rejected our approach,” said Craig M. Bradley, an expert in comparative criminal law at Indiana University. “In every other country, it’s up to the trial judge to decide whether police misconduct has risen to the level of requiring the exclusion of evidence.” https://mobile.nytimes.com/2008/07/19/us/19exclude.html
On the flip side, UK police are far more constrained in their actions when interviewing suspects than US police are:
@ UK police are not permitted to lie to suspects in interviews
@ Interviews must be recorded from start to finish.
@ No abusive use of plea bargains: we don’t do the “take this plea bargain or risk being locked up for 60 years” thing at all.
I’m sure there are more, but those are the things that spring to mind immediately.
I’m not going to pretend that everything in the UK is sweetness and light regarding our police, but the idea that the US is a haven of civil rights compared to the UK is just completely wrong-headed.
There are further differences. For instance:
* Like most of Europe, the UK doesn't have an exclusionary rule for illegitimately obtained evidence. Unauthorized searches can produce evidence admissible in court.
* Defendants in the UK don't have the same right to avoid self-incrimination that US defendants do.
* Evidence obtained through entrapment can be admissible in UK courts.
* There's precedent in the UK for secret criminal trials (the US has "secret courts", but those courts have no powers to hear criminal cases).
* The UK accused can be held for up to 28 days without charge.
* Terror suspects in the UK can be placed on what is effectively house arrest indefinitely, without criminal charges.
If you discount parallel construction
Non-US citizens arrested in the US will potentially face deportation and permanent expulsion if the crimes are serious enough, like rape or murder. Other than that the police will likely treat you just the same as any American, which is not necessarily great but at least it's equitable.
Now the federal law enforcement departments are more brutal in their techniques. They're usually only involved in serious crimes though.
And extraordinary renditions are illegal kidnappings so I don't think there's any expectation of rights afforded or decency shown in that sort of situation. You're gonna get tortured in Egypt/etc. whether you're an American or not.
Any felony is grounds for deportation and permanent expulsion regardless of how "serious" it might be.
Contra the original article, a 23 year-old does not have a fundamental right to talk to mommy and daddy once arrested.
Law enforcement is under no obligation to arrest you as you arrive in country so that you can become a cause celebre to the conference you are about to attend. Neither are they under any obligation to tell you ahead of time that they plan to arrest you.
While the accused has rights, the friends, family, and casual acquaintances of the accused have none. Law enforcement must give Marcus' lawyer access to him, but need not tell random strangers where he is being detained. In the first day or so it is not at all uncommon for someone who has been arrested to be moved from the initial arrest point to a location in the jurisdiction of the indictment or from a local/county holding facility to a federal facility. What Marcus needs to do is shut his mouth, repeat "I am invoking my right to remain silent and wish to speak to my attorney", and NOT SAY ANYTHING.
Oh, he didn't get to communicate immediately with his co-defendant and make sure they have their stories straight? Yeah, major violation of his rights there...
I am not sure what fantasy-land the author of the original post lives in, but even someone with only a passing familiarity with the US legal system would know some of this. Yes, he will get to speak to his attorney and such access by his counsel must be allowed, but there are strict limits on how long he can be denied such access and he should expect the feds to go right up to that limit but not beyond. As someone who apparently has an appreciation for the grey areas in law and society, I am sure we will hear from Marcus how much he appreciates law enforcement taking advantage of the differences between MUST and SHOULD in the societal protocol docs that we call laws and legal precedent.
I disagree, the limits are minimum standards, not what we should expect.
He was denied access to a lawyer for 48 hours.
He doesn't even know who his codefendant is. How can anyone mount a proper defense (the strongest form of which would be "I don't know this person and I've never communicated with him") without that information?
How can one properly exercise one's habeas corpus rights (that is, challenging the detention) without either of those things?
The problem with your post is the problem with the federal government. They exploit technicalities to punish innocent people and they game the system for their own extraneous reasons.
Disclaimer: I've had several interactions with the FBI, federal prosecutors and senior executives at Homeland Security, that have demonstrated to me that they can be malicious, incompetent and oh so human. There's a two tier system of justice in the US, one that has access to former government officials who work in the private sector, who will do near anything necessary to protect a wealthy and privilege class of people.
But the key advice is Do. Not. Say. Anything. other than "bring my my attorney". Remember that in the interrogation game, the FBI gets to lie, but it is a felony for you. The FBI also refuses to videotape interrogations, gets to write the reports, and has played this game far more than you.
Add that up, and admitting that you like ice cream is dangerous. This can be especially dangerous for smart people, who will tend to start thinking about the questions, trying to guess where they're going, what is important. Don't. The rules are stacked against you, you're missing important information, and your interrogators are (probably) practiced experts at creating little set-piece dramas to manipulate you.
Yet so many in this forum and elsewhere are spreading ridiculous conspiracy theories and accusing law enforcement of malfeasance, without any evidence whatsoever.
[1] For example, the unqualified rights to remain silent and to a jury trial in which illegally gathered evidence is excluded, neither of which he would have in the UK.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/ferguson-michael-brown-i...
Could that be that law enforcement do not bring cases to the grand jury unless there is significant evidence already? If they have clear requirements it could just be that they're being selective about what they submit.
While the grand jury system may appear to protect innocent defendants, I wonder if it does the opposite. A grand jury might have a disposition to allow a case to proceed when in doubt, on the grounds that the matter will be sorted out in a trial, while the fact that a grand jury has made a decision may bias the trial jury towards conviction.
Another practice that has demonstrably been abused is the offer of something approaching immunity in exchange for testimony. We know there is a co-defendant, but nothing else so far in that regard.
The swatting of as respected a character as Brian Krebs shows that law enforcement can be manipulated into a precipitate action, especially when there is a deadline, and in this case, Hutchins was about to leave their jurisdiction.
I have no opinion as to whether Hutchins is guilty of anything, but I hope his case is dealt with quickly, and above all, justly.
And like dijit says, prosecutors aren't in the business of prosecuting hopelessly unwinnable cases, which is what you would have if you can't even show probable cause.
You mean the guy who ran a massive illegal drug marketplace, and who tried to have people killed to protect it?
Over course, in America, where things are much better and one is innocent until proven guilty, they only have a 99.8% conviction rate in federal court.
Yay America.
If the conviction rate was a lot lower, I'd be more concerned that the government was bringing so many cases without sufficient evidence.
In any case, the United States has the second highest incarceration rate in the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...
Either the US has the second highest rate of criminal activity in the world or an unusually high rate of wrongful convictions.
When Saddam Hussein won 99.96% percent of the vote in the 1995 election, we said "The fix is in" but when federal prosecutors get a 99.8% conviction rate, we say that they must be really great at their jobs!
We have a moral obligation to subject the criminal justice to serious scrutiny since so many lives are at stake - not just repeat some platitudes about how the system is stacked in favor of the defendants (not saying you were doing that but the OP certainly was).
Er... go easy on the patriotism, mate. We have those.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_silence_in_England_an...
The US system also has flaws not present in our system (at least for now) e.g. Plea Bargains.
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2017/apr/27/traditional-tria...
Despite your snarky tone, you are mistaken. See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14935867
There are surely other ways to enforce the relevant rights and procedures.
Without the exclusionary rule, you rely on the authorities following restrictions purely out of the goodness of their hearts, or only as much as the voters of the day demand. What incentive would the prosecutors and police have to limit their own authority? You can't have the fox guarding the hen house.
How can this be true? "Only" is a strong word. And there are functioning judicial systems elsewhere that have different evidentiary rules.
I agree that there should be external incentives to obey rules and procedures, but there have to be other incentives out there. Why can't sanctions against individuals and organizations work just as well, for instance?
The exclusionary principle is remarkably indirect, if incentives for law enforcement officials is the primary reason for the principle.
Because the judicial branch doesn't play an active role in regulating and managing the executive branch. They can only address specific cases and controversies that have been brought before them. And if the legislature doesn't enact penalties for police overstepping their bounds, then the courts can do nothing to punish them. They can only issue orders to halt a specific ongoing violation. This is a hard requirement of the US Constitution[1], and the other common law systems around the world function the same way.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_or_Controversy_Clause
What concerns me is that there seems to be a resignation to a false dichotomy between partially informed jurors and abusive trials. I'm not convinced that there isn't a better option out there. Especially since the U.S. is somewhat unique in its application of the idea.
In the UK, these rights are merely statutory and exist at the discretion of Parliament (the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty). If Parliament does not create an adequate enforcement mechanism, then that is its will and the legally legitimate outcome.
The rights guaranteed by the US Constitution, however, do not exist at the discretion of Congress. The courts will not allow the Fourth Amendment to become inoperative because Congress and the President fail to enforce it. On the other hand, Congress can and does create statutory rights through legislation, and is free to create as vigorous or as weak an enforcement mechanism for them as it wishes.
> The courts will not allow the Fourth Amendment to become inoperative because Congress and the President fail to enforce it.
Again, this is a false choice. Other countries make sure prevailing law is enforced without the exclusionary principle.
And other amendments are enforced without compromising the pursuit of truth in the courtroom. There are no enforcement mechanisms for the first amendment in the Constitution, but it gets enforced.
"In every other country (UK), it’s up to the trial judge to decide whether police misconduct has risen to the level of requiring the exclusion of evidence."
I would regard these as features rather than bugs.
Overall though the UK is better than the US. You only have to watch a couple of episodes of John Oliver to know that!
I'd like to see the number of actual trials and verdicts (guilty or not) go way up, though. If that's too expensive, then we should start repealing laws that are literally not worth enforcing.
From what I know of the US criminal justice system it is one of the worse in any democratic country.
Pretty sure that in the UK he would also have the right to remain silent, a fair trial, and also have illegally gathered evidence excluded. Quite the opposite of what happens a lot in the US.
EDIT: Note the parent used to claim that $2000 for Malware isn't worth going to Jail for 40 years because its only $2000.
A straw man. Stealing $1 is certainly isn't as serious than stealing $100k. And creating malware is closer to theft rather than murdering people.
If I sell someone Anthrax for $1, my punishment should be based on the $1 amount?
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/03/41-months-weev-underst...
I also question if the conversion of BTC worth was based on what it was worth back when the alleged crime was committed.
The government (as a whole) has also shown a disconcerting lack of technology prowess.
The US Legal system is rife with abuse, corruption, and unethical actions, there is zero reason anyone should have faith in it
http://www.npr.org/2017/08/01/540903038/u-s-citizen-held-by-...
I find it hard to get my head wrapped around the argument that gun manufacturers are somehow exempt from being at least at some level involved in the crimes perpetrated with the stuff they make but that for software we're going to have a completely different standard where simply making something and selling it rather than using it is the bar to clear.
Especially since so much software is 'dual use'.
I guess that's technically true, but practically no more so than the PSF or the GCC team.
> I find it hard to get my head wrapped around the argument that gun manufacturers are somehow exempt from being at least at some level involved in the crimes perpetrated with the stuff they make but that for software we're going to have a completely different standard where simply making something and selling it rather than using it is the bar to clear.
There isn't really any argument, just politics (lobbying groups/companies/whatever) and familiarity (of lawmakers and judges, which is why people like Judge Posner are so important to our field).
Maybe a similar confusion caused his boarding to be denied - but what if this is a case of similar confusion acted upon after the person arrived in the US? Or what if the cURL author was allowed to enter the US but whatever cause for denying him was flagged before he was to leave for home?
Where did he all has the money from, which he spent in Vegas? It looks very suspicious to me. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4762608/Marcus-Hutch...
* Rented a Lamborghini, and wanted to rent a helicopter flight to the Grand Canyon.
* Stayed at a £1,950-a-night mansion rented with seven friends with Vegas' largest private pool. Who paid for this?
* Didn't attend the 2 conferences there.
* Admitted in a police interview that he created the code of a malware that harvests bank details, a prosecutor said in a Las Vegas court.
An employed UK citizen doesn't have to rob a bank to stay in Las Vegas for few days and rent an exotic car.
Oh and I would not take a Daily Mail article as a facts source. What it could have actually happened is that he created a proof of concept code that can do these things, not actually creating a malware to steal bank details.
"He stayed in our villa for free. He didn't pay for the car. He didn't pay for a helicopter ride. He didn't pay for concert tickets..." [1]
He takes home a 6 figure salary [2]