Hacker arrested for Exposing Rape Faces more Jail Time Than Convicted Rapists
hackread.com
hackread.com
The charges relate to the following:
"After the hack, a video appeared on the fan page. It showed a man wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, threatening to release social security numbers and other personal information of Steubenville football players unless they apologized to the rape victim by Jan. 1, 2013."
The FBI thinks that it was Lostutter, but Lostutter denies it. The charge, which is essentially hacking + extortion (vigilante justifications aside), doesn't seem wrong to me, although the alleged FBI response (12 member SWAT team in a van to execute a search warrant) is ridiculous.
Besides being incoherent, the original article suffers from comparing a potential maximum statutory sentence for an adult, with the actually administered sentences for two football players tried as juveniles.
That said, there's a lot of things wrong with this story. The FBI shouldn't have sent a 12-man SWAT team to execute a search warrant on a hacking charge. The CFAA's "felony escalation" provision again proves itself to be at best unnecessary (since in this case you could get him for the attempted extortion). Finally, the existence of the sentencing guidelines undermines the application of judicial sentencing discretion to the special circumstances of the case. Unfortunately, the submitted article doesn't touch on any of these real issues.
The US seems to have some of the craziest over-reaction sentences and has been happily exporting the insanity to legal systems around the world for quite a while. They put the gas pedal to the floor both domestically and internationally post 9/11 as, you know, some of these people are helping terrorists and stuff. Why else would a SWAT team need to go so heavy-handed on a trivial arrest like this.
As an aside, I now know more of the background from the Good Wife episode; I've been suprised how often tech stories are woven in and in surprisingly balanced detail.