Attorneys for Barrett Brown want case on linking to hacked material dismissed

Of all of the activities undertaken by the state, an increasingly high percentage fall firmly under this definition.

This is also a legal ethics issue, since a prosecutor who fraudulently claims a higher maximum penalty during plea bargaining can be suspended or disbarred. Cops can lie to you--prosecutor's can't. They have sworn an oath (to the bar) to be honest in their legal representations. Prosecutors have been sanctioned, suspended, and even disbarred for being dishonest about sentencing because such dishonesty indicates moral turpitude that likely extends into other facets of their legal work.

It's the media that throws around the 100-year numbers by adding together all of the potential individual sentences. It turns out that journalists aren't very good at understanding technology, science, or the law.

Because the media has been doing it for 20+ years. The news is more "interesting" when big numbers like that are thrown around.

When someone is convicted of a federal crime, its the Department of Corrections that will put together a presentence report with a computation of the sentence under the guidelines. To get above that, the prosecutor has to argue to the judge that this case is special and requires a sentence above the guideline range. This is very difficult.

Only one of the statutes in question mandates consecutive sentences, 1028A. The maximum sentence for these counts is 2 years for the crime charged. (He was not charged with a terrorism offense under 1028A, so the 5 year sentence is not applicable.) The way this statute is written, this 2 year sentence may not be concurrent to any other sentence for any other crime but multiple counts of the same crime can be served simultaneously. (Note that 1028A is an "enhancement" charge, similar to the gun enhancements I mentioned earlier. They are add-ons to other crimes, and cannot be charged separately. Basically, enhancement charges are used when additional circumstances covered by the enhancement make the underlying crime "worse" than a normal instance of that crime.)

1028 imposes a maximum sentence of 15 years for the gravest crime listed in the statute. Assuming he is found (or pleads guilty) this yields a likely maximum sentence of 17 years, or a potential maximum sentence of no more than 33 years.

I'm as pro-legalisation as they come, but any reasonable person would have to admit that the damages caused by the actions of the leaders of big drug cartels are, in the aggregate, causing at least as much suffering as, let's say, a single rape. I know I'm threading on thin ice here because this might make it seem like I'm trivializing rape, which I'm decidedly not, but regardless of what side of the debate one is one, it's wholly unreasonable to assert that drug dealers do not cause any suffering and that they are in no way responsible for that suffering (i.e. the 'users make their own choices' and 'if I didn't sell it, somebody else would have' arguments).

I don't like that interpretation, because i feel it's important that linking remains legal in most crcumstances, if not all, but that doesn't change the fact that if you reason by analogy to the physical world most url's are indeed paths. And this is where the danger is: reasoning by analogy. It doesn't produce good results to reason about dgital resources by analogy to physical resources.

What gives? Can't have it both ways.

> Google doesn't do any filtering (except the filtering that it does do)

> Google doesn't give directions to somebody's house and tell you how to get in, it gives directions to everybody's houses and tells you how to get in.

Explain that one, Mister Ideological Predisposition.

[0] http://nypost.com/2013/01/12/no-charges-for-nbc-host-david-g...

"Goggle doesn't do any filtering"

"..doesn't willingly lead people to certain material"

Are you sure we are taking about the same Google?

He flipped out and lost his cool over constant government-sanctioned harassment. He's not perfect by any means—admitted substance abuse problems and a big naïve/foolish/arrogant streak—but still deserves sympathy.

I don't think he would have known there was a law on the books making it illegal to dox feds. Doxing abusive cops on the other hand is legal and happens all the time between Anonymous/Occupy and even journalists do it sometimes.

In order to convict on threats there needs to be a "true threat" of physical harm, a non-conditional statement made to a specific person. All he said was "if they come" he wouldn't be able to tell FBI from Zetas so he'd exercise self-defense. And he explicitly clarified when he said he was going to ruin the guy's life, he meant to expose him, not as a physical threat.

One can disseminate a link without knowing whats in it. Brown is on the record in many places as being opposed to spreading credit cards. He was against that kind of stuff.

I don't think I would be that idealistic or generous.

I disagree, mainly because this case is an asymmetric risk scenario - his gains from pleading not guilty are extremely miniscule when compared to his losses(compared to the 100 days he'd have to spend in jail, if he were to plead guilty).

If you're talking about piling on charges to make a plea deal look attractive, I'm pretty sure that's been done before.