Hacker Who Helped Disrupt Cyberattacks Is Allowed to Walk Free
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
http://cryptome.org/2012/09/sanguinarious-sabu.htm
> Why is an informant going around throwing out a location to a claimed cache of classified documents concerning SCADA systems? So this is like a textbook attempt at entrapment, its akin to giving someone a key to a door but telling them its legal to open it with, someone being an informant, to take them down after. It also does not appear the FBI gives not one fuck about the security of critical infrastructure as long as it entraps another kid. Nothing at all wrong here is there? Full transcript: http://cryptome.org/2014/05/sabu-m45t3rs4d0w8-2012-0330-0524...
Perfect example of the FBI looking for easy arrests using morally-vague methods of entrapment, instead of doing the hard work and stopping real criminal conspiracies. This is a technique they perfected in domestic terrorism cases where they find dumb criminals with no skill, financing, or strong motivation, then give them all of the resources and information they need to do conduct a real scheme. While holding their hand along the way.
Makes great headlines when they arrest someone "domestic terrorist caught by FBI!" but hardly a good use of resources when they keep missing real terrorist attacks.
Bruce Schneier nailed it in 2007: https://www.schneier.com/essay-174.html. None of the 'foiled plots' were ever a real threat until the FBI showed up. People could argue these people should be in jail anyway but they are hardly worth the skill and resources of the most advanced investigators in the country.
By a former New York prosecutor.
Entrapment requires:
(1) a causal relationship between police action and the accused's commission of a crime, and
(2) the police overcoming some demonstrable resistance to the commission of that crime, or the accused otherwise demonstrating that the police somehow corrupted them into committing a crime they would not have been predisposed to commit otherwise.
The "entrapment myths" in the comic:
1. That the police have to tell you that they're cops, or are somehow not allowed to deceive you into committing a crime. (No).
2. That the police cannot ask you to commit a crime. (No).
3. That the police cannot break the law themselves to get themselves into a position to see you commit a crime. (No).
4. That the police cannot help you commit a crime. (No).
5. That the police cannot allow you to commit a crime or somehow give you the impression that your actions are lawful and then arrest you. (No).
The law expects you to actively resist an entreaty from anyone --- undercover cop, uniformed cop, friend, family member --- to knowingly break the law.
The example the comic gives of an unreasonable effort to break through resistance: appealing to a friend to aid in the commission of a crime because your life depends on it, putting the accused in a position where a reasonable ordinary person might choose to participate in the crime as the lesser of two evils. That's entrapment.
Furthermore, as I understand it, and this may be state-by-state, but entrapment is doubly difficult to employ in a defense because it's an affirmative defense: to raise "entrapment", you must first acknowledge that you committed the crime in all its particulars, and then claim that your excuse was that you were entrapped.
Plus there are a ton of dumb people and nearly everything is a crime these days, so all you have to do his handout a crime on a platter and fill prisons with the incompetent criminals who take the bait.
Why hunt down criminals when you can fish for dumb ones.
Meanwhile, it is extraordinarily difficult to catch people in the act of committing computer crimes; the most effective investigative approach to enforcing computer crime laws probably is to find people who are predisposed to commit them, stage an opportunity to commit a specific instance of it, and then apprehend them. So, yes, computer crime enforcement does have a "fishing for dumb people" element to it.
What would be really interesting in a thread like this is, after pointing out how US criminal law makes it hard to raise an entrapment defense, providing specific examples of how some other country's criminal law handles the same circumstances.
One example was an IRA arms dealer caught bang to rights actually at the buying point he got off on a tiny technicality - whereas the amount of stuff that the FBI where allowed to do was interesting and slightly disturbing.
It might have been on PBS or BBC America at some point
... Yeah
Edit: Down votes - with no comments? I'm pretty sure the other responses actually agree with my claim.
What is the problem here, cowards?
As it is, the fact that we're having this "conversation" at all mostly shows HN is declining in quality. I seldom complain about downvotes but when there's no comments and no obvious justification, it seems reasonably warranted.
Anyone else having this issue? I am no expert in with gpg so it could be on my end.
This one seems like a very obvious benefit for the FBI. The government wants it well known that "look, if you really cooperate we'll totally definitely let you go later." Of course, all the cases where the defendant cooperated and still went to jail don't make the media.
[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2532759#up_2532885 [3] There are others, too lazy to list.
Pg even notes this outright in his essay:
> Of the stories you read in traditional media that aren't about politics, crimes, or disasters, more than half probably come from PR firms.
everyone knows he's an actor for the state anyway, but a quick temperance change online would be a pretty big red flag for many.
That's the point. The idea is that one should 'fall on the grenade' to protect his criminal comrades. When he instead throws them to the wolves to save himself, people get up-in-arms about it.
Though it's not all that surprising. It's sort of like whole 'honor among thieves' ideal. When you throw in with a bunch of people that are willing to 'colour outside the lines,' sometimes the lines that they cross will not just be the lines drawn in the sand by the law, but the lines that you yourself draw in the sand.
I guess I'm missing some context. Whose idea was the first sentence?
@codesuela called him a "snitch," which has a negative connotation (e.g. phrases like "snitches get stitches"[1][2]).
[1] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=snitches+get+...!
Well, there's a reason why it's called "defection" in the Prisoner's Dilemma.
Failing that, there's the people in a certain country whom Greenwald himself claimed would be put directly at risk if that country name were to be revealed. But WikiLeaks leaked it anyways.... which is directly attributable to Snowden.
But that's the beautiful things about things like what he does. It's like coal polluting the air... we know it kills people in the abstract, but you can't point to a slouched-over body directly attributable to any given lump of coal.
Sabu was caught and played ball, Snowden acted on moral grounds. Russia is simply the only nation willing to anger the US and deter "payback", hence his only choice.
2) In this scenario, the American People would be the FBI, and the criminal conspirators would be the NSA and Snowden is Sabu. I can think of very few more noble activities than exposing the fraud of a working government to the very people who have a chance at changing it via the power of a democratic society.
It's ridiculous to even compare the scenarios, as the motives between the two are so different, and I hope anyone can see that. Look at the audiences at least. Sabu has gained personally from every single decision he has made; whether it was for his own agenda or for the FBI's after he was caught. What has Snowden achieved for himself?
The culture comes from the consequences. People would be substantially more willing to inform the police of criminal activity if the penalty for e.g. drug possession was mandatory rehab and probation, or the penalty for modest computer crimes was community service, rather than felony charges and prison time. Nobody wants to send their friends to prison. So instead of the slap on the wrist they deserve, they either get no punishment at all and carry on committing crimes or they get caught by the police and forfeit their lives to the prison system.
I think authoritarian-types consider snitching "adolescent" because they have lost all sense of idealism and justice that they once might have had as a youth. The only way to change society with that type of mindset is for millions of dollars to be spent on lobbying by corporations or benevolent millionaires.
Re: the FBI. Their job is to maintain law and order. The burden of this is that even though 99% of the time you'll be fighting malevolent destabilization, you're likely to be in the wrong side of history that 1% of the time, and history will pillory you for it. That's OK and it's inevitable. It's intrinsic to the social function of such organizations. Because for every MLK there are a hundred David Koresh's.
Is there no duty from a promise of secrecy? Is morality tied to certain organizations?
What if the motivation isn't atonement but self-interest?
Becoming an informant against Anonymous might be admirable if the informant did so because their conscience required it, and the informant undertook risks in doing so; the act of conscience and cost of that action would outweigh the betrayal of friends and peers. So, for instance, someone who had participated in a group who planned to bomb abortion clinics might be admirable if they had a change of heart about killing innocent people and risked their life to break up the plot.
It does not seem like either of those two factors are at play in Monsegur's case.
There is, of course, a difference between finding Monsegur admirable and determining for oneself that the prosecution was or wasn't in the public interest.