Disturbingly, the HACIENDA system actually hijacks civilian computers to do some of its dirty work, allowing it to leach computing resources and cover its tracks.
Yeah, that is disturbing, and it should be made illegal.
I mean, I'm game to make it illegal if it's not already, and it probably already is illegal in the countries where that would be going on.
But when I advocated the viewpoint that unauthorized access to computers was illegal and disturbing back with Aaron Swartz, that viewpoint didn't seem as popular at Hacker News for some reason.
Likewise when Jeremy Hammond admitted to hacking into Stratfor and was duly sentenced, that didn't seem super-popular here.
So if people want strong legal controls (and I do), then great! Let's have those, keeping in mind legal controls apply to everybody, with the state having at least as much authority and power (and often much more) than the public at large.
If people instead believe that the intent and the underlying cause of what you do completely justifies one's actions, then don't be surprised when you see "Bad Guys" doing "Bad Things" because they also deeply believe that what they are doing is right, essential, and good for humanity in general.
Personally while I thought that while Aaron Swartz was guilty of something, the charges DAs were pressing for were disgustingly and flagrantly incommensurate, and I was distressed at the abuse of government power.
I didn't really follow the Jeremy Hammond case, can't speak to it.
I don't really have a problem with penalties for computing crimes, but I firmly believe that the punishment should be commensurate with the crime.
The commonality with NSA and with Swartz is that you have heavy-handed authority figures flagrantly abusing their power with impunity. That's the part that I take issue with. Swartz was headed for a prison term and life as a felon for downloading a lot of documents he technically had legal access to (the issue was with the way he downloaded them). I don't think he didn't break any rules, but what he engaged in was in all respects a victimless crime. The NSA has abused its power in ways that are mind-boggling, lying to the Congress and continuing with illegal programs after being told to stop, abusing the privacy of the public in ways that have ramifications of such a scale that are hard to even sorted out, but nobody is seeing any justice for things that look like serious crimes. Nobody is even being charged with anything.
Comparing computing crimes of individuals vs. the government hacking citizen's computers and violating basic civil liberties is that the government engaging in the same act is doing something far more dangerous, harmful, and abusive, and the punishments should be far more severe, since the dangers from that abuse are far, far more serious, but instead they are non-existent.
Whatever else NSA's been doing, it hasn't been "with impunity", it's been in coordination with allied intelligence agencies (including the German BND that was spying on Turkey, Kerry, and Clinton...), and as Snowden's own leaks demonstrate, a ton of oversight within and without NSA, the intelligence community, and the Executive branch itself.
Likewise with Swartz, it's not the prosecutors' fault that the evidence of what Swartz did was sufficient to cause a grand jury to indict on charges that could easily lead to a 1-2 year sentence (as admitted even by Jennifer Granick, no friend to the DOJ here).
> I don't think he didn't break any rules, but what he engaged in was in all respects a victimless crime.
Mapping the Internet is a victimless crime too. Hell, even hijacking computers to aid in proxying those port scans is a victimless crime. Spammers running botnets on Aunt Edna's Windows 98 box is a victimless crime, so I hope you have something better than that.
> Comparing computing crimes of individuals vs. the government hacking citizen's computers and violating basic civil liberties
Did you read the linked article? NSA isn't hacking citizen's computers, except maybe for citizens in non-Five Eyes countries. Likewise NSA wasn't the one who lied to Congress, but then I can't expect people to keep the agencies that most risk their civil liberties straight now can I? :)
And the tradeoff with "far more severe punishments" even for civil servants trying to stay within the law, is naturally "far less severe restrictions" on operation of those civil servants.
If the deal is "you can do whatever is right and proper, but screw up and you go to Leavenworth" then I'd argue that the civil liberties impact would be much more of a net negative. Putting restraints and oversight and restrictive policy and all the rest is much safer IMHO, but the tradeoff there is that when government agencies make a good-faith effort to stay within those restrictions (as even the Snowden leaks have indicated with regard to NSA) that you wouldn't expect heads to roll even if a court later disagrees.
"but the tradeoff there is that when government agencies make a good-faith effort to stay within those restrictions (as even the Snowden leaks have indicated with regard to NSA) that you wouldn't expect heads to roll even if a court later disagrees."
We must live in parallel universes, only bridged by a single message thread. Since in my universe your account of the NSA is a bizarro-world inversion of what we have here, I am pretty jealous of you getting to live there.
I don't think even most prosecutors would have the balls to say something as fucked-up as that. One who scoffs at the threat of criminal court proceedings, in this nation, does so from a very privileged position. A more charitable person than I would hope you never have the misfortune to discover how wrong you are.
What I'm saying is that you cannot have your cake here and eat it too.
Strong laws? Great, you'll have an Aaron Swartz every 5 years at least, especially as long as those laws continue to make common-sense computer crimes like breaking into a subnet (now matter how easy or difficult that was to do technically!) legal crimes as well.
Weak laws? That's fine too, but don't be surprised what a dedicated "advanced persistent threat" can do under a weak legal regime.
That is not at all my interpretation of your other comments on this page, but let's go with it...
If APT were "real" instead of marketing/lobbyist bullshit, like "al Queda" and "the domino theory", what could we imagine "strong laws" doing to combat it? Does anyone suggest we pull a Baghdad in Shanghai or St. Petersburg? How strong is a law that can't be enforced, really?
By all means. Then the government agent will just walk out the building, put on his "private citizen" ball cap, and resume spying using all the authorities any random citizen would have.
That's why I pointed out the state often has much more power, as we wouldn't bother having the state do it in the first place if anyone could do it for themselves.
Yeah. If you consider "Congress" (who can declare war) and "Executive Branch" (the organization that does the spying) are the same "organization"... sure.
For the most part, the US Government is composed of very many different organizations who are specifically designed to not work together very well.
I think they don't care if it's illegal. They believe their actions are justified. The primary problem with that assumption is that they are the ones that justify it.
Yeah, that is disturbing, and it should be made illegal.