I can tell you what happens if you call the FBI to report your site being hacked by criminal syndicates.
Nothing. The FBI has no interest at all in investigating these crimes.
Unless apparently it is from a group criticizing the government. As we see in the article, that's the real crime. Not hacking a site, but the motivation. If it's to steal and commit financial fraud, the government couldn't care less. But if it's because you want to out lies and crimes told by government, then you are going to prison for a long time.
Make no mistake. This is not about the hacking itself at all.
There was an article a few months ago that showed the FBI spends most of its resources going after copyright infringers. Maybe you could claim some of your intellectual property was stolen next time?
Really? So there's Homeland Security going after copyright infringement, now FBI. What's next? CIA? I've seen that in Europe they are already starting to use the Interpol for such things.
When did copyright infringement become one of the biggest crimes one could do? It certainly seems to be on the Government's top priority list, not far below terrorism.
DHS is a cobbled-together afterthought, the bureaucratic equivalent of Mr. Oogey-Boogey from Nightmare Before Christmas, a writhing collection of squiggley little agencies held together with stitched up burlap, created as a slapdash response to 9/11.
One of those agencies is ICE, the (small) organization originally chartered with transcontinental IP enforcement.
The part of our government that is supposed to enforce organized criminal infringement of IP is enforcing infringement of IP. It seems silly to get upset that they're doing so under the banner of "DHS". You'd rather it was DOJ? They'd be doing more than seizing domains.
It became the biggest crime because copyright control means control of what people can see, hear and talk about. There's a lot of money to be made in censorship and controlled conversations with consumers.
You would think that a politician would see that as a prime way to get votes. "The FBI cares more about you downloading a song off the internet then about your child being abducted. We need to get their priority straight. Vote for XYZ 2012"
One guy I talked to said occasionally they might have an attorney wanting them to do some time-consuming, heroic forensics on, say, a CD duplicator to find out how many copies of something were made. His response was something like "This guy's got pictures of a little boy getting sodomized here we're not going to drop this to work on that." Apparently there are a lot of people trading that child porn.
These forensics guys seemed to know what they're doing and had a good perspective on their priorities.
Unless apparently it is from a group criticizing the government. As we see in the article, that's the real crime.
Read it again, or better yet read the linked Reuters article, which RWR just re-wrote and sexed-up. There is no causal connection made between the call for increased sentence maximums and criticism of the government. The only connection made is that the two things are mentioned in the same article.
The idea that you've come away with is not based in fact, but in poor reporting.
In the FBI's defence (and I'm loathe to go to bat for it), they have been actively targeting carders. It's by no means a comprehensive approach to security, but they are at least going after credit fraud.
Now, whether that's to protect consumers or creditors is a different matter...
There are some famous instances of hackers being locked up, e.g., Kevin Mitnick.
But are there any examples of hackers not being locked up long enough? Someone who gets out after 10 years but hadn't learned their lesson and really needed 20?
The classical purposes of punishment (as taught in my criminal law courses):
1. Specific deterrence. (deterring the individual from doing 'it' again)
2. General deterrence. (a signal to other potential criminals to 'not do it')
3. Rehabilitation / resocialisation. Giving the criminal a chance and circumstances to reconsider their way of life or state of mind, or be 'cured' from the mental illnesses or moral defects that are causing their actions.
4. Prevention. Getting people off the street.
5. Revenge for the victim.
6. Revenge for society - making the perpetrator fulfill their moral debt to society.
There are various schools in criminology, criminal psychology etc and depending on which one one subscribes to, some of the above are more important than others. An interesting (to me) development of the last years/decades is the emergency of neuropsychology, explaining people's behavior in terms of neural functioning and basically acknowledging that all actions come from the way our brains are wired. This will have huge implications in the moral aspects of punishment; it will basically nullify the concept of 'guilt' as there won't be a difference between someone who has an epileptic seizure and kicks somebody down the stairs in a spasm, killing him; and a psychopathic murderer who creeps up on a woman at night and cuts her throat. Both will come from 'neural defects', and it will require a serious redefinition of our legal concepts of 'guilt' to reconcile this state of affairs with society's more 'intuitive' concept of guilt.
The prison system in the US is a multi-billion dollar industry. More prisoners = more prisons = more jobs (guards, cleaning staff, psychologists, etc.).
The Mitnick incident was a good example of the government failing to understand new technology and completely overreacting to a sensationalised crime, resulting in Mitnick receiving punishment well in excess of what would be appropriate for his "crimes".
Giving the government power to double their capacity to overreact because of future failures to understand technology just seems like a Bad Idea.
First there were witches, then there were terrorists then there were the hackers. But as every child says those who accuse are the ones who really are.
Nothing. The FBI has no interest at all in investigating these crimes.
Unless apparently it is from a group criticizing the government. As we see in the article, that's the real crime. Not hacking a site, but the motivation. If it's to steal and commit financial fraud, the government couldn't care less. But if it's because you want to out lies and crimes told by government, then you are going to prison for a long time.
Make no mistake. This is not about the hacking itself at all.