I don't think this will do much good unless it applies in aggregate. Even if this act were written and passed, there is nothing stopping a prosecutor with charging someone with many counts of computer crime and asking a judge to sentence someone to serving all the sentences back to back if found guilty on all counts.
Propose an Aaron Swartz Act:
The purpose of which to limit all computer crime sentences to 1 year maximum and $100,000.
This act would provide a sensible maximum penalty for what the government deems "computer crimes." As a society, we all agree that proportionality is important for non-violent crimes, especially those who we typically prosecute young people with. Many times these crimes are prosecuted under laws that aren't well defined and leave a great deal of the implementation and sentencing to politics, not justice.
Considering it takes at least $1.5 million dollars to attempt to defend oneself from a federal prosecutor, we can at least try to make sentencing sane as most federal indictments go into plea bargaining as no one other than the super-rich can attempt to defend themselves.
Hold on, if I disrupt a power grid or steal your identity, I am already violating a slew of other laws. The prosecutor should, rightfully, be using those laws to charge me. If I kill you via your heart implant I get a murder charge. You can tack on a computer trespass charge if you like but it seems a little extraneous now doesn't it?
The problem is having a vague law(s) from the 1980s kinda sorting defining computer trespassing and the antiquated "wiretapping" means we probably violate this law hundreds if not thousands times a day. Ever guess your own password because you forgot it? Or run nmap on a netblock? Those are, arguably, technical violations of legislation. At least as much as waltzing into MIT and downloading a whole bunch of PDFs.
>It over-penalizes acts like Aaron's but underpenalizes heinous acts
Well, I'd rather have 1 year than 35, wouldn't you? This proposal is still loads better than the status quo.
How about they just get rid of the concept of a "computer crime"? Crimes should be based on the harm they cause, not just the tools used. There's no "shoe crime" committed when someone puts on shoes and walks to a bank robbery.
Prosecutors will always include all possible charges; they have to because of double jeopardy (gross but generally accurate simplification: if they only charge you with one crime for an act and you immediately plead guilty, they cannot charge you with more crimes for that act).
* If I kill you via your heart implant I get a murder charge. You can tack on a computer trespass charge if you like but it seems a little extraneous now doesn't it?*
Special circumstances charges always play a role in determining sentencing. By adding in the computer hacking charge, that murder sentence could go from 25 years with the possibility of parole to life without.
For example: I once had a client who had a simple gun possession charge attached to an attempted murder/robbery charge. By itself, the gun possession charge would normally have only been a 1-3 year sentence (he was a convicted felon), but attached to a violent crime, even though the gun was not used in the crime it automatically added 15 years to the end of any sentence imposed by the judge, with no room for discretionary adjustment.
Well, I'd rather have 1 year than 35, wouldn't you? This proposal is still loads better than the status quo.
I would rather pay a small fine than go to prison at all for something like what Aaron did. As I said, it overpenalizes what he did but vastly underpenalizes far more serious crimes.
Hold on, if I disrupt a power grid or steal your identity, I am already violating a slew of other laws. The prosecutor should, rightfully, be using those laws to charge me If I kill you via your heart implant I get a murder charge. You can tack on a computer trespass charge if you like but it seems a little extraneous now doesn't it?
Yes, they should, but they would still need to actually convict you in court (or get you to plead). There may not be sufficient evidence of those other crimes to convict on those other charges, but that would not ameleriorate the seriousness of, say, hacking the power grid.
