Earlier quoted context omitted.
How disturbing and/or illegal should it be? 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 ha…
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…
Read csandreasen's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8205642
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.