Another Revenge Porn Extortion Site Operator Going To Jail

from the random-sentencing dept

Sentencing revenge porn extortionists seems to be all over the place. Craig Brittain, who basically originated the extortionate process of not just running a revenge porn website, but combining it with a (pretending to be) separate "pay us and we'll get your naked photos taken down" service, had his wrists duly slapped by the FTC earlier this year. Shortly after that, Kevin Bollaert, who more or less copied Brittain's plan, got sentenced to 18 years in jail (which he's currently in the process of appealing). Hunter Moore, who is often credited with being the first one to set up a big revenge porn site (without the corresponding extortionate takedowns, but apparently with hiring people to hack into computers to get copies of naked photos to post), took a plea deal with somewhere between two and seven years in jail.

And, now, Casey Meyering, who also copied Brittain's plan -- almost exactly -- and who also took a plea deal a few weeks ago, has been sentenced to three years in jail (which he can't appeal, due to the plea deal). Adam Steinbaugh, who spends his spare time hunting down revenge porn operators, provides a bit of background:

In June of 2013, I documented how Meyering had ripped off an extortion scheme pioneered by another revenge porn site operator, Craig Brittain.  Meyering created Takedownhammer.info, copying Brittain’s Takedownhammer.com (word for word), and solicited payments to this “independent” service using a Google Wallet account clearly linked to Meyering’s drum-lessons business.

When Meyering was arrested in February of 2014, he was found in a Tulsa hotel room, drunk.  He subsequently told the court he was homeless, bankrupt, and had nobody to ask for financial assistance to hire an attorney.

It seems like the sentencing is all over the place with these guys. However, at the very least, it seems to have scared most revenge porn sites away from the US.

Filed Under: casey meyering, craig brittain, jail, kevin bollaert, punishment, revenge porn

DailyDirt: Suicide Isn't Painless -- Neither Is The Death Penalty (Yet?)

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Regardless if you're for or against the death penalty, there's at least some agreement that the method of execution shouldn't be cruel and unusual. The drugs for lethal injections seem to be running into supply problems, resulting in some botched executions. One might think the methods for assisted suicide would step in, but doctors like Jack Kevorkian are pretty scarce.

• In Utah, Gov. Gary R. Herbert signed a bill into law that establishes a firing squad as a legal means of execution by the state if the drugs for lethal injection aren't available. In the US, 34 states enforce a death penalty and use lethal injection as the primary method of execution. Secondary methods include electrocution, gas chamber, hanging and firing squads. [url]
• You might think execution methods have been well-researched to be effective or that it should be easy to design a method that provides a painless death. Oklahoma is considering "nitrogen hypoxia" (suffocation that should be painless because it doesn't contribute carbon dioxide into the person's bloodstream), and nitrogen gas is cheap and easy to use. [url]
• Singapore executes by hanging -- the "long drop" method -- which allows for convicts to donate their organs afterwards. This is definitely not a painless method, but when it's done correctly, death is relatively swift. [url]

Filed Under: death, electrocution, execution, firing squad, gas chamber, hanging, lethal injection, nitrogen hypoxia, painless, penalty, punishment, suffocation, suicide

Separate And Unequal: Gen. Petraeus Facing Mild Wrist Slap For Leaking Eight Books Full Of Classified Info To His Mistress

from the granted-Most-Favored-Leaker-status dept

The administration still wants to punish whistleblowers and leakers, but only if it can do it with logic borrowed from Animal Farm. When it comes to prosecution, some leakers are more equal than others.

John Kiriakou -- who exposed a single CIA operative's name while exposing its waterboarding tactics -- spent more time in jail than former CIA director Leon Panetta, who has spent (at last count) a grand total of 0 days locked up for leaking tons of classified info to Zero Dark Thirty's screenwriter, Mark Boal.

Of course, some leaks just aren't leaks, at least not according to the government. Kiriakou's were wrong. Panetta's were right. And Kiriakou spent three years in prison for a lesser "crime."

Thomas Drake faced a potential 35-year sentence for his exposure of wasteful NSA spending. The government's case against him self-imploded, however, resulting in a guilty plea to a misdemeanor and no jail time.

General Petraeus, who leaked classified information to his mistress, is in line to receive the lightest of wrist slaps for his indiscretion: two years probation and a $40,000 fine. The lightness of the sentence suggested by government prosecutors belies the extent of Petraeus' wrongdoing.

What he handed over to his mistress far surpasses anything the above whistleblowers "leaked."

While he was commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, Petraeus “maintained bound, five-by-eight inch notebooks that contained his daily schedule and classified and unclassified notes he took during official meetings, conferences and briefings,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina writes in a statement of fact regarding the case...

All eight books “collectively contained classified information regarding the identifies of covert officers, war strategy, intelligence capabilities and mechanisms, diplomatic discussions, quotes and deliberative discussions from high-level National Security Council meetings… and discussions with the president of the United States.”

The books also contained “national defense information, including top secret/SCI and code word information,” according to the court papers. In other words: These weren’t just ordinary secrets. This was highly, highly classified material.

On top of that, he lied to the government about these books, first in the form of a sworn statement...

Petreaus retained those Black Books after he signed his debriefing agreement upon leaving DOD, in which he attested “I give my assurance that there is no classified material in my possession, custody, or control at this time.” He kept those Black Books in an unlocked desk drawer.

And again to investigating FBI agents.

In an interview on October 26, 2012, he told the FBI:

(a) he had never provided any classified information to his biographer, and (b) he had never facilitated the provision of classified information to his biographer.

Simply lying to the FBI has consequences far greater than those Petraeus will face. But that's because he's General Petraeus and you're not -- as 22-year-old Kirstie Barratt recently discovered.

United States Attorney Bill Nettles stated today that Kirstie Elaine Philome Barratt, age 22, of Fort Mill, South Carolina was sentenced to 24 months’ imprisonment today after earlier pleading guilty to making a false statement to a federal agent, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001. United States District Judge Joseph F. Anderson, Jr. imposed the term of imprisonment, which will be followed by a 3 year term of supervised release. In October, Barratt plead straight up to the charge without a plea agreement. Barratt also may face deportation as a result of her guilty plea. During the sentencing hearing, Judge Anderson granted the government’s motion for an upward departure from the federal guidelines sentencing range of 0 to 6 months, noting that this was a “rare” case and that Barratt “knowingly placed a law enforcement officer’s life in jeopardy” by her false statement.

Petraeus was a trusted member of the military and the CIA. And he turned over eight books worth of classified info to his biographer/mistress just because she asked. But because he's part of the administration's arbitrarily-selected "in crowd," and because he didn't embarrass the government as much as he embarrassed himself, he's facing a sentence of nearly nothing. His suggested punishment will have zero effect on his current position at a top equity firm and his life will suffer none of the disruptions Kiriakou and Drake experienced. He'll be $40,000 poorer -- and with "deterrents" like these being deployed -- none the wiser.

What's most disgusting about Petraeus' cakewalk of a proposed sentence is that he himself took a hypocritical hardline stance on leaking after Kiriakou's sentencing.

When John Kiriakou pled guilty on October 23, 2012 to crimes having to do with sharing a single covert officer’s identity just days before Petraeus would lie to the FBI about sharing, among other things, numerous covert officers’ identities with his mistress, Petraeus sent out a memo to the CIA stating,

"Oaths do matter, and there are indeed consequences for those who believe they are above the laws that protect our fellow officers and enable American intelligence agencies to operate with the requisite degree of secrecy."

Yeah. "Oaths matter." Except when you're the one uttering them, right? Apparently, a "requisite degree of secrecy" means stashing eight books full of classified info in an unlocked desk drawer and handing them out to your clandestine SO in hopes of keeping your knob biography as polished as possible.

This administration is severely hypocritical, but seemingly no more so than in its treatment of whistleblowers. There are those who will be persecuted and punished and those whose similar indiscretions will be waved away by government prosecutors. The problem is: you may not know which of these faces of the administration you'll be facing when you decide to start blowing the whistle. Chances are -- given this administration's track record -- it will be the vindictive, angry administration that continually hopes to "send a message" with each new whistleblower/leaker prosecuted.

Those on the inside of the military/industrial/surveillance supercomplex -- who leak under the name of "anonymous official" to aid filmmakers, deploy talking points or steer narratives -- will never see this side of the two-faced administration. Their leaks are more equal than others.

Filed Under: cia, classified information, david petraeus, doj, fbi, john kiriakou, leaking, lying, punishment, thomas drake, wrist slap

Should The Punishment For Falsely Accusing People Of A Crime Match The Punishment For The Crime Itself?

from the false-accusations-everywhere dept

Two very different stories, but both with some startling parallels.

First, Radley Balko's story about how police and attorneys in Louisiana apparently flat out lied to claim that a process server "assaulted" a police officer he was serving (in a police brutality case, no less). There are lots of details there, but suffice it to say, the process server, Douglas Dendinger, did not assault Chad Cassard at all -- even though he was soon arrested for it, and Cassard managed to present seven witnesses (including police officers and two prosecutors who witnessed Dendinger serving the papers on Cassard). Dendinger went through two years of hell because of this, before the case was dropped when cell phone videos made by Dendinger's wife and nephew showed that there was no assault at all. Police and prosecutors lying to protect one of their own? Sure, it happens. But now that it's been exposed, Balko has an important question:

Why aren’t the seven witnesses to Dendinger’s nonexistent assault on Cassard already facing felony charges? Why are all but one of the cops who filed false reports still wearing badges and collecting paychecks? Why aren’t the attorneys who filed false reports facing disbarment? Dendinger’s prosecutors both filed false reports, then prosecuted Dendinger based on the reports they knew were false. They should be looking for new careers — after they get out of jail.

If a group of regular citizens had pulled this on someone, they’d all likely be facing criminal conspiracy charges on top of the perjury and other charges. So why aren’t these cops and prosecutors?

I could be wrong, but my guess is that they’ll all be let off due to “professional courtesy” or some sort of exercise of prosecutorial discretion. And so the people who ought to be held to a higher standard than the rest of us will once again be held to a lower one.

Second, we have last week's story about Total Wipes sending an automated takedown notice to Google demanding tons of perfectly legitimate, non-infringing web pages be taken out of Google's index for infringement. Total Wipes blamed it on a "bug" in its program, which would be more convincing if it hadn't happened before.

This second story has Rick Falkvinge, quite reasonably, wondering why the penalties for false takedowns aren't equivalent to the penalties for infringement, saying that this is the way it works in other parts of the law:

The thing is, this should not even be contentious. This is how we deal with this kind of criminal act in every – every – other aspect of society. If you lie as part of commercial operations and hurt somebody else’s rights or business, you are a criminal. If you do so repeatedly or for commercial gain, direct or indirect, you’re having your ill-gotten gains seized. This isn’t rocket science. This is standard bloody operating procedure.

The copyright industry goes ballistic at this proposal, of course, and try to portray themselves as rightsless victims – when the reality is that they have been victimizing everybody else after making the entire planet rightsless before their intellectual deforestation.

The irony is that at the same time as the copyright industry opposes such penalties vehemently, arguing that they can make “innocent mistakes” in sending out nastygrams, threats, and lawsuits to single mothers, they are also arguing that the situation with distribution monopolies is always crystal clear and unmistakable to everybody else who deserve nothing but the worst. They can’t have it both ways here.

Of course, his claim that this is true in "every" other area is proven somewhat false by the first story above. But the underlying factors in both cases are nearly identical, and it actually goes back to a previous concept that Falkvinge has written about: the "high court" and the "low court." The "nobility" gets a special court when they break the law, with limited consequences. The lowly commoners have to go to the "low court" where the consequences are quite severe. Falkvinge's original point is that we still seem to have the same thing today, and that's clearly shown in both stories above.

If you're in power, you can lie about things to accuse others of serious things that can have serious consequences for them, and there's no real punishment. Instead, it's brushed off as not being important -- sometimes with expressions of understanding about how "these things can happen." I'm reminded of the phrase that we "judge ourselves according to our intentions, but others based on their actions," and that seems to be partly at work here as well (though I question the "intentions" of the prosecutors who lied above). The lies are written off as minor "mistakes," whereas those accused are given no such benefit of the doubt. It's a big problem in the copyright space, certainly, but it's true in many other areas of society as well.

Filed Under: assault, copyright, crime, false accusations, high court, lies, low court, process server, punishment, radley balko, rick falkvinge
Companies: total wipes

Sexual Relationship With A Minor, Theft Of Services And Destruction Of Evidence Nets Police Officer One-Year Prison Sentence

from the and-that's-quite-possibly-not-the-worst-thing-about-the-situation dept

There are multiple levels of effed-upness in this story but we'll start from the top.

Cincinnati police officer Darrell Beavers appears to have used his power and position to effect and perpetuate a sexual relationship with a minor. This went far beyond simply relying on the innate "trustworthiness" of the position.

Beavers, a Cincinnati police officer since 2002, set up a scheme, using his job as a police officer as bait, to send and receive 650 sexually explicit photos and texts with a minor and destroying an incriminating [police] cell phone once he knew he was being investigated.

Add to this the use of his position to coerce a local landlord into handing him over an apartment to use for his sexual trysts -- free of charge -- by claiming he was setting up a department "substation" to "fight crime in the area."

Once Beavers, 45, had the apartment, it was adorned with an official Cincinnati Police logo as well as beds, bedding, personal lubricants, pornographic videos and a police-owned night-vision camera to record events that were happening in the dark.

Beavers is now an ex-officer and has been sentenced to prison. Thanks to a friendly plea deal and a recent law change, he will be facing a maximum of one year behind bars. That seems awfully low considering Beavers committed a sexual offense, destroyed evidence and falsely procured an apartment to be used solely to commit illegal acts with a minor.

But that's not the only thing screwed up about this. Cue Beavers' attorney, Carl Lewis:

Beavers' attorney, Carl Lewis, believed the incident was a one-time "lapse of judgment" of an otherwise upstanding, respected police officer, husband, father of three and football and basketball coach.

"He said if this same activity had occurred with his daughter with another police officer, he would be angry, he would be upset," Lewis said of Beavers.

No. A "one-time lapse of judgment" is having sex with an underage person by accident (or possibly on purpose) ONE TIME, and then NEVER DOING IT AGAIN. It is not stealing an apartment to use as a sex pad, sending and receiving 650 texts/photos over a period of three months, and then destroying evidence when investigators start closing in.

All the follow-up comment about Beavers being "upset" means is that his moral compass is as flexible as anybody's. Double standards are distressingly common. They are not, however, indicators of latent "goodness."

On to the next level of effed-upness.

A theft in office charge that would have resulted in Beavers losing any police pension was dropped as part of the plea deal.

Beavers will do some time, most likely return to his current employer (an oil pipeline) and his $70,000 salary, and still draw a pension when he hits retirement age.

Even more layers:

Beavers also fears the humiliation of being labeled a sexual predator, having to report his address for the next 15 years to the sheriff in the county where he will live.

Well, gee, former Officer Beavers. That sucks. But that's what the system requires of other sex offenders, including the ones that don't have access to favorable plea bargains and a taxpayer-funded pension to fall back on. Don't forget, the list of sexual predators also tends to include teens who had consensual sex [statutory rape] and teens who passed around sexual photos of other teens [sexting] -- teens who begin their trip through the "justice system" accompanied by officers like yourself. So, try to keep that chin up, Darrell.

And there's still more. This wasn't the only so-called "substation" under police officer control.

[Detective] Schofield noted police also found a previous fake substation in West Price Hill and wanted to ask Beavers about it but he refused.

"It was their belief," Lewis said of police investigators, "that there are other Cincinnati police officers (who) have used, were using the so-called substations for other activity other than police work."

So, there will be more indictments in the future?

Cincinnati said they aren't investigating possible involvement by other officers.

Apparently, one officer being (minimally) punished is enough. Everything else can simply be ignored, for morale's sake... or whatever. It wouldn't do to have the Cincinnati PD portrayed by the media as a bunch of amoral jerks strong-arming landlords into providing them with rent-free crash pads from which to pursue their illicit aims.

By all other accounts, Beavers appeared to be an exemplary officer. But he used his position to take advantage of a 17-year-old member of the Cincinnati Police Explorer program. Even if the sexual contact was consensual, it was still illegal. Everything else he did -- destroy evidence, commandeer an apartment -- was far outside any legal or moral gray area. In the end, he'll serve less than a year and enjoy a full pension. Other officers who may have abused their power or simply looked away while Beavers took advantage of his will emerge from this incident unscathed. And if they aren't held accountable, there will be no reason for them to alter future behavior.

Filed Under: darrell beavers, destruction of evidence, police, punishment

The Government Doesn't Punish Whistleblowers; It Just Shoves Them In Closets Or Sends Them To The Basement

from the not-punitive,-just-really,-really-bitchy dept

More evidence of the US government's fabled whistleblower protections at work. While laws may prohibit direct retaliation for speaking up about misconduct, there's nothing in place to prevent an agency from taking a useful employee and Milton-ing them into irrelevance.

[Paula] Pedene, 56, is the former chief spokeswoman for this VA hospital. Now, she is living in a bureaucrat's urban legend. After complaining to higher-ups about mismanagement at this hospital, she has been reassigned — indefinitely — to a desk in the basement.

Now, the good news is that investigators are still trying to determine whether this reassignment to the depths of the hospital was retaliatory. The bad news is that even if they can prove this, there's likely nothing that can be done about it.

In the past, whistleblowers have had their desks moved to break rooms, broom closets and basements. It's a clever punishment, good-government activists say, that exploits a gray area in the law.

The whole thing can look minor on paper. They moved your office. So what? But the change is designed to afflict the striving soul of a federal worker, with a mix of isolation, idle time and lost prestige.

And, of course, this isn't an isolated incident. Another contractor interviewed spent 16 months in a basement office after alerting regulators about improper radioactive material processing. An Air Force chemist found himself sweeping the floor of his basement office after uncovering mismanagement. As for Pedene, her whistleblowing helped uncover an $11 million budget shortfall, one that led to the voluntary resignation of hospital's director. Instead of adding another accolade to her active 20 years of service, Pedene's office was moved as far away as possible from the rest of the hospital and her responsibilities almost completely eliminated.

Those in charge used this minor breach as the supposed justification for moving her downstairs.

The chief accusation was that Pedene had let her husband upload photos of a VA-sponsored Veterans Day parade onto her work computer. He was helping her finish a PowerPoint presentation she was working on. He was a non-VA employee, working on a VA computer.

The hospital refuses to address any questions about Pedene's situation, claiming it was a decision made by her previous boss -- one that was forced out during the recent investigation that uncovered the use of bogus wait lists to cover up how long patients were waiting for treatment.

The scant legal protections Pedene can avail herself of look much better on paper than in practice.

In theory, it is illegal to make the basement into a bureaucratic purgatory. In 1994, for instance, Congress prohibited agencies from making significant changes in a whistleblower's "working conditions" as punishment for speaking out.

But in practice, the situation is murkier. Some courts have said moving an employee to a basement or closet usually amounts to punishment. But others have said this is a decision that should be made case by case. How nice is the basement office? How big is the closet?

What makes this tougher for the people being relegated to basements or closets is there are no easily-definable damages to be pursued -- which makes it unlikely that many lawyers would be interested in pursuing the case. And so, the government gets away with it. It can still pretend it's looking out for whistleblowers while ignoring those who have simply been removed from their visible positions and offices and stripped of their responsibilities. All this does is guarantee that more and more malfeasance will be the result of very public leaks rather than issues that could be handled internally with a minimal of PR damage.

The government likes to actively punish leakers but it doesn't treat those who go through proper channels much better. It would apparently rather have abuse and misconduct remain out of sight and out of mind and remain secure in its delusion that its agencies are staffed with good people doing good work.

Filed Under: government, punishment, whistleblowers

DailyDirt: Time Flies When You're...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There are a lot of myths and aphorisms about the passage of time. A watched kettle never boils. Time flies when you're having fun. However, these observations could lead to some important discoveries about human psychology and how our brains perceive and remember various events in our lives. Does "proportionality theory" really explain why 8yo kids and 80yo senior citizens judge time differently? Here are just a few links on the topic of time.

• Does the perception of time really speed up as you get older? It depends on the time frame -- days and weeks may pass at a normal speed, but it's the years that seem to fly by. [url]
• The perception of time passing can be changed by emotions (fear seems to slow time down), disrupted routines and new experiences. Also, drugs that affect dopamine function in the brain (eg. Ritalin, Adderall and anti-psychotic drugs) can speed up or slow down how a person perceives time. [url]
• If the maximum sentence for criminals is life in prison, could we make the punishment worse by giving inmates drugs that make the time seem to pass more slowly? Obviously, there are some serious ethical questions about customizing punishments with technology, but it's an issue that should be debated as medicine comes up with ever more ways to extend human lifespans. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: aging, drugs, lifespan, perception, psychology, punishment, time

Man Who Raped 14-Year-Old Sentenced To 30 Days In Jail Because Girl Looked Kinda Old And The Internet Is Mean

from the well-okay-then dept

We've seen ridiculous requests and results stemming from the concept of how "mean" the internet is. Recall that Prenda Law wanted all manner of documents sealed because the internet was a cruel, cruel place. To be fair, it isn't like we haven't seen our share of stories about jerks on the web. Still, I'm pretty sure the internet housing a bunch of meanie poopy-heads probably shouldn't factor into the decision to have a former high school teacher who raped a 14 year old girl serve only 30 days in jail.

Now, I know what you're thinking: that didn't happen. A guy did not rape a 14 year old student and then only do a month in the pen. Sorry, you're wrong, and the reasons for it are as absurd as they come.

A Yellowstone County district judge Monday ordered a former Senior High teacher convicted of raping a 14-year-old female student who later committed suicide to spend 30 days in jail. Judge G. Todd Baugh sentenced Stacey Dean Rambold to 15 years in prison, with all but 31 days suspended, for sexual intercourse without consent.

Rambold's attorney, Jay Lansing, argued Monday for the suspended sentence. He said Rambold lost his career, his marriage and his home and has suffered a "scarlet letter of the Internet" as a result of publicity about the case. The judge also said Morales was "older than her chronological age."

Okay, let's take these in order. First, doesn't even 15 years for a teacher raping a student seem on the light side, particularly when that student subsequently killed herself? Secondly, reducing the sentence from 15 years to 30 days for any reason is insane, but when those reasons are that the rapist has lost his family and job while suffering the wrath of a pissed off internet, the justice train has gone off the rails somewhere. One would think any stories of the internet being so cruel to Captain Rapey as to warrant a reduced sentence would have made it into the public light without the defense attorney's help. To even make this argument is an insult to our concept of justice and accountability.

Finally, what the hell difference does it make that the girl may have looked older than her peers? Several news pieces on this story have shown the young lady, who certainly did look mature for her age, and I can imagine some nightmare scenario in which an adult unwittingly hooks up with a mature looking young person who is underage and faces the wrath of the court as a result, but this isn't that scenario. Rambold taught at the girl's school and had every reason to know and/or believe that her age should have come into question, setting aside entirely the fact that teachers probably shouldn't be banging their students no matter what age they are.

The internet can be a cruel world, but it isn't as cruel as a teacher raping a 14-year-old girl. It just isn't.

Filed Under: internet, punishment, rape, students, teachers

People Who Got Shorter Sentences Than Bradley Manning: Spies Selling Secrets To Russians & Active Terrorists

from the disproportionate dept

By now, of course, you've heard that Bradley Manning received a sentence of 35 years, and lots of people are arguing over whether or not this is reasonable. In fact, we've even seen some people arguing that he got off easy. Okay, well, let's explore that line of reasoning. Over at the Huffington Post, there's a good article looking at the sentences that eight actual spies received from the US. These are people who actively sold or tried to sell key US secrets to enemies, such as the Russians, as opposed to revealing wrongdoing to the public via the press. Guess what? The actual spies got off with lighter sentences.

Take, for example, the case of David Henry Barnett, a CIA agent who directly sold secrets to the Russians, including but not limited to outing around 30 active CIA agents to the KGB. Oh, and at the urging of the KGB, he also tried to get a job on Capitol Hill in order to get access to more secrets. He was eventually caught and charged with espionage in 1980... and received an 18 year sentence. Got that? Directly sell the identity of CIA agents to the KGB and you get about half the time that Manning got, not for revealing the identity of any intelligence agents, but basically for embarrassing the State Department and the military. That doesn't seem right.

Okay. And how about people, including Americans, who actively tried to hurt America? Remember, Manning made it quite clear his goal was to help America. But that's not true for these five people who joined the Taliban or teamed up with terrorists working on plans to attack America. Those people actively wanted to harm America. And they got shorter sentences.

David Hicks: An Australian national who was captured fighting alongside the Taliban and sent to Guantanamo Bay prison in 2002, Hicks plead guilty to material support for terrorism in a Gitmo military commission in 2007 and was sentenced to seven years confinement. That sentence was reduced to nine months given time already served.

John Walker Lindh: Lindh was convicted of a slew of terrorism and conspiracy charges in 2003 for fighting with the Taliban against the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Or, for a different type of comparison, how about how other countries have treated leakers of key government information? Once again, we discover people who appear to have revealed much more damaging information... and got off with much lighter sentences.

Had he been born in Denmark, he might have gotten four months for disclosing information a Danish court found highly damaging to national security. That’s the penalty Danish Defense Intelligence analyst Frank Grevil received in 2005 for disclosing threat assessments concerning Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction.

Or, had he been British, he could have been released after serving seven weeks of a six month sentence, as was David Shayler, the former MI5 member who gave a newspaper 28 security and intelligence files on a variety of topics, including on Libyan links with the IRA, Soviet funding of the Communist party of Great Britain, agents’ names and other highly sensitive information.

Or, given his military status, he might have received a sentence of 12 months in jail – the penalty a British judge gave to Navy petty officer Steven Hayden in 1998 for selling significant security and intelligence information to a newspaper concerning a plot by Saddam Hussein to launch anthrax attacks in the UK. That sentence was the heaviest awarded to any of the eight Britons convicted of disclosing sensitive information since the current Official Secrets Act was passed in 1989.

In fact, the article notes that, after looking at the laws of 20 European countries, they discovered that while all have criminal penalties for disclosing classified national security info, most have a top penalty of just a few years in jail, so long as the person leaked the information, rather than delivering it directly to a foreign state. In the UK and Great Britain, for example, the longest time allowed under law is two years in prison. France is the most aggressive punisher, where leakers can face up to 7 years in jail.

Now, compare that to the truth about Bradley Manning. There's no evidence he put anyone in danger. Nothing he leaked was "top secret" (even though he had top secret clearance). His intent was clear from the beginning and it was not to aid our enemies or to harm America. Yet guess who gets the longer sentence?

Given all of these comparisons, it's difficult to see how the sentence that Manning received is anywhere even close to proportionate or reasonable. It seems fairly obvious: Bradley Manning was not punished so harshly for harming the US. He was punished for embarrassing the government. That's not how things are supposed to happen in an open and free society.

Filed Under: bradley manning, leaks, prison, punishment, sentences, sentencing, spies, terrorists

More Copyright Censorship: 'Straight Pride' Group Uses DMCA To Take Down Their Own Responses To Reporter

from the copyright-as-censorship dept

While some copyright maximalists are still insisting that copyright is never used to censor anyone, it seems that every day we see more cases of it in action. The latest, as sent in by just about everyone, is that a group in the UK, called Straight Pride UK, who ridiculously go around claiming that homosexuals and their supporters are trying to silence heterosexuals, did an interview with a student named Oliver Hotham. He emailed them, telling them he was a freelance journalist with a list of questions. They responded by sending a document that included the answers to the question, and the document was entitled "press release." Hotham explains what happened next:

About a week later they responded with an attached document with the title “press release”. I went through the questions, corrected the horrendous grammar, and organised it so it coherently answered the questions I’d posed. I also noted that two rather pointed questions I’d asked, regarding the problem of the bullying of LGBTI youth and the nature of other “pride” movements, had not been answered. I sent them an email about this, saying that I’d give them the opportunity to respond but, if they didn’t, I’d “make it clear in the article” that they avoided the questions. They didn’t get back to me for 2 days, which I thought ample time to write two sentences.

Fully satisfied that my journalism had made them look like the arses they are, I hit the publish button, and sat back, feeling all together really pleased with myself. I called the article “It’s great to be straight… yeah”, too, which I thought acutely summed up their philosophy and referenced a mid-90s dance album I rather like.

And, apparently having realized that they look like the "arses they are," the group did what any sniveling censorious jerks would do, and sent a completely bogus DMCA takedown. At least they first warned Hotham that they were going to take this ridiculous step:

“It has been brought to my attention that you have published the email that I sent you to, you did not state this in your email request, nor you did have consent to do this.

I therefore request that you take down the article that you have placed on your blog.

You have 7 days in which to do this, failing this I shall submit a DMCA to WordPress to have it removed.

And then they did, in fact, send the DMCA takedown to Wordpress parent company Automattic, who took it down. There's been some anger at Automattic, but having dealt with Automattic a few times in the past, I know that they take this stuff very seriously (perhaps more seriously than almost every other company out there) and work extra hard to weed through the bogus DMCA takedowns. But, it's a really difficult task, especially when you're inundated with DMCA takedowns. Once the story got attention, Wordpress admitted that it was a mistake and agreed that this was a clear case of censorship via the DMCA.

Of course, the good news is that all of this censorious activity quickly drew much more attention to the article -- in fact, lots of sites reposted it and called extra attention to what a ridiculous bunch of people "Straight Pride UK" really are.

Still, this has people wondering, given how often we see censorship attempts like this fail, and end up getting more attention via the Streisand Effect, why does it still happen so often. And, one troubling possibility is that this sort of censorship-by-copyright actually works much of the time, and it's only a small portion of the cases that generate so much attention. That's definitely a possibility. For obvious reasons, a lot of these types of stories get submitted to us, and we only have time to cover a small fraction of them. So there are definitely cases of bogus takedowns that just don't get attention. But, in some cases it's worse than that. That's because the only ones that do get attention are the cases where the person who is censored knows enough to speak out. Many people who don't understand copyright law will get censored with bogus DMCA takedown notices and, because of the threats, the legal language and the big numbers (statutory damages!), will just shut up and be censored rather than risk anything. And from a personal liability standpoint, for many people, that's probably a perfectly logical -- if horrifically damaging to free speech -- position.

This is why the DMCA takedown process needs to have real teeth behind punishment for bogus takedowns. It seems fairly clear to some of us that the current DMCA takedown process itself is a clear First Amendment violation, in that it effectively requires content to be restrained prior to any adversarial hearing or review. A much more reasonable and non-censorious system would be a "notice and notice" system, in which the target of a DMCA notice is given a time period in which to respond before the content is removed. Combine that with real punishment for a bogus DMCA takedown notice, and you might finally be able to minimize the risk of the DMCA being used to censor.

Filed Under: censorship, copyright, dmca, free speech, notice and takedown, oliver hotham, punishment