Seriously, how does that even make sense? The idea of a sentence that is accelerated if it's your Nth offense makes sense. A sentence accelerated by malicious destruction (of any sort) makes sense. Accelerate if done for commercial gain. Accelerate for deliberately obstructing investigations. Accelerate for being the ringleader of a conspiracy.

But a sentencing structure that says "fuck it, all we have to go on is damages, so go make up a plausible story and we'll use that to figure out where on the X axis of this spreadsheet you figure out" --- and "plausible story" is exactly the term when you learn about the burden of proof here --- it makes no sense at all. The same mindset, intent, and actions can't generate radically different outcomes based on how many iterations a for() loop makes before you get caught.

Well, it's a problem with sentencing in general. If you have $2m and I steal $1m from your safe, it's judged a much worse crime than if you have $200 and I steal all of it, even though the outcome for you is a lot worse in the second case. Ideally the imposition would be quantified in terms of the marginal cost to the injured party, but then there's another economic theory that says we have to multiply that by the probability of capture in order to achieve deterrence by means of a criminal's indifference curve.

And at that, we're not even committed to any kind of intellectual theory of sentencing int eh first place - some lawmakers thinks sentencing is a punitive matter, some rehabilitative, and so on. Gestural politics are the norm in American criminal justice; which goes some way to explaining how we only recently had mandatory minimum sentences recognized as unconstitutional, and how the crack/cocaine disparity was addressed even more recently, despite its blatantly obvious unfairness.

I don't think legislation will go anywhere, since the house GOP will probably sink it in the name of personal responsibility.

Sure, the legislation won't go anywhere if you go out of your way to make it seem like a one-party issue.

Some of us have been reaching out to our GOP representatives, especially those who've expressed prior concerns about prosecutorial abuse of power. I see Darrell Issa - on the Oversight Committee, and hardly a liberal - has already agreed to look into the appropriateness of Aaron's prosecutors' behavior.

It's really not that hard to tie the type of bullying Aaron went through to the bullying suffered by more GOP-friendly victims like the Reese family out in New Mexico. You can wrap it all up in a nice bow of Fast & Furious. If you want the House GOP to pass this legislation, why don't you do your part and reach out?

This legislative proposal is too narrowly tailored to address prosecutorial overreach in general, and I'm not sure it would have even made much difference in this case.

I agree completely - but it's a good step in the right direction. I didn't mention it in the letters I've already written, because I didn't know about it, but I'll certainly be working it into the letters I haven't written yet.

Hopefully you'll do the same.

> Sure, the legislation won't go anywhere if you go out of your way to make it seem like a one-party issue.

And to pile on, it's hardly only GOP members who believe in "personal responsibility". But that doesn't let overzealous prosecutors off the hook anyways.

It's a hack to make it easier to put major drug distributors, commercial piracy operations, etc, away for longer sentences on the assumption that if you're downloading a million documents, you must be engaged in some large criminal enterprise.

Really, no crime needs more than a few degrees (it's good enough for murder, after all). Even things like aggravating factors can be used pretty unfairly.

Worse, according to Granick, this made-up number is laundered into a finding of fact that is given deference at appeal.

I think you meant "if a sentence that...", right?

This goes even further: if one was to carry drugs in a ziplock bag (or whatever else they're carried in, I am probably one of the few people on HN who doesn't know), when calculating the charges, it's not uncommon for the weight of a ziplock bag to be added to the weight of whatever is in it. God help someone who decides to stash the drugs away inside their spare wheel in their car.

Angry nerds is a force we can use for good -- reforming CFAA os probably useful on its own merits (I fully support this legislation), but majority of people being judicially bullied into unreasonable plea bargains (or worse, manifestation of physical or mental illness such as suicide and heart attacks) are not being charged under CFAA.