We must live in parallel universes, only bridged by a single message thread. Since in my universe your account of the NSA is a bizarro-world inversion of what we have here, I am pretty jealous of you getting to live there.
...a ham sandwich.
Please, let's not pretend that anything happens in a grand jury that is not completely controlled by prosecutors.
Strong laws? Great, you'll have an Aaron Swartz every 5 years at least, especially as long as those laws continue to make common-sense computer crimes like breaking into a subnet (now matter how easy or difficult that was to do technically!) legal crimes as well.
Weak laws? That's fine too, but don't be surprised what a dedicated "advanced persistent threat" can do under a weak legal regime.
If APT were "real" instead of marketing/lobbyist bullshit, like "al Queda" and "the domino theory", what could we imagine "strong laws" doing to combat it? Does anyone suggest we pull a Baghdad in Shanghai or St. Petersburg? How strong is a law that can't be enforced, really?
So just the majority of the world population.
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.