US mulls stiffer sentences for common Net proxies

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Source: AP via Edwardsville Intelligencer

A key vote Wednesday on new federal sentencing guidelines would classify the use of proxies as evidence of "sophistication," increasing sentences by about 25 percent - which could mean years or even decades longer behind bars, depending on the crime. It's akin to judges handing down stiffer sentences when a gun is used in a robbery.

Yet digital-rights advocates are worried. Although they aren't absolving criminals, they complain that the proposal is so broad, it could lead to unnecessarily harsh sentences for tech neophytes who didn't know they were using proxies in the first place or who were simply engaging in a practice often encouraged as a safer way of using the Internet.

"It sends a bad message about protecting your own privacy," said John Morris, general counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology. "This is the government saying, 'If you take normal steps to protect your privacy, we're going to view you as a more sophisticated criminal.'"

Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/T/TEC_PUNISHING_PROXIES?SITE=ILEDW&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

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The lockdown on Americans who use the Internet continues....While the banks get away with murder and collect trillions of dollars for their trouble.

Wake up to this tyranny and act. Sleep, and you too will end up as a labeled terrorist.

[MADem]

1. Well, if they take away the internet, people will start talking to each other again.

People talking to each other ended the Vietnam War, after all. If the government makes it too scary to use a computer, people will demonstrate instead. They might not like that.

[regnaD kciN]

6. "...ended the Vietnam War"...???

Spare me. We didn't end the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War ended when Richard Nixon decided it should end.

I know lots of us have nostalgic memories of the antiwar movement as the high point of our youth, and so accepting that we failed is hard. But the fact is, we failed. By the time we were done with seven years of marches, rallies, moratoriums, "teach-ins," oh, and four unarmed students gunned down by the National Guard at Kent State and two more at Jackson State, voters picked Nixon over one of the leading antiwar Democrats by the largest margin in history (up to that time -- Reagan over Mondale was even bigger).

The war ended because Nixon and Kissinger worked out an acceptable, "face-saving" (for them) deal at the Paris talks, by which time the "antiwar movement" was as dead as the hula-hoop.

Sorry, but it's the truth.

[MADem]

7. Maybe YOU feel like a failure, but don't count me in your miserable group.

I reject your assertions entirely, because they're flat-out wrong. You evidently have forgotten that Nixon started troop reductions a year after he was elected (June 69), followed by the "Nixon Doctrine" a month later (we'll give you guns but not bodies), followed by "Vietnamization" (let the Vietnamese start doing it themselves) in November. His trajectory in his first term was extrication from Vietnam. He would not have done that without pressure from the antiwar movement.

Nixon would have drafted every motherfucker in the nation if no one spoke up. He would have used nukes if no one spoke up. Listen to the Nixon tapes, sometime.

He also "opened China" right before the reelection. In the context of the time, his reelection was entirely unsurprising.

You're revising history for some reason known only to you, but your comments are completely inaccurate.

Here, read this timeline (go to the Presidency years), and see how your recollections don't reflect what actually happened during those years: http://nixon.archives.gov/thetimes/timeline/index.php

[Iowa]

2. Yep, they're building a surveillance society...

...and in a surveillance society, the desire for privacy is considered subversive - even criminal.

Our liberty is being chipped away day by day, and without freedom, none of the rest matters.

[bemildred]

3. Right, there is nothing wrong with being watched, what are you hiding anyway?

Why do you want anonymity? You ought to be eager to cooperate with government surveillance.

[DJ13]

4. Wait...... I thought the good guys won the last two elections

This is starting to sound familiar....

[Psephos]

5. drip drip drip

Your privacy, autonomy, and independence are being drained slowly away by those who would be your masters.