April 2009 Archives

An emberassing moment for the Dutch police earlier this week. They had shown a 'wanted' warning on TV of a man getting money from an ATM with a stolen bank card. When the man recognised himself on TV, he went to the police to ask what was going on. After a better look at the camera and the ATM, it was found that the time on both devices was not in sync, and thus the wrong video material was used. This was never verified before airing the warning. Check your timestamps before pointing fingers, people!

This one caught my eye this morning. Apparently, as of November in the USA, the use of a proxy when conducting a crime might increase one's sentence by up to 25%, as this is seen as evidence of sophistication. I mean, come on, many people don't even know they are behind proxies! Admitted, they shouldn't commit crimes, and it may be harder to track someone that did commit a crime through a proxy, but hey its not impossible... and to increase the sentence for it? That's just totally irrelevant.

It would be like increasing the sentence for someone because they formatted a hard drive or deleted a partition table to cover their tracks. It makes the job of the investigator a tad harder, but not impossible!

And should one's sentence be increased for it? I don't really see the link between the adversary being 'smart' and him being punished harder than an idiot :)

UPDATE: The U.S. Sentencing Commission decided to drop above mentioned amendment as the language used to describe it was too general.