8 ms·

For alleged Russian hacker, a visit to Amsterdam is a costly trip

44 points by ssclafani 12y ago

jacquesm 12y ago
> "We have a 99.6 percent conviction rate in cybercrime" I'm sure he sees absolutely nothing weird in that. The Spanish Inquisition managed to get similar rates. I'm very surprised the Dutch (as in: my) government is agreeing to this extradition. It's very well possible that this is in part because of the current animosity between Putin and the rest of the world. It's quite possible the guy is guilty but Ari Baranoff is on the record as having said that he will not be given a fair trial.
- gwern 12y ago
  > I'm sure he sees absolutely nothing weird in that. If this were a discussion of Japanese conviction rates based primarily on (coerced) confessions or something like that, then yes, a 99.6% conviction rate would be suspicious. But you have to remember two things here: (1) 99.6% is not that much higher than the usual federal prosecution rates (I think they get a net of ~96% when I looked it up a few months for a different discussion), (2) and when Baranoff says “We don’t build our cases on one piece of evidence. Our cases are built on evidence that is curated over many years. We take our time to build these cases to make sure we have them right.” (the part you didn't quote), he's not kidding. That's exactly what they do with cyber-crime cases. They spend years investigating an organization or figure, flipping people, running markets or forums, extracting records from ISPs and Amazon and Google, and so on and so forth. Look at the whole tangle of carding cases in the 2000s with cardingplanet/shadowcrew/etc. For that matter, look at the Ulbricht Silk Road case right now - the agencies involved spent years busting random vendors, looting people's emails (eg Ashley Barr's Gmail was searched on only the vaguest possible suspicion), flipping multiple employees... Read the trial transcripts if you have a few days to spare. If anything, I'd say that a rate of 99.6% says bad things about them, but for an entirely different reason than you: because it implies that they're inefficiently overdoing their cases, goldplating them & gilding the lily.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    Is there any substantial difference between coerced confessions and plea bargaining as practiced in the US?
    - happyscrappy 12y ago
      I think you are letting your hatred of the US cloud your judgement. Plea bargaining is mostly a cost saving measure, going to trial is very expensive.
      - kghose 12y ago
        Please don't feed the trolls.
      - ObviousScience 12y ago
        Except that I know people who have accepted plea bargains for things that they probably would have prevailed at trial on, because the risk of losing at trial outweighs accepting the plea bargain (or they didn't have the money for a proper defense to refute police misconduct, etc). A particular instance I'm privy to the details of was a friend accepting a bargain on a resisting arrest charge (it probably got reduced to a more minor charge in the bargain) that only led to community service (and probation), when the reality is that the police officer had assaulted the defendant and they were covering it up. It simply wasn't worth the risk of going to jail and the certainty of financial trouble for him and his kids to fight the city on it. But the city got a conviction against a troublesome black, or whatever euphemism they're using these days, and didn't have to admit wrongdoing on the part of a police officer, so all good, right? I'm not saying all plea bargains are bad, I'm just saying that the US makes suspicious use of them and some of them have been noted to be abusive (eg, that they charge ridiculous things for the trial and agree to plea down to what the charges should've been in the first place). I view this as semi-rampant prosecutor misconduct, rather than a fundamental problem with plea bargains, though plea bargains make this kind of misconduct easier, if not otherwise policed.
      - jacquesm 12y ago
        Justice should not be about cost.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- delackner 12y ago
  I was more concerned with the apparent dependence on proving that people use specific nicknames known to be used by some suspect. I must be missing some detail.
- ptaipale 12y ago
  > The Spanish Inquisition managed to get similar rates Is that claim about the Inquisition conviction rates based on some source? This is a diversion, but according to what I've read, Spanish Inquisition was a lot better than its reputation, which is largely a myth (about torture etc). http://www.crisismagazine.com/2011/the-truth-about-the-spanish-inquisition http://www.crisismagazine.com/2011/the-truth-about-the-spani... says nothing about conviction rates, but it says about torture something that probably surprises people: "Modern researchers have discovered that the Spanish Inquisition applied torture in only 2 percent of its cases. Each instance of torture was limited to a maximum of 15 minutes. In only 1 percent of the cases was torture applied twice and never for a third time."
  - CamperBob2 12y ago
    Wow. Some people will try to rehabilitate anything. The next time you catch yourself typing a sentence like "Modern researchers have discovered that the Spanish Inquisition applied torture in only 2 percent of its cases," read it first, then hit Post if you still think it's appropriate. Especially if the sentence you're typing is a quote from "Crisis Magazine: A Voice for the Faithful Catholic Laity."
    - ptaipale 12y ago
      Yes, anything should be "rehabilitated" if that serves truth, or helps to put things into proportion. I'm not Catholic, I'm not Spanish. I have no axe to grind except truth. Earlier I read a lot of stories about how bad the Inquisition was. That 2 percent figure is certainly less than what I had expected based on the myths I heard previously. Overall, I think it is unfair to use the Inquisition as a particularly heinous example of juridic cruelty and oppression, if it actually wasn't bad for its times - comparing it to today is anachronistic. Wikipedia: "As with all European tribunals of the time, torture was employed. The Spanish inquisition, however, engaged in it far less often and with greater care than other courts." A couple of sources are given for this. Anyway, I'm just curious to know if the Spanish Inquisition's conviction rate actually was 99.6 %, or something like that?
      - 12y ago
- malandrew 12y ago
  I would also bet that 99.6% is based on plea bargains as well. Defending a federal case will likely cost you $1 million plus. On top of that, all your assets will likely be frozen or inaccessible. Basically the government always aims for a conviction based on a plea bargain, but if you dare challenge them by going to court, they will crush you with every trick they have. Basically, there is no such thing as a fair criminal trial at the federal level. I'd love to know more about that 0.4% and what those trials did to them and how destroyed they were financially when all was said and done.
- downandout 12y ago
  Approximately 97% of defendants plead guilty. Approximately 2/3 of the remaining 3% are convicted at trial. The reason is simple: The US has built extortion right into its laws. Most laws on our books are broad (one law can cover both very serious and very minor conduct) and carry absurdly high maximum penalties. When prosecutors offer a "deal" for a small fraction of the maximum, defendants almost always take it. Why would a free society do this? Mainly because taking people to trial is hard and costs alot. If the plea rate dropped from 97% to 95%, the courts and prosecutors would be overwhelmed. The few politicians that have dared to introduce legislation lowering maximum sentences (which would have an effect on the guilty plea rate) have almost universally been eviscerated at the polls, so this situation is unlikely to change in our lifetimes.
- tptacek 12y ago
  No, Jacques. This doesn't make sense. You're quoting a prosecutor, not a judge. The prosecutor absolutely should be 99.9% convinced of the guilt of the accused! Otherwise, they're taking flyers at the expense of people they themselves believe might be innocent. Anyone who has ever suggested --- rightfully! --- that prosecutors should exercise more discretion in the cases they bring is arguing that prosecutors should be more confident about the guilt of the accused.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    He quoted a conviction rate, not a rate of confidence that he thought the suspects had actually committed the crimes. So that's post conviction, not prior to.
    - tptacek 12y ago
      I don't see the logical distinction. A prosecutor achieves a high conviction rate the same way a poker player achieves a high win rate: you bet on the hands you can win. Put it differently: a prosecutor with a low conviction rate has demonstrably inflicted tremendous costs on many ultimately innocent people. How could a low conviction rate possibly represent justice?
      - crististm 12y ago
        I bet that poker players don't reveal they are bluffing.
        tptacek 12y ago
        No, but poker players who bluff also never have 90% win rates.
        jacquesm 12y ago
        That's because all players have the same tools at their disposal.
benbristow 12y ago
"catchmeifyoucan" I guess he got caught.
- PhantomGremlin 12y ago
  I think you're right. But the article is poorly edited. The final paragraph begins with the word "he", while the previous paragraph mentions both Drinkman and Kalinin. So it's possible that "he" refers not to Drinkman, but to Kalinin, who has not yet been caught.
masida 12y ago
I expect HN people to get their vocabulary straight and use the word "hacker" only for the people that build things. This story is obviously about a cracker.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Unfortunately nobody cares. So re-claiming the word hacker for the good guys is an exercise in futility.
  - walshemj 12y ago
    And like many English words Hacker has several meanings and trying to go back to the 60's usage at MIT is I afraid a pointless exercise just Like King Cnut trying to hold back the tide.
    - dang 12y ago
      The creative and transgressive meanings of the word "hacker" have been around about equally long and both go back to the MIT milieu. Its first appearance in print referred to breaking into phone networks. (Sorry I don't have links handy but this has been discussed many times on HN.) So it's not true that the word started out good and was corrupted by misunderstanding... but I bet that claim is also about as old as both usages! Agreed about pointlessness in any case.
      - walshemj 12y ago
        I thought that the MIT Model railroad club usage was well before phone phreaks and blue boxing - not sure when STD dialing came in in the states
        dang 12y ago
        This is what I was thinking of: http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/first-recorded-usage-of-hacker/ http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/first-recorded-usage-of... https://web.archive.org/web/20060715031620/http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0306B&L=ads-l&P=R5831&m=24290 https://web.archive.org/web/20060715031620/http://listserv.l...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
kw71 12y ago
> "We have a 99.6 percent conviction rate in cybercrime" AUSA Paul Fishman also prosecuted the famous Auernheimer "ipad hack" case, and then went on to watch judges in the appeals court reverse the conviction on procedural grounds and admonish the way that Fishman and his office handled the case. I wonder if the statistic takes into account situations like that, or if weev's case wasn't considered "cybercrime." At any rate it is nice to see that Fishman also obtains indictments against real criminals from time to time.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
codecamper 12y ago
what eedjits keep 130 million credit card numbers in a computer that is attached to the Internet. Gross negligence is not a crime?
- tptacek 12y ago
  I'm going to go with "the entire economy of the world" as an answer to that question. Everyone does this. And there are much worse things attached to the Internet than the payment card information of virtually everyone with a credit card.

44 points by ssclafani 12y ago

> "We have a 99.6 percent conviction rate in cybercrime" I'm sure he sees absolutely nothing weird in that. The Spanish Inquisition managed to get similar rates. I'm very surprised the Dutch (as in: my) government is agreeing to this extradition. It's very well possible that this is in part because of the current animosity between Putin and the rest of the world. It's quite possible the guy is guilty but Ari Baranoff is on the record as having said that he will not be given a fair trial.

gwern 12y ago
> I'm sure he sees absolutely nothing weird in that. If this were a discussion of Japanese conviction rates based primarily on (coerced) confessions or something like that, then yes, a 99.6% conviction rate would be suspicious. But you have to remember two things here: (1) 99.6% is not that much higher than the usual federal prosecution rates (I think they get a net of ~96% when I looked it up a few months for a different discussion), (2) and when Baranoff says “We don’t build our cases on one piece of evidence. Our cases are built on evidence that is curated over many years. We take our time to build these cases to make sure we have them right.” (the part you didn't quote), he's not kidding. That's exactly what they do with cyber-crime cases. They spend years investigating an organization or figure, flipping people, running markets or forums, extracting records from ISPs and Amazon and Google, and so on and so forth. Look at the whole tangle of carding cases in the 2000s with cardingplanet/shadowcrew/etc. For that matter, look at the Ulbricht Silk Road case right now - the agencies involved spent years busting random vendors, looting people's emails (eg Ashley Barr's Gmail was searched on only the vaguest possible suspicion), flipping multiple employees... Read the trial transcripts if you have a few days to spare. If anything, I'd say that a rate of 99.6% says bad things about them, but for an entirely different reason than you: because it implies that they're inefficiently overdoing their cases, goldplating them & gilding the lily.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Is there any substantial difference between coerced confessions and plea bargaining as practiced in the US?
  - happyscrappy 12y ago
    I think you are letting your hatred of the US cloud your judgement. Plea bargaining is mostly a cost saving measure, going to trial is very expensive.
    - kghose 12y ago
      Please don't feed the trolls.
    - ObviousScience 12y ago
      Except that I know people who have accepted plea bargains for things that they probably would have prevailed at trial on, because the risk of losing at trial outweighs accepting the plea bargain (or they didn't have the money for a proper defense to refute police misconduct, etc). A particular instance I'm privy to the details of was a friend accepting a bargain on a resisting arrest charge (it probably got reduced to a more minor charge in the bargain) that only led to community service (and probation), when the reality is that the police officer had assaulted the defendant and they were covering it up. It simply wasn't worth the risk of going to jail and the certainty of financial trouble for him and his kids to fight the city on it. But the city got a conviction against a troublesome black, or whatever euphemism they're using these days, and didn't have to admit wrongdoing on the part of a police officer, so all good, right? I'm not saying all plea bargains are bad, I'm just saying that the US makes suspicious use of them and some of them have been noted to be abusive (eg, that they charge ridiculous things for the trial and agree to plea down to what the charges should've been in the first place). I view this as semi-rampant prosecutor misconduct, rather than a fundamental problem with plea bargains, though plea bargains make this kind of misconduct easier, if not otherwise policed.
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      Justice should not be about cost.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
delackner 12y ago
I was more concerned with the apparent dependence on proving that people use specific nicknames known to be used by some suspect. I must be missing some detail.
ptaipale 12y ago
> The Spanish Inquisition managed to get similar rates Is that claim about the Inquisition conviction rates based on some source? This is a diversion, but according to what I've read, Spanish Inquisition was a lot better than its reputation, which is largely a myth (about torture etc). http://www.crisismagazine.com/2011/the-truth-about-the-spanish-inquisition http://www.crisismagazine.com/2011/the-truth-about-the-spani... says nothing about conviction rates, but it says about torture something that probably surprises people: "Modern researchers have discovered that the Spanish Inquisition applied torture in only 2 percent of its cases. Each instance of torture was limited to a maximum of 15 minutes. In only 1 percent of the cases was torture applied twice and never for a third time."
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  Wow. Some people will try to rehabilitate anything. The next time you catch yourself typing a sentence like "Modern researchers have discovered that the Spanish Inquisition applied torture in only 2 percent of its cases," read it first, then hit Post if you still think it's appropriate. Especially if the sentence you're typing is a quote from "Crisis Magazine: A Voice for the Faithful Catholic Laity."
  - ptaipale 12y ago
    Yes, anything should be "rehabilitated" if that serves truth, or helps to put things into proportion. I'm not Catholic, I'm not Spanish. I have no axe to grind except truth. Earlier I read a lot of stories about how bad the Inquisition was. That 2 percent figure is certainly less than what I had expected based on the myths I heard previously. Overall, I think it is unfair to use the Inquisition as a particularly heinous example of juridic cruelty and oppression, if it actually wasn't bad for its times - comparing it to today is anachronistic. Wikipedia: "As with all European tribunals of the time, torture was employed. The Spanish inquisition, however, engaged in it far less often and with greater care than other courts." A couple of sources are given for this. Anyway, I'm just curious to know if the Spanish Inquisition's conviction rate actually was 99.6 %, or something like that?
    - 12y ago
malandrew 12y ago
I would also bet that 99.6% is based on plea bargains as well. Defending a federal case will likely cost you $1 million plus. On top of that, all your assets will likely be frozen or inaccessible. Basically the government always aims for a conviction based on a plea bargain, but if you dare challenge them by going to court, they will crush you with every trick they have. Basically, there is no such thing as a fair criminal trial at the federal level. I'd love to know more about that 0.4% and what those trials did to them and how destroyed they were financially when all was said and done.
downandout 12y ago
Approximately 97% of defendants plead guilty. Approximately 2/3 of the remaining 3% are convicted at trial. The reason is simple: The US has built extortion right into its laws. Most laws on our books are broad (one law can cover both very serious and very minor conduct) and carry absurdly high maximum penalties. When prosecutors offer a "deal" for a small fraction of the maximum, defendants almost always take it. Why would a free society do this? Mainly because taking people to trial is hard and costs alot. If the plea rate dropped from 97% to 95%, the courts and prosecutors would be overwhelmed. The few politicians that have dared to introduce legislation lowering maximum sentences (which would have an effect on the guilty plea rate) have almost universally been eviscerated at the polls, so this situation is unlikely to change in our lifetimes.
tptacek 12y ago
No, Jacques. This doesn't make sense. You're quoting a prosecutor, not a judge. The prosecutor absolutely should be 99.9% convinced of the guilt of the accused! Otherwise, they're taking flyers at the expense of people they themselves believe might be innocent. Anyone who has ever suggested --- rightfully! --- that prosecutors should exercise more discretion in the cases they bring is arguing that prosecutors should be more confident about the guilt of the accused.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  He quoted a conviction rate, not a rate of confidence that he thought the suspects had actually committed the crimes. So that's post conviction, not prior to.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    I don't see the logical distinction. A prosecutor achieves a high conviction rate the same way a poker player achieves a high win rate: you bet on the hands you can win. Put it differently: a prosecutor with a low conviction rate has demonstrably inflicted tremendous costs on many ultimately innocent people. How could a low conviction rate possibly represent justice?
    - crististm 12y ago
      I bet that poker players don't reveal they are bluffing.
      - tptacek 12y ago
        No, but poker players who bluff also never have 90% win rates.
        jacquesm 12y ago
        That's because all players have the same tools at their disposal.

benbristow 12y ago

"catchmeifyoucan" I guess he got caught.

PhantomGremlin 12y ago
I think you're right. But the article is poorly edited. The final paragraph begins with the word "he", while the previous paragraph mentions both Drinkman and Kalinin. So it's possible that "he" refers not to Drinkman, but to Kalinin, who has not yet been caught.

masida 12y ago

I expect HN people to get their vocabulary straight and use the word "hacker" only for the people that build things. This story is obviously about a cracker.

jacquesm 12y ago
Unfortunately nobody cares. So re-claiming the word hacker for the good guys is an exercise in futility.
- walshemj 12y ago
  And like many English words Hacker has several meanings and trying to go back to the 60's usage at MIT is I afraid a pointless exercise just Like King Cnut trying to hold back the tide.
  - dang 12y ago
    The creative and transgressive meanings of the word "hacker" have been around about equally long and both go back to the MIT milieu. Its first appearance in print referred to breaking into phone networks. (Sorry I don't have links handy but this has been discussed many times on HN.) So it's not true that the word started out good and was corrupted by misunderstanding... but I bet that claim is also about as old as both usages! Agreed about pointlessness in any case.
    - walshemj 12y ago
      I thought that the MIT Model railroad club usage was well before phone phreaks and blue boxing - not sure when STD dialing came in in the states
      - dang 12y ago
        This is what I was thinking of: http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/first-recorded-usage-of-hacker/ http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/first-recorded-usage-of... https://web.archive.org/web/20060715031620/http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0306B&L=ads-l&P=R5831&m=24290 https://web.archive.org/web/20060715031620/http://listserv.l...

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

kw71 12y ago

> "We have a 99.6 percent conviction rate in cybercrime" AUSA Paul Fishman also prosecuted the famous Auernheimer "ipad hack" case, and then went on to watch judges in the appeals court reverse the conviction on procedural grounds and admonish the way that Fishman and his office handled the case. I wonder if the statistic takes into account situations like that, or if weev's case wasn't considered "cybercrime." At any rate it is nice to see that Fishman also obtains indictments against real criminals from time to time.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

codecamper 12y ago

what eedjits keep 130 million credit card numbers in a computer that is attached to the Internet. Gross negligence is not a crime?

tptacek 12y ago
I'm going to go with "the entire economy of the world" as an answer to that question. Everyone does this. And there are much worse things attached to the Internet than the payment card information of virtually everyone with a credit card.