CIA Admits to Hacking U.S. Senate Computers

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Is anyone really surprised by this?  Of course they will keep doing whatever they want.  Just like with Wall Street, there is no real accountability.  Instead of paying what is for them a speeding ticket fine, they testify and some members of Congress like Wyden wag their finger at them from time to time.  However, even if folks like Wyden are serious, their criticism is essentially an empty threat.  Given human nature and the fact that the intelligence community has been doing whatever it wanted pretty much from the beginning, why would they change their behavior now?

Hardly anyone (actually no one, IIRC) went to jail for their role in Iran-Contra, COINTELPRO, the warrentless wiretaps, helping DEA agents create fake CIs so they could lie to judges/prosecutors so they could use information from data-mining and warrentless wiretaps in drug cases, or even for protecting drug dealers like Freeway Rick Ross and selling/supplying them with f***ing crack cocaine to sell in cities like Los Angles.  Can you really blame them for going "f*** it, what's anyone gonna do if we hack Senate computers and start deleting documents or perjure ourselves when we testify to Congress? 

The real problem is that our society has this bizarre idea that certain people whether it be businessmen who commit white-collar crimes, members of the intelligence community (I know the FBI is domestic stuff, but I'm including them here for the purposes of this post), etc don't "belong" in prison.  We've created this completely illogical protected class of criminals.  The real question, and I don't have the answer, is why is stealing $10,000 in an armed robbery where no one actually ends up being harmed viewed as being worse than a businessman who steals $100 million?  Few prosecutors even approach most white collar crimes seeking jail time for the defendants.  There are obviously exceptions (ex: Enron), but still...

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I agree the CIA needs to be shut down (with an admendment banning similar organizations), but prison time seems unnecessary, given there's no evidence that they got anything useful from their hack job.

This is exactly the sort of mentality I am talking about

They hacked government computers to try to blatantly and illegally sabatoge the Senate committee investigating them.  They don't need to be shut down, they just need to be held accountable for their illegal acts just like any other American who breaks the law.