First, don't ever take legal analysis from Techdirt at face value. It's often quite bad. Here are good comments from 'tzs about this issue ('tzs, besides being one of my favorite HN commenters, also went to law school):
Second, not all racketeering crimes are subject to federal mandatory minimums --- racketeering charges with minimums all involve forms of money laundering. The court has to find that you were laundering money regardless of how you use computers to do it.
Third, Techdirt takes the bill radically out of context; by Techdirt's logic, 18 USC 1961 also makes any misuse of a passport, any bribery, any counterfeiting, any obstruction of justice, and any violation of money transmitting statutes "racketeering". Of course, that's not how the law works. CFAA offenses were merely being suggested as one of the huge list of offenses that could, in the context of a racketeering case, be construed as part of the racketeering. The state still needs to make a racketeering case on the merits.
Fourth, in context, that one section of the bill actually makes sense. Racketeering is the crime of running a "racket"; the best-known example of this is a protection racket. It actually doesn't make sense for computer crimes to be exempt from the list of things you can shake businesses down for. As luck would have it, this is an issue being discussed on the front page of HN today:
Fifth, the bill was a House draft that apparently never made it out of committee.
If you want to learn more about the elements of the crime of racketeering and RICO in general, a good place to start is model jury instructions.
I'm less charitable towards Techdirt than other smart people seem to be. Popehat, for instance, which I more or less revere, routinely links to them. I find their coverage misleading at best, and often --- as in this case, where the author tries to convince their readers that the House wants to make all CFAA crimes chargeable as "racketeering" --- overtly dishonest.
In any case: no, nobody has proposed mandatory minimums for CFAA crimes.
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=author%3Atzs+techdirt#!/comment/fo...
Second, not all racketeering crimes are subject to federal mandatory minimums --- racketeering charges with minimums all involve forms of money laundering. The court has to find that you were laundering money regardless of how you use computers to do it.
Third, Techdirt takes the bill radically out of context; by Techdirt's logic, 18 USC 1961 also makes any misuse of a passport, any bribery, any counterfeiting, any obstruction of justice, and any violation of money transmitting statutes "racketeering". Of course, that's not how the law works. CFAA offenses were merely being suggested as one of the huge list of offenses that could, in the context of a racketeering case, be construed as part of the racketeering. The state still needs to make a racketeering case on the merits.
Fourth, in context, that one section of the bill actually makes sense. Racketeering is the crime of running a "racket"; the best-known example of this is a protection racket. It actually doesn't make sense for computer crimes to be exempt from the list of things you can shake businesses down for. As luck would have it, this is an issue being discussed on the front page of HN today:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8661245
Fifth, the bill was a House draft that apparently never made it out of committee.
If you want to learn more about the elements of the crime of racketeering and RICO in general, a good place to start is model jury instructions.
I'm less charitable towards Techdirt than other smart people seem to be. Popehat, for instance, which I more or less revere, routinely links to them. I find their coverage misleading at best, and often --- as in this case, where the author tries to convince their readers that the House wants to make all CFAA crimes chargeable as "racketeering" --- overtly dishonest.
In any case: no, nobody has proposed mandatory minimums for CFAA crimes.