The federal government's scale of "badness" differs from yours. Look at the sentences handed out. Just a little behind murder is counterfeiting, illegal weapons possession, and mail fraud. A fake $20? Unlicensed gun with barrel 1cm short of legal? a stamp-less letter using the return address as the intended destination? they all sound so trivial, yes. Yet...they cut at the foundation of the country: falsifying the representation of value, edge into revolutionary armaments, and undermine the smooth flow of information. Sure they're petty in and of themselves, but they constitute "the line" which anyone stepping over begin to damage & undermine the fragile structure holding up our society & government. Copy a $20? [shrug] meh, no big deal. Everyone copies a $20 (just once)? $6,000,000,000 of fake money can screw up the economy fast.
Remind me, is this the government that created the NSA which undermined the entire internet, destroying trust and disrupting the smooth flow of information to a degree never dreamed of by any criminal in history? That government?
As a citizen, I have a vested interest in seeing the currency protected, so this isn't "us versus the G". Your argument is irrelevant to this matter (regardless of how much I agree with your feelings about the NSA).
The government's real interest in protecting the sanctity of information flow etc is very much pertinent to the matter. The government has demonstrably zero real interest in that. Thus the sentencing is arguably too harsh.
