No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

The leader of the Anonymous group that acquired (pinched) much of the data used to prosecute the Steubenville football player rapists, has been raided by the FBI:

In April, the FBI quietly [His description is, "12 F.B.I. Swat Team agents jumped out of the truck screaming for me to "Get The F%$# Down" with m-16 assault rifles and full riot gear armed safety off, pointed directly at my head." This is a definition of "quietly" I was previously unaware of] raided the home of the hacker known as KYAnonymous in connection with his role in the Steubenville rape case. Today he spoke out for the first time about the raid, his true identity, and his motivations for pursuing the Steubenville rapists, in an extensive interview with Mother Jones.

"The goal of the media interviews is to get the entire nation to say 'fuck you' to these guys," said KYAnonymous, whose real name is Deric Lostutter. He was referring to the federal agents who raided his home in Winchester, Kentucky, and carted off his computers and XBox.

Lostutter may deserve more credit than anyone for turning Steubenville into a national outrage. After a 16-year-old girl was raped by two members of the Steubenville High football team last year, he obtained and published tweets and Instagram photos in which other team members had joked about the incident and belittled the victim. He now admits to being the man behind the mask in a video posted by another hacker on the team's fan page, RollRedRoll.com, where he threatened action against the players unless they apologized to the girl. (The rapists were convicted in March.)

He is facing more jail time than the rapists.

This is nuts, between the SWAT style raid, and the excessive nature of the possible sentences.

This lack of proportionality is a feature, and not a bug. Hyper-aggressive policing and sentencing has intimidation (and guilty pleas) as a goal.