Are Plea Agreements Always Accurate

[Declan McCullagh]

On Thu, Sep 27, 2001 at 10:34:19AM -0700, enochian wrote:
> According to an article by Declan in this morning's Wired News, Brian K.
> West has decided to take a plea agreement in the government's case against
> him for accessing an inadvertantly left wide open web site at a newspaper.
> 
> http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,47146,00.html

Feel free to read the plea agreement (politechbot.com) yourself and
draw your own conclusions.

Yes, federal prosecutors may go on fishing expeditions and file
thoughtcrime charges. We've discussed many such cases here. But it
does not logically follow that all charges filed by federal
prosecutors are abuses of power.

-Declan