The Enchanted Forest, a new state in the United States of America, is under attack!

Cyberattack, that is.

For weeks, woodcutters, bean salesmen, and other innocent victims have turned on their computers in the morning to discover strange things on their computers.Prince Charming, for example, woke up to find a note on his computer: "If you want your magic pumpkin returned uncarved, please send $1000 in Bitcoin to [an anonymous account]." And just yesterday, Red Riding Hood opened an email from her grandmother and clicked on a photo-sharing link, hoping to see new pictures of the red cape her grandmother had been knitting. Instead of photographs, however, Red Riding Hood discovered that her bank account information was stolen from her computer by malicious software hidden in the email, which was definitely not from her grandmother.

Law enforcement is panicked. At the center of suspicion lies Rapunzel, a long-haired criminal mastermind. Rapunzel is the leader of a crew of cybervillains long believed to be behind the cyberattacks. Lurking safely in her tall tower, Rapunzel normally has two henchmen do her dirty work for her. Snow White is the group's main hacker, and she's very good at what she does. Although she grew up as one of eight siblings in an impoverished part of the Forest, Snow White taught herself computer programming during night school and never looked back.

Recently, just for fun, Snow White managed to access a U.S. military installation and change the color of all of the computers to goldthe color of Rapunzel's hair. Then Snow White swiped six fake IDs from the computer of Jack, beanstalk owner and master forger, and used each of the IDs to open a new credit card. She then used the credit cards to buy gourmet apples from Oregon, never planning to pay for them.(When Jack learned of the theft of his carefully crafted fake IDs, he sent some bad code Snow White's way, hidden inside a video embedded in a PowerPoint presentation that advertised thorn-bush removal services. When Snow White opened the PowerPoint, the code sent the fake IDs back to Jack and erased them from Snow White's computer. But I digress.)

The other member of Rapunzel's crew is the Big Bad Wolf. He's big, he's bad, but he's not that bright. The crew uses the Wolf mostly for mindless tasks. When Snow White stole the floorplans for the Three Little Pig's new line of condosnot yet constructed, but soon to be made of the finest bricks in the landshe had the plans emailed to the Wolf, not to her. The Wolf also is a little bit of a liability for the group because he participated in a series of armed robberies (well, fanged robberies) a few years ago. (To give you a sense of how little Rapunzel really trusts the wolf, she communicates with Snow White by end-to-end encrypted WhatsApp messages, but only talks to the wolf using text messages on a burner cell phone.)

Rapunzel also dabbles in blackmail, having acquired some compromising pictures of Humpty Dumpty, the night watchman at the Enchanted Forest Savings & Loan bank.Rapunzel recently threatened Dumpty with exposure unless Dumpty downloaded all the plans to the bank's vault from the security system and handed them over to Rapunzel. Frightened, Dumpty waited until the bank manager stepped outside for a coffee break and used the manager's computer to download the plans.Annoyed that Dumpty got egg all over the flashdrive containing the plans, Rapunzel released the compromising pictures.

Recently, Rapunzel reached out to a criminal in another country, Beanstalkia. There, the Giant hosts a secret server high in the clouds. The server provides capacity for cybercriminals looking to store stolen information or to launch DDOS attacks. About a year ago, the Giant conducted a cyberattack at the direction of the Baron of Beanstalkia (the country's leader) in which the Giant stole a new recipe for magic beans, which he then distributed to the bean farmers of Beanstalkia. The Giant doesn't conduct cyberattacks himself, but he's allowed Snow White to use his infrastructure in some of her more creative efforts, including a nasty little caper in which Snow White used a sustained computer assault to shut down the computers of the Enchanted Forest Savings & Loan in retaliation for the bank refusing to provide Snow White with a business expansion loan. The bank's computers were shut down for a week after Snow White's attack.

Based on a previous spate of cybercrimes in the Enchanted Forest, the Sentencing Commission has added another enhancement to the Guidelines: +2 levels where the crime for which the defendant is being sentenced is a "cybercrime."

The Questions

1. As a federal prosecutor, whom would you charge in this case? With what crimes would you charge them, and why?

2. Describe in detail the kinds of evidence (e.g., documents, testimony) you would want to present to support the charges, as well as how you would obtain that evidence.

3. What arguments would you make to the judge related to sentencing each of the defendants, including the relative culpability of each defendant? To which defendants should the "cybercrime" enhancements in the Guidelines apply? (Note: Please do not conduct any specific calculations using the Sentencing Guidelines.)

4. Recently, Hansel Grimm, one of the U.S. Senators from the Enchanted Forest, has been pushing a bill to amend 18 U.S.C.1030 to exempt from prosecution the leader of a foreign country, as well as individuals acting at the direction of such a leader. Hansel has argued that continuing to allow such prosecutions will push the United States too close to the brink of armed conflict (or at least cyber conflict) with foreign countries. You are approached by the other senator from the Enchanted Forest, Gretel Grimm (no relation to Hansel, Grimm is just a common name), who asks for your advice