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Comment by JoachimSchipper | Hacker News Reader

Truly, there is no honor among thieves.

This surprises me, actually: he was willing to invest a ton of time and effort in this, but rolls over at the first sign of trouble? It's not like it's surprising that he eventually got caught...

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It is a funny thing about people, sometimes they believe things that aren't true. You have teens who do crazy stuff because they don't believe they will fail and die. And you have criminals who do things believing that they will never get caught. Heck you have soldiers believing they can dispassionately kill other humans and not be affected by it. And when reality intrudes on the self deception, the results are even more unpredictable.

So we can't know what Hector's state of mind was, but we know that when he was confronted with prison time and the immediate loss of freedom he responded by mitigating that with co-operation. If you compare the impact on his personal life of that choice, versus 'taking one for the team', well it seems he made the right choice for Hector.

I suspect that recruiting people who would make the right choice for 'the cause' would require a different strategy than what is currently employed by the Anonymous community.

And it's not surprising that once he was caught, the FBI could easily leverage his two daughters to terror him into cooperating?

It is surprising that as sole guardian of the girls, he would run the risk of them going into the state foster system just so he could get (illegal) lolz online. That's very irresponsible and I have no sympathy for him.

I agree, but it seems like the feds would have wanted to keep his status as a CI under wraps. I question why this is being published.

The publication weakens the whole movement. "See, they don't really care about those things they say they do...and neither should you. Look at how weak they are for cooperating with us!"

It supports law enforcement's narrative that Anonymous is a group of criminals with no honor or allegiance to one another.

It doesn't really surprise me at all. I don't imagine most members of anonymous to be hardened criminals who are ready to go to prison.

They are fond of the term "activists", and I've certainly seen e.g. Greenpeace's activists willingly risk prison.

I don't think the FBI get involved with Greenpeace activists, and Greenpeace activists probably aren't risking all that much jail time. This guy, on the other hand, was probably at-risk of many, many years in prison.

The FBI focused on Greenpeace in the aftermath of 9/11. Including adding the names of some members to the 'no-fly' list.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/09/hbc-90007642

An incident that comes to mind immediately with Greenpeace & law enforcement is the killing of one of its activists in New Zealand by the French Secret Service in 1985 when they sank the 'Rainbow Warrior'.

Plus, he never even met his cohorts. It is much easier to turn over a name on the screen than a face.

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