Jeremy Hammond sentenced to 10 years for Stratfor leak
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
First let me say that I am pretty sympathetic to Hammond and Swartz (though I think their actions were totally different). I am sympathetic because I've been in Hammond's shoes actually. I had my door kicked in when I was 15 for things I shouldn't have done online.
What Hammond has said here really bothers me for two reasons. The first is that he attempt to conflate things that are not equal in any way. Swartz may have had a "legitimate political cause" but he sullied it (in my opinion) with illegal activities. Anonymous may also have a legitimate gripe but their actions were illegal and Hammond is now paying the price. That's how it works. It is wrong to act as if you somehow should be looked at differently by the law because you had a "legitimate political cause."
Also, it's really not fair at all for Hammond to compare his situation to Swartz. The damage done by what Swartz did is nothing compared to damage and potential for real harm with what Hammond did. Maybe I'm alone in this but I think that is an asinine comparison that does Swartz's reputation a disservice.
We have higher incarceration rates than China, and even with their massive population we have more people in prison than China does. [1](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rat...) We are roughly tied with North Korea for highest % of population in prison by country. [2](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcerat...)
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/13/us-prisoners-se...
For clarity, I'm for rehabilitation and not retribution -- it gains us nothing. When it comes to drug crimes and youthful offenders, community service and rehab seem like far better things than X days/months/years in jail with a grabbag of offenders running the gamut from arsony to grand theft to smoking a joint. And while I think the purpose of imprisoning them should be to offer rehabilitation, would you not imprison murderers or would you put them in mental health institutions rather than "prisons"?
These weren't businesses looking to crush people who voted a certain way, these were businesses who may have had a supplier in Japan and wanted more rational, reasoned coverage of Fukushima than most everyone else was providing. Or, companies that employ Latin American immigrants and wanted a more nuanced view of the future than the standard "instant voting blocs good!/evil brown people bad!" narrative.
If Jeremy Hammond had hacked Stratfor for the express purpose if getting arrested, in order to demonstrate the injustice of computer crime law, your comment would be right on. But that's not what he did, or why he did it.
Better to focus our energies on the similarities which are overtly real: the extreme sentencing mismatching the level of harm done. It's an issue of the state seeking vengeful punishment for political purposes and not seeking to maximizing public safety or victim compensation. In addition to computer hacking/unauthorized access laws having unusually high maximum sentences vs other more more harmful offences.
TH;DR: I said it to highlight the commonality of mass hysteria fueled hyper-punishment for socially distasteful actions.
As opposed to the billions lost in 2008, and the people rewarded with bailouts for their fraud?
Pshyeah, hokay. Justice is truly being served here.
...while in Norway, you typically only get the maximum 21 years of imprisonment for multiple murders. And even that is apparently with the possibility of an early release after 14 years and unsupervised weekend parole after 7 years. And even with murder on your hands, they just might send you off to Bastøy to rehabilitate yourself properly. And somehow, the crime rate in Norway is still much lower, as are the reoffending rates.
I just wonder, what comes next in the US, two years for littering, perhaps?
well, theoretically you can get up to 1 year in many states, though i suspect usually it is much-much less harsh than that.
http://www.ncsl.org/research/environment-and-natural-resourc...
Since we're being honest here, if someone murdered someone close to me and then got unsupervised weekend parole after 7 years, they'd be dead in an alley their first weekend out. Maybe Norweigans are very different, culturally. Maybe I'm just a vengeful asshole who should just deal with it - but I doubt I'm alone over here. But this could also just be a reaction to violent crime - I don't feel as though most non-violent crime deserves harsh sentences. Hell, I'd settle for large fines in most cases.
This is why the federated approach to governing was a big part of the American founding fathers literature (focusing on state-level power), which they viewed as a counter-point to the negative side-effects of centralized Monarchy systems in Europe.
The American government has been reversing it's course - centralizing law (and law enforcement) to a national level - over the last century. Making experimentation with new systems and adaptation to better systems much more difficult.
The length of this sentence is absolutely a cultural thing - perhaps some would feel that 7 years before unsupervised weekends is a fitting punishment. I can guarantee you that most Americans do not - if you want to see a rapid increase in vigilantism in the U.S., try reduced sentences for things like murder.
Oh, and I would fully expect to have the court system hit me the harshest penalty they could - they hate vigilantism. But that's irrelevant to the decision that got me there.
Quote from wiki about previous 2006 cause:
Charges of 2.5 million dollars in damages was assessed based on $500 per credit card, for each of the 5,000 credit card numbers in Hammond's possession, despite the fact that no money had been spent
Hammond has a history of taking political protest over the line to breaking into things, destroying property, etc.
Also important to remember is the fact that Anonymous didn't just leak the e-mails, but stole a bunch of credit card numbers and made $700k worth of charges.
To be fair, I think the sentence is too long, but more because I have a philosophical problem with the sentencing guidelines and how it punishes repeat offenders and not because I think Hammond was particularly singled out.
Can you expand on that?
I believe in judicial discretion in sentencing, but it should be used to account for extenuating circumstances of the offense, not the character of the offender. E.g. someone who stole food to feed their hungry child should get a reduced sentence, whether he or she is a hardened drug dealer or a sympathetic single mother.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restorative_justice
> Restorative justice is an approach to justice that focuses on the needs of the victims and the offenders, as well as the involved community, instead of satisfying abstract legal principles or punishing the offender. It is based on a theory of justice that considers crime and wrongdoing to be an offence against an individual or community, rather than the state. [..] it shows the highest rates of victim satisfaction and offender accountability.
So the question is would 2, 5 or 10 years in prison make any difference in making Hammond (and others in the community) stop conducting political property destruction? I doubt it.
Focusing so heavily on the punishment side of it is an incomplete solution and often creates a negative reactionary effect in the community.
The basic purpose of criminal law is to establish norms for behavior. Punishing any given offender or satisfying any given victim is secondary to establishing a norm so 10 other people won't do the same thing. This is a distinct concept from "deterrence." The idea of deterrence is to force people to include the probability-weighted cost of a jail sentence into their cost-benefit analysis. A jail sentence twice as long means a twice as strong deterrent effect. However, given the practical probabilities of getting caught for many crimes, deterrence doesn't really exist. Say 2 years for stealing a bike times a 0.1% chance of getting caught = deterrent effect of 0.73 days in jail per bike. The punishment isn't deterring anyone. What's keeping people from stealing bikes is the social norm created by making bike stealing illegal and punishing offenders.
This rationale for criminal punishment supports having crimes be punished in proportion to how egregious a violation of the social norm has occurred. That's why punishing someone less for stealing food to feed a hungry child is justifiable. Within a restorative justice theory less punishment is appropriate because a small breach of social norms requires less healing, but that only focuses on the singular event. The additional justification is that a small breach of the social norm requires less punishment in order to maintain the norm for everyone else.
At some point in the 1960's, people (mostly liberals) decided that criminal law should be about rehabilitating the offender. This led to a focus on the offender, rather than the offense. Hence three strikes laws, ridiculous sentencing enhancements or reductions for whether an offender seems contrite at sentencing, etc. Ironically, this thought process also led to an inflation of sentences, because people more easily rationalized increasing maximum sentences when those maximums would only be applied to "bad people."
Of course restorative justice isn't coextensive with the 1960's idea of rehabilitative justice, so I'm not saying it suffers from the same problems.
deterrence force[s] people to include the probability-weighted
cost of a jail sentence into their cost-benefit analysis.
... given the practical probabilities of getting caught
for many crimes, deterrence doesn't really exist.
Even if the punishment were immediate execution a-la Judge Dredd, we would still have people committing crimes, because they irrationally believe that they'll never get caught, or that what they are doing isn't a crime. Or, in some cases, are acting through emotion rather than rationality.
Once you start making assertions like this, you're already into a particular kind of theory of justice. There are a few. It's not really possible to say that there is one true purpose of criminal law.
Now, if you qualified it with our current legal system, it absolutely subscribes to a particular notion of what justice is. And maybe you mean to, without explicitly noting it. But given we're in a discussion about different forms of justice, it would make sense that not everyone agrees with this assertion, and therefore, your others.
For effective rehabilitation program you need a few things - low sentences for non violent crimes , social norms that not reject the ex felons and allow the reintegration.
Also you need robust job market and social safety network.
And i think that sentencing should be done on scientific grounds and not moral ones.
So I wouldn't call today's policies rehabilitative, they are very much neoliberalist, much like American economic policy.
I'm not saying the current system is rehabilitative, but rather that it's a perverse consequence of attempts in the 1960's at making the penal system rehabilitative. The rehabilitative approach shifted the focus from the offense to the offender. This is logical: in a penal system the punishment fits the crime. In a rehabilitative system, the punishment is tailored to the offender (ideally with an eye towards reducing recidivism).
That backfired, because it turns out criminal offenders aren't particularly sympathetic. Once the focus was on the offender, it became much easier for people to justify long sentences and harsh punishment than when the focus was on the crime in the abstract.
The deep irony of the focus on the offender is that it allows us to punish Jamal from the hood much more harshly than Johnny from the suburbs for the same exact crime, all because Johnny doesn't have a rap sheet of minor offenses and is socialized to look contrite and afraid at sentencing.
Because punishment has many goals, and one of them is removal of negative agents from society.
If someone seems sorry, or it's his first crime, there's a likelihood it will be his last crime, and releasing him earlier makes sense.
If someone is not sorry, or keeps committing crimes when released, then perhaps a higher penalty will at least somewhat deter them, and if not - they'll have less opportunity to repeat the crime.
Why shouldn't they? The purpose of imprisonment is not only restorative or rehabilitative, but also to keep the offender from doing further harm to society. If, by reoffending, someone shows beyond doubt that they can't learn from their mistakes, why should they receive the same punishment for their nth crime that someone else receives for their first? Failure to punish repeat offenders more harshly amounts to sanctioning sociopathy.
Anyone who has been injured by a four-time DUI offender would probably have a strong opinion on this. At some point, it is indeed necessary and appropriate to write offenders off as hopeless.
Fundamentally, in the US, the issue is that prison is not for rehabilitation, it is for containment and retribution. We don't provide for their mental health. We don't provide for their safety. We force non-violent criminals into association with violent criminals. There are people who can't be rehabilitated, but we never really try so we have no way of distinguishing the repeat offenders who learned but had a moment of stupidity from those who simply didn't learn.
[1] http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/cruel-and-unusual-...
Sentencing laws in general are a really terrible idea IMHO.
Attacking civilian targets is wrong regardless of which side is doing it. Having previously engaged in the same behavior does not make the act any less wrong, or the vilification any less deserved.
What about a single civilian in a civilian building filled with a company of soldiers? In the law of armed conflict this kind of thing is called "perfidy" and brings no protection.
You know full well what "Anonymous" is, and attempting to attribute everything bad that's ever happened on the internet to every defendant that ever gets grouped in with "Anonymous" is ridiculous.
I honestly don't appreciate Anonymous. If you want to be an activist, show your face and your identity. The world doesn't need an incubator of batman.
> "The actual group of Anonymous [...]"
There is no such thing. Not in any traditional sense. Talking about "Anonymous, the group" is like talking about "Kilroy, the GI."
I wonder how many people here are even going to get that reference...
I thought it was a good comparison because of the "graffiti/website defacement" angle.
How is that different than working for the Gambinos? Anonymous members were part of an "ongoing criminal enterprise", and anybody who didn't realize what that means is too stupid to be out roaming the streets.
The Gambino crime family is actually an organization or group in the traditional sense. "Anonymous" is more analogous to "The Mafia". A useful term if you are okay with being imprecise, but the reality of "The Mafia" is encompasses a very broad set of groups that more often than not have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
Of course there are a few differences between the concept of "Anonymous" and the concept of "The Mafia". Groups that identify as "The Mafia" have more in common with each other than groups who identify as "Anonymous" (the former are all organized crime groups, the later can be any group from organized crime groups, to people who wear silly masks and protest fringe religions, to people who call the parents of kids who abuse cats and post pictures to facebook.) Furthermore, if I burn down a local business and then claim to be The Mafia, mainstream media would mock me for delusionally thinking I had any claim to the term. If I defaced a local businesses website and then claimed to be "Anonymous", the media would lap that bullshit up.
Also, having a sufficiently "legitimate political cause" is a just and legitimate reason for action. For example, revealing criminal activity on the part of the government is a legitimate reason to violate classification laws.
E.g. when MLK Jr. was arrested in Birmingham for marching without a permit, it wasn't because he just up and marched. He tried to get a permit like a good citizen, and it was denied. And even there he could easily argue he was taking advantage of his First Amendment right and not really breaking the law (as the way that law had been applied would be obviously Unconstitutional). But I know of no Constitutional or common law that would allow people to hack into computer systems, copy out other people's private emails, or steal credit card numbers.
On that note, I guess privacy is only important when it's people we like, eh?
Next stop, surveillance state. Just because something is illegal often means absolutely nothing to some, depending on whose interests or version of morality were being represented at its' signing in.
Or stated differently, the illegality of act has no bearing on it's ethical or moral status.
Similarly, things with very high risk of long term negative effects to the society or the individual are made illegal due to the risk and not due to the immorality of the event itself, such as our drug laws.
Re: drug laws, people do consider drug use and dealing to be immoral.
This isn't correlated with general intelligence. Most of the intelligent people you know probably have a moral compass largely dictated by the state.
Obviously nobody explicitly thinks their morality is dictated by the state/church/parents/authority-figure, but in reality most people would agree with virtually everything an authority figure would say, especially if you look at what people actually do rather than just listening to what they profess.
You misunderstand, and from there you argue based on your misunderstanding. No one is saying that just because you agree with a certain "law it means [your] morality is dictated by the state.", rather, your morality just happens to overlap with the state, meaning you are past that stage of moral development (at least regarding that particular issue).
Also, your claim of offense and then your sarcastic apology don't do anything to further the conversation, avoid such rhetorical sub-tactics in the future.
If you find that offensive, maybe you should make an effort to clear your cached thoughts[0], and recompute everything you think about prisons. If you haven't done this at least once in your life, it's probable that you have a thought in your cache that was just inserted there by some authority figure while you were young enough not to know better.
"It was as if the human brain had a blind spot, and someone had written on it in permanent ink, 'Kings. What a good idea.'"
I believe it's from the Discworld book Guards! Guards!； I always loved that imagery.
Why do you state-defenders feel the need to make up and exaggerate facts.
That said, I realize that many of the issues discussed on HN of late have been cases where the state also considers itself above the rule of law - and I think that's far worse. So I don't mean to argue with you - just saying that breaking the law needs to be a very conscious decision you do for a good reason. And you should be prepared to accept some consequences.
Most law is pretty obviously mostly just there because of special interests at one time or another--remember, "law" refers to both "thou shalt not kill" as well "all sidewalks with thus and such distance of a school must have thus and such..." as well as "thou shall not commit sodomy".
These are all laws with different purposes, different origins, and different moral backing--to pretend that we ought to follow them, just because they are laws, is rules fetishism.
I find that sentiment deeply troubling. I think there is value to disobeying rules you disagree with, and even going out of your way to do so, assuming you're aware of the obvious risks.
> There is value in just obeying the law unless you have a very good reason to do otherwise.
Well, sure, but the reason is self-interest, not morality.
> cases where the state also considers itself above the rule of law
To me, that's a nonsensical phrase. The state creates, interprets, and enforces laws, so it is by definition above the rule of law (or perhaps one could say that the state is the rule of law).
Of course this can sometimes take about 2 seconds and you conclude that the rule is utter crap in your situation's context.
There are laws of people ("no decapitating moron drivers"), laws of society ("no imploding buildings just to see what will happen", "no dumping your waste in the river"), and laws of multinational corporations ("no copying data, no tampering when we say no tampering, everybody must buy private health insurance, ...").
It's easier, and more valid, to ignore laws at the high end of the abstract-o-sphere.
This is an interesting proposition... I hadn't really considered the relationship between validity and abstraction in the context of law. What's your reasoning behind it? Has this been written about?
This sounds like blind obedience. "If patriotism were defined, not as blind obedience to government, not as submissive worship to flags and anthems, but rather as love of one's country, one's fellow citizens (all over the world), as loyalty to the principles of justice and democracy, then patriotism would require us to disobey our government, when it violated those principles." Howard Zinn
The reasoning behind a law is irrelevant. The effect of the law is what matters -- the effect on individual liberty, the effect on society, etc. Unjust laws are laws that are harmful to individuals, particular groups of individuals, or society as a whole -- and it is our civic duty to violate those laws, and to violate them to such an extent that they become impractical to enforce.
Unfortunately the government has learned to keep people in line with fear. We now live in an age of militarized law enforcement; it only takes one widely publicized story about someone having soldiers attack their home to get the rest of the population back in line. You see it with drug prohibition, you see it with hacktivism, and you will see it with every tyrannical law that the government enacts.
It's absolutely ridiculous to take 10 years off someones life for doing good.
Instead of wasting a human being for 10 years, give them mandatory community service, or worse, customer service heh. Put them to work, make them productive. People have too much skill and creativity to waste away in a jail for 10 years. It would absolutely wreck me.
I would, without hesitation, kill myself as soon as possible after sentencing.
You seem to think that the only possible way to be a menace to society is with actual violence. What a positively uncreative viewpoint! Surely you can think of some way to absolutely ruin a person's life without so much as a hint of violence? Likewise, perhaps punching someone in the shoulder isn't as vicious a crime as, say, cleaning out all of their bank accounts via computer hacking?
His crime is in the internet domain. Monitor his internet traffic or take away his personal computer rights.
It's treating the symptom by eradicating all possible causes by throwing the man in prison for a decade.
It's like the russians, bombing and burning all their land so the enemy stands no chance. I think it's wrong to take that approach in this case, but hey, I guess I have some semblance of empathy.
I don't think stealing my CC number was "doing good."
I don't see it the same way as you. I see this as a complaint about the law itself, not a claim that the law shouldn't be enforced because of a "legitimate political cause." If slavery were still legal, and a slave complained publicly about the practice, you (hopefully) wouldn't tell the slave "hey, slavery is legal, that's how it works."
Also, I've seen a couple of people claim that Hammond seems surprised, but in the article it is very clear and explicit that he expected this to happen.
>"Swartz may have had a "legitimate political cause" but he sullied it (in my opinion) with illegal activities."
In this case, the law was part of the problem. Aaron broke the law, but that doesn't necessarily mean his actions weren't for a legitimate cause, nor does it mean that they weren't justified.
> "It is wrong to act as if you somehow should be looked at differently by the law because you had a "legitimate political cause."
And what if you think the law is wrong? What about civil disobedience? Sometimes it's right to break the law, and sometimes it's worth the risk of punishment to break the law. Whether it was wise is another question entirely.
In my personal view, what Aaron did was unwise, but not wrong; and what Hammond and his associates did were both unwise and wrong.
That isnt what he is arguing. His argument is that the crime he is being prosecuted for would never have taken place without the involvement of the FBI. And second, he is being over prosecuted for political reasons.
As far as over prosecuted, that's only really possible if they're throwing a book at him that contains charges he didn't really commit (e.g. how Russia initially charged the Arctic Greenpeace protestors with "piracy" even after Putin acknowledged it wasn't piracy). I don't see that in this case.
He ran afoul of an overly severe law, that much is true. But what happened isn't so much that the government ramped up the charges, as that the government didn't tamp them down like they might for other computer hackers who seem more innocent. But I don't know what Hammond expected here either. If you're going to commit a series of crimes specifically to piss off The Man then you shouldn't be surprised when the judge seems to forget how to be lenient.
There is an IRC log somewhere of lulzsec talking about Stratfor, only one person knew who it was. It has to be characterized in very simple terms for the others (about 8 people there) to get what it was. They all wanted to continue scanning .gov and had to be convinced of Stratfor as being value.
I am almost certain the Stratfor idea came from outside of the group. Hammond was the most politically involved and savvy yet he didn't know about them, I really doubt Sabu did.
The other part of this is that the Stratfor hack has been represented as the work of one man who only got a little help along the way, when it was a few individuals involved. What distorts this case is that the only source of information is Sabu. Since Hammond trusted Sabu and spoke to him a lot (although I think Hammond knew that Sabu was more operations/motivation than skill). So naturally there is more evidence against Hammond, than there is evidence against Topiary and the europeans who spoke to Sabu much less and didn't trust him.
The Sabu evidence gave the feds enough information to issue Hammond an entirely separate indictment for Stratfor, something that happen nowhere else in Lulzsec hacking cases.
He has been charged with nothing else. All else that the case established was that he had views sympathetic with parts of Anonymous and he hung out on their IRC channel a lot. Charged with credit card fraud and $1M in theft even though the guy was eating out of a dumpster.
I think it would have been fair to imprison him for 18-24 months like a few of the others, he seems reformed in any case.
You've got it backwards. The point of all political protests, whatever form they take, is to get people to look at something in a different way. I know you don't mean it this way, but what you've stated could just as easily have come out of the mouth of a racist during the 1960s.
The legality you talk about, the rule books were written by the same (type of) people. They get to break it but you get to do nothing about it.
http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.h...
It's not about "the law", it's about justice (the concept of what's "good").
Owning slaves was once OK with the "law". But I'd say, I'd very much agree with someone in 1850 illegaly helping slaves break free, because he had a "legitimate political cause".
People should care less about what's legal and more about what's moral. (Admitingly, the second is harder to define. But that's the conversation worth to have, instead of just blindy assuming anyone who did something illegal "deserves" jail).
At the same time, I wonder at what seems like a tone of surprise about the outcome. What he did is not materially different from breaking into secure offices and stealing copies of private documents. Apparently he or others working with him also made donations in the order of millions of dollars using stolen credit card numbers from this hack. His punishment should be of the same order as someone who did those things. Political motivation is not a get out of jail free card.
Presumably he knows this and the emphasis in this direction is the work of the article's author. Or maybe I'm picking up on something that's not there.
Hastings is a wonderful teaching case though, but more along the lines of being the example of you don't recklessly speed down city streets while intoxicated.
That said, in this case, were nasty things uncovered? I can't find anything about that. Also, mixing investigative journalism with theft and use of other people's credit card numbers is probably not the best way to maintain an appearance of innocence.
In both the case of pedophiles and state actors who are breaking the law, the answer is the same. Wait for them to slip up. It's hard to keep something secret forever.
Didn't realize the TV show "To Catch a Predator" did mass surveillance of the internet, NBC is taking investigative journalism to an extreme.
http://falkvinge.net/2012/09/07/three-reasons-child-porn-mus...
Sure, it should be. I haven't done the research but 10 years is above and beyond what I'd expect, any comparable cases out there?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Butler
"Arrested in 2007, Butler was accused of operating Carders Market, a forum where cyber criminals bought and sold sensitive data such as credit card numbers. After pleading guilty to two counts of wire fraud from stealing nearly 2 million credit card numbers and spending $86 million in fraudulent purchases, Butler was sentenced to 13 years in prison, which is the longest sentence ever given for hacking charges. After prison, he will also face 5 years of supervised release and is ordered to pay $27.5 million in restitution to his victims.[5][22]"
Also Albert Gonzales the leader of Shadowcrew actually plea bargained DOWN to a 20 year sentence:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Gonzalez
"On March 25, 2010, U.S. District Judge Patti Saris sentenced Gonzalez to 20 years in prison for hacking into and stealing information from TJX, Office Max, the Dave & Busters restaurant chain, Barnes & Noble and a string of other companies.[27] The next day, U.S. District Court Judge Douglas P. Woodlock sentenced him to 20 years in connection with the Heartland Payment Systems case. The sentences were ordered to run concurrently, meaning that Gonzalez will serve a total of 20 years for both cases.[28] Gonzalez was also ordered to forfeit more than $1.65 million, a condominium in Miami, a blue 2006 BMW 330i automobile, IBM and Toshiba laptop computers, a Glock 27 firearm, a Nokia cell phone, a Tiffany diamond ring and three Rolex watches.[29]"
Hector “Sabu” Monsegur is facing 124 years if he's convicted on all charges, but with the current string of 10+ year sentences, chances are, his will be in that range as well I would assume. His sentencing was delayed for a third time until January 2014.
Previous to those, I think the longest sentence was to Mitnick who got 5 years. Even Kevin Poulsen got a 3 year sentence. Even the Lulsec hackers all got sentences under 3 years. Clearly, the feds are uping the ante on computer crime and using long sentences as deterrents for future hackers who think they will get light sentences.
Even if it is constitutional, is it wise to to permit?
Your statement is debatable, but since Federal Sentencing Guidelines are set by the United States Sentencing Commission, we don't have much say either way.
It's debatable because most states don't prosecute computer crimes and simply pass the cases to the Feds for a number of reasons. Had Hammond been tried in a state court, there is a high probability his sentence would be a lot less.
Also you have to take into effect how the feds should combat the increasing issue of hacktivism without steep jail times. I seriously don't have any answers, but I'd be interested to find out how you think you can stop this sort of stuff from happening again.
I'd say it's probably accurate to say that you're almost-completely screwed if you are even in a scenario where you have to consider a plea bargain, of course.
Not Guilty: 0 - 100 years
(These numbers totally made up, just to illustrate a point)
Jeremy Hammond caused the release of information collected by a private security firm, which Barron's referred to "The Shadow CIA" JS's purpose, by all accounts i have read, was to (i) call attention to the volume, and scope of data collected by a private company whose customers include foreign governments; and (ii) call attention to the additional risks arising from Stratfor's insecure storage of this data.
it's difficult to effectively "blow the whistle" without revealing this information. Sure he had no authorization to do so, but the moral claim that seems to have motivated his effort--whether you agree with it or not--was that a private company has no business collecting this type of data and selling it to foreign governments and worse they storing it while not adequately protecting it against unauthorized access.
The moral justification is really just: (1) Stratfor does work for the powers that be; (2) the powers that be are bad; therefore (3) hacking Stratfor hurts bad people.
(1) Mike Smith pays taxes to the powers that be, and therefore works 3-4 months out of the year for the powers that be; (2) The powers that be are bad; Therefore (3) murdering Mike hurts bad people.
The term "shadow CIA" seems to imply that they're a worse, shadier version of the CIA. In fact IMHO they're doing what the CIA should be doing (actually collecting intelligence rather than trying to actively influence foreign politics), they're doing a much better job of it than the CIA, and the information, rather than being a state secret, is available to anyone who's willing to pay their (fairly pricey but not unreasonable for the information you get) annual membership fee. I know these things because I was a subscriber, and my credit card was leaked as a part of this hack (hmm I guess I must be part of the shadowy cabal). Have any of the people who claim it's a shady organization actually read any of their reports? They read like I wish CNN articles would - 1 paragraph of "what happened" followed by dozens of paragraphs of historical context.
The fact that they had government clients is completely irrelevant. You know who else has government clients? The Starbucks next to the Capitol building. Unless they were exclusively providing information to governments (which they weren't), I don't see why it's an issue that governments found their intelligence valuable enough to pay for it.
Of course it is a problem that their data was stored insecurely, but like other commenters I don't think releasing/charging the credit card numbers was a particularly productive way to call attention to this fact.
Just wanted to say that as a fellow subscriber who also had the royal inconvenience of having my email/password/CC leaked, you're spot-on. Spend enough time reading their analysis and even The Economist starts to feel like People Magazine.
And the format of: Summary / What Happened / Historical Background / Restated Summary should be made standard journalistic procedure.
Let me stop you right there. Hammond was not a productive member of society. He stole water and power and food, even though he could pay for it (his web design side-job paid for the trinkets he didn't deem capitalist waste). He attacked old people in restaurants. He tried to insight people in public settings to go out and vandalize and attack public infrastructure. He threatened many, many people with bodily harm. He's been in and out of prison and probation for years.
This fuck had it coming.
And let me quote the last part of the article:
He says he plans to use his time in prison “reading,
writing, working out and playing sports – training myself
to become more disciplined so I can be more effective on
my release”.
Who has he threatened? Hadn't heard of that.
Most of his defenders never really knew him, or saw the shit that would fall out when somebody disagreed with him. Those of us who talked to him on a daily basis know he's a dangerous asshat.
edit: I can probably get the full logs for context if somebody really really wants them. This was a public channel, so probably a hundred people have these logs.
13:50 <+tylerknowsthis> it's cause they are rich nerds who can't dance and have terrible taste in music
Woooo, that is me! :)
This is interesting. Thank you for sharing. Still not sure I see your point (you will have to forgive me for not reading through this in it's entirety).
Yeah, stop the presses. If commenting online and especially on places like 4chan has taught me anything, it's that anonymity lets people vent their emotions in ways they never would face-to-face. I'm sure you can find a similar list of shit I've said online and acted like a psychotic asshole. I can probably compose part of that list right now off the top of my head. Sometimes you need to say the angry words and let people tell you you're wrong to learn things once your head cools down.
Hammond was dangerous because he would manipulate people into following his anarchist leanings toward more "direct action", as he liked to put it. He wasn't just some troll on IRC. He committed crimes, over and over, and incited others to do the same. The stratfor and other hacks were just his bravado getting away from him, and people are safer now that he's in jail.
The only thing that bothers me now is what kind of shit he's going to concoct to lash out at everyone and everything he hates once he's released.
I'm really not sure what's supposed to be scary about that quote. It sounds like self-improvement to me.
20:55 <+tylerknowsthis> what are the advantages of a kindle or other similar devices as compared to an ipod touch or droid or something
20:56 <+tylerknowsthis> r0d3nt: I'm on top of that shit too... but i'm talkin actual books.... autobiographies, history books, technical guides, political ideology
20:56 <+tylerknowsthis> and of course the underground network of zines
20:56 <+tylerknowsthis> i'm reading "Courtroom 302: right now.... a history of cook county jail kinda academic tho
20:57 <+tylerknowsthis> r0d3nt now you just pullin shit out your ass
20:57 <+tylerknowsthis> I did a fuckload of reading in prison... 2-3 books a week
20:57 <+tylerknowsthis> a habit I didn't lose when I got out
20:58 <+tylerknowsthis> oh I wasn't doing nothing. I was training myself physically and mentally to be a more effective fighter
20:58 <+tylerknowsthis> for the service of the revolution. prison is a good organizing opportunity
21:00 <+tylerknowsthis> I also fine tuned my chess game.... picked up tricks from the killers
21:01 <+tylerknowsthis> wonder why people are so fascinated with prison rape
21:01 <+tylerknowsthis> it's true people get punked out all the time
21:02 <+tylerknowsthis> it's a sink or swim situation you can't let anyone get an inch
What trinkets?
In and out of prison and probation for years. Wow, that means nothing, especially when you consider what those were for.
I didn't talk to him "on a daily basis" and had many disagreements with him, at times coming to near physical confrontation. But you are a tool.
The Nazi restaurant incident is an interesting microcosm of the whole Hammond case.
In all seriousness, would you have a link to that story? Hadn't heard of that.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/soc.culture.israel/q...
Really glad this was brought up because I just realized an old acquaintance of mine was also arrested at the same event along with Hammond O_O. Add that to the fact that my credit card was leaked as a part of the Stratfor hack, and the fact that I happened to live 2 blocks away from where Sabu did, and I have an unsettling number of weird connections to this case.
Another ironic dimension to the restaurant assault and its parallels to the whole Hammond case: the one guy that got injured in that incident was injured by a protester, and had nothing to do with the Nazis; he was just an innocent bystander.
But they also drove them out, someone happened to be hit by an object. You make it sound like they shit-kicked some old people. Which is bullshit.
Sorry, though, they all get rights.
Many Nazi beliefs aren't strictly fascist, comparing with the Italian Fascist Party may provide some insight. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Fascist_Party It's easy to conflate the two, and while fascism and Nazism are cleary undesirable they are not the same.
Nazi apologists may for example concentrate on Holocaust denial, while having little time for an authoritarian nationalised state.
The word Fascism may today primarily conjure images of Hitler and the Third Reich, but in the thirties it was strongly tied with Italy as well.
Anyway, I think the fine line of disagreement here is that I personally see "Nazi apologist" as someone who is an apologist for _all_ of National Socialism, not just certain policies. You may be correct that today, people could consider anyone who's denying the holocaust to be a "Nazi apologist."
Does that make sense?
Fourteen Defining Characteristics of Fascism
Dr. Lawrence Britt studied the fascist regimes of Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia. He found fourteen defining characteristics common to each.
Powerful and Continuing Expressions of Nationalism — Fascism makes constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Military pride and unity are encouraged. Flags are everywhere, as are flag symbols in public displays, or pinned to clothing.
Disdain for Human Rights — These are viewed as a hinderance to achieving their goals. Through propaganda, the population is made to accept this abuse by marginalizing and demonizing those being targeted. Tactics include secrect, denial, and disinformation. The people ignore or approve of torture, assassination, incarceration without formal charges, etc.
Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause — The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic, sexual or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
Supremacy of the Military — Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of funding, while domestic needs are neglected. The military is glamorized, and used to assert national goals and intimidate other nations.
Rampant Sexism — The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion, and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.
Controlled Mass Media — Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by subtler government regulation: the control of licensing and access to resources, economic pressure, appeals to patriotism, and implied threats. Censorship is very common.
Obsession with National Security — Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses, and questioning its activities is portrayed as unpatriotic or even treasonous.
Religion and Government are Intertwined — Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.
Corporate Power is Protected — The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are those who put the government leaders in power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite, especially in the repression of the poor.
Labor Power is Suppressed — Because the organizing power of labor is a threat to fascism, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed. The working poor form an underclass, and are viewed with suspicion or outright contempt. Under some regimes, being poor is considered a vice.
Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts — Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. Professors and other academics espousing unorthodox ideas are censored, harassed, or arrested. Free expression is the arts and letters is openly attacked. Art and literature serve the national interest, or they don’t exist.
Obsession with Crime and Punishment — Fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
Rampant Cronyism and Corruption — Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in facist regimes for national resources to be appropriated or even stolen by government leaders.
Fraudulent Elections — Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Others times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, disenfranchising oppositions voters, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascism uses the judiciary to manipulate or control elections.
Source: Adapted from Fascism Anyone? in Free Inquiry, Spring 2003
Address a couple of your points:
Fraudulent elections: not all forms of government are duly elected by a people, but there is generally some process of a decision making body coming together that can be called "elections". And this process is always ripe for manipulation. I think one could resonably point to the Reichstag Fire and its political fallout as suppressing the German Communist vote and was a form of fraudulent electioneering.
Labor power is suppressed: There is a well documented history of forced labor within Nazi Germany during WWII. It is one of the reasons the German War Machine held on as long as it did despite heavy allied bombing and sabotage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labour_under_German_rule...
I think it is reasonable to say the individuals in these camps didn't have access to the benefits of free association and what in general terms a strong union and workers rights oriented economy would provide. If we can't call that a form of "suppressing labor power" then what would you suggest we use to describe the phenomenon?
For example: "Causing or encouraging prostitution of, intercourse with or indecent assault on girl under 16" gets you a max sentence of 2 years.
So, a guy use his computer to show us some nasty things the government is doing with our money: 10 years
A pimp manipulates a 13-years-old girl to have sex with pedophiles: 2 years
EDIT: Another example is Chelsea Manning, who now have a criminal sentence of 35 years, and on the other side the guys of Collateral Murder video from the Air Force who killed innocents persons have no charges and are free...
Including stealing people's CCs.
Where are you seeing a tone of surprise? The caption on the main image is his quote: 'I knew when I started out with Anonymous that being put in jail and having a lengthy sentence was a possibility,' and the article goes on to make it quite clear that he was aware of the likely consequences of his actions. He's disgusted, not surprised.
edit: wrong word
Part of Sabu’s interest in him, he now believes, was that Hammond had access to
advanced tools including one known as PLESK that allowed him to break into web
systems used by large numbers of foreign governments.
[0] http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-rise-and-fall-o...
When you look at insurgencies you start asking, it feels horrible to say this, what a life is worth to a cause. If the insurgents take out a couple of soldiers but lose a bomb-maker then they've done poorly on the exchange, if they take out a general or political figure but lose a few dozen suicide bombers they've done well.
Some lives are more valuable to a cause than others.
Here someone relatively smart, a high value target so to speak - though apparently not overly skilled in opsec, has been taken out of the game. That's a win for the powers that be, and perhaps helps to explain the punitive nature of his sentence. Anonymous has a lot of people who turn up in crowds, but we don't hear about them having a lot of high-quality hackers.
There are people that it makes more sense for them to sacrifice. To have the attacks that these people do executed by someone other than the people capable of making the tools in the first place.
They could do everything through encrypted channels, that could be made largely immune to traffic analysis, with the sort of really fluid cell structures that would facilitate. Just the first idea that springs to mind: uploading an encrypted steg'd message as part of a lolcats image on reddit that thousands of people are going to download - the noise to signal ratio would be enormous.
But then, insurgencies - in general - do a lot of things that don't make sense when taken purely from the perspective of their cause. I wonder how that sort of approach would interact with the social dynamics of A, how they'd find people who were up for it. Whether that's more what we're going to be looking at if A gets to mature as an organisation or whether their largely ephemeral nature excludes that sort of distribution of risk.
http://www.stratfor.com/free-reports
Disclosure: I'm a subscriber, and have been for a number of years now, and find most of the Stratfor-bashing that inevitably (and predictably) happens in these discussions to be void of any understanding of what they actually produce. So, please read up and then tell us why the fact that he attacked a private forecasting company somehow makes his sentence unjust.
Like morally wrong? If you think the law is bad, what is morally wrong about breaking it and saying "I understand the law, but I don't think I should be punished for this act"? That's what civil disobedience is. I can understand if you think it's stupid, or if you think the justice system should ignore those people, but I don't understand what morally wrong about it.
Could somebody please tell me there's another kind of PLESK beyond that which is shat forth by Parallels?
The monsters and power-hungry need each other to survive and flourish, and they prey on the rest of us to do so.
Edit for below: oops! liberty indeed :)
He did a significant amount of damage to a legitimate business. Some people seem to hate STRATFOR, without articulating any reasoning for feeling that way, other than using certain triggers for up votes, "government," "CIA," "evil," etc.
The files posted to Wikileaks largely showed them to be a surprisingly competent private forecasting company. The outcry over telling an attractive intelligence collector to use her looks as a means by which to get people to be more pliable? Welcome to the real world. Sex sells, and it also buys.
Many subscriber's identities were stolen in the process. My personal information was leaked, and it was difficult and costly to deal with. Some will never be able to fully undo the damage personally done to them by Jeremy Hammond. I'm not sure how his actions bettered the world, or even sought to.
Activism is valid, and a discussion of hacktivism as a form of civil disobedience that can effect necessary change, would be welcome.
A guy who selected a target while being almost completely ignorant of the work they do, a guy who, rather than going to some effort to minimize collateral damage, actually worked to inflict as much collateral damage as possible, is not a hacktivist, but a criminal, and a pretty inconsiderate criminal, at that. Doing harm for the sake of ego isn't hacktivism, it's mayhem.
I'm OK with people like that being segmented from civil society, no matter how just the cause he thought it would further. If a guy walked around keying cars in the parking lot because he wanted to achieve world peace, I'd respect his desire to achieve world peace, but also want him prevented from doing so again until he demonstrated some understanding and therefore the necessarily resultant remorse.
I subscribe to STRATFOR's informative, insightful, and apolitical news service, and think most people who wax lyrical about how evil they are probably don't, or they'd realize they tend to write things like "Germany's Problematic Trade Surplus," or "Colombia's River Revitalization Plan."
A hacktivist picked a bad target and sought maximum collateral damage of innocents. People like that need to demonstrate that they understand why that's incompatible with living in a civilized society before they get to sit at the big kid's table again.
I'll get down voted for this, but if Jeremy Hammond still thinks the same way when his 10 years are up, he will have been released too soon. Sometimes prison is about rehab and reform, sometimes it's about damage control.
> ... he saw quotes marked CW for “co-operating witness” ...
"Confidential witness", that is.
"CI", short for "confidential informant", is also commonly seen in similar documents.