Jeremy Hammond sentenced to 10 years for Stratfor leak

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/15/jeremy-hammond-anonymous-hacker-sentenced

by callum85 • 13 years ago

342 235 13 years ago

theguardian.com

GuiA4• 13 years ago

One nation under god, with freedom and justice for all :')

Edit for below: oops! liberty indeed :)

jamesaguilar6• 13 years ago

It's unfortunate that a possibly productive member of society has to go to jail for this.

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.

gcb13• 13 years ago

but in the past revealing crimes in those secret documents often lead to trials. now, watergate would have not have ended with 43 incarcerations from nixon admin and his resignation, but probably with journalists from the post being sent to Guantanamo for reporting on national security matters.

mpyne7• 13 years ago

Just like 'The Guardian's journalists working out of their New York office reporting on the NSA have all been sent to Gitmo, amirite?

GuiA4• 13 years ago

So if someone does nasty things, but getting access to evidence for these nasty things is impossible without breaking a law, how do you suggest that one should go about proving that the aforementioned nasty things were committed?

jamesaguilar6• 13 years ago

Not sure. You might have to take one for the team like with other acts of civil disobedience.

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.

andrewfong6• 13 years ago

Pedophiles do nasty things on the Internet. Uncovering pedophiles on the Internet is impossible without mass surveillance of the Internet. How do you suggest that one should go about proving that someone is a pedophile?

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.

jebus9892• 13 years ago

His punishment should be of the same order as someone who did those things.

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?

jamesaguilar6• 13 years ago

To me, it's not surprising that stealing a bunch of credit cards and secret documents gets you ten years (maximum, of which he'll probably serve three to five if this is anything like other crimes that are eligible for parole). But I'd welcome evidence that I'm miscalibrated.

at-fates-hands2• 13 years ago

Max Butler got 13 years for his role in Carders Market:

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.

ry0ohki3• 13 years ago

I'm surprised he got the maximum sentence after pleading guilty. Isn't the whole point of pleading guilty to get a lesser sentence?

andrewfong6• 13 years ago

Being repentant helps if you're trying to get a lesser sentence. Pleading guilty and being proud of it ... probably less so.

gknoy2• 13 years ago

You __hope__ to get one. If there's no plea bargain on the table, you're likely screwed.

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.

doug1001• 13 years ago

"[n]ot materially different from breaking into secure offices and stealing copies of private documents"

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.

andrewfong6• 13 years ago

I don't really buy that. If you think that the collection and insecure storage of confidential information is a problem, you don't "fix" the problem by releasing all of that confidential information to WikiLeaks. And you certainly don't make over a million dollars in fraudulent credit card transactions.

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.

dandelany4• 13 years ago

I still don't understand the hatred for Stratfor. Here's the Barron's article you refer to: http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?read=13032

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.

peterwwillis5• 13 years ago

possibly productive member of society

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”.

Does this sound like a stable, productive member of society to you?

mcantelon2• 13 years ago

He threatened many, many people with bodily harm.

Who has he threatened? Hadn't heard of that.

ceejayoz2• 13 years ago

Does this sound like a stable, productive member of society to you?

I'm really not sure what's supposed to be scary about that quote. It sounds like self-improvement to me.

kungfooguru3• 13 years ago

Attacked old people in restaurants? You mean the fascist fucks?

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.

pera• 13 years ago

Justice is complicated. Usually it's very difficult to quantify damages, specially when those damages depends on a POV. What I think we all can agree is that sentences times are disproportionated: committing a crime to a corporation is one of the most dangerous things you can do, even more than killing or raping someone.

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...

darkarmani2• 13 years ago

So, a guy use his computer to show us some nasty things the government is doing with our money: 10 years

Including stealing people's CCs.

drzaiusapelord3• 13 years ago

This guy was an off-the-grid thief and conman who justified his hacking by "sticking it to the man" which, unfortunately, a lot of HN readers apparently agree relieves him of any moral or personal responsibility for his actions.

baddox4• 13 years ago

I wonder at what seems like a tone of surprise about the outcome

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.

gcb13• 13 years ago

and the stratfor people are all innocent even after the leaks. that will surely tell people that they should not be activists but live within the law.

jamesaguilar6• 13 years ago

I've only looked briefly (mostly wikipedia and the linked article), but I didn't see anything that referenced lawbreaking on the part of the Stratfor or its employees. Can you post a citation?

mkohlmyr2• 13 years ago

And the judges husband is a stratfor client directly affected by the hack..

edit: wrong word

grecy• 13 years ago

Surely that's a conflict of interest and the judge should be dismissed?

mkohlmyr2• 13 years ago

the judge didnt think so.

horm• 13 years ago

Jeremy Hammond? Doesn't seem very anonymous to me.

forgottenpass• 13 years ago

For more background, The Rolling Stone had a good piece on him last year after he was arrested: The Rise and Fall of Jeremy Hammond: Enemy of the State [0]

[0] http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-rise-and-fall-o...

dopamean7• 13 years ago

“The same beast bit us both,” Hammond said. “They went after Aaron because of his involvement in legitimate political causes – they railroaded charges against him, and look what happened.”

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.

consultant23522• 13 years ago

Releasing information can be civil disobedience and imho should be shown leniency when it is. I don't suggest that I'm the one that should determine whether something should qualify as civil disobedience or not, but there's some wisdom to the idea that the court should not harshly punish someone who technically broke the law for the greater good. Your intent is often a factor in not only what you are convicted of but also the sentence handed to you.

pyrocat2• 13 years ago

Putting someone in jail for 10 years when they haven't harmed another person is ludicrous, but that's the American justice system for you.

sigzero• 13 years ago

It can but don't try to brush it away with "therefore what I did wasn't illegal" which is what Mr. Hammond sounds like he is trying to do. The only thing that he and Aaron have in common is what they did was illegal.

dandelany4• 13 years ago

You'd consider releasing credit card numbers of all subscribers to an organization you don't like to be "civil disobedience"? Even if you accept the (deeply flawed IMHO) premise that Stratfor was an evil shadowy organization, it's clients are a step removed and clearly not all of them had bad intentions (I know because I was a subscriber). Next time your employer or a company you are a client of does something bad, I assume you won't mind if I leak your personal information under the guise of civil disobedience.

snowwrestler• 13 years ago

The whole point of civil disobedience as a form of protest is to suffer the legal consequences of a law in order to demonstrate its injustice.

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.

dmix5• 13 years ago

There is not much value in pedantically debating the differences between the two.

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.

mindslight2• 13 years ago

Computer hacking laws actually have pretty light sentences compared to their historic counterparts. A show trial followed by some years in jail is much nicer than being executed for witchcraft.

andrewfong6• 13 years ago

10 years doesn't strike me as unreasonable. What he did basically amounted to burglary and over $1M in credit card fraud. 10 years is at the upper end of what I would sentence for those crimes, but it's not out of range -- especially considering that he's relatively unrepentant about the whole thing.

rayiner7• 13 years ago

The sentence has to be understood in context of Hammond's criminal record: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Hammond#Arrests_and_crim....

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.

diogenescynic2• 13 years ago

And on the other hand, the complete lack of prosecution against Wall Street executives for fraud over the financial crisis. Shows our government's priorities.

jMyles• 13 years ago

I agree with your last paragraph. However, I disagree that aaronsw "sullied" his actions with illegal activities. I think he did damn near everything right.

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.

DerpDerpDerp• 13 years ago

It's not the same at all as this issue, but the civil rights movement essentially was violating laws with a political agenda in mind.

ddoolin• 13 years ago

"That's how it works."

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.

EthanHeilman• 13 years ago

The argument that the legality and ethically of actions are orthogonal is very strong and generally accepted.

Or stated differently, the illegality of act has no bearing on it's ethical or moral status.

rayiner7• 13 years ago

Totally incorrect. Its generally accepted that legality and morality are not coextensive, but that's different than legality and morality being orthogonal. Legality and morality are closely correlated, in that societies tend to make illegal actions they consider immoral. Thus, while it's possible for something to be illegal that society does not consider immoral, it's generally not the case.

duairc3• 13 years ago

So what if it's illegal? Is your moral compass really dictated by the state?

tedks3• 13 years ago

Yes. Most humans never progress past the command-ethics morality that characterizes Kohlberg's second stage (of three) of moral development.

This isn't correlated with general intelligence. Most of the intelligent people you know probably have a moral compass largely dictated by the state.

TallGuyShort• 13 years ago

I think it's good for a moral compass to be partly dictated by the state. One should not assume that they know the reasoning behind every law and disobey it simply because they disagree. There is value in just obeying the law unless you have a very good reason to do otherwise. The law is intended to be a protection, and it can only do so if we obey it for it's own sake.

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.

rfnslyr3• 13 years ago

That's not even remotely the point. Your argument should be one level above your current one, that is the laws in the first place, not his compliance with.

It's absolutely ridiculous to take 10 years off someones life for doing good.

dopamean7• 13 years ago

Whether or not Hammond did "good" is debatable. I happen to think he's a criminal and he should go to jail. Perhaps not for 10 years though.

darkarmani2• 13 years ago

It's absolutely ridiculous to take 10 years off someones life for doing good.

I don't think stealing my CC number was "doing good."

drzaiusapelord3• 13 years ago

Except Swartz's master plan was downloading a bunch of PDFs to release, which is a copyright violation at best. Hammond was actively causing DDOS's, hacking servers, attacking his personal enemies, falsifying credentials, performing brute-forces, etc for fun and sometimes profit. These are two very different situations.

dopamean7• 13 years ago

That's my point.

nikcub6• 13 years ago

You should work for the feds, as you seem very good at inventing new charges

baddox4• 13 years ago

It is wrong to act as if you somehow should be looked at differently by the law because you had a "legitimate political cause."

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."

dopamean7• 13 years ago

I think that's kind of an absurd comparison because a slave would be made a slave simply because he exists not because of anything he had done. If you know the consequences of your actions before choose to act and you go ahead anyway then you have, in my mind, stated that you find those consequences to be acceptable. It is odd to me that Hammond would then complain about his prosecution like it was some kind of surprise.

ignostic• 13 years ago

You shouldn't confuse legitimacy and legality.

"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.

znowi• 13 years ago

This talk of legality is fine and honorable. And I'd certainly stand by it if the law applied to the opposite party respectively. However, those in power are not only in position to craft the law, they're also exempt from it. Until this injustice resolved, I will support people like Swartz, Anonymous, et al.

nikcub6• 13 years ago

It is wrong to act as if you somehow should be looked at differently by the law because you had a "legitimate political cause

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.

mpyne7• 13 years ago

Not quite right. He said he wouldn't have gone after Stratfor specifically had he not been pointed out to it by Sabu. He never said (nor, AFAICT, implied) he wouldn't have hacked some other website he thought was relevant to Anonymous's aims. This is just one example from the linked article of Hammond being disingenuous.

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.

john_b• 13 years ago

It is wrong to act as if you somehow should be looked at differently by the law because you had a "legitimate political cause."

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.

pavs• 13 years ago

Is there a legal way to leak or expose abuse of political and intelligence use of power?

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.

paulrademacher• 13 years ago

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."

http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.h...

coldtea• 13 years ago

It is wrong to act as if you somehow should be looked at differently by the law because you had a "legitimate political cause."

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).

happycube• 13 years ago

. o O (they would have caught Richard May, but he was too slow to hack anything.)

krapp2• 13 years ago

"Oh cock, it's the cyber-rozzers..."

6d0debc071• 13 years ago

Without commenting on the politics of the thing, I'd suggest the proper lens to look at this situation with is one of an insurgency.

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.

clienthunter• 13 years ago

...Hammond had access to advanced tools including one known as PLESK...

Could somebody please tell me there's another kind of PLESK beyond that which is shat forth by Parallels?

dyc• 13 years ago

Good obviously got what he deserved.

kh_hk• 13 years ago

    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.

I do not think this means what they think it means.

notjustanymike• 13 years ago

Anyone else accidentally freak out that this would affect Top Gear?

themoogle• 13 years ago

That is the first thing I thought of. I was scratching my head waiting for the page to load thinking "Why the hell... how the hell... what the hell..."

prawks• 13 years ago

It did cross my mind, oddly enough. For those wondering:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Clarkson

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Hammond

baldfat• 13 years ago

He was denied bail due to possible LIFE IN PRISON sentence. WOW! I just do see that A) He did illegal activities B) Money was involved. A Jail sentence is very likely BUT life and denial of bail?

tsotha4• 13 years ago

The potential sentences for financial and computer crimes in the US are draconian. If you're going to be a criminal you'd be better off robbing banks.

nutball• 13 years ago

Send Jeremy books! http://freejeremy.net/updates/send-jeremy-books/

andrethegiant• 13 years ago

I remember when Hammond helped run (or at least was an admin for) HackThisSite. That site helped pique my interest in web development, which is now my career. I owe a lot of my web tech prowess to that site.

rookadook• 13 years ago

Because, after ten years, he will get out and become a model citizen. Right? If you don't deal with the root of the problem, the monster you create will be your undoing. If the feds keep doing this, it won't be pretty. They are creating a lot of monsters.

wavefunction• 13 years ago

What do they care? Their children and families are secure in their gated communities. Creating more monsters just means expanded power and job security.

The monsters and power-hungry need each other to survive and flourish, and they prey on the rest of us to do so.

erikpukinskis• 13 years ago

It is wrong to act as if you somehow should be looked at differently by the law because you had a "legitimate political cause."

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.

oceanstone• 13 years ago

Jeremy Hammond helped uncover TrapWire, possibly the most cutting edge surveillance system currently exposed to the public.

http://rt.com/usa/stratfor-trapwire-abraxas-wikileaks-313/

sfx• 13 years ago

Thanks for sharing this article, I don't know why I hadn't heard of this. It's pathetic that it takes illegal leaks for the public to know about this type of surveillance, then we jail the leakers/whistleblowers. Shouldn't this type of thing at the very least be a voting issue? They really do want to know what every American is doing all the time, terrifying.

ThrowFarAway5• 13 years ago

There's a lot of certainty and knee-jerk moralizing on display here (hacker in trouble! He deserves our unhesitating support!), but there's shockingly little justification to accompany strong sentiment. Put another way: what's with the mob mentality, HN? This place is normally better than that.

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.

jebus9892• 13 years ago

Maybe others are able to give a more objective analysis, assuming your claims are true you enter the debate with significant bias.

dandelany4• 13 years ago

s/bias/relevant knowledge and experience/

seoguru• 13 years ago

wow. I consider this sentence overkill. and sadly he is not the only victim of extreme sentencing: https://www.aclu.org/living-death-sentenced-die-behind-bars-...

ThrowFarAway5• 13 years ago

If anyone who wants to somehow argue that Stratfor is evil incarnate thus rendering Hammond's sentence unjust, I invite you to first read some of their stuff:

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.

rospaya• 13 years ago

It's sickening to see so many people claiming Hammond "did a good thing" and "didn't harm any person". Something I expected from reddit, but not HN.

jlgaddis• 13 years ago

Tangentially related:

... 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.

Jeremy Hammond sentenced to 10 years for Stratfor leak

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