Raisethefist.com Raided

mfb and others wrote in about a raid on the operator of raisethefist.com last week. It was first reported on Indymedia.org here and here, followed by an LA Weekly article. By far the best news piece so far is this one from Newsbytes.

Comments

Because of his *opinions*?

[kingdon]

OK, this guy says that he was busted because the government didn't like his opinions, but in fact he had been cracking web sites and putting in that troop.cgi thing. Somehow that doesn't sound like an opinion to me. There's also the question of bomb-making information which is potentially thornier, but also isn't really opinion (at least, not opinion about globalization - opinion about bomb policy I suppose might be a bit more debateable).

Re:Because of his *opinions*?

[Derkec]

I could see his arguement. He's going to jail because of his opinion that it was ok to crack into other people's pages, deface them and try to attack army computers. Since he acted on his opinion and violated various laws, he's pretty much screwed. The guy clearly is out of touch with reality if he expects the police to knock on the door of an anti-government type and nicely ask, "I'm sorry, but could we have your computer?"

Regarding what I assume will be a 1st amendment type of defense. You can speak freely so long as you don't trample of the rights of others. When you facilitate and encourage the use of weapons to hurt people or property you are outside of 1st amend. protection. Likewise when you deface a website to get your message across, your efforts to communicate have come at the expense of someone else's right to do the same and so aren't protected.

Re:Because of his *opinions*?

[MrResistor]

Well put.

Your right to swing your fist ends at my face.

How can someone advocate violent overthrow of the government and expect the government to look the other way? There are better ways to affect change if you don't like the way things are going, and they're built into the Constitution! Being a punk myself, I used to hang out with a lot of anti-corporate anarchists and this has always been my main disagreement with them (second is the irony that the vast majority are smokers and thus enslaved to the tobacco industry, but that's a whole other issue).

Reading the Newsbytes article, I can't help but come to the conclusion that this kid is just another one of those moronic LA "Bring It All Down"(TM) punks, totally oblivious to the fact that The Man is the only thing keeping the skinheads from beating the crap out of him and stealing the oxblood 20-eye Doc Martins his mom bought him for his birthday.

Sorry, that turned into more of a rant than I thought it would.

Re:Because of his *opinions*?

[Liberal Mafia]

>>How can someone advocate violent overthrow of the government and expect the government to look the other way?

Well, regardless of what Sherman expects, for the past half century the Supreme Court has routinely expected the government to do just that. The phrase that applies here is "clear and present danger".

The phrase first came about in 1919 from the Schenck v. United States case. But it didn't really have any teeth until 1957 and Yates v. United States, when the Court ruled that, to quote my old book on the law of public communications, "a conspiracy to advocate the overthrow of the government was too far removed from immediate danger to be punished."

The real precedent used nowadays is Brandenburg v. Ohio, (1969) in which the Court overturned the conviction of some KKK members for advocating "unlawful methods of industrial or political reform", then a crime under Ohio state law. To be constitutional, the Court said, a statute can only ban speech that "is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to produce such actions."

The Court backed this precedent up in 1973 with Hess v. Indiana, in which an antiwar demonstrator had been convicted for shouting "We'll take the fucking street later." The Court ruled that this "amounted to nothing more than advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time".

So, unless what Sherman put up on the Web was really both meant and likely to produce immediate illegal action, or the current Supreme Court is ready to overturn this precedent (very possible, given its obvious partisanship and corruption), he hasn't broken the law by advocating overthrowing the federal government.

I'm sure these rulings are on the Web somewhere but I'm too tired to karma whore any further just now.

Dumbass.

[sulli]

According to Newsbytes:

According to the FBI, Austin allegedly defaced at least five commercial Web sites since 1999 using the nickname "Ucaun." On three of the sites, Austin left behind a hacking program named troop.cgi that was designed to attempt to log in to a computer operated by the U.S. Army, the FBI affidavit stated. In the interview, Austin acknowledged that he vandalized the Web sites and that he knew it was illegal to do so. But he defended the act by saying it was necessary to get his message out.

Okay, so this guy was an admitted website defacer who posted denial of service tools on victim websites and knew it was illegal but did it anyway.. That he was doing it for some "anticorporate revolution" doesn't matter one iota.

But what I really loved was his comment, later in the article:

"But how many of us are really willing to engage in such an intense form of warfare through bauds and wires? Who's got the balls? Who's willing to sacrifice everything?" said the page.

Who indeed? Let's start with this numbskull. I say throw the book at him.

Re:Dumbass.

[haizi_23]

agreed. i am very much concerned with the impact of increasing corporate control over our public life, but this idiot is not my spokesperson.

when you want to mount successful political opposition, you start by keeping your nose squeaky clean so that no one can defame your character when the real work of change begins. this kid obviously didn't get that.

-w

Hey! Don't slashdot this site!

[jaxdahl]

From the site:

NEWSFLASH raisethefist.com is running out of current allocated bandwidth. In just two days we have used over 130MB of data transfer. The limit is 512MB per month. That means we will run out of bandwidth in less than a week. If we do, the site will be shut down indefinitely. We need to move to another web host in order to keep the site up and updated with official information for its visitors. If you would like to donate space, the e-mail contact information is on the bottom of this page.

I think it's a bad idea to link directly to his site.. We could end up costing him a lot of money in bandwidth terms.

Re:Hey! Don't slashdot this site!

[Tackhead]

> > raisethefist.com is running out of current allocated bandwidth. In just two days we have used over 130MB of data transfer. The limit is 512MB per month. [ ... ]
> I think it's a bad idea to link directly to his site.. We could end up costing him a lot of money in bandwidth terms.

1) L33t d00d defaces websites and acknowledges that he knew doing so was illegal.

2) L33t d00d posts denial-of-service tools on the defaced websites.

3) L33t d00d then whines about his bandwidth bills arising from the Slashdot effect.

Payback's a bitch, ain't it, skr1pt k1ddi3?

There's only one fist that needs to be raised here, and the FBI knows exactly where to raise it. And after the FBI's finished reaming out his bank account, I hope his bandwidth provider takes whatever's left.

Internet Wayback Machine

[Zach Garner]

Thanks to Archive.org, we can use the Internet Wayback Machine to view the site: Jan 23 or other days

They're kidding, right?

[BadDoggie]

Who needs the FBI and a warrant to shut down a site? Post the URL here and the effect will toast the place. We kill sites for an entire month when they have transfer limits, even when we like them.

woof.

Move along now, nothing to moderate here.

Jesus Christ

[elefantstn]

So this guy is actively cracking and defacing websites, including attempting to break into Army systems, and he's whining about being arrested?

Next person who whines that he's the victim of the fascist Ashcroftian regime gets beat over the head with a clue-by-four. I'd be pretty pissed if he was hacking my site "so he could get his message out." What a loser.

Slant-Six Flashback...

[FortKnox]

Before Slant-Six sank, they had an interesting article on how to confuse the future terrorists. Put up anarchist sites, but provide bogus info. Setup bomb-making instructions that make silly putty or something. The more sites like that that pop-up, the less likely a terrorist will discover the correct bomb-making papers. The point is to fight terrorists by making the internet a place that they can't trust...

I wonder how the FBI would react to those kinds of sites...

violently overthrow the Constitution?

[Tyrannosaurus]

"People can rant and rave on the Internet all they want, but when they cross the line of calling people to action to violently overthrow the Constitution of the United States, they have a problem," said McLaughlin.

That would be correct. The United States of America is all for free speech. It's also a democracy, where you can elect a new government to install new laws if you disagree with the current state of affairs. Elected officials (who presumably represent a majority of the populace) will eventually populate the group responsible for interpreting the Constitution, the Supreme Court. Therefore, in a theoretical sense (before you start screaming about corporate america owning the politicians), the people do control the government.

By ignoring the political route and espousing the virtues of a violent overthrow, you have now entered the realm of "terrorist" or "freedom fighter." In a country where the freedom of speech is guaranteed in the very Constitution you want to do away with, you are more than likely to be considered a terrorist. And frankly, I would agree with that assessment.

Here's a suggestion: if you don't like the system and don't feel like changing the system, take your bombs and move to Columbia or the middle east.

Re:violently overthrow the Constitution?

[Wesley Everest]

Oh come on. The U.S. was founded by such "terrorists" (if older and wiser ones).

The president just recently created a system of military tribunals where you can be arrested, tried, convicted, and executed without even being told the crime you were charged with, without the prosecution having shown probable cause before arrest, without hearing any evidence presented against you, without the ability to cross-examine witnesses, without your choice of counsel, without the crime specifically calling for a death sentence, without a presumption of innocence, without "beyond a shadow of a doubt" or even "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard of proof, without public scrutiny, and without a right of appeal.

This system makes a military court-martial look like a hippy love-in.

Now please re-read the Declaration of Independence and tell me whether the guys that wrote it sound more like Bush or this punk "terrorist" kid.

The kid may have talked about overthrowing the constitution, but Bush has done it.

And if your response is that if you don't like it, you should change it by working your way up the corporate ladder until you are CEO of a large enough corporation so that you can buy yourself or a friend into office, spare me. Yeah, and if you don't like the U.S. government, why don't you go to some country the U.S. government is bombing or propping up some hellish dictator -- now that's a great idea!

Bush has made it perfectly clear -- you are either with him or against him. If you are against him, you are a terrorist and they intend to find you no matter what country you reside in. Clearly Bush is not quite that powerful, yet -- and one hopes that countries that care about human rights will be able to reign in some of his powers, but the point is that if you don't like the U.S. government you're only real options are to try to change it or keep your head down to avoid it's wrath.

And you won't change it by saving your pennies to work within the system -- with lobbyists, bribes, and the corporate media. The current system has evolved to make sure that we can't change it from within. At the same time, violence is only a successful tactic if you are already powerful -- if you are weak, it will only hasten your destruction (look at what happened to the U.S. militia movement after Oklahoma City). And advocating violence without the intention or the ability to carry it out is the height of stupidity.

The alternative is to organize where we have the most power (whether we realize it or not) -- with our coworkers or neighbors, in schools, professional associations, clubs, consumer groups, etc. And rather than organize for lofty meaningless phrases, organize for real gains that benefit us and those around us. Much of Bush's attack on Americans has taken the shape of less job security, longer hours, etc. at work. It is possible to resist these attacks, and it is much more effective if the resistance is organized and collective rather than disorganized and individual.

As passive voters and pleaders, we are powerless, but organized and actively fighting back where we have power can work -- that's how it has worked with every social improvement in the last 1000 years or so, at least.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Publish bomb instructions, go to jail

[ethereal]

I think you'd better be careful on that there slippery slope, because the next step is "how many of us really want 'that hacker kid' down the street having the knowledge of how to reset my router or how to access my bank's poorly-secured web site?" A lot of the things that people on this site know and converse about freely could be just as dangerous to the public as bomb-making instructions.

I'm not defending hacking or blowing up people with bombs, and I'm not entirely defending this kid either. I'm just saying that we need to differentiate between the knowledge of how to do something, the tools for doing something, and the actual doing of the thing. Responsibility should be laid against those who actually commit crimes, not all of those who know how to. Providing bomb-making information (which is available on any number of other sites) does not seem to be such a major crime.

Although hacking a DoD site definitely was a big mistake. On those grounds alone he should go down.

it does matter

[Pope]

Well, OK, I think it matters.
There are lots of articles on Slash about different countries taking away their citizens' rights, based on the assumption that if some information's on the net it's far more dangerous than if it's simply in print.

This is a tech-savvy activist, using the internet as his tool to get his message out to the world. Bravo.

However he crossed the line a number of times by hacking other machines, using a pretty lame-ass excuse: "I had to get my message out!" Sure, Charlie, I have a feeling you're preaching to the converted.

I had an argument with a coworker last summer during the WTO conference (or was it G8? I can't remember). An anti-corporate web site was giving out information and software to stage a "virtual sit-in" to protest against companies involved. Basically, they were advocating a gigantic DDOS against a certain few companies, including Cisco, one of our clients.

He thought it was cool, I thought the entire thing was 100% lame: WTF do they hope to accomplish my not letting me do my work? Are they somehow more important than me? Does their "message" get out by DDOSing a few companies? No. They'd be better off by actually writing letter to the companies they hate, but of course, that takes actual time and effort. It takes little to download someone else's work (the DDOS programs) and run it, then go back to whatever you were doing, thinking you've accomplished some great blow for democracy.

I don't buy it one bit: it's lame, far too easy and cowardly.

So I propsed that on the date and time they went to put up their links page to all the DDOS software, we hit THEM first, in a pre-emptive strike, just to give 'em a taste of their own medicine and see how much they like. But we didn't. I would have had a good laugh though, I just didn't want to sink to their chickenshit level.

Ah well. I'm glad this guy got arrested for his hacking crimes, I just hope they don't pull a Mitnick and give him his fair chance. Doubt it.

Lets not forget

[Pinball Wizard]

Yeah, yeah, this guy broke into websites and should be punished. However, way too many people seem to be forgetting a couple of things.

1 - The right of the people to overthrow their government when it fails to meet their needs is written in the Declaration of Independence:

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government

It is expressly Patriotic according to our countries founding document to overthrow the government should it become tyrannical.

2 - we have this little thing called freedom of speech. There is no law prohibiting the dissemination of bomb making information. If that is a crime, I guess Amazon.com is a terrorist organization:

Poor Man's James Bond

Anarchist's Cookbook

Home Workshop Explosives

I suggest we keep these things in mind as we continue to hunt down terrorists. Its important not to forget the freedoms that make this country worth fighting for.

No defense, and that guy's wacked.

[ctimes2]

Seriously, c'mon.
First, activists are not terrorists, and that kid's no activist. My brother-in-law is an activist {PETA} and his arguments are intelligent, well researched, more than reasonable, and effective. I haven't given up meat yet, but I've cut down on milk. Thus, someone is listening to him and he's effecting change. That is what activists do.

RTF is nothing more than a dumb ass kid preaching to the disenfranchised (yeah, like that's tough). He has no real concept of anarchy, no understanding of WHY the world works the way it works (no matter how screwed up it gets), and no reasonable solution. So in effect, he's running his position on poor instinct and bad judgement. He effects no change because all he's trying to do is scare people into either buying his position or dying in the chaos of upheaval. I guess it never occured to him that most of the rest of us couldn't give a rats ass about what he thinks ("getting the message out"... what a load. Your message is out, and it sounds like a big steaming pile of crap. Now you're going to try and play the victim card & blame it on the government? Where do you come from?).

Then, he's got the balls, audacidity or insanity to claim the agencies involved used a lot of hardware - no shit sherlock. You ran a website that advocated voilence, vandalism, and had BOMB making instructions on your site. Gangs are dangerous and have guns. You have politicol motivation, half a brain (1/2 more than most local gangs), and a dangerous message with instructions on how others can perform those acts too. Plus, you broke the LAW... you... IDIOT! You bet they're coming heavily armed.

And by the way, the definition of terrorism is, and I quote "The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons". How 'bout that. You're a fledgling terrorist according to the very definition of the word. Good luck to him and for the FBI, keep up the good work.

If any of you feel any sympathy for this guy, you need to evaluate whether or not that's because you agree with him or just hate the feds, because that's one *'d up kid. And I'll bet the thousands of other sites that host the same kind of information (anarchists cookbook, etc.) don't advocate or act upon an idiological soapbox, which is why this kid was nabbed.

/rant. sorry.