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LulzSec Leader Sabu Unmasked, Arrested and Caught Collaborating
Velcroman1 writes "Law enforcement agents on two continents swooped in on top members of the infamous computer hacking group LulzSec early this morning, and acting largely on evidence gathered by the organization's brazen leader — who sources say has been secretly working for the government for months — arrested three and charged two more with conspiracy. Charges against four of the five were based on a conspiracy case filed in New York federal court, FoxNews.com has exclusively learned. An indictment charging the suspects, who include two men from Great Britain, two from Ireland and an American in Chicago is expected to be unsealed Tuesday morning in the Southern District of New York. 'This is devastating to the organization,' said an FBI official involved with the investigation. 'We're chopping off the head of LulzSec.'"
...For the lulz
mole mole mole mole! (read it like Austin Powers)
Seriously... they scored the head of the organization as a mole? Either blatant luck, or someone knew what they were doing.
Or option C, said head has little scruples.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
This is why any kind of Hacking intent should never be combined with monetary interests. It should be left alone as a Hobby. Getting involved in Politics is dangerous, especially if you are doing something illegal. And this might as well be a set up.
WAIT! It's a story from Fox News. Wait until a more reputable news source reports the details. All every other reputable source is saying is that some dude got arrested and the feds think he's part of lulzsec. The rest is probably exaggeration if not complete fabrication and speculation on the part of that news organization. Do not assume anything in the article is true.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
He was arrested about 9 months ago.
I think you're getting LulzSec mixed up with Anonymous. Although there's some crossover between the two, they're generally regarded as separate entities.
Charges against four of the five were based on a conspiracy case filed in New York federal court
Hey, that's a double standard!
... we all know people with money and power are happy people with good feelings who'd never do that...
Whenever you have reason to think there are conspiracies within government, why you're paranoid and that's absurd, no I won't look at your evidence because that just can't be so, *plugs ears* nana nana nana I can't hear you
But when government says they found a conspiracy among private individuals, why that's just law enforcement.
Seeing as Anonymous is simply the name given to anyone who posts on 4chan, it doesn't really identify anyone. Indeed, Lulzsec recruits skiddies on /b/, and the idea of mass-DDOS was made famous by *chan style invasions, but other than that there is no correlation.
This should be interesting to follow. They may have cut off the head of LulzSec but is this going to be like a hydra?
Certainly there are already other "LulzSec wannabes" out-there following in Sabu's wake.
I have split feelings about this. Lulzsec didn't do anything to directly harm my interests- although, theoretically they could have at any time- yet having rogue groups like LS was a threat to all people in one way or another. On the other hand- a world with no LulzSec would be a threat to us too. When governments can quickly lock down groups like this- government has too much power.
It is probably just and right that Sabu go to jail- but it's also good they couldn't catch him too quickly... if you understand what I mean.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
If it's the same Jeremy Hammond, he's a known item in Chicago for some time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Hammond
The talk page is interesting as well.
I find it endlessly hilarious that you're posting as an Anonymous Coward.
I wonder if they'll have as much success as Hercules.
Oh suuure. After all , companies were lining up to hire Mitnick after he came out of prison.
Not.
"What is the deal with those proxies anyway?"
Only people on the dole and school kids have time to do this shit, the rest of us have to earn an honest living.
A little bitter and prejudiced are we? No, it's not just kids that do this kind of thing. All that malware leeching away your personal data was not designed by teenagers or unemployed people. Software like that is often designed and used by people who are well-educated, often have jobs, and are otherwise just like you except for one minor detail: They think your working class ethos means dick, and they want to actually get ahead in the world rather than working for The Man forever and ever for crap health insurance and a shot at that extra $0.30 raise at the end of the year after using up their "generous" 11 days of vacation for the year... which also counts as their sick days... which means the average person spends their "vacation" being sick, and then gets written up and denied that $0.30 raise for taking too many days off. You might have heard of the most successful malware currently in use: It's called Facebook, and it's a scam that's become so popular that it has been incorporated and now has its own laison with the government (you know how much they hate competition in these kinds of things...)
I know Slashdot is in love with the idea of some lone samurai learning to hack in some temple somewhere, then bravely venturing forth fully versed in the art of code-fu, but it's just as fictional as those samurai movies: The overwhelming majority of people these days learn their trade on the job, or in school, and then they do this kind of stuff on the side. You just hear about the unemployed and school kids a lot more because (a) they're more likely to have deficits in their understanding of how to do this without getting caught and (b) if caught they're not going to be able to put up money for any kind of a legal defense.
No sane employer will want him within a mile of their systems.
You do realize that by denying people access to employment after their jail term has ended, you're leaving them only one option: Criminal activity, correct? The world of crime is a lot more amiable to a meritocracy than the corporate one; They don't try to hold onto weird beliefs like thinking how a person dresses is an indicator of potential, for example. It's just food for thought... not that I expect much thinking from you... you seem to be very narrow minded and prejudiced against the disadvantaged in general, so why would you ever stop and consider that maybe the problem is as much how we're treating them as their lack of ethics? Remember: You can't eat ethics. A very small number of people will be dicks just to be dicks, but the vast majority of people engage in unethical behavior because it has a benefit to them. That benefit is usually pretty basic too: Food, shelter, clothing, sex, etc. Of course, once they've gotten into the criminal world, it's hard to turn back because it's so goddamned profitable. So people wind up sticking a toe in the water and wind up getting pulled in deep. That's how it usually goes... no tricks, no arguments, no politics... just people who had some hard times, reached for the closest life preserver, and got sucked in.
We create the criminals when we allow social injustice.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Sadly, it really comes down to who you work for rather then what you are doing. If lulzsec was doing illegal work for politicians or government they would be fine. For that matter if they were doing it for profit to help a company that contracted them they would probably just get a slap on the wrist since many seem to feel that activism is less ethical then profit.. or more accurately, the more money you make the more acceptable it is.
The original link to the Fox News website is a little thin on details, but there's a bit more flesh here
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/03/06/exclusive-inside-lulzsec-mastermind-turns-on-his-minions/?intcmp=related
Because Americans are both passionate (a good and bad thing) and pretty bloodthirsty when it comes to punishment. Many people get a thrill out of the idea of someone getting tortured and/or raped, but we have a nice social 'out' that if the person is a 'bad guy' then it is ethically OK and there is nothing wrong with the person salivating at the idea. The whole 'it is not evil if your victim is evil!' is very convient.
One of his last tweet before the arrest:
"They read your mails. Listen to your calls. Break into your wireless routers+sniff your traffic. GPS cars. I'm not talking about terrorists." https://twitter.com/#!/anonymouSabu/status/176683665919721472
I guess he really knew what he was talking about.
Now that the world is safe from LulzSec, how about some cuffs for the real criminals and their official enablers who have free reign still to this day.
Banksters and officials who enabled them
Fast and Furious
Oath breakers of the US Constitution
Ought to be a full time job right there, no time to screw with medical cannabis, milk farmers, or guitar manufacturer's.,
The world of crime is a lot more amiable to a meritocracy than the corporate one; They don't try to hold onto weird beliefs like thinking how a person dresses is an indicator of potential, for example
And this is why you're a girl in training and not a banker in training.
All sophisticated crimes are confidence tricks. How you dress is a significant indicator of potential.
"Meritocracy" rarely has substantive meaning: it is usually applied when someone without full understanding of a hierarchy fails to appreciate the full set of qualities required of an individual. For example, loyalty in business to an "Old Boys' Club", guaranteeing that personal friends will further each others' interests, is far more important than e.g. who got the highest grade in some stupid aptitude test or who managed to increase profitability most at their previous job.
But it's fortunate that we don't have meritocracy, because it's a euphemism for "might makes right".
When Mitnick came out of prison he was out of the loop for a while so that's knid of an unfair comparison. Besides, Mitnick used his position to start his own company - and being a famous hacker is a damn good selling point. Still, in a strange twist he made awful decisions for his own company: http://www.2600.com/news/view/article/1531 . And if I was at all security related this is the first kind of person I'd be looking for. I mean think about it, who would you hire to do a security audit: someone who's broken into tons of systems or someone with an MCSE who took a weekend seminar about how to make IIS suck less?
You're making the assumption their activities have been interrupted.... hell this may just piss them off and increase their aggressiveness.
Like kicking a beehive.
Really? You would mod up someone who has absolutely no proof, has formed a jaded opinion off of various reports, nitpicking what they need to form their opinion, and then post it on slashdot on a news report that may kinda sorta support their crazy ass conspiracy?
Hmm.... I think I just came up with the internet conspiracy formula.... patent pending!!!
This is why any kind of Hacking intent should never be combined with monetary interests.
That is true, but since the source is Fox News (Rupert Mudoch), as another poster pointed out we need to take this with a huge dose of salt.
If, however, this should turn out to be true, I find it disturbing on so many levels. Is anyone reminded of 1984 at all? The government running an underground resistence organization, to attract and arrest "revolutionaries." I'm not a fan of lulzsec at all, but this story, if at all true, is one of the more overtly Orwellian things I've seen, and living in an age of Orwellian behavior, with western democracies perched on the precipice of right-wing fascism, the middle east largely given over to their brand of sectarian fascism, and authoritarianism on the rise in Russia, China, and elsewhere, that is saying a lot.
What is even more telling, is how blase people are about the idea of a countercultural "leader" inciting criminality and then handing those he's managed to influence over to the authorities for "processing." Too many of us don't even seem to know enough to be ashamed, or appalled, by this kind of thing, so few in fact, that the GOP mouthpiece is essentially bragging about using such methods to take down a group they've found so easy to demonize. A process made easier no doubt, if the story is true, by the very behavior their mole incited and coordinated in the first place. Agent provocateur on steriods.
If this turns out to be at all true, and if we were a healthy democracy, the "leader" and his handlers would be facing serious jailtime, while those incited into this behavior would see a blackmark on their record and probation, hopefully scared straight. But those days died out sometime in the early naughties, and things have only gone downhill from there.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Please sir, pray tell...how blatantly obvious do the powers that be have to make it to you that they are hardcore criminals before you will remove your head from the sand?
I am in no way defending LulzSec or anyone who commits crime for any reason. But if you honestly haven't learned yet that crime for corporate profit or expansion of government power is completely ignored while anyone who challenges the status quo is given life in Federal PMITA prison, you are naive and blissfully childish, and I only wish I could enjoy your blasé sense of morality.
Reading comprehension should be the next thing you learn about. They identified and arrested the guy and flipped him. The article even says that - he plead out and he became a confidential informant.
He turned his guys over to the feds in exchange for the lulz. No wait, not for the lulz, but for lesser punishment. As previously stated, anyone simply in it for the lulz is not to be trusted. We should expect them not to be trusted, and they should have expected themselves not to be trusted.
depending on which facts you choose to follow, the GP can be very correct. I wouldnt disparage someone for believing crazy ass conspiracies when we can watch bankers and wall street knowingly manipulate a system that causes massive harm, and the firms they work for get very minor punishments, while at the same time the FBI finds it enormously important to destroy a group because they embarrassed SONY.
Also I suspect he'll remain unemployed for a long time now whether he goes to jail or not. No sane employer will want him within a mile of their systems.
Yeah.
Kevin "Condor" Mitnick, Author, computer consultant
Kevin Poulson, News Editor, Wired
J-P Assange, no further intro needed. Sold rights to his memoirs for a cool mill.
Mark "Phiber Optik" Abene, successful security consultant
John "Captain Crunch" Draper, wrote EasyWriter for Apple while in jail, later jobs included CTO and company founder.
Sure, convicted black hats have no way to make a living.
from cnet.com, an alternate link:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20072906-17/lulzsec-suspect-arrested%20-in-u.k-reports-say
LulzSec suspect arrested in U.K., reports say
by Don Reisinger June 21, 2011 6:28 AM PDT
A 19-year-old U.K. man has been arrested on suspicion of hacking and online attacks, the U.K.'s Metropolitan Police announced this morning.
Last night's arrest was part of "a pre-planned intelligence-led operation" that also involved cooperation with the FBI, according to the Metropolitan Police. Following the arrest, the man was brought to a London police station where he is currently in custody for questioning.
Sky News reported early on that the teenager is the mastermind behind LulzSec, a prominent hacking group that has wreaked havoc on several companies and government organizations of late. However, the Metropolitan Police's e-Crime Unit stopped short of saying whether the man in custody might be connected to LulzSec.
"The arrest follows an investigation into network intrusions and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against a number of international business and intelligence agencies by what is believed to be the same hacking group," the Metropolitan Police said. "The teenager was arrested on suspicion of Computer Misuse Act, and Fraud Act offences."
For its part, LulzSec seemed bemused by the arrest, with a cheeky post to its Twitter account that it's still in operation.
"Seems the glorious leader of LulzSec got arrested," the group wrote on its Twitter account. "It all over now. Wait, we're all still here! Which poor bastard did they take down?"
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
the universe is conspiring to keep us stuck to this planet using an insidious technique we call "gravity." we have no proof of this. gravitons are still theoretical. relativity is still theoretical. but it's my opinion that we'll continue to be stuck to this planet for the foreseeable future. because there's a conspiracy. i hear a whoosh
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
Can't we cite a more respectable source for chrissakes?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17270822
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/03/06/hector-xavier-monsegur-fbi-lulzsec-arrests_n_1323638.html?ref=uk
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Fox News has it's brain washed followers.
CNN has it's brain washed followers.
Truly free and open minded people have the ability to watch both (and admit it), put the various pieces together and come up with their own opinion.
I myself like and hate both Fox and CNN. You on the other hand, if I had to guess, you're in with the CNN followers, but that's just my guess.
We should expect them not to be trusted, and they should have expected themselves not to be trusted.
But they knew I wouldn't trust them - they expected that - so clearly I cannot drink from the cup in front of me.
Disclaimer: Evolution comes with NO WARRANTY, except for the IMPLIED WARRANTY of FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
You get a 50% on this one. You have insight on the first half, then fall off a cliff.
No sane employer will want him within a mile of his systems. This is true. He showed blatant disregard for the law, leaked confidential information, and has international connections. While you are correct that taking away legal avenues leaves little other option, this does not in any way change the fact that no one will hire him for a lot of IT jobs. There is a small chance of getting on as a white hat, but this guy seems like a coordinator, not a skilled hacker type.
He can get hired, but not as someone who has direct access to systems. And then there is the stereotype of the unemployed. Know why people headhunt during an economic downturn instead of hiring the unemployed? Because if you had to trim your force, would you lay off your best people or your worst? This is a business practice, not a judgement on unemployed people, because entire divisions sometimes get riff'ed and the good workers get caught up. But if we were to take an objective view, without access to lots of private information, we can assume he was not a top notch worker, and shows more delegation skills than hands-on work. He would not do very well in a criminal meritocracy, statistically speaking. Well enough to have a very rough life, maybe.
The fact that he is cooperating demonstrates he can "play ball", and will most likely do whatever it takes to stay on the side of the law where he gets to keep his kids and out of jail. He got caught, he will be punished, and he will find work. This will be the moment he looks back on his life and decides either it made him a better person or ruined his life, depending on what *he* does with it. Society as a whole can't be blamed, only his local ecosystem. IF he has friends and family to keep him going, and can find a willing employer, he will come out okay. Social injustice won't come in to play here, I'm fairly certain of that.
It should be no surprise that he who pays the piper calls the tunes.
As long as we have the best government money can buy, we have to accept that they're bought and paid for. They are not corrupt as long as they stay bought.
Don't like it? Don't vote for a politician who is bought. Or buy your own politician.
You are absolutely right. These members of this actual LulzSec conspiracy have all been spirited away from their homes just before dawn by jackbooted thugs at gunpoint and are even now being tortured prior to execution in the basement dungeons of...oh, no, wait...that's total bollocks isn't it?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Copyright trolls have to jump in on torrents in order to mine the IP addresses, yet no prosecution of them. Proof enough?
I hate to break it to you, because you seem to be really enjoying wallowing in your cynicism, but if it were illegal, they'd be punished regardless of the circumstances. Now is it legal for the United States to conduct Cyber Warfare against another country? I am not sure.
The only powers of war lies with congress. The constitution tells us so.
So to get around this, don't call it a war. Vietnam started as a "police action". Similar with Iraq.
I can see things like bitcoin "challenging the status quo." Could you explain how defacing websites, breaking into systems, and releasing private information challenges the status quo?
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Just look at the policies and the laws and you will understand why crime is increasing among smart educated types.
Having skills will not produce a job. The problem is people who decide to go criminal would be better off trying to run a legit business but where are they going to get the money to start a business?
Ultimately unemployed geek types will have to start legit businesses. It's the only way. The illegal route leads to prison and even greater difficulty starting a legit business.
The more difficult it is for smart people to start legit businesses the more criminals and the smarter criminals are produced. If a person cannot ever land a legit job and wont ever be given the money to start a legit business what else can they do?
If they are smart they'll live on food stamps and move to a state with healthcare and figure out a way to make money without breaking the law but if they live in Texas or some backwards Republican town where people are being cut off unemployment I can't really blame them for what they do.
I never said it did.
But if the person in question happened to be working *for* a private corporate interest with an unlimited bank account or a government with unlimited bombs, his actions would have been summarily ignored by any and all relevant authorities. If he had happened to challenge the status quo in the process, it would just bring a harsher punishment.
As I said before, and will say again, I am in no way defending ANYONE who commits crime for ANY reason, but if someone hasn't learned by now that "some animals are more equal than others", they are naive and have their heads in the sand, and really need to start paying attention.
LulzSec was never more than a bunch of script kiddies with more ego than brains. I always figured they would crumble when they saw members being carried off in handcuffs. Betrayed by your leaders? Welcome to the real world, punks.
Would you characterize an atheist as one who denies the existence of god outright, or someone who, in the absence of proof, does not allow himself to accept the positive claims of others?
The former is an atheist. The latter is an agnostic. How, exactly, is this relevant though?
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Seriously, I am staring to think we need to bludgeon people with a copy of 1984 every time they make a stupid statement about something normal being "Orwellian."
This right here? How they do criminal investigations for criminal organizations. They locate someone involved, catch them committing a crime, arrest them, and then try to get them to turn state's evidence. They use that person to attempt to shut down the entire organization.
This is how they run mob cases and all that kind of shit. If you aren't aware of it, your ignorance is the problem. It is not "Orwellian".
Seriously I think some people on Slashdot are anarchists, they don't think the government should be allowed to enforce ANY laws. Of course then something will come up with a company doing something and they go all communist and demand that the government not so much enforce the law and just get extremely punitive on the company. To me that speaks of a very poor understanding of the concepts of justice and fairness.
If the choice boiled down to convicted felon or someone who did a MSCE certification course, I'd keep on looking.
"Prison is SUPPOSED to be unpleasent. What do you want , a holiday camp like in some "liberal progressive" (read: stupidly naive) european countries like sweden?"
Why is it that when opposition to jail-rape is discussed, an immediate accusation of wanting the accused to live a 'life of luxury' is made? I think we can prevent jail-rape without giving criminals daily massages and pedicures.
Frankly when we ALREADY have a government that has...1.-admitted to taking suspects on 'rendition rides" so they can torture them, 2.-waterboards, 3.-attempted to set up a false flag to take away your second amendment rights with "Fast & Furious" which led to dozens being murdered by guns provided by the US government to terrorists. 4.- Covered up child sex trafficking by a PMC that was trading 9 year old boys as party favors to seal deals and who had done the same trick in Kosovo a decade earlier with 11 year old girls.
Frankly I wouldn't trust the fucking United Snakes government to tell me its raining outside. If their own admitted actions aren't enough for you? Then I'm sorry but you are just too ignorant. Just the things they have admitted to should have caused several officials to be shot for treason if the laws of this country actually meant a damned thing anymore.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/03/06/sabu-lulzsec-betrayed-anonymous-hackers/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=status+message&utm_campaign=naked+security
“Sabu could be making millions of bucks heading the IT security department of a major company,” a law enforcement official said. “But look at him, he’s impoverished, living off public assistance and was forced between turning on his friends and spending a lifetime in jail.
Millions of bucks... IT security department
Millions of bucks
Millions
lol
Yeah right. That is disinformation and propaganda. If there were millions of bucks to be made doing that, many people have more skills than him and aren't ever going to make millions of bucks. That FBI guy who said that probably isn't making millions of bucks as FBI agents and law enforcement officers don't make millions of bucks. Someone who doesn't have a clue about how the industry works is talking about something they don't know anything about.
Sabu had some skill, enough skill to run an IT dept but that would only pay $80,000-100,000 and chances are they'd look at his resume and never even give him an interview. It wouldn't matter if he had skill or not since he probably doesn't have name recognition, a strong resume, or social networking to leverage.
If you think I'm sympathetitc to the individual- you're wrong. I'm not. They hurt a lot of people and caused a lot of damage. For the Lulz.
I'm sympathetic to the idea that I am glad it is still possible for civilians to be anonymous and be able to look in on some government activities without being immediately caught. It's scary that civilians can do this- it would be even scarier if they couldn't.
Law enforcement knows that there is a potential for them too to be targeted- and that has to give them the willies before allowing corruption... at least to a degree.
And that is what I am sympathetic towards.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
He stopped, collaborated, and listened!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
You do realize that those people you want to see brutalized and tortured in prison regardless of what their crime was are eventually going to get out of prison and be back on the street. With you. Are you sure you want that? Think about it for a second. I already know you have no empathy, but how's your sense of self-preservation? A society of enthusiastic torturers is a society with some seriously bad karma.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
'Lulzsec hackers' arrested in international swoop
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17270822
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Your mistake is in assuming (suggesting?) that CNN is an equal distance from the center as is Fox News. By any credible metric, such a comparison is laughable. Thanks for playing.
The problem with your comment is that you overlook important details.
Bankers have accountants and lawyers that provide cover for them in terms of actual criminal wrongdoing. That's why the bankers aren't being prosecuted yet, because it's hard to prove criminality rather than incompetence. It's not like people haven't been trying and the AG of NYS is still trying and will probably get them *for something* the same way we got Al Capone *for something* (, in his case, income tax evasion.
LULSEC is just outright breaking the law, no chaser. That's called "mooning the giant" in the business world. The giant is going to notice you and do something about you.
Do well connected companies do blackhat things for large contractors businesses and politicians? We all have the feeling that they do, but there has to be specific allegations and specific cases, not just a general feeling of corruption.
The child sex slavery incidents are usually a reference to Dyncorp, details on Wikipedia and here:
Cari Lynn titled The Whistleblower: Sex Trafficking, Military Contractors And One Woman's Fight For Justice.
In Bosnia, they had immunity from prosecution- itself a ridiculous notion but there it was.
In Afghanistan they were investigated but you have to pin crimes on individuals doing specific acts and this is not so easy.
But to your point, the greater reality seems to be this: not many companies do why Dyncorp and Xe do. When push comes to shove, the government feels it needs these companies to do things. Thus the immunity from prosecution clauses and thus the invigorous investigation (what no hidden cameras and months of undercover work???? ).
Don't like this state of affairs? Then do what I do and stop voting Republican. It was Rumsfeld under Bush who wanted to downsize the military to save costs (and upsize private contracting by a cost equal to , oh, ten times that amount or more) .
No one is starting a competitor to Xe or Dyncorp. For this reason alone, they should not exist- monopoly power on necessary services to the government on the government dime should never be permitted to exist. Government should perform the services that fit anything like that description.
You cry about the end results, but do you vote? Do you express anything like the concerns I expressed to your congresscritter? Once the gun is loaded and trigger is pulled, the bullet IS going to fly to its target. You have to stop the action before it gets to the point of inevitability. Permitting Xe and Dyncorp to exist in the capacity they do was ABSOLUTELY going to lead to just what we see here, along with the lackluster prosecution in the name of "the greater good" .
LULZSEC on the other hand were just a bunch of lawbreaking joyriders shoving their bare asses out their car window as they drove by the chief of police's house.
Just because there's an unsolved armed robbery in a town doesn't mean vandals aren't prosecuted anymore.
Maybe not Lulzsec, but Megaupload's Kim Dotcom was arrested in the conditions you described (helicopters and all) in the first half. As for the second half, look at what happens in Gitmo and other secret CIA prisons. Unless you're one of those people who think waterboarding is not torture.
Yes, one happend in Australia and the other in the States (Cuba technically). But Megaupload was done at the behest of the U.S. government and their industry cronies. Don't think that it couldn't happen here, in the land of the free and home of the brave.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
And it can be surprisingly effective, Canada's recidivism rate is 3% over the felon's lifetime while the U.S. rate is 66% in the first 3 years.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Its a good thing everyone in prison is guilty. Otherwise it might be immoral to grin and wink at the idea of prison rape. Oh wait...
Dipshit.
It made people realize just how shit the security at most companies is and that perhaps they shouldn't share their private information with them. It exposes a fair bit of criminality and general corporate and political evil. It gave us an insight into the inner workings of our corrupt law enforcement agencies and an idea of their true level of incompetence.
Above all it gave us hope that individuals can still fight back against the corruption and expose it. Manning is a hero but also an opportunist, Lulzsec proved that if needs be people can take the fight to them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Except that history has shown us that severity of punishment and restricting the rights of those accused and convicted doesn't really create less crime, but more and tends to concentrate it.
These guys underestimated the resources of the various law enforcement agencies ability to find them and vastly over estimated their own abilities to remain hidden.
We have transitioned to a digital age and a lot of our existing laws were not written for this type of environment. New laws are being formulated, old laws are being modified or held inapplicable but it doesn't happen overnight. One of the most glaring examples is the law against receiving stolen property. If I steal a car and give it to you and you take it knowing I stole it you have broken the law. If I illegaly download data from a computer system and give it to you is that still breaking the law? If it is against the law would a site like Wiki leaks be guilty of accepting stolen property? If I gave a car to someone it would have to be registered and licensed which usually requires some proof of prior ownership or transfer of ownership documentation to happen. Would a site like Wiki leaks need to obtain proof that the information given to them was not stolen by requiring some type of notarized release? I don't know the answer and it seems people are not against criminalizing illegal data theft if they approve of the content and are for criminalizing the act if they have a problem with the content. If it is government data that's good but if someone hacks into a corporate banking system and releases my personal banking information it is bad. You can't have it both ways.
This is where you're wrong. The justice system isn't meant to dole out punishment. It's meant to deliver justice. That's why we have (what's supposed to be) impartial judges and a jury of our peers.
Punishment is the result of the justice system, but it's not the purpose. The purpose of the justice system is to right the wrongs of society. It is to identify the elements in society that need fixing and to fix it.
You set rules to put a value on each criminal act (robbery will cost you 5 years). It doesn't prohibit the act, but discourages it. No sane, productive member of society would want to risk 5 years of life just for a few hundred bucks or less. You permanently lock away the most henious criminals not because the crime they committed is henious, but because they will continue to pose a danger to the rest of society. It is unfortunate, but necessary.
What you advocate--the death penalty, lengthy prison terms--is vengance, not justice. It is because of your mentality that the justice system is becoming more of a vehicle for revenge than for any actual justice. Vengence helps no one and only hurts society. It makes criminals, and encourages crime. Because hey, if you're going to do 20 years for stealing some passwords or credit cards for fun, might as well go rape and kill and go wild before you get caught.
The system is failing those who need it most because of people like you, who think like you do. I do not want to be around to see it collapse completely.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Personally, I just watch the daily show. I probably won't be any better informed, but since it's entertaining I at least get SOMETHING out of the time. Arguably, since the DIS-information in the Daily Show is made deliberately obvious, I do end up somewhat better informed since I am at least not DIS-informed.
Actual information tends to come form various nearly random places on the web.
if you honestly haven't learned yet that crime for corporate profit or expansion of government power is completely ignored while anyone who challenges the status quo is given life in Federal PMITA prison
"Completely ignored", really? I find that this level of hyperbole detracts from one's credibility, and that's a shame because I agree with your underlying concerns. Honest question: are you aware that there have been an increasing number of successful prosecutions for fraud in the financial sector, particularly insider trading? It just doesn't make great news copy, so maybe it's been off your radar. Even the Raj Rajaratnam case, as major as it was, didn't get all that much coverage.
Is every guilty & corrupt person currently at risk of arrest? Of course not. But it is actually a rather difficult process to investigate and prosecute these kinds of crimes. It requires a lot of resources, expertise, time, and taxpayer money. I get the sense that you'd be very troubled to see the expansion of the justice department that would be necessary to obtain a higher rate of successful prosecution.
According to Wikipedia, some progress has been made in this case, with over a dozen people arrested and charged. I'll grant that they have not been convicted, but most of them have only been arrested recently. We'll just have to see if anyone actually gets convicted, and, furthermore, how many of them turn out to be influential and powerful.
Both are atheists. "Agnostic" was a term coined by a man who admitted that the term "atheist" applied to him but didn't want to be lumped in with other people the term also applied to.
[citation needed]
atheist - a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.
agnostic - a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience.
When I reached intellectual maturity and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; Christian or a freethinker; I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until, at last, I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain "gnosis,"–had, more or less successfully, solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of "agnostic." It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the "gnostic" of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant. To my great satisfaction the term took. - Huxley, Thomas. Collected Essays. pp. 237–239. ISBN 1-85506-922-9 (via Wikipedia).
Also, prison does not have to be unpleasant. In theory, prison can serve both its public safety role --keeping violent criminals away from innocent people-- and (don't laugh) its rehabilitation role without also being intentionally punitive.
It's a common belief that justice = making a guilty party suffer in kind, but that is *exactly* the mentality that turns prisons into nothing more than graduate school for criminals.
Technically, guantanamo is in US, not Cuba. Generally speaking its on the Cuban island, but if you want to be technical, please specify that it is US.
No, if you want to be technical, it's Cuban.
United States leases the Guantanamo Bay base area from Cuba. It's under US jurisdiction, but Cuban souvereignty.
That it's not on US soil is precisely what Donald Rushfeldt used as a sleazeball argument for bypassing US laws.
Rape is considered cruel and unusual punishment - which is in the constitution that you hard liner conservatives love to quote but never seem to understand in full.
When you think about the costs of simple incarceration, without the rape and beatings and so forth thrown in, it's pretty high.
One loses one's family, in many cases, one's possessions (can't take care of them); one loses one's future possibilities, and one loses time that can never be regained.
And you want to throw ass rape on top of it?
Check your premises.
You're a gnostic atheist. I, who don't believe in the non-existance of god(s), am a agnostic atheist.
Here's a nice diagram and explanation: http://freethinker.co.uk/2009/09/25/8419/
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No. A gnostic atheist is someone who says "there are no god(s)".
An agnostic atheist is someone who says "I don't believe in gods, but I can't assert their non-existance either".
Then there are the ignosticists, who say "before I answer, define 'god'."
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I guess it depends on what kind of information is released. Just putting out wads of credit card data of anyone they can find is not really a tactic that would gain sympathy or can be morally justified. Putting out documents to prove corruption and abuse of taxmoney or violation of basic rights is imo entirely justified even if it need breaking into whatever. I get the impression these loosely organised collectives arent organised at all. The first rule is that you shouldn't know too many people by name or personal within the organization if you intend to do stuff like that. You can't give up what you don't know. They should have done their homework. I read about other 'crackdowns' where one of the key figures was in fact working for a government agency and had infiltrated by committing various crimes themselves. The end and the means and all that. I hope the remainders learn their lesson from this.
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?