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Stratfor Hacker Could Be Sentenced to Life, Says Judge
dgharmon writes with this excerpt from rt.com: "A pretrial hearing in the case against accused LulzSec hacker Jeremy Hammond this week ended with the 27-year-old Chicago man being told he could be sentenced to life in prison for compromising the computers of Stratfor. Judge Loretta Preska told Hammond in a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday that he could be sentenced to serve anywhere from 360 months-to-life if convicted on all charges relating to last year's hack of Strategic Forecasting, or Stratfor, a global intelligence company whose servers were infiltrated by an offshoot of the hacktivist collective Anonymous. Hammond is not likely to take the stand until next year, but so far has been imprisoned for eight months without trial. Legal proceedings in the case might soon be called into question, however, after it's been revealed that Judge Preska's husband was a victim of the Stratfor hack."
8 months with no trial has completely violated his constitutional rights, therefore the state should not be able to charge him.
Why should the sentence be any different than the very same crime committed in meat space.
His crime is taking advantage of poor security to gain access. This would be the same as kicking in a flimsy door to gain physical access.
Murderers don't always receive life sentences. I wasn't aware the "life" of a corporation was more important than the rest of us.
meanwhile rapists and murders get off in 5-10
truly is a corporate run government.
and get bailed out. Maker some intelligence company look like chumps and get life in prison. I know its the states but what happened to the punishment should fit the crime?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Crabtree notes that Hammond ... has also since been added to a terrorist watch list.
So hacking into a Corporation will now get you labelled as a Terrorist and could land you life in prison.
Seems that being a plain ol' armed robber and/or murderer would net you far less severe a punishment.
Seems that if a crime happens on the internet, the punishment is automatically increased 10 fold from it's brick and mortar counter-parts.
Oh I murdered a couple of families on the eastern seaboard, luckily all I got was life. You?
I uh..hacked a computer network..
Aw Frell this
It is almost universal that the defendant waives their right to a speedy trial on the advice of their attorney. Otherwise, their attorney would have to put on a defense far sooner that they would be ready.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
You sir are simply a sadist.
Even without experiencing the horrible torture you propose, you are already as cruel and depraved as if you had.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Corporations are virtual entitty. He tried to fuck with "priveledged" people, so he must be severely punished in order to demonstrate the power to other peasants. Sending a message is more important than any peasents' business.
And I'm not being sarcastic.
360 months (30 years) to life? Who the fuck has seen the inside of a jail cell, for any of the numerous unending scandals behind the financial crisis, that have impoverished and will impoverish many more people still? Who has seen the inside of a jail cell for engaging in war crimes, in a war of aggression, that after WWII was enshrined as one of the principle most evil acts a country can undertake? Who has seen the inside of a jail cell, for illegally spying on their citizenry, or for sanctioning that? For murdering other countries citizens (and even some of their own) in drone strikes?
Fuck off with this utter bullshit; this guy was caught and should spend time in prison for what he did, but the length of the sentence they are going after is hideously gratuitous; this is the totally unaccountable elite trying to make an example out of someone, for giving enough of a shit to fight back, and reveal information that embarrasses that elite.
I don't pretend that this guy or Anonymous in general work with noble intentions, it's plainly obvious many of them do it just because they like the attention and drama of high-profile hacks, and useful information gained is often incidental, but there's a lot to be said for the civil disobedience aspect of these attacks on establishment institutions; much of the information gained from Stratfor provided a valuable service to the public interest, and this guys attack should be treated as an act of civil disobedience, meriting the same level of outrage defense, of someone getting a similarly gratuitous sentence for trespassing while protesting.
This is a government that already massively invades everyones privacy through surveillance, and is trying to gratuitously expand their attacks on peoples privacy through massive expansions on monitoring the whole Internet in the US, with the legal ability to invade anyones online and personal lives.
If they're going to try and invade peoples privacy to such a huge degree, people should fucking fight back and legitimize digging dirt on government and connected establishment institutions through hacking, as an act of civil disobedience; if they want to invade peoples privacy and lives, but try to remain opaque and unaccountable, people should fucking well force transparency onto them, and be ready to face the legal consequences, and defend those that get caught up in gratuitous cases such as these.
People who actively commit criminal acts are not "political prisoners"
Political prisoners get jailed for saying or writing things the government does not like; they are jailed for having and/or promoting the "wrong" political views
Nasty, foul, obnoxious twits do not get to commit crimes against other citizens and lawful businesses they do not like and then claim to be political prisoners when arrested By the standards of this guy's supporters, I guess a cop who beats somebody up and then gets prosecuted would be an innocent political prisoner, right? I guess the American guards who were prosecuted for abusing prisoners at the Iraqi prison were, themselves, political prisoners right? If Mitt Romney is angry at Democrats after the election and decides to get revenge by robbing a store run by a Democrat or burning-down Democrat part headquarters and he is caught and prosecuted, does he become a "political prisoner"? In the real world, the answer would be "no" he would just be another criminal... but in lefty-world he apparently would be (but only if he was a liberal and had attacked something he thought was right-wing).
If the politics of the StratFor hack were reversed... if this was some right-wing "hacktivist" and he had gone-after things like move-on or daily Kos, or maybe some entity that was part of the Obama campaign's internet activity would you be on his side and calling him a political prisoner? I'd bet more than a nickel that you'd be calling for his execution. You know, there were once some "hactivists" who broke into a Democrat office to try to pry loose some dirty hidden secrets... it was called "Watergate" and the left in the US still hisses about it... people on both the left AND the right called for jail time for the crooks (who did indeed go to jail). Yeah, Nixon never went to jail, but there was no evidence he ordered the break-in or knew about it before it happened... his crimes were the political ones of trying to cover it up and he paid the political price of being driven from office and having his reputation destroyed...but that's a separate issue... his "hacktivists" who broke into a "site" run by people whose politics they opposed were, irrespective of their politics or political motivations, just plain crooks... same as this jerk
If Jeremy Hammond actually did commit the crimes of which he is accused (and remember he is legally entitled to the presumption of innocence), then he deserves to be punished. But it's very difficult to think of any situation where life in prison would be appropriate for what is basically a small-scale hack of the type that happens dozens if not hundreds of times every day. Stratfor is a company with 70 employees. The local library where I work has more employees than that, and probably more patrons than Stratfor has customers. If someone hacked our databases, do you think the authorities would investigate the complaint as seriously, much less try to sentence the hacker to life in prison? If someone hacked into the poorly-secured credit card data from a small restaurant and did the same amount of damage, would the authorities be treating him or her as Public Enemy No. 1? It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Hammond is being pursued with such vigor not because he broke the law, but because he committed offenses against politically powerful people, the clientele of Stratfor. (According to Wikipedia, "the company's publicity list includes Fortune 500 companies and international government agencies.") While this may not be surprising, it's a clear violation of the Constitution and needs to be fought against.