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Anonymous Warhead Targets US Sentencing Commission
theodp writes "Late Friday, Violet Blue reports, the U.S. Sentencing Commission website was hacked and government files distributed by Anonymous in 'Operation Last Resort.' The U.S. Sentencing Commission sets guidelines for sentencing in United States Federal courts, and on the defaced ussc.gov website Anonymous cited the recent suicide of Aaron Swartz as 'a line that has been crossed.' Calling the launch of its new campaign a "warhead," Anonymous vowed, 'This time there will be change, or there will be chaos.'"
Adds reader emil: "Anonymous has not specified exactly what files they have obtained. The various files were named after Supreme Court judges. At a regular interval commencing today, Anonymous will choose one media outlet and supply them with heavily redacted partial contents."
Idea: let's give in to what they want. Bow deeply and honestly, and maybe they might forgive us our sins. What could possibly go wrong? After all, these attacks would certainly cease.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I'm not gonna go into whether or not this "warhead" business is a good idea. It's probably not, since it wouldn't be what Aaron Swartz himself would. He would have made a lot of noise and brought public attention had he been able to cope, but defacements were beneath him. Also, it's likely just dirt courtesy of WikiLeaks.
But whatever hope anyone had about restoring that term to what it was just went up in a flame of digital smoke.
If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
Methinks this is more hoax than serious threat. I checked Google's cache of the vandalized USSC site and found the instruction to create the "Warhead" file near the bottom of the page:
$ cat Scalia* Kennedy* Thomas* Ginsburg* Breyer* Roberts* Alito* Sotomayor* Kagan* > Warhead-US-DOJ-LEA-2013.aes256 && rm -rf /
Anonymous will choose one media outlet and supply them with heavily redacted partial contents.
Well, that's one way to get the word out -- but word to the wise, going upstairs and showing your mom doesn't count as a "media outlet."
Breakfast served all day!
What I understood is that the redacted versions will be sent out piecemeal to news outlets, while the full reveal will happen later "if demands are not met."
Here we go again. Stop posturing and just publish the documents. As appealing as fighting for justice and equality, this grand standing and attempt to use "secret" information to extract concession is at best juvenile, at worst a power game. Neither of which serves to advance justice and equality.
If there is information pertinent to illegal or unethical government action. Just publish it and let the public judge for themselves. Otherwise, how is the blackmail strategy of Anonymous different from that of our governments.
This is typical of Anonymous's "hacktivism". The problems with federal prosecutor over reach has been a problem for decades, but Anonymous didn't care at all about it until it impacted one of their own. And even now they're focussed purely on retaliating over someone who can't be helped rather than trying to get publicity for the thousands of other (mostly poor and minority) people out there right now being victimized just the same way.
And to top it all off, the organization they decide to attack is the USSC, one of the few parts of the government that actually been an ally on this issue (for example, by criticizing the way drug sentencing is biased against minorities).
Everyone will argue whether this is a good idea, whether we should "work within the system", whether this is something that Aaron would have done, "ballot box, soapbox, ammo box", and so on. The arguments are patently obvious, and not particularly new or innovative. We've heard it all before, here and elsewhere.
The federal government has always been toxic to the citizenry, and it seems like in recent years the level of malevolence and spite from the people in charge have reached critical levels. Like a pot of superheated water, a nucleating agent will make the whole thing flash to steam.
Efforts to fix the problem from within have failed. The system is flexible enough that it will change to prevent any attempts to fix it. People have been trying for years, to no avail. (People have voted for smaller government, less war, and human rights for decades - how has that worked out?)
Most of what we depend on for civilization does not come from the federal government. The protections of law, community services, even many entitlements are run at the state level. We could do away with the federal government almost entirely and everyday life would continue uninterrupted.
(Would anyone notice if suddenly we no longer had a war on drugs, no searches at airports, no wars fought on foreign soil, no foreign military bases? Could we just dispense with all military and discretionary spending, leaving social security, medicare, and VA benefits intact? Who would attack us if we didn't have a military? How much would productivity increase if instead of paying to keep people in prison, we freed people to become taxpayers?)
People are losing faith in the government. At some point, government is no longer an asset to the people, but a tumor which must be attacked and destroyed.
If you dislike the tactics Anonymous are using, then by all means show us your alternative.
Otherwise, outright hostility towards the federal government will increase and people will eventually realize that having no federal government is better than what we have now.
At that point it will all come tumbling down - very quickly.
All it takes is a spark, a nucleating incident, or a viral video.
States? States have nothing to do with this. Believe it or not, states are not some all powerful entity bravely feuding with the federal government over peculiar institutions.
The US Sentencing Commission was intended to standardize federal prison sentences, so that persons who committed similar federal crimes ended serving similar sentences, regardless of which district judge or parole board they appeared before.
Stith, Kate and Koh, Steve Y., "The Politics of Sentencing Reform: The Legislative History of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines" (1993). Faculty Scholarship Series. Paper 1273.
it's fair in that it's consistent, but it's unfair in that it may not be wise. Like most Bureacracies, it's a triumph of mediocrity over the capriciousness of individual persons.
Indeed. The typical tactic is 'play for time, until the sniper gets into position.'
Remember, the people they are playing against do not believe in any rules: they cheat, and will never stop; there is no reasoning with them, and every ploy is singularly meant to further their own ends. Or do we have some true believes in the crowd, who think that politicians & friends, against every shred of evidence, will not cheat given the opportunity?
Remember, this is a government which was not afraid to set up its own version of concentration camps (the Japanese war camps), and is not afraid at all to experiment on its own people (the Syphilis and radiation experiments). It is also a government which employs the best of orators and spin-doctors to achieve its own ends. In short, if we judge it by its own laws, it's a maverick government; essentially a loose cannon.
I am John Hurt.
We, the government, have decided to detain all Slashdot users with a uid greater than 500,000; please report to the nearest camp.
The treatment they received is besides the point; the point being they were American citizens, whose only crime was to be of children or grandchildren of Japanese inmigrants.
Yes, they were not exterminated but it was a racist action, and in that way, the two are comparable.
Now, think how much worse the treatment could have gotten if the war was lost or if it looked that way to the powers that be...
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. - Cardinal Wolsey