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Jeremy Hammond of LulzSec Pleads Guilty To Stratfor Attack
eldavojohn writes "After facing 30 years to life imprisonment and pleading not guilty to charges last year, Jeremy Hammond has pleaded guilty to his alleged involvement in Anonymous' hacking of Stratfor. The self proclaimed hacktivist member of LulzSec, who has compared his situation to that of the late Aaron Swartz, explained his reasoning in his plea: 'Today I pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. This was a very difficult decision. I hope this statement will explain my reasoning. I believe in the power of the truth. In keeping with that, I do not want to hide what I did or to shy away from my actions. This non-cooperating plea agreement frees me to tell the world what I did and why, without exposing any tactics or information to the government and without jeopardizing the lives and well-being of other activists on and offline. During the past 15 months I have been relatively quiet about the specifics of my case as I worked with my lawyers to review the discovery and figure out the best legal strategy. There were numerous problems with the government's case, including the credibility of FBI informant Hector Monsegur. However, because prosecutors stacked the charges with inflated damages figures, I was looking at a sentencing guideline range of over 30 years if I lost at trial. I have wonderful lawyers and an amazing community of people on the outside who support me. None of that changes the fact that I was likely to lose at trial. But, even if I was found not guilty at trial, the government claimed that there were eight other outstanding indictments against me from jurisdictions scattered throughout the country. If I had won this trial I would likely have been shipped across the country to face new but similar charges in a different district. The process might have repeated indefinitely. ... I did what I believe is right.'"
Charge someone that you know is guilty of one thing with a ridiculous array of charges that you know he is not guilty of, on the chance that he'll take your plea "deal" and avoid the possibility of being convicted (wrongly) on the BS charges.
Sounds rather like patent trolling.
" the government claimed that there were eight other outstanding indictments against me from jurisdictions scattered throughout the country"
How can they claim this without giving the person a list?
The more I read about what these guys were doing--and I mean the stuff they've admitted to, not just been accused of--the more I think they are getting what they deserve. Breaking into someone's network to get at information that the public should know is political. Breaking into someones network and racking up charges on personal credit card numbers is criminal. They're like the idiots that smash store windows during street protests.
Unlike the LulzSec crew, Swartz was not politically motivated and did not do anything "black hat". Comparing the two sets of CFAA charges are like comparing someone who got a speeding ticket to someone who got a DUI, since they're both moving violations.
I do have to point out that his statement is rather blatently self-justification and self-serving. Yes, indeed, he sounds like a sweet-well intentioned innocent, and the evil government is the villain, when he tells the story.
The more I read about what these guys were doing--and I mean the stuff they've admitted to, not just been accused of--the more I think they are getting what they deserve. Breaking into someone's network to get at information that the public should know is political. Breaking into someones network and racking up charges on personal credit card numbers is criminal. They're like the idiots that smash store windows during street protests.
I agree they are not the good guys. But I also think it's important to mete out justice based on who was doing what. I hope in street protests when windows are smashed that the vandals are correctly identified and brought to justice. Similarly, I hope they find who are responsible for the credit card thefts but it appears Hammond is not and there are reports he did not benefit personally from this intrusion:
Barrett Brown of Dallas, Texas is expected to stand trial starting this September for a number of charges, including one relating to the release of Stratfor subscribers’ credit card numbers. He faces a maximum of 100 years in prison.
More here.
My work here is dung.
I wonder when Stratfor is going to be prosecuted for engaging in corporate espionage? Never, because most Fortune 500 companies and government intelligence agencies rely on this private corporation to know what is going on in the world. Can we say "too big to fail?"
sudo make me a sandwich
Breaking into someone's network to get at information that the public should know is political
Who decides what the public should know? You? What makes you special? The perp in this case? Why does he get to decide?
You can't break the law just because you think you know better than the law.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So, inflating charges is one thing, but I guess I have a much bigger problem with the idea that the government can buffer some of the inflated charges for later and keep you in a state of permanently accused and tried. I've heard of this for serial killers, where they only bring 1/2 of the cases in one block in case they don't get the conviction or the convict is released at a later date. I have no clue how you address this, but it sounds like a horrible precedent. A really unscrupulous DA could trickle out charges one at a time and keep you in court for life for all kinds of offenses.
Slightly OT, but I just watched a movie called American Violet about disreputable DAs in Texas who were piling on charges with sometimes innocent poor people, getting them to plead out under the threat of YEARS in prison, then collecting money from the Feds for successful drug convictions.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Taking Hammond's crime, his criminal history, his messed-up psychology, and the altruistic component of his motivation all into account. . . this looks like a fair resolution to me.
I hope Hammond learns his lesson THIS time. I feel sorry for him, he's really smart and really a moron at the same time. He could to a lot working within the law.
Feds could've ripped his guts out. Maybe THIS federal prosecutor thinks a little more about justice and a little bit less about winning.
Hacktivism is OK as long as you are on the right side of the dictatorship.
it's more than that: it's actually a criminal offense, known in the U.S. as "Assault by Lawyer". if you repeatedly sue someone, for example, such that they are made bankrupt by the legal fees of doing nothing more than defending themselves, it's actually a criminal offense. could someone please get word to this guy's legal team about this please?
I briefly conflated "Jeremy" and "Hammond" to mean two of the Top Gear presenters, and I almost had a heart attack. I really need to stop watching that show...
Actually, slashdot is overwhelmingly populated by dysfunctionally ignorant twats. Luckily, not all of them are self-righteously obtuse like you.
30 years though? I could go into a 7-11 - shoot the clerk and rob the store and get less time.
Well, 30 years is the maximum, not necessarily what would be imposed.
However, since this is, if I'm counting right, his fourth offense-- I'm not even sure he was off probation for his previous break-in-- and his statement, which didn't include anything even remotely like "I'm sorry and won't do it again," will almost certainly be entered as evidence in his sentencing hearing, he may get something rather on the higher side than the lower side.
But in communist Russ^H^H^H^HChina, the government rewards you for hacking American networks!
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
... there be laws against fabricating problems for profit that otherwise would not exist?
Exposing such should not be criminal, but honored and rewarded.
As others have said, if a lot of the charges were indeed bogus, a defense attorney should have been able to get them thrown out.
If they are bogus they should not be there in the first place, according to a thousand years of western law it is not ok to throw "bogus" legal obstacles and distractions at the (presumed innocent) defendant.
A significant part of the problem is that (US) prosecutors are judged by the number of convictions they obtain rather than the quality of the charges they lay. When implemented this becomes pile up 10 charges, plea bargain guilty for one, bingo another brownie point on the prosecutors score card, collect enough points and you are moved up a rung on the judicial career ladder..
The US simply takes plea bargaining to the extreme and turns it into plea bulling, in the same way Fred Phelps takes free speech to the extreme and turns it into harassment. Other nations seem to be able to (largely) avoid plea bullying whilst still leaving the option of a plea bargain open to the defendant.
US law is firmly rooted in English common law and yet a random person in the UK (or indeed all of the EU) is ~7X less likely to be incarcerated, and the figures don't look that much better when comparing the US to China. The main reason for the imbalance is that the US has 500K prisoners from the drug war alone, the EU with nearly twice the population has a total of 600K prisoners for ALL crimes.
There is no sane explanation for these glaring differences other than "culture".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Steal $1000 and you're a criminal. Steal $1B and you're a business leader.
Oh, since things are worse other places we should just shut up and not fix the issues we have here? Clearly the most rational approach is to let our little solvable problems turn into huge intractable problems before even start trying to address them.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
They broke into a company that was handling credit card transactions and was poorly secured. Stratfor would have done well to invest in some decent sysadmins years ago.
Even worse, in their eyes, Stratfor had discounted Barrett Brown and the claim that anonymous would bring down the Mexican cartels as wishful thinking fantasy (which it indeed was).
Then, they found all sorts of "spook speak" in emails and convinced themselves that they had found their way into something more secret than the CIA, NSA, DEVGRU and Spetznatz combined.
They probably talked back and forth, and how important it was went up each time they talked about it.
They harvested a bunch of credit card data, password hashes, etc, and posted it. Boom, a bunch of bogus charges were made on them. Big surprise.
Then, they told a tale about how the emails they found were going to be a bombshell that would make the Wikileaks diplomatic cables leak look tame.
A lot of the emails were the same sort of innuendo, opinion and unsubstantiated rumors that a lot of journalists have to sift through.
And, no surprise again, even that turned out to be a damp squib. About the most they got is that the Stratfor source ME1 may be Hilal Kashan, someone that every Mideast journalist in existence uses as a source. Big, hairy deal.
But, after very little came of it, some are still claiming that it identified Elvis and JFK along with which 7-11 they're working at. "Just wait till we release more."
If I want that level of information I can go by Above Top Secret or such.
So after all the hoorah, it seems they broke into a not so secret as they thought, web site and committed a not so serious as the feds portrayed it, crime.
Can we all go back to something important like wondering what the naked Natalie Portman statue will look like?
It turns out that you just can't fix stupid.
There are simply some people who think of themselves as Robin Hoods and think they are justified in any crimes they commit... and when they think they are "right" and "justified" they then see no reason to hide from potential friends/followers/supporters. The masks they wear (in this case, internet names) are only intended to protect their identity from the authorities, whom they presume are dumber than they, their friends, and their supporters are. It's a poor form of narcissism. Luckily, most criminals are stupid and eventually screw-up while presuming themselves superior.
A common jail house saying that all criminal hackers should ponder.
As noted here earlier this month, three young hackers in Britain convicted of similar charges relating to the Stratfor hack received sentences that pale in comparison to what Hammond faces and highlight the U.S.’ overreach when it comes to cybercrime prosecutions. The longest sentence handed down in the U.K. cases carried a maximum of 15 months jail time. Meanwhile, as Hammond expressed in a statement Tuesday, he could have faced 30 years in prison were he to have been found guilty at trial. His supporters and legal team are now asking his presiding judge to hand down a sentence far less harsh than the possible 10 years his plea agreement can carry.
Uhm. How is this overreach?
This is NOT his first CFAA violation. He did 2 years in federal lockup previously for THE EXACT SAME CRIME several years back?
Worse, he started this little shindig while still on parole from the first offense!
Not to mention other convictions for assault and battery, theft, assaulting a police officer, etc.
This guy isn't a hero. He's not a crusader. He's not a moral compass. Hell, he hasn't actually even done anything ORIGINAL. His basic idea, steal a bunch of credit cards and donate to liberal causes? Hello? Sneakers?
He's a glory hound with delusions of grandeur.
The whole reason he got ID'ed for this was he HAD to drop his "cred" about his past endeavors. All he had to do was STFU. And he was constitutionally incapable of that.
I've met this guy. I've had dealings with this guy in a social setting for a couple years.
He can be very likable when he wants to.
But when he doesn't get his way, he's absolutely toxic.
People as "why doesn't the government recruit him!".
He's not a hacker. He's a one-trick pony. He's a script kiddie who happens to be better than average with someone else's tools.
This is the same guy who went to a zero-day security newsgroup and exhorted the regulars to hold back the "best stuff" for themselves. So they could "look like gods" to all the up and coming hackers...
Cue gales of derisive laughter.
Here's his talk at DefCon '04 about "Electronic Civil Disobedience". Basically it was "break shit of people you don't agree with, just to break shit". And he hasn't moved on from this. Ever.
Jeremy Hammond does NOT need lenience at this point. He needs a more lengthy incarceration and some intensive psychological therapy to relive his attention-seeking, destructive tendencies.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Reading about all these news about :-
Recently, Anonymous decided to target the English Defense League by publishing the personal details of its members online, in the wake of that group's protests over the Woolwich jihad murder. I'm a South Asian myself, and I find that Anonymous' blatantly sectarian political bias puts them outside of the realm of social justice. They're just a bunch of Left-wing punks with their own glaring ethnic biases coupled with crooked vigilanteism.
Bad taste but it is in their name...
The original Boston Tea Party took place in an environment where the nation's founders had published a great deal of information (you seem under the impression that they were vague about the issues)
No no, far from it. I'm aware that the press was important to the nations founders. What I was pointing out is that with the media today, any message longer than a tweet gets distorted or outright ignored. Perhaps OWS made some PR missteps, but they did have a message that was comparable to the message of the boston tea party. There are several important differences of course, but I'm saying one of them was that the media in that day had an attention span that it does not today. Thus, the boston tea party's message was recieved, while OWS's was not (at least in part).
They did NOT destroy the tea after innocent shopkeepers bought it and brought it into their shops. They did not rampage through the streets smashing windows and burning shops and, oh just by accident stuffing their pockets with merchandise... and the biggest difference is that they were in a revolutionary struggle to throw-off a government that taxed them without allowing them fair representation. There are no pictures or accounts of Tea Partiers pooping on police horses...
You're suggesting that the revolutionaries were all perfectly behaved? My opinion is that you hear less about misbehavior from the revolutionaries largely because they didn't have camera phones back then, and also that those who win write history as they see fit. I'm sure if you found a paper with a Tory bias, they'd highlight misbehavior as bad as you see with the OWS.
Moreover, you shouldn't judge a movement by the actions of a few. Remember that many of our founding fathers were slave owners. I'd much rather our country had been born of men who pooped all over police horses than slave owners. But it wasn't, and the fact that our country was founded by slave owners doesn't mean the whole thing was rotten.
Are the "occupy Wall Street" groups trying to throw-off the US government because it unfairly taxes them while not allowing them to vote for representation? To me, they mostly looked like freeloaders looking to get representation without taxation (for themselves) and taxation without representation (for corporations and everybody else).... the opposite of our founders. Oh, and the photo of the "occupier" pooping on a cop car is the perfect symbol of the "movement"...
How about you read some of the press statements they've made about their intentions? It sounds to me like you've only listened to pundits whining about how gross these hippies are. You have the internet, google "Are the "occupy Wall Street" groups trying to throw-off the US government because it unfairly taxes them while not allowing them to vote for representation?" It's quite hypocritical to say I'm oversimplifying the boston tea party and ignoring their statements (which, again, I wasn't doing) while you oversimplify the OWS.