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Bradley Manning and the 'Hacker Madness' Scare Tactic
New submitter wabrandsma sends this excerpt from New Scientist:
"The Bradley Manning case continues a trend of government prosecutions that use familiarity with digital tools and knowledge of computers as a scare tactic and a basis for obtaining grossly disproportionate and unfair punishments, strategies enabled by broad, vague laws like the CFAA and the Espionage Act. Let's call this the 'hacker madness' strategy. Using it, the prosecution portrays actions taken by someone using a computer as more dangerous or scary than they actually are by highlighting the digital tools used to a nontechnical or even technophobic judge. ... We've seen this trick before. In a case that we at the Electronic Frontier Foundation handled in 2009, Boston College police used the fact that our client worked on a Linux operating system with "a black screen with white font" as part of a basis for a search warrant. Luckily the Massachusetts Supreme Court tossed out the warrant after EFF got involved, but who knows what would have happened had we not been there. And happily, Oracle got a big surprise when it tried a similar trick in Oracle v. Google and discovered that the judge was a programmer who sharply called them on it."
... the prosecution portrays actions taken by someone using a computer as more dangerous or scary than they actually are by highlighting the digital tools used to a nontechnical or even technophobic judge. ... We've seen this trick before. In a case that we at the Electronic Frontier Foundation handled in 2009 ...
I wonder what Kevin Mitnick would have to say about this revelation as news.
... simply to avoid admitting ignorance.
On a broad scale, people have always been scared by what they don't understand. On a more refined level, people are often willing to agree with a strongly-worded argument if they don't understand the premise
There are lots of new problems due to technology - but very few new avoidance tactics / reactions. Look at the opposition to nearly every major advance (in science) in the last 500 years. No need to go further back - you'll find enough examples in the last 50 that going back 500 will be difficult.
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
What exactly is the relevance to the Manning case? He was convicted of releasing classified information, something it's pretty obvious he did. Regardless of what the information is or how he obtained it, the release of the information is what he was charged with and convicted of doing.
This sounds like someone trying to hitch their own free software wagon to the pro-Manning/Wikileaks train.
Original article on EFF blog.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
In the Manning case, technology is relevant. There is no way he would've been able to photocopy that amount of information. The case shows the very real danger of switching to digital without considering the security implications. Furthermore, what Manning did had quite a big impact, the volume of the leak more than explains the harsh charges, there's no need to blame it on the 'hacker scare'.
In the Manning case, the prosecution used Manning's use of a standard, more than 15-year-old Unix program called Wget to collect information, as if it were a dark and nefarious technique.
Maybe it's not quite that, but if it's used to download information that shouldn't be collected by an individual, it certainly bears watching.
Dude, what the fuck?
wget is a web client - you know, like the one you're using to read this comment. It bears watching just like any other web client bears watching.
Now, one could argue it might profit them more to pay attention to what data they make available to web clients.... But that would be all... I dunno, sensible.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
These thoughts have been bouncing around in my head for a while now. I've been following a steady stream of stories and reports chronicling the continual demonization of stigmatization of "hackers" and generally technologically proficient people in general.
People misunderstand or refuse to understand at all. The negative perception caused partly by a few ne'er-do-wells and mostly by corporate propaganda paints us all with a thick coat of black. Misunderstanding transforms into mistrust, mistrust into fear, fear to indignant anger, anger to oppression; before you know it, we have a publically supported, government sanctioned witch hunt on our hands. We technology-savvy individuals are being singled out as the next great threat to the establishment.
The FBI threw Sklyarov in the slammer for giving a security talk on flaws in Adobe's DRM. Russia -- Russia, people, not exactly known for a track record of upholding civil rights -- issued a statement for security researchers to stay the hell out of the US because it had become illegal to do some math.
Auernheimer exposed a blatant security flaw, which only existed because of AT&T's utter laziness and indiscretion, and went to prison simply because the way he exposed it and pissed off AT&T.
Swartz hanged himself after the full force of the federal government hounded him and drove him over the edge by threatening a 35-year prison term for what should have been a slap-on-the-wrist misdemeanor.
An obviously technophobic judge ruled for an injunction against a UK security researcher to prevent him from publicizing an immobilizer security flaw that could be exploited by organized crime to steal millions of dollars worth of expensive sports cars. He is going ahead with it anyway because it's the responsable thing to do when affected parties refuse to address it, and I'm willing to bet the government is going to come down on him heavily for it.
The incidents of tech-savvy people being vilified are too numerous to list, but I'm sure we're all aware of them. The establishment wants their culture of liability, where ordinary individuals are dragged into the big leagues and expected to perform at the same level as corporate and government giants, while our perspective demands greater personal freedoms to offset the goliathan advantage held over us.
I think we're going to see a lot more of this until the societal shift is complete and the new generation becomes leadership, and that's a *very* optimistic view.