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Prison Is For Dangerous Criminals, Not Hacktivists
In late 2011, defense contractor Stratfor suffered a cybersecurity breach that resulted in a leak of millions of internal emails. A few months later, the FBI arrested hacktivist Jeremy Hammond and several others for actions related to the breach. Hammond pleaded guilty to one count of violating the CFAA, and today his sentence was handed down: 10 years in prison followed by three years of supervised release. He said, [The prosecutors] have made it clear they are trying to send a message to others who come after me. A lot of it is because they got slapped around, they were embarrassed by Anonymous and they feel that they need to save face." Reader DavidGilbert99 adds,
"Former LulzSec and Anonymous member Jake Davis argues that U.S. lawmakers need to take a leaf out of the U.K.'s legal system and not put Jeremy Hammond behind bars for his part in the hack of Stratfor. 'Jeremy Hammond has a lot to give society too. Prisons are for dangerous people that need to be segmented from the general population. Hackers are not dangerous, they are misunderstood, and while disciplinary action is of course necessary, there is nothing disciplined about locking the door on a young man's life for 10 years.'"
Here we have prison to punish people. It doesn't exist as a means to control risk by controlling dangerous people. We've collectively decided that we should put people in cells(and let them be raped) like it's telling 5 year olds to stand in the corner.
Why just limit that label to hackers?
"It's just a misunderstanding that makes you think she is dead, sure you have a body that lacks a pulse..."
"Why yes, I did burn down that orphanage... but you misunderstand why."
"No officer, I did have a lot to drink tonight, but you don't understand that my driving abilities get better when I'm wasted!"
We are not talking about an accidently committed crime here... my understanding is he deliberately did what he did... so should be punished hard as a reminder.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
If only he was a bank VP. Then all crimes are forgiven with a sizable bonus.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
There are so many problems with prisons in this country it's not funny.
Lets see...
I'm sure there's more....
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
You pay the price. Civil disobedience can be a very noble act, but if you are going to perform such an act you must be ready to pay the price. Particularly if most of society actually disagrees with your position. Prison is the appropriate location for these guys. They broke the law, they got caught. They must do their time. Prisons are for criminals, i.e. those who break the law are caught and convicted. Not all criminals are dangerous or violent, but all still go to prison if the sentence is for Prison time.
How does that saying go? "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time."
Motive is relevant when considering crimes. It's the difference between first degree murder and involuntary manslaughter(or even justified self-defense).
"Misunderstood"? Wow, that's a mantra for the far, far, left. "Society is just so mean, he's misunderstood"..
I have no issue stating that prisons are over populated with people who are not physically dangerous, and/or shouldn't be there (guys busted for pot for example) but saying they're "misunderstood" is akin to saying they're just children who didn't know any better. Um, a little personal responsibility please? There still must be some repercussions, commensurate to the hacking/stealing/damage they perpetrated.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
This is why people should stick to more conventional terrorism, like bombs and murder. Then the ROI is far better.
I don't see anyone saying that hackers aren't criminals or that Jeremy Hammond didn't deserve to go to prison. What they're saying is that criminals and dangerous people are sets that overlap, but that don't totally overlap. Or, another way to put it: Criminals aren't dangerous. Dangerous criminals are dangerous. Some hackers might be dangerous. Some hackers might not be dangerous. For hackers that are dangerous, 10 years in prison might be appropriate. For hackers that aren't dangerous, like those engaged in political protest, 10 years in prison is overkill.
The difference, of course, is dangerous to who?
Being dangerous to authority is much worse than being dangerous to the public, and is treated accordingly.
then the insecure system is what is dangerous, not the alleged criminal.
There is no alleging about it. People who deliberately break into someone else's systems are criminals. By your logic if I leave my door unlocked and you walk in and steal my stuff, I'm the one at fault. Nice way to blame the victim. Do I need to drag out the rape example?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I think there's an argument to be made that people who commit assaults or other acts of violence against others are an entirely different class of individual than people who run pyramid schemes, hack web sites, etc.
There -is- an aspect of prison that says "we're going to keep this person out of society for a while as a way to protect society". Taking phones/internet away from a cracker is more than sufficient to protect society, and arguably is a significant punitive action against someone with the time/skills/interests to be successful.
People who commit mail fraud or steal long distance shouldn't share cell space with sex predators, murderers, etc. It's not in the interests of society, the individuals in question, or any efforts at reforming criminals prior to re-introduction to society.
What's going to happen to a nerd in prison is that they'll do anything possible to survive. Historically, hackers have joined up with mafia or gangs for _physical_ protection, and in exchange, provide black-hat services to the groups providing them with protection.
This is NOT how you reform geeks. This plunges them deeper into the realm of criminal enterprise, with higher stakes, and more damage to everyone.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
When Google and Facebook do this for a profit, hide the data collection behind an EULA, and then sell your personal data to third parties, they are called geniuses and made billionaires.
Furthermore, the individual in question did not seek to make a profit. You can disagree with his methods, but back when the scales of justice were still capable of measuring anything at all, these sort of considerations were commonly implemented.
In 1750: "Stop making excuses for those who commit treason against the King. They are criminals, pure and simple."
In 1850: "Stop making excuses for those people who steal slaves under the guise of making them free. They are criminals, pure and simple."
In 1950: "Stop making excuses for those people who participate in race riots. They are criminals, pure and simple."
Legitimate power and systems of law do not justify themselves without some reasoning. So can you tell me why people who commit physical assaults, armed robberies, and sexual assaults should see less jail time that someone who made a copy of an email archive to try and expose overreach of our privatized military economy?
How is putting this individual in prison going to
1) repair the damage they are accused of
2) improve society at large
3) cost effectively return them to society
Questions 1-3 are routinely ignored because the American incarceration system is not designed to help American society. It causes more harm than good, has shoved millions of people into a cycle of poverty and violence that few escape from, and the costs (upwards of 60-100k per prisoner per year) to perpetuate the broken system are far more than simpler, more humane justice systems found throughout the industrialized world.
This is not 1600. America is not a puritan state. Keep your dead ideas about corporal punishment in the distant past where they belong.
Fuck you!
Do the crime, serve the time! I'm totally down with that.
That is quite insightful. I've never heard that before.
Now that I've heard that, I can finally move on and forget about the fact that the US has such an absurdly high incarceration rate, disproportionate prosecution of minorities, crazy sentencing schemes, so many people arrested that our courts can't even handle them all without plea bargains (which are accomplished by stacking so many charges against a person that it can be rational for even the innocent to take the plea in order to avoid losing a gamble that destroys their entire life), for-profit organizations running prisons that lobby to create more prisoners and prison time, and...
There's no reason to go on, because you solved it all. Nothing to see here. We should move on.
You might want to read my post a little more carefully. I realize that it's easy to skip over the first sentence, where I stated that "I don't see anyone saying that hackers aren't criminals or that Jeremy Hammond doesn't deserve to go to prison."
The claim that I was making was that the prison sentence was excessive (probably because the Judge's husband was a victim of the crime). Somewhere in the 2-4 year range would probably make more sense.
Here we have prison to punish people. It doesn't exist as a means to control risk by controlling dangerous people. We've collectively decided that we should put people in cells(and let them be raped) like it's telling 5 year olds to stand in the corner.
Prison is not primarily to punish. I know when someone is a victim of a crime, they like to believe it exists to punish criminals. That's not what is intended.
The intent of any punitive action by a court is to discourage an activity in such a way that the rest of society doesn't engage in the behaviour.
Think about it: do the police arrive before a crime and prevent it, or do they show up afterwards? Do we penalize manslaughter to a lesser degree because we think the victim is any less dead than if it had been second or first degree murder instead? Punishment is clearly intended to send a message to the rest of society, not make the victim or the victims families feel better about themselves.
The message is clearly intended as "Don't do this; if you get caught, this is what will happen to you, and you should fear that penalty enough that you don't engage in the proscribed behaviour". We tend to lose sight of this because of cases that drag on for years, rather than having the penalty assessed immediately; delayed punishment = delayed threat. But until Tom Cruise starts showing up at your house to prevent murders which you are about to commit, in no way is the system about punishing criminals.
If you are going to base the argument around who needs to be separated from society, there's MORE reason to put hackers in a prison than most other criminals there - because a hacker can easily affect tens of thousands of people, unlike a criminal who can only really affect a handful. Being in prison is the only sure way to control computer access for hackers.
If you want to argue there needs to be a separate place to put hackers because they don't deserve to be at the mercy or violent hackers, well that's why we have white collar prisons is it not? There were "soft targets" going to prison long before hackers.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley