8 ms·

Sentenced to 10 years, Marty Gottesfeld wrote about Bureau of Prisons corruption

DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
for anyone new to this story, here additional coverage: "Today is the beginning of Marty's 4th week week on a hunger strike. His demands are so modest: non-toxic water and to appear over the phone for an emergency hearing."[1][2] "Whistleblower Marty Gottesfeld, serving 10 YEARS in prison for exposing medical abductions by Boston Children's Hospital, placed in solitary confinement"[3] [1] https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.505138/gov.uscourts.nysd.505138.116.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.505138... [2] https://twitter.com/FreeMartyG/status/1211823172493942785 https://twitter.com/FreeMartyG/status/1211823172493942785 [3] https://www.mintpressnews.com/marty-gottesfeld-another-whistleblower-in-solitary-confinement/256331/ https://www.mintpressnews.com/marty-gottesfeld-another-whist...
- gus_massa 7y ago
  In [3], I can't found any whistleblowing actions: > The story drew the attention of Marty Gottesfeld, a computer-security expert. He was appalled at the treatment to which Justina and her family were being subjected and he decided to act. He initiated a denial of service attack against the Children’s Hospital computer system and against the Wayside Youth and Family Support Network, where Justina was later moved.
- tptacek 7y ago
  In what sense did Gottesfeld "blow a whistle"? He's a cause celebre' in the right-wing blogosphere (because Justina Pelletier is, as well), but I can't figure out why. From what I can say, all his information came from the right-wing blogosphere as well; all he did was react violently to it.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    Everything I've read about this case has been in Mint Press. Are we really supposed to consider that "the right-wing blogosphere"? I feel like we're losing something when words no longer have specific meanings... why would "right-wingers" care more about medical abuse and kidnapping than "left-wingers"? In olden times, advocating for more merciful prison terms was also not considered "right-wing". Is it really different now? I guess at least Gottesfeld hasn't been called "antisemitic" yet... he's no Jeremy Corbyn.
    - kasey_junk 7y ago
      Right now, in this time and place, a news source that has admitted ties to Russia and the Syrian government, is a right wing news source in the States. A weird outcome I agree.
    - tptacek 7y ago
      I have no idea what "Mint Press" is and it is not what I'm referring to when I talk about the right-wing blogosphere ("blogosphere" is the wrong word; whatever the word that captures "online community" is what I'm looking for; Michelle Malkin, who was just booted from YAF(!) for vouching for white supremacist Nick Fuentes, took a picture with Justina Pelletier, and Mike Huckabee wrote an article about it.) I'm neither making up nor projecting the fact that Justine Pelletier is a cause celebré among right-wingers. Incidentally: I'm not casting aspersions (in this instance). Like I said downthread, nobody in this story (except Justina herself) comes out looking good. Justina's parents? Just awful. BCH? Not much better. Of course, nobody looks worse than Martin Gottesfeld.
      - jessaustin 7y ago
        Justina's parents? Just awful. OK, it's this sort of low-brow dismissal that causes me to actually dig through enough search engine BS to find the "reputable" take. [0] [1] So good job, I guess. I find in those two long articles nothing about the parents' behavior to be even suspect, let alone "awful", let alone worse than BCH. That is a totally unsupported garbage judgment, of the sort one might expect from a neurologist with 7 months of experience assigned to be the lead physician for a child diagnosed with chronic metabolic problems and acute intestinal distress. Oh, wait... that's what happened at BCH! If the intention of the state of Massachusetts is to have fewer juvenile patients traveling from out of state for medical care, their policies are absolutely correct. [0] https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/12/15/justina/vnwzbbNdiodSD7WDTh6xZI/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/12/15/justina/vnwzbbN... [1] https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/12/16/month-medical-ordeal-conclusion-still-uncertain/Y7qvYTGsq8QklkxUZvuUgP/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/12/16/month-medical-o...
afthonos 7y ago
> it’s one of many reasons why I also advocate revolution, preferably followed by public executions I feel this man doesn’t understand what he’s asking for. And should the revolution happen, he will be shocked to find himself in an interrogation room, screaming that they should be torturing and executing the real bad guys, not upstanding revolutionaries like himself.
- seemslegit 7y ago
  He is kinda doing that already: https://www.thedailybeast.com/julian-assange-went-after-a-former-ally-it-backfired-epically https://www.thedailybeast.com/julian-assange-went-after-a-fo...
- dclowd9901 7y ago
  I don’t follow your illustration.
  - bpodgursky 7y ago
    If you throw away the rules, the rules stop applying to everyone, not just the revolutionaries. The rule of law is not a tool of oppression; it's a check on the people with power and guns. The revolutionaries do not have the power. So throwing away the legal system is far, far more likely to just lead to an unchecked re-entrenchment of whoever is in charge, not a new system. If things are truly, truly catastrophic, maybe that's a risk you're willing to take. But since the average American is not, in fact, dying in the streets, most really want to continue living their lives in relative prosperity and relative freedom.
    - Ill_ban_myself 7y ago
      Which is why I advocate public intoxication and discussion of politics. It’s beneath the sort I oppose and would benefit the sort I support taking action.
    - wayoutthere 7y ago
      Right, which is why modern revolutionaries favor "direct action" against an unfair system -- in addition to protests, this includes things like intentionally turning a blind eye to shoplifters (aka "no snitching"), stealing from your employer, or actively sabotaging their plans. It's easy to disguise as incompetence or laziness because there's no explicit coordination. We all have to work to eat, but nothing says people legally have to do a good job in most positions -- and it's easy to get away with if you can talk a good game. The idea is that because the rules aren't enforced against the people at the top, why should the people at the bottom help enforce them against their peers? If the police are a tool of the oppressive state, why would you help them in any way? If you're systemically oppressed, why would you not be dishonest and game the system in every way you could?
seemslegit 7y ago
Protip: describing oneself as an "Obama-era victim" is not a great way to win support among people who support prisoner rights or object to authoritarianism. Having your case pushed on medium by a guy whose preceding writeup was a "defensive publication" against a neighbour who (checks notes) "screamed at his dog" is also... not great.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > Having your case pushed on medium Agree that the medium (no pun intended) is suboptimal for the message.
- edoo 7y ago
  If you ignore the typical propaganda and research the actual policies of Obama you are likely to come to the conclusion he was the Bush dynasties 5th and 6th term. Despite all the rhetoric he continued nearly every significant policy that Bush implemented. You might find weird things like the fact Biden actually wrote the Patriot Act.
  - seemslegit 7y ago
    I'm not under the impression that either Obama or Biden were or are friends of the cryptoanarchic hacktivist - this is just not the business that politicians or governments are in. But it's fairly clear whose voter base has a higher degree of sympathy for prisoners and support for keeping checks on the power of police, corrections officers et. al.
    - edoo 7y ago
      Another interesting thing I found due to doing research after Google redefined fascism as right wing during the election season (it was not defined as right wing before) was that FDR, the father of the modern democrat party, wrote letters to Hitler and Mussolini praising fascism, how inspirational it was, and how closely aligned it was with their own socialist movement in America. Ponder for a second, what if, just what if our liberal biased educations were more about generating a sense of questionless support for authoritarianism instead of the opposite.
Semaphor 7y ago
Having never heard of Martin Gottesfeld or Justina Pelletier before, and just spending some time reading articles, I'm pretty disgusted. At face value this seems like a horrible miscarriage of justice on many, many levels. Now I'm not exactly a fan of the USA, but this all seems a bit over the top, but I can find nothing debunking any of it. Does anyone have articles with dissenting view points about either of them, bringing arguments in favor of Massachusetts, BOP, or the Boston Children’s Hospital?
- seemslegit 7y ago
  Do you really need an argument in favor of Boston Children’s Hospital to realize that DoSing a hospital is nowhere near the scope of either a legally or morally acceptable course of action to deal with something like this even if his take on the case was 100% correct ?
  - LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
    Sometimes sacrifices have to be made, sometimes children have to suffer and die, for a moral outcry to be marshalled. Totally agree with seemslegit, he botched the political poker by not upping the stakes.
  - Semaphor 7y ago
    If you want to engage in that, does that make him deserving of being in a secret (?) prison? Does that preclude the need of arguments in favor of them to excuse them of their treatment of Justina Pelletier? I think you read something into my comment that isn't there. edit: And I'm not even sure I could categorically state that DoSing a fundraiser of a hospital engaging in (at least from what I've read in the articles) medical kidnapping, using wards of state as guinea pigs, etc. is morally wrong. Another reason for my request for differing opinions.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - leftyted 7y ago
thrownaway954 7y ago
I feel really bad for this dude and hope he's ok when they do finally hear from him. First off 10 years for a DOS attack is a little extensive in my book. I really feel that these prison sentences are extreme in the case of a non-violent crime. That all being said I think there just HAD to be a better way of going about helping the girl in the hospital. I don't get what a DOS on the hospital was suppose to accomplish.
- siffland 7y ago
  This is the US, the chances of him serving all 10 years is slim, probably parole out after a few. Also anytime he already served in jail will go towards his sentence. However, this is a hospital, imagine if the DOS somehow would of contributed to a death.
  - javagram 7y ago
    > This is the US, the chances of him serving all 10 years is slim, probably parole out after a few. Also anytime he already served in jail will go towards his sentence. He is serving federal, not state, prison time. “Parole out after a few” only applies to state prison. There is no federal parole system, prisoners who get good behavior credits can reduce their sentence by 15% though. https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/is-federal-parole-system.html https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/is-federal-parole-sy...
    - hansthehorse 7y ago
      On sentences greater than one year, which is why you see those one year plus one day sentences.
      - thrownaway954 7y ago
        i never knew that. i always wondered why judges handed down sentences like that.
  - bluntfang 7y ago
fsloth 7y ago
Anonymously DOS:sing a hospital because a few families disagreed with their policies is not a heroic work of hactivism. Just because a party is a dick does not morally oblige you to endanger medical treatment of hundreds of individuals. I would take everything Mr. Gottesfeld communicates with a grain of salt.
tptacek 7y ago
This Barrett Brown piece doesn't really say anything, except that Barrett Brown is very angry at how Barrett Brown been treated by the Obama administration and, apparently, by journalists including and in the orbit of Glenn Greenwald. As to Marty Gottesfeld, Brown has little to say, other than that he's been transferred to a different federal prison and that his wife has trouble staying in communication with him. Brown has much more to say about his own treatment than that of Gottesfeld. Gottesfeld, if you're unfamiliar, is serving 10 years for launching a botnet DDOS attack against Boston Children's Hospital. Sometime around 2013, (mostly) right-wing media took up the cause of Justina Pelletier, a teenager who had been referred by her physician to BCH and, after being admitted, had been taken into BCH's custody after a court determined that her parents had been harming her and impeding her care. Her parents didn't regain custody for over a year. The case is complicated, and nobody in it looks good. Gottesfeld, a self-declared "anon", decided to declare "OpJustina", appealing for people to attack the facilities that had been involved in Pelletier's care. He recruited a 40,000 node router botnet which managed to take BCH off the Internet for several days. In the process, he shut down their central prescription service, their physician scheduling system, and all email between doctors, as well as the fundraising page that had been his declared target. He also managed to disrupt systems at several other facilities, including Dana Farber and Harvard Medical, which were hosted on a related network. The FBI very quickly tracked Gottesfeld down because one of the accounts he had used to cheerlead the attack was registered under his name. They obtained a search warrant and found computers with incriminating evidence. Gottesfeld retained Tor Ekelund, the well known CFAA lawyer, and met with the DOJ to discuss a plea, during which he admitted to the attacks. He then fled to Cuba in an unmarked 23 foot open-cabin motorboat, with his wife, passports, cash, and computers. His boat lost propulsion off the Cuban coast and, unfortunately for him, he was rescued not by the Cuban Coast Guard but by a Disney Cruise Ship, which returned him to Florida, where he was promptly arrested. At his detention hearing, the US Attorney stated for the record that the guideline range they had been contemplating at the time of Gottesfeld's meeting was 3-4 years, and that there was some substantial possibility that, had he plead out before an indictment, he might avoid prison time altogether (at that stage of the investigation it may have been unclear how much damage Gottesfeld had actually caused). Instead, Gottesfeld fired and repudiated Tor Ekelund, and another lawyer, took his case to court, lost, refused to take responsibility after his conviction, offered a post-conviction memorandum stating that he was morally required to DDOS BCH and that he'd likely do it again, and managed to secure for himself a 10 year sentence. I guess my point is just, don't be this clown.
8bitsrule 7y ago
Barrett Brown, author of the linked article, is a journalist who spent 2010-2016 in Federal prisons and was fined $900,000 for digging into Austin intel operation Stratfor. (His mother got 6 months of probation for 'obstruction'.) Brown spent 6 months of his time in 'the hole'. Makes sense that he's interested in a Federal prisoner who is being held incommunicado. Makes sense that we'd be interested in knowing about stuff like that. Mess with the wrong people, and ... justice is in the eyes of the beholders. Another article on Gottesfeld, by a CIA whistleblower: https://www.mintpressnews.com/marty-gottesfeld-another-whistleblower-in-solitary-confinement/256331/ https://www.mintpressnews.com/marty-gottesfeld-another-whist...
- tptacek 7y ago
  As I recall (I'm not looking at the documents right now), Brown didn't "dig in" to Stratfor so much as function as an accessory to the hack of Stratfor by Jeremy Hammond and his crew, after which he actively obstructed the investigation, both by Stratfor and by the DOJ (including a sad attempt to hide an incriminating laptop during a search). It seems clear to me that Brown was certainly criminally culpable, but also that his sentence was outlandish and unjust. It's less clear to me that what happened to Gottesfeld was wrong. For one thing: Gottesfeld doesn't appear to be any sort of "whistleblower". His information about the Justina Pelletier case came from the right-wing media, where the case had gone viral. Moreover, his response to that information was to organize DDOS attacks that shut down the electronic pharmacy at Boston Children's Hospital; they literally had to go back to paper prescriptions and faxes during the attack. He had originally targeted a fundraising website BCH was running, but quickly realized that he was attacking the infrastructure of the hospital itself, which he then bragged about taking down. After being caught, he attempted to flee to Cuba, but stranded himself just off the Cuban coast and had to be rescued by a Disney Cruise ship, which took him back to the US. The final thing I want to point out is that Barrett Brown is a person who appears to have believed that Stratfor was a powerful mercenary intelligence outfit, and not a grifting zine for aspirational Tom Clancy types with desk jobs. Stratfor was a figure of fun in the real intelligence community, and had none of the malign influence Barrett attributed to them; if anything, by helping arrange their hack, he helped the real IC. Certainly nothing Stratfor did justified dumping the credit cards of people who had subscribed. But, more importantly: take whatever Brown says with an appropriate tonnage of salt.

for anyone new to this story, here additional coverage: "Today is the beginning of Marty's 4th week week on a hunger strike. His demands are so modest: non-toxic water and to appear over the phone for an emergency hearing."[1][2] "Whistleblower Marty Gottesfeld, serving 10 YEARS in prison for exposing medical abductions by Boston Children's Hospital, placed in solitary confinement"[3] [1] https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.505138/gov.uscourts.nysd.505138.116.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.505138... [2] https://twitter.com/FreeMartyG/status/1211823172493942785 https://twitter.com/FreeMartyG/status/1211823172493942785 [3] https://www.mintpressnews.com/marty-gottesfeld-another-whistleblower-in-solitary-confinement/256331/ https://www.mintpressnews.com/marty-gottesfeld-another-whist...

gus_massa 7y ago
In [3], I can't found any whistleblowing actions: > The story drew the attention of Marty Gottesfeld, a computer-security expert. He was appalled at the treatment to which Justina and her family were being subjected and he decided to act. He initiated a denial of service attack against the Children’s Hospital computer system and against the Wayside Youth and Family Support Network, where Justina was later moved.
tptacek 7y ago
In what sense did Gottesfeld "blow a whistle"? He's a cause celebre' in the right-wing blogosphere (because Justina Pelletier is, as well), but I can't figure out why. From what I can say, all his information came from the right-wing blogosphere as well; all he did was react violently to it.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- jessaustin 7y ago
  Everything I've read about this case has been in Mint Press. Are we really supposed to consider that "the right-wing blogosphere"? I feel like we're losing something when words no longer have specific meanings... why would "right-wingers" care more about medical abuse and kidnapping than "left-wingers"? In olden times, advocating for more merciful prison terms was also not considered "right-wing". Is it really different now? I guess at least Gottesfeld hasn't been called "antisemitic" yet... he's no Jeremy Corbyn.
  - kasey_junk 7y ago
    Right now, in this time and place, a news source that has admitted ties to Russia and the Syrian government, is a right wing news source in the States. A weird outcome I agree.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    I have no idea what "Mint Press" is and it is not what I'm referring to when I talk about the right-wing blogosphere ("blogosphere" is the wrong word; whatever the word that captures "online community" is what I'm looking for; Michelle Malkin, who was just booted from YAF(!) for vouching for white supremacist Nick Fuentes, took a picture with Justina Pelletier, and Mike Huckabee wrote an article about it.) I'm neither making up nor projecting the fact that Justine Pelletier is a cause celebré among right-wingers. Incidentally: I'm not casting aspersions (in this instance). Like I said downthread, nobody in this story (except Justina herself) comes out looking good. Justina's parents? Just awful. BCH? Not much better. Of course, nobody looks worse than Martin Gottesfeld.
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      Justina's parents? Just awful. OK, it's this sort of low-brow dismissal that causes me to actually dig through enough search engine BS to find the "reputable" take. [0] [1] So good job, I guess. I find in those two long articles nothing about the parents' behavior to be even suspect, let alone "awful", let alone worse than BCH. That is a totally unsupported garbage judgment, of the sort one might expect from a neurologist with 7 months of experience assigned to be the lead physician for a child diagnosed with chronic metabolic problems and acute intestinal distress. Oh, wait... that's what happened at BCH! If the intention of the state of Massachusetts is to have fewer juvenile patients traveling from out of state for medical care, their policies are absolutely correct. [0] https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/12/15/justina/vnwzbbNdiodSD7WDTh6xZI/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/12/15/justina/vnwzbbN... [1] https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/12/16/month-medical-ordeal-conclusion-still-uncertain/Y7qvYTGsq8QklkxUZvuUgP/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/12/16/month-medical-o...

afthonos 7y ago

> it’s one of many reasons why I also advocate revolution, preferably followed by public executions I feel this man doesn’t understand what he’s asking for. And should the revolution happen, he will be shocked to find himself in an interrogation room, screaming that they should be torturing and executing the real bad guys, not upstanding revolutionaries like himself.

seemslegit 7y ago
He is kinda doing that already: https://www.thedailybeast.com/julian-assange-went-after-a-former-ally-it-backfired-epically https://www.thedailybeast.com/julian-assange-went-after-a-fo...
dclowd9901 7y ago
I don’t follow your illustration.
- bpodgursky 7y ago
  If you throw away the rules, the rules stop applying to everyone, not just the revolutionaries. The rule of law is not a tool of oppression; it's a check on the people with power and guns. The revolutionaries do not have the power. So throwing away the legal system is far, far more likely to just lead to an unchecked re-entrenchment of whoever is in charge, not a new system. If things are truly, truly catastrophic, maybe that's a risk you're willing to take. But since the average American is not, in fact, dying in the streets, most really want to continue living their lives in relative prosperity and relative freedom.
  - Ill_ban_myself 7y ago
    Which is why I advocate public intoxication and discussion of politics. It’s beneath the sort I oppose and would benefit the sort I support taking action.
  - wayoutthere 7y ago
    Right, which is why modern revolutionaries favor "direct action" against an unfair system -- in addition to protests, this includes things like intentionally turning a blind eye to shoplifters (aka "no snitching"), stealing from your employer, or actively sabotaging their plans. It's easy to disguise as incompetence or laziness because there's no explicit coordination. We all have to work to eat, but nothing says people legally have to do a good job in most positions -- and it's easy to get away with if you can talk a good game. The idea is that because the rules aren't enforced against the people at the top, why should the people at the bottom help enforce them against their peers? If the police are a tool of the oppressive state, why would you help them in any way? If you're systemically oppressed, why would you not be dishonest and game the system in every way you could?

seemslegit 7y ago

Protip: describing oneself as an "Obama-era victim" is not a great way to win support among people who support prisoner rights or object to authoritarianism. Having your case pushed on medium by a guy whose preceding writeup was a "defensive publication" against a neighbour who (checks notes) "screamed at his dog" is also... not great.

JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> Having your case pushed on medium Agree that the medium (no pun intended) is suboptimal for the message.
edoo 7y ago
If you ignore the typical propaganda and research the actual policies of Obama you are likely to come to the conclusion he was the Bush dynasties 5th and 6th term. Despite all the rhetoric he continued nearly every significant policy that Bush implemented. You might find weird things like the fact Biden actually wrote the Patriot Act.
- seemslegit 7y ago
  I'm not under the impression that either Obama or Biden were or are friends of the cryptoanarchic hacktivist - this is just not the business that politicians or governments are in. But it's fairly clear whose voter base has a higher degree of sympathy for prisoners and support for keeping checks on the power of police, corrections officers et. al.
  - edoo 7y ago
    Another interesting thing I found due to doing research after Google redefined fascism as right wing during the election season (it was not defined as right wing before) was that FDR, the father of the modern democrat party, wrote letters to Hitler and Mussolini praising fascism, how inspirational it was, and how closely aligned it was with their own socialist movement in America. Ponder for a second, what if, just what if our liberal biased educations were more about generating a sense of questionless support for authoritarianism instead of the opposite.

Semaphor 7y ago

Having never heard of Martin Gottesfeld or Justina Pelletier before, and just spending some time reading articles, I'm pretty disgusted. At face value this seems like a horrible miscarriage of justice on many, many levels. Now I'm not exactly a fan of the USA, but this all seems a bit over the top, but I can find nothing debunking any of it. Does anyone have articles with dissenting view points about either of them, bringing arguments in favor of Massachusetts, BOP, or the Boston Children’s Hospital?

seemslegit 7y ago
Do you really need an argument in favor of Boston Children’s Hospital to realize that DoSing a hospital is nowhere near the scope of either a legally or morally acceptable course of action to deal with something like this even if his take on the case was 100% correct ?
- LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
  Sometimes sacrifices have to be made, sometimes children have to suffer and die, for a moral outcry to be marshalled. Totally agree with seemslegit, he botched the political poker by not upping the stakes.
- Semaphor 7y ago
  If you want to engage in that, does that make him deserving of being in a secret (?) prison? Does that preclude the need of arguments in favor of them to excuse them of their treatment of Justina Pelletier? I think you read something into my comment that isn't there. edit: And I'm not even sure I could categorically state that DoSing a fundraiser of a hospital engaging in (at least from what I've read in the articles) medical kidnapping, using wards of state as guinea pigs, etc. is morally wrong. Another reason for my request for differing opinions.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - leftyted 7y ago

thrownaway954 7y ago

I feel really bad for this dude and hope he's ok when they do finally hear from him. First off 10 years for a DOS attack is a little extensive in my book. I really feel that these prison sentences are extreme in the case of a non-violent crime. That all being said I think there just HAD to be a better way of going about helping the girl in the hospital. I don't get what a DOS on the hospital was suppose to accomplish.

siffland 7y ago
This is the US, the chances of him serving all 10 years is slim, probably parole out after a few. Also anytime he already served in jail will go towards his sentence. However, this is a hospital, imagine if the DOS somehow would of contributed to a death.
- javagram 7y ago
  > This is the US, the chances of him serving all 10 years is slim, probably parole out after a few. Also anytime he already served in jail will go towards his sentence. He is serving federal, not state, prison time. “Parole out after a few” only applies to state prison. There is no federal parole system, prisoners who get good behavior credits can reduce their sentence by 15% though. https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/is-federal-parole-system.html https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/is-federal-parole-sy...
  - hansthehorse 7y ago
    On sentences greater than one year, which is why you see those one year plus one day sentences.
    - thrownaway954 7y ago
      i never knew that. i always wondered why judges handed down sentences like that.
- bluntfang 7y ago

fsloth 7y ago

Anonymously DOS:sing a hospital because a few families disagreed with their policies is not a heroic work of hactivism. Just because a party is a dick does not morally oblige you to endanger medical treatment of hundreds of individuals. I would take everything Mr. Gottesfeld communicates with a grain of salt.

tptacek 7y ago

This Barrett Brown piece doesn't really say anything, except that Barrett Brown is very angry at how Barrett Brown been treated by the Obama administration and, apparently, by journalists including and in the orbit of Glenn Greenwald. As to Marty Gottesfeld, Brown has little to say, other than that he's been transferred to a different federal prison and that his wife has trouble staying in communication with him. Brown has much more to say about his own treatment than that of Gottesfeld. Gottesfeld, if you're unfamiliar, is serving 10 years for launching a botnet DDOS attack against Boston Children's Hospital. Sometime around 2013, (mostly) right-wing media took up the cause of Justina Pelletier, a teenager who had been referred by her physician to BCH and, after being admitted, had been taken into BCH's custody after a court determined that her parents had been harming her and impeding her care. Her parents didn't regain custody for over a year. The case is complicated, and nobody in it looks good. Gottesfeld, a self-declared "anon", decided to declare "OpJustina", appealing for people to attack the facilities that had been involved in Pelletier's care. He recruited a 40,000 node router botnet which managed to take BCH off the Internet for several days. In the process, he shut down their central prescription service, their physician scheduling system, and all email between doctors, as well as the fundraising page that had been his declared target. He also managed to disrupt systems at several other facilities, including Dana Farber and Harvard Medical, which were hosted on a related network. The FBI very quickly tracked Gottesfeld down because one of the accounts he had used to cheerlead the attack was registered under his name. They obtained a search warrant and found computers with incriminating evidence. Gottesfeld retained Tor Ekelund, the well known CFAA lawyer, and met with the DOJ to discuss a plea, during which he admitted to the attacks. He then fled to Cuba in an unmarked 23 foot open-cabin motorboat, with his wife, passports, cash, and computers. His boat lost propulsion off the Cuban coast and, unfortunately for him, he was rescued not by the Cuban Coast Guard but by a Disney Cruise Ship, which returned him to Florida, where he was promptly arrested. At his detention hearing, the US Attorney stated for the record that the guideline range they had been contemplating at the time of Gottesfeld's meeting was 3-4 years, and that there was some substantial possibility that, had he plead out before an indictment, he might avoid prison time altogether (at that stage of the investigation it may have been unclear how much damage Gottesfeld had actually caused). Instead, Gottesfeld fired and repudiated Tor Ekelund, and another lawyer, took his case to court, lost, refused to take responsibility after his conviction, offered a post-conviction memorandum stating that he was morally required to DDOS BCH and that he'd likely do it again, and managed to secure for himself a 10 year sentence. I guess my point is just, don't be this clown.

8bitsrule 7y ago

Barrett Brown, author of the linked article, is a journalist who spent 2010-2016 in Federal prisons and was fined $900,000 for digging into Austin intel operation Stratfor. (His mother got 6 months of probation for 'obstruction'.) Brown spent 6 months of his time in 'the hole'. Makes sense that he's interested in a Federal prisoner who is being held incommunicado. Makes sense that we'd be interested in knowing about stuff like that. Mess with the wrong people, and ... justice is in the eyes of the beholders. Another article on Gottesfeld, by a CIA whistleblower: https://www.mintpressnews.com/marty-gottesfeld-another-whistleblower-in-solitary-confinement/256331/ https://www.mintpressnews.com/marty-gottesfeld-another-whist...

tptacek 7y ago
As I recall (I'm not looking at the documents right now), Brown didn't "dig in" to Stratfor so much as function as an accessory to the hack of Stratfor by Jeremy Hammond and his crew, after which he actively obstructed the investigation, both by Stratfor and by the DOJ (including a sad attempt to hide an incriminating laptop during a search). It seems clear to me that Brown was certainly criminally culpable, but also that his sentence was outlandish and unjust. It's less clear to me that what happened to Gottesfeld was wrong. For one thing: Gottesfeld doesn't appear to be any sort of "whistleblower". His information about the Justina Pelletier case came from the right-wing media, where the case had gone viral. Moreover, his response to that information was to organize DDOS attacks that shut down the electronic pharmacy at Boston Children's Hospital; they literally had to go back to paper prescriptions and faxes during the attack. He had originally targeted a fundraising website BCH was running, but quickly realized that he was attacking the infrastructure of the hospital itself, which he then bragged about taking down. After being caught, he attempted to flee to Cuba, but stranded himself just off the Cuban coast and had to be rescued by a Disney Cruise ship, which took him back to the US. The final thing I want to point out is that Barrett Brown is a person who appears to have believed that Stratfor was a powerful mercenary intelligence outfit, and not a grifting zine for aspirational Tom Clancy types with desk jobs. Stratfor was a figure of fun in the real intelligence community, and had none of the malign influence Barrett attributed to them; if anything, by helping arrange their hack, he helped the real IC. Certainly nothing Stratfor did justified dumping the credit cards of people who had subscribed. But, more importantly: take whatever Brown says with an appropriate tonnage of salt.