6 ms·
It’s a bad time to be a hacker in the United States
- EliRivers 14y agoIt certainly is with people like the author dropping the dime.
- rdl 14y agoI can't imagine Adrian or someone else in his position not doing exactly the same thing. Remember, he's a convicted felon, and had every reason to suspect he was still a target. A totally random person IMs you out of the blue, talking recklessly about crimes he'd committed, and trying to elicit your support and confirmation of understanding and support in furtherance of acts previously and ongoingly committed. Even if you support some of his motives, you'd be wise to either report it (as Adrian did), or, at the very least, make it clear you neither understood nor supported the actions. Otherwise, you're part of a conspiracy, and thus even more fucked. The guy could either be an informant trying to entrap you, or at least had such recklessness that he'd approach someone and be reported/caught later, so you'd be at risk if you cooperated in any way. There could be a slight difference if you were a protected party (someone's lawyer, priest, spouse, doctor) and if the crime were not something which carried a duty to report. (IANAL)
- andrewcooke 14y agoin which case, maybe you could say "dude, fuck off" and close the session?
- rdl 14y ago"Sorry dude, I have no fucking idea what you're saying, plus you're a dick" is probably safer. They'd have to show you both understood and agreed with the action, but it's hard to prove that, especially if you started the conversation by not being a dick. It's fun/scary reading the transcript and figuring out at what point you'd do what. If it were a random person IMing me from Iraq, I'd probably be friendly to start out. The safest thing is to end the conversation before any criminal acts are discussed. I think it's also probably safer if you immediately switch to "you should report that to law enforcement, it sounds like a crime" vs. just "the fire, please die in it."
- EliRivers 14y agoDid you just imagine doing something other than what AL did? Seems like "I can't imagine Adrian or someone else in his position not doing exactly the same thing" didn't last long :)
- rdl 14y agoI'm not a felon. AL is. As a felon, I would err on the side of reporting criminal contacts. (I personally also have an obligation to report compromises of classified data, too, so I would have reported this.)
- EliRivers 14y agoAnd yet a great, great many convicted felons do not report criminal contacts. I point to the number of convicted felons who go on to commit another felony in company of other criminals. Furthermore, I am led to believe that a culture of physical violence towards informants means that a felon who reports on other criminals is, frankly, asking for trouble. I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of felons do not habitually inform on each other.
- rdl 14y agoThey like to make an example of computer criminals. Locking up a marginal rapist, murderer, gang member, etc. doesn't serve any useful political purpose -- it just makes crime stats look worse.
- duaneb 14y agoLook, I'm all for better laws and such, but most of what constitutes being a hacker (in the HN sense) doesn't even approach illegality. I think it's never been a better time to be a hacker.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- nmb 14y ago"most of what constitutes being a hacker (in the HN sense) doesn't even approach illegality" I wouldn't say that. As an example, many companies in the (very crowded) data-storage or file-sharing space spend a lot of money on legal fees to cover their asses (or do damage control) in case of copyright violation when someone decides to share the latest DVD rip using their service. There are many other examples like this. People in our field are constantly exploring the limits of what we can and can't do with technology in the context of laws that were created without these uses in mind. True, it has never been a better time to be a hacker, but I think when/if we have all these issues sorted out it will be even better.
- dpeck 14y agoUber, AirBNB, and quite a few other "hacker" companies are dealing with quite a bit of (il)legality these days.
- kaonashi 14y agoIt's a bad time to be a whistleblower too.
- yuvadam 14y agoIt's a bad time to be any agent acting against the plutocracy that rules the world as it is today.
- EvilLook 14y agoEspecially if you discuss things with the author of the piece, Adrian Lamo. Adrian Lamo is not a hacker. He is a Fed. Pure and simple. His hacking convictions were there to give him cover.
- jasonkester 14y agoTo many, a hacker is anyone who does something with a computer that is not trivially understood. To law-enforcement and the criminal justice system, a hacker is someone who commits a computer-involved crime. So to clarify, it's actually still a great time to be the former. It's not now, nor has it really ever been, a good time (or a good idea) to be the latter. The rest of the article seems to just be an explanation of why that is.
- jessaustin 14y agoTo many, a hacker is anyone who does something with a computer that is not trivially understood. To law-enforcement and the criminal justice system, a hacker is someone who commits a computer-involved crime. "To law-enforcement and the criminal justice system" the former criterion implies the latter.
- tedunangst 14y agoCitation needed. Are they picking up random Haskell programmers off the street now?
- jessaustin 14y agoYou probably disagree with the common feeling that the prosecuted actions of e.g. Weev, Swartz, etc. would not actually be crimes in any decent society, but don't pretend you've never heard of them.
- tedunangst 14y agoI disagree with the notion that weev and Swartz were arrested for "doing something that is not trivially understood."
- jessaustin 14y agoTo us their actions were trivial. To a trial jury or especially to a grand jury, not so much. But this specific objection actually undermines your entire argument. If justifiable trivial actions can be maliciously portrayed as crimes, so much more can justifiable nontrivial actions. It's a sliding scale anyway: I'm no über-hacker so I know that many things that are trivial to more skilled people would be initially mysterious to me. This is why just law must be based on the consideration of specific acts that either meet or fail to meet concrete widely-understood criteria. Just law does not punish acts that are in a "gray" area, which cannot be said with certainty to be crimes. When uncertainty is a basis for prosecution, the only criteria we have are the potential misunderstandings of the dumbest jury a prosecutor could possibly empanel. At that point, human innovation and happiness will cease. It seems pretty clear at this point that you did not in fact need any citations.
- fatalerrorx3 14y agoHackers should form security companies and offer hacking as a service. Many private companies would rather pay a third party security firm a fixed price to solve any vulnerabilities versus hiring a team of fulltime security experts on their payroll.
- rdl 14y agoMost of this is done through consultancies already.
- n3rdy 14y agoI’ve also worked the other side of the fence, working with law enforcement and the US Government on computer-involved national security issues, most notably in the apprehension of Bradley Manning for leaking military and diplomatic secrets to Wikileaks. This isn't something to be proud of.
- _k 14y agoExactly what I was thinking.
- mpyne 14y agoWhy? I ask this because many politically-minded hackers are under the misapprehension that Bradley Manning was purely a whistleblower, which is not the case.
- georgemcbay 14y agoMy thoughts on Bradley Manning are more complicated than the simplistic "Free Bradley!" or "Hang Bradley!" extremes one often sees when it comes to that case. I don't fully support what he did and I think he was wrong to do it in the manner in which he did and thus he deserves some punishment. I also think he stands as an unfortunate symbol of how the idea of the writ of habeas corpus is completely dead in America, which sucks. As it relates to Lamo, though, I think it is clear that the way Lamo went about convincing Manning to reveal what he had done while convincing him that he (Lamo) was a journalist and priest and thus Manning would be protected from disclosure was hugely unethical and marks him as one of the great asshats of all time.
- mpyne 14y agoI think the concern about habeus corpus is valid, but more for those like the Gitmo detainees than Pfc. Manning per se. He leaked classified information, and having to build an entire legal infrastructure and trial around that properly, without having any eventual sentence thrown out on a technicality, is going to take time and effort. Let's face it, if it were up the Army he'd already be convicted and spending the next couple of decades at least playing cards at Ft. Leavenworth. As far as Lamo, I agree in general with the description of asshattery. But still, if Manning actually thought Lamo were a priest then I have to wonder about his capacity for critical thinking. And either way, I find it at least a bit ironic that Lamo managed to extract accurate information from Manning, under false pretenses, immediately after Manning extracted accurate information from the U.S. Government, under false pretenses. But only one of those two swore to protect the information in question under penalty of law.
- nnq 14y agoThis is the "meat" imho: > A law becomes unjust when a person of ordinary — or even extraordinary — intelligence cannot readily predict what charges might arise from a given activity. ...if I were to commit armed robbery, I could easily find out what law I would be breaking and what kind of prison sentence I'd get. With infosec and IP laws, you'll never know how they could be wielded against you!
- snowwrestler 14y agoWhy does anyone continue to give Adrian Lamo a platform? He is like the Kim Kardashian of computer security--he's famous for being famous. I'm not aware of any evidence that he knows what he is talking about, particularly when it comes to various criminal penalties (he gets these blatantly wrong). Edit to add example: Lamo says >To put this into some kind of perspective, if Swartz had committed violent battery of a Supreme Court justice or a member of Congress he would have faced, at most, a year locked up in the pen — as long as he didn’t use a deadly weapon. The maximum prison sentence for aggravated assault in DC is actually 10 years. And if you use a deadly weapon, it adds an additional maximum penalty of life in prison.
- georgemcbay 14y agoI wish I had known Lamo wrote this before I graced it with a click. He's also the guy who turned in Bradley Manning (after convincing Manning he could communicate with him in confidence since he was a priest).
- Canada 14y agoWho cares what Lamo thinks
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- phene 14y agoSeriously -- he's already demonstrated himself as untrustworthy.
- EvilLook 14y agoThis piece was written by Adrian Lamo and can be summarized as follows: faaaaaaaaaaarrrrttt, pffffffffffttttttttt, pffffffffffttttttt, faaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrttttt, innuendo, lies, bullshit, faaaaaaaaaaaartttt