5 ms·

Caught in the System, Ex-Hacker Is Stalked by His Past

59 points by cyphersanctus 13y ago

bennyg 13y ago
The government really tries to cripple you following any sort of felony. Isn't going to prison and not doing the things you normally do, for any extended amount of time, enough punishment as it is? Isn't the whole thing supposed to be about rehabilitation for tendencies that hurt society and the fostering of tendencies that would help it? I'm not saying prisons, or the whole system, are rigged to perpetuate more crime, but it feels like you'd have to do some sort of illegal activity to stay afloat after losing everything then constantly getting held under water after release so as not being able to make a rent payment.
- abstractbill 13y ago
  Yes, absolutely. After we're "done" fixing gay rights (because it's hard to get everyone behind more than one thing at a time), there's a very strong case that we need to fix felons' rights.
  - sophacles 13y ago
    I believe that with the current "make it legal" happenings for marijuana, and the fact that huge amounts of people are forever fucked because of posession felonies, the two things should be more inter-twined than they currently are. As such, I would argue that laying the groundwork for this sort thing should be (and arguably is) happening now, while the gay rights stuff is center-stage.
    - bennyg 13y ago
      Exactly. My brother may or may not be dealing with possession charges that would have warranted nothing more than a ticket if they happened ~60 miles to the West.
- tbrownaw 13y ago
  I'm not saying prisons, or the whole system, are rigged to perpetuate more crime, but it feels like you'd have to do some sort of illegal activity to stay afloat after losing everything then constantly getting held under water after release so as not being able to make a rent payment. Bad things don't happen to good people, and good people don't do bad things or associate with bad people. If someone gets arrested or convicted for doing something bad, then you associating with them must mean that either (1) you are also a bad person, or (2) bad things do in fact happen to good people, and could happen to you. This would suggest that a way to fix things would be to publicize that the system has a disturbingly high error rate (bad things do in fact happen to good people) and the damage from that needs to be reduced. Another way would be to get rid of the belief that (getting caught) doing one bad thing makes you forever a bad person, but that would require working against how intolerance seems to feed on itself...
  - anon808 13y ago
    "Bad things don't happen to good people, and good people don't do bad things or associate with bad people." Evidence please . . . what a one-dimensional statement. It turns out life isn't binary.
    - randallsquared 13y ago
      That's part of his point, yes.
  - bilbo0s 13y ago
    "...Bad things don't happen to good people..." I HAVE to say this after what I've seen in my life. (I've spent a significant portion of it researching cancer.) Bad things DO HAPPEN to good people.
    - eropple 13y ago
      Might want to read it again with tongue in cheek.
  - ryguytilidie 13y ago
rayiner 13y ago
The key to the whole story is buried for some reason on the second page: "Prosecutors disputed this and maintained that chat logs recovered from Gonzalez’s computer described illegal carding activity that Gonzalez conducted and showed that Watt at least had broad knowledge of what Gonzalez was doing, if not the details. As Gonzalez and his gang hacked target after target, he sent Watt links to news stories describing the breaches, though he didn’t acknowledge in the correspondence that he was behind the attacks. Watt’s attorney told Wired in 2010 that his client accepted 'responsibility for aiding people that he knew would commit wrongdoing. However, he is very disturbed by the government’s aggressive attempt to make him into more than what he is.'" The article spends a page and a half making you think that he's just some innocent guy who wrote a program for a friend who ended up using it maliciously, when in reality he admitted that he helped Gonzales who he knew was going to use it to commit crimes. This is open and shut aiding and abetting a felony. And not some vague made-up felony. A felony that actually deserves to be a felony. Without taking any affirmative measures when he found out to turn his friend in, and without cooperating with police when he was charged with helping in the scheme. Is it the mark of an innocent person to you that when he found out his software had been used to commit a crime, even then he didn't help the police? The judge did absolutely the right thing in not giving him probation in order to send a signal.
- dobbsbob 13y ago
  Yeah right, turn his friend in. You realize they would've jailed him anyways, and his 2 years in prison would've been hell because of snitching.
  - StevenRayOrr 13y ago
    Edit: doh. Posted this without realizing that you'd made an edit, dobbsbob. Oh well. I think the point is still valid, just not as a response to you :) --- While I tend to agree about overzealous prosecutions when it comes to computer crimes, let's not pretend that there aren't individuals being hurt by some of these crimes. I am a bit fuzzy on the exact nature of the fraud, but I get the impression that it was either small businesses or individuals that were hit. Dealing with fraudulent charges is neither easy nor stress free, even when it is clearly the case that fraud occurred. Sure, most eventually get it resolved, but as someone who has had to navigate those bureaucracies before I know how unpleasant it is. This is not to say that business owners facing high stress and uncertainty about their financial future is sufficient justification for the magnitude of the punishment, but it isn't always just the major corporation that suffers.
dobbsbob 13y ago
If this guy worked for Morgan Stanley then why isn't he coding Bitcoin/Litecoin/PPPcoin trading engines? Screw wallstreet, work for the hacker wallstreet
- sophacles 13y ago
  Because if he uses a computer for anything but his web development job (unless he is monitored by an appropriate authority), he violates his terms of probation and gets a second felony?
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
    - dobbsbob 13y ago
      Really? Because even the most amateur exchange operator like Bitcoin24 was making thousands per day. Look up how much cavirtex.com is making lately, or bitstamp.net
  - dobbsbob 13y ago
    No reason he can't turn web development into bitcoin trading engine development by asking them. I know three sites that would apply to be his auth employer immediately regardless of prison history. That's all he needs to change jobs, a letter of employment confirmation sent to the parole board. I know because I was on probation once when I was 19 for some BS hacking charge and had the same restrictions
    - sophacles 13y ago
      There is the very real question here - He got special dispensation to do the stuff at his work. It may be (I don't know but wouldn't be surprised if it was) logged/monitored by law enforcement, even if it isn't, the reasonable suspicion is there. So: Would the judge, probation board, or whoever is in charge be ok with something like bitcoin? It is pretty linked in the popular mind with criminal doings. Would any bitcoin exchange be OK with their development potentially being monitored by the government? I think both of these are pretty likely answered in the negative.
Scramblejams 13y ago
Single page link: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/04/stephen-watt-stalked-by-past/all/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/04/stephen-watt-stalke...
utnick 13y ago
Strangely, the article really glossed over his past and made it seem like he was just an everyday programmer. He is the same person who goes by the name of 'the unix terrorist' and was pretty active in the hacking world: http://www.phrack.com/issues.html?issue=65&id=2 http://www.phrack.com/issues.html?issue=65&id=2
OGinparadise 13y ago
Sorry but I have little sympathy for this guy. He knew or should have known that he screwed many people's lives (clearing up the mess thanks to your stolen CCs is a nightmare) and cost hundreds of millions. He should've been happy making $130k a year in 2007
deadfall 13y ago
7ft tall hacker? I imagine that should be in the GBWR.
futhey 13y ago
Heh, Ironically, I bet if he came to this website, bells and whistles would go off and he'd get a call about his internet activities.
fractallyte 13y ago
Regardless of his level of guilt, the aim of the prosecutors/government was not to punish, nor to rehabilitate - they wanted to break him. This is not 'justice'. And, sadly (in my opinion), it appears they succeeded.

59 points by cyphersanctus 13y ago

The government really tries to cripple you following any sort of felony. Isn't going to prison and not doing the things you normally do, for any extended amount of time, enough punishment as it is? Isn't the whole thing supposed to be about rehabilitation for tendencies that hurt society and the fostering of tendencies that would help it? I'm not saying prisons, or the whole system, are rigged to perpetuate more crime, but it feels like you'd have to do some sort of illegal activity to stay afloat after losing everything then constantly getting held under water after release so as not being able to make a rent payment.

abstractbill 13y ago
Yes, absolutely. After we're "done" fixing gay rights (because it's hard to get everyone behind more than one thing at a time), there's a very strong case that we need to fix felons' rights.
- sophacles 13y ago
  I believe that with the current "make it legal" happenings for marijuana, and the fact that huge amounts of people are forever fucked because of posession felonies, the two things should be more inter-twined than they currently are. As such, I would argue that laying the groundwork for this sort thing should be (and arguably is) happening now, while the gay rights stuff is center-stage.
  - bennyg 13y ago
    Exactly. My brother may or may not be dealing with possession charges that would have warranted nothing more than a ticket if they happened ~60 miles to the West.
tbrownaw 13y ago
I'm not saying prisons, or the whole system, are rigged to perpetuate more crime, but it feels like you'd have to do some sort of illegal activity to stay afloat after losing everything then constantly getting held under water after release so as not being able to make a rent payment. Bad things don't happen to good people, and good people don't do bad things or associate with bad people. If someone gets arrested or convicted for doing something bad, then you associating with them must mean that either (1) you are also a bad person, or (2) bad things do in fact happen to good people, and could happen to you. This would suggest that a way to fix things would be to publicize that the system has a disturbingly high error rate (bad things do in fact happen to good people) and the damage from that needs to be reduced. Another way would be to get rid of the belief that (getting caught) doing one bad thing makes you forever a bad person, but that would require working against how intolerance seems to feed on itself...
- anon808 13y ago
  "Bad things don't happen to good people, and good people don't do bad things or associate with bad people." Evidence please . . . what a one-dimensional statement. It turns out life isn't binary.
  - randallsquared 13y ago
    That's part of his point, yes.
- bilbo0s 13y ago
  "...Bad things don't happen to good people..." I HAVE to say this after what I've seen in my life. (I've spent a significant portion of it researching cancer.) Bad things DO HAPPEN to good people.
  - eropple 13y ago
    Might want to read it again with tongue in cheek.
- ryguytilidie 13y ago

rayiner 13y ago

The key to the whole story is buried for some reason on the second page: "Prosecutors disputed this and maintained that chat logs recovered from Gonzalez’s computer described illegal carding activity that Gonzalez conducted and showed that Watt at least had broad knowledge of what Gonzalez was doing, if not the details. As Gonzalez and his gang hacked target after target, he sent Watt links to news stories describing the breaches, though he didn’t acknowledge in the correspondence that he was behind the attacks. Watt’s attorney told Wired in 2010 that his client accepted 'responsibility for aiding people that he knew would commit wrongdoing. However, he is very disturbed by the government’s aggressive attempt to make him into more than what he is.'" The article spends a page and a half making you think that he's just some innocent guy who wrote a program for a friend who ended up using it maliciously, when in reality he admitted that he helped Gonzales who he knew was going to use it to commit crimes. This is open and shut aiding and abetting a felony. And not some vague made-up felony. A felony that actually deserves to be a felony. Without taking any affirmative measures when he found out to turn his friend in, and without cooperating with police when he was charged with helping in the scheme. Is it the mark of an innocent person to you that when he found out his software had been used to commit a crime, even then he didn't help the police? The judge did absolutely the right thing in not giving him probation in order to send a signal.

dobbsbob 13y ago
Yeah right, turn his friend in. You realize they would've jailed him anyways, and his 2 years in prison would've been hell because of snitching.
- StevenRayOrr 13y ago
  Edit: doh. Posted this without realizing that you'd made an edit, dobbsbob. Oh well. I think the point is still valid, just not as a response to you :) --- While I tend to agree about overzealous prosecutions when it comes to computer crimes, let's not pretend that there aren't individuals being hurt by some of these crimes. I am a bit fuzzy on the exact nature of the fraud, but I get the impression that it was either small businesses or individuals that were hit. Dealing with fraudulent charges is neither easy nor stress free, even when it is clearly the case that fraud occurred. Sure, most eventually get it resolved, but as someone who has had to navigate those bureaucracies before I know how unpleasant it is. This is not to say that business owners facing high stress and uncertainty about their financial future is sufficient justification for the magnitude of the punishment, but it isn't always just the major corporation that suffers.

dobbsbob 13y ago

If this guy worked for Morgan Stanley then why isn't he coding Bitcoin/Litecoin/PPPcoin trading engines? Screw wallstreet, work for the hacker wallstreet

sophacles 13y ago
Because if he uses a computer for anything but his web development job (unless he is monitored by an appropriate authority), he violates his terms of probation and gets a second felony?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - dobbsbob 13y ago
    Really? Because even the most amateur exchange operator like Bitcoin24 was making thousands per day. Look up how much cavirtex.com is making lately, or bitstamp.net
- dobbsbob 13y ago
  No reason he can't turn web development into bitcoin trading engine development by asking them. I know three sites that would apply to be his auth employer immediately regardless of prison history. That's all he needs to change jobs, a letter of employment confirmation sent to the parole board. I know because I was on probation once when I was 19 for some BS hacking charge and had the same restrictions
  - sophacles 13y ago
    There is the very real question here - He got special dispensation to do the stuff at his work. It may be (I don't know but wouldn't be surprised if it was) logged/monitored by law enforcement, even if it isn't, the reasonable suspicion is there. So: Would the judge, probation board, or whoever is in charge be ok with something like bitcoin? It is pretty linked in the popular mind with criminal doings. Would any bitcoin exchange be OK with their development potentially being monitored by the government? I think both of these are pretty likely answered in the negative.

Scramblejams 13y ago

Single page link: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/04/stephen-watt-stalked-by-past/all/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/04/stephen-watt-stalke...

utnick 13y ago

Strangely, the article really glossed over his past and made it seem like he was just an everyday programmer. He is the same person who goes by the name of 'the unix terrorist' and was pretty active in the hacking world: http://www.phrack.com/issues.html?issue=65&id=2 http://www.phrack.com/issues.html?issue=65&id=2

OGinparadise 13y ago

Sorry but I have little sympathy for this guy. He knew or should have known that he screwed many people's lives (clearing up the mess thanks to your stolen CCs is a nightmare) and cost hundreds of millions. He should've been happy making $130k a year in 2007

deadfall 13y ago

7ft tall hacker? I imagine that should be in the GBWR.

futhey 13y ago

Heh, Ironically, I bet if he came to this website, bells and whistles would go off and he'd get a call about his internet activities.

fractallyte 13y ago

Regardless of his level of guilt, the aim of the prosecutors/government was not to punish, nor to rehabilitate - they wanted to break him. This is not 'justice'. And, sadly (in my opinion), it appears they succeeded.