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> “The same beast bit us both,” Hammond said. “They went after Aaron because of his involvement in legitimate political causes – they railroaded charges against

• dmix 13y ago
  There is not much value in pedantically debating the differences between the two. Better to focus our energies on the similarities which are overtly real: the extreme sentencing mismatching the level of harm done. It's an issue of the state seeking vengeful punishment for political purposes and not seeking to maximizing public safety or victim compensation. In addition to computer hacking/unauthorized access laws having unusually high maximum sentences vs other more more harmful offences.
  • mindslight 13y ago
    Computer hacking laws actually have pretty light sentences compared to their historic counterparts. A show trial followed by some years in jail is much nicer than being executed for witchcraft.
    • duairc 13y ago
      So we should feel good about it, or feel that we're lucky, or not try to fight back against this system? I know you probably think you're “not saying that”, but if you're not, why did you feel the need to post that?
      • mindslight 13y ago
        Should 'witches' have been thankful that they weren't tortured as horrifically as the victims of the Inquisition ? TH;DR: I said it to highlight the commonality of mass hysteria fueled hyper-punishment for socially distasteful actions.
  • andrewfong 13y ago
    10 years doesn't strike me as unreasonable. What he did basically amounted to burglary and over $1M in credit card fraud. 10 years is at the upper end of what I would sentence for those crimes, but it's not out of range -- especially considering that he's relatively unrepentant about the whole thing.
    • billmalarky 13y ago
      Over a million dollars in credit card fraud? 10 years sounds reasonable for something like that.
      • angersock 13y ago
        Million dollars? As opposed to the billions lost in 2008, and the people rewarded with bailouts for their fraud? Pshyeah, hokay. Justice is truly being served here.
      • lowkeykiwi 13y ago
        He didn't steal any money. He stole a crap load of information and credit card numbers were in there. They've extrapolated to a million dollars by adding all the credit limits together.
    • gngeal 13y ago
      10 years doesn't strike me as unreasonable. ...while in Norway, you typically only get the maximum 21 years of imprisonment for multiple murders. And even that is apparently with the possibility of an early release after 14 years and unsupervised weekend parole after 7 years. And even with murder on your hands, they just might send you off to Bastøy to rehabilitate yourself properly. And somehow, the crime rate in Norway is still much lower, as are the reoffending rates. I just wonder, what comes next in the US, two years for littering, perhaps?
      • pessimizer 13y ago
        Life sentences for repeat offenders caught shoplifting food are last decade's news.
  • rayiner 13y ago
    The sentence has to be understood in context of Hammond's criminal record: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Hammond#Arrests_and_criminal_history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Hammond#Arrests_and_crim.... Hammond has a history of taking political protest over the line to breaking into things, destroying property, etc. Also important to remember is the fact that Anonymous didn't just leak the e-mails, but stole a bunch of credit card numbers and made $700k worth of charges. To be fair, I think the sentence is too long, but more because I have a philosophical problem with the sentencing guidelines and how it punishes repeat offenders and not because I think Hammond was particularly singled out.
    • crististm 13y ago
      What was the problem after all, "political protest", "destroying property" or the $700k charges made by "Anonymous" ?
      • dopamean 13y ago
        It's very easy to claim to be the victim of political showboating when you tie your criminal activity to a political cause. It kind of reminds me of terrorists launching attacks from areas densely populated by civilians and then vilifying the counter attacks that end up hurting civilians.
        • alcari 13y ago
          > then vilifying the counter attacks that end up hurting civilians Attacking civilian targets is wrong regardless of which side is doing it. Having previously engaged in the same behavior does not make the act any less wrong, or the vilification any less deserved.
          • mpyne 13y ago
            > Attacking civilian targets is wrong regardless of which side is doing it. What about a single civilian in a civilian building filled with a company of soldiers? In the law of armed conflict this kind of thing is called "perfidy" and brings no protection.
  • diogenescynic 13y ago
    And on the other hand, the complete lack of prosecution against Wall Street executives for fraud over the financial crisis. Shows our government's priorities.
• jMyles 13y ago
  I agree with your last paragraph. However, I disagree that aaronsw "sullied" his actions with illegal activities. I think he did damn near everything right. Also, having a sufficiently "legitimate political cause" is a just and legitimate reason for action. For example, revealing criminal activity on the part of the government is a legitimate reason to violate classification laws.
  • DerpDerpDerp 13y ago
    It's not the same at all as this issue, but the civil rights movement essentially was violating laws with a political agenda in mind.
    • mpyne 13y ago
      The difference is that they obeyed the law as much as possible, it wasn't simply an anti-authority movement (as they would need the authority of the state after the laws they wanted were passed!). E.g. when MLK Jr. was arrested in Birmingham for marching without a permit, it wasn't because he just up and marched. He tried to get a permit like a good citizen, and it was denied. And even there he could easily argue he was taking advantage of his First Amendment right and not really breaking the law (as the way that law had been applied would be obviously Unconstitutional). But I know of no Constitutional or common law that would allow people to hack into computer systems, copy out other people's private emails, or steal credit card numbers. On that note, I guess privacy is only important when it's people we like, eh?
• consultant23522 13y ago
  Releasing information can be civil disobedience and imho should be shown leniency when it is. I don't suggest that I'm the one that should determine whether something should qualify as civil disobedience or not, but there's some wisdom to the idea that the court should not harshly punish someone who technically broke the law for the greater good. Your intent is often a factor in not only what you are convicted of but also the sentence handed to you.
  • pyrocat 13y ago
    Putting someone in jail for 10 years when they haven't harmed another person is ludicrous, but that's the American justice system for you.
    • einehexe 13y ago
      I'm sure some EU state would give him a backrub.
      • pyrocat 13y ago
        You're being facetious, but you have to agree that even thought there is strict sentencing in the EU, America goes beyond the pale. We have higher incarceration rates than China, and even with their massive population we have more people in prison than China does. [1](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rat...) We are roughly tied with North Korea for highest % of population in prison by country. [2](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcerat...)
        • einehexe 13y ago
          It makes me very angry that this known scumbag tries to associate himself with a true hero like Aaron Swartz, so in my opinion he is getting what he deserves, regardless of drug law incarcerations.
• ddoolin 13y ago
  "That's how it works." Next stop, surveillance state. Just because something is illegal often means absolutely nothing to some, depending on whose interests or version of morality were being represented at its' signing in.
• EthanHeilman 13y ago
  The argument that the legality and ethically of actions are orthogonal is very strong and generally accepted. Or stated differently, the illegality of act has no bearing on it's ethical or moral status.
  • rayiner 13y ago
    Totally incorrect. Its generally accepted that legality and morality are not coextensive, but that's different than legality and morality being orthogonal. Legality and morality are closely correlated, in that societies tend to make illegal actions they consider immoral. Thus, while it's possible for something to be illegal that society does not consider immoral, it's generally not the case.
    • OvidNaso 13y ago
      There are lots of laws that are not considered immoral on their own, but are enforced due to practical constraints on determining risk. Driving a car without a license is not an immoral act if someone posses the training and skill and carefully applies these. However, determining the individual case risk becomes practically impossible and thus we make driving without a license illegal. The same goes for construction permits, business and contractual law, etc. Similarly, things with very high risk of long term negative effects to the society or the individual are made illegal due to the risk and not due to the immorality of the event itself, such as our drug laws.
      • rayiner 13y ago
        I'm using "illegal" here in the narrow sense to refer to violations of criminal law, rather than civil ordinances. Breaking into a computer and stealing files isn't a civil offense like driving without a license, it's a criminal offense that's illegal because society considers it immoral. Re: drug laws, people do consider drug use and dealing to be immoral.
• duairc 13y ago
  So what if it's illegal? Is your moral compass really dictated by the state?
  • tedks 13y ago
    Yes. Most humans never progress past the command-ethics morality that characterizes Kohlberg's second stage (of three) of moral development. This isn't correlated with general intelligence. Most of the intelligent people you know probably have a moral compass largely dictated by the state.
    • jlgreco 13y ago
      Many (perhaps even most) people can be talked into the later Kohlberg states of moral development. This is basically what tends happens in the lead up to a category of laws being rejected by society and eventually dispensed with.
      • tedks 13y ago
        That's an optimistic way of looking at it. The pessimistic way is that people eventually see enough authority figures endorsing new stances that they change their own stance. Obviously nobody explicitly thinks their morality is dictated by the state/church/parents/authority-figure, but in reality most people would agree with virtually everything an authority figure would say, especially if you look at what people actually do rather than just listening to what they profess.
    • dopamean 13y ago
      I find it a little offensive that because I agree with a certain law it means my morality is dictated by the state. I'm sorry that I believe that if you're a repeat offender who just hacked a computer system and made off with nearly a million dollars in fraudulent credit card transactions you should go to prison. I haven't yet decided whether or not I think 10 years is too long for that.
      • arca_vorago 13y ago
• rfnslyr 13y ago
  That's not even remotely the point. Your argument should be one level above your current one, that is the laws in the first place, not his compliance with. It's absolutely ridiculous to take 10 years off someones life for doing good.
  • dopamean 13y ago
    Whether or not Hammond did "good" is debatable. I happen to think he's a criminal and he should go to jail. Perhaps not for 10 years though.
    • rfnslyr 13y ago
      Nobody should ever go to jail for non violent crimes. The whole point of containing someone in a cell is because they are a menace to society, and somewhere along the line we blurred it. Instead of wasting a human being for 10 years, give them mandatory community service, or worse, customer service heh. Put them to work, make them productive. People have too much skill and creativity to waste away in a jail for 10 years. It would absolutely wreck me. I would, without hesitation, kill myself as soon as possible after sentencing.
      • deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
      • mpyne 13y ago
        > Nobody should ever go to jail for non violent crimes. The whole point of containing someone in a cell is because they are a menace to society, and somewhere along the line we blurred it. You seem to think that the only possible way to be a menace to society is with actual violence. What a positively uncreative viewpoint! Surely you can think of some way to absolutely ruin a person's life without so much as a hint of violence? Likewise, perhaps punching someone in the shoulder isn't as vicious a crime as, say, cleaning out all of their bank accounts via computer hacking?
        • rfnslyr 13y ago
• drzaiusapelord 13y ago
  Except Swartz's master plan was downloading a bunch of PDFs to release, which is a copyright violation at best. Hammond was actively causing DDOS's, hacking servers, attacking his personal enemies, falsifying credentials, performing brute-forces, etc for fun and sometimes profit. These are two very different situations.
  • dopamean 13y ago
    That's my point.
    • drzaiusapelord 13y ago
      Sorry if it wasn't obvious I was cheerleading you. Fully agree. One of my pet peeves is that any criminal thinks himself an idealist and that's not fair to real idealism.
  • nikcub 13y ago
    You should work for the feds, as you seem very good at inventing new charges
• baddox 13y ago
  > It is wrong to act as if you somehow should be looked at differently by the law because you had a "legitimate political cause." I don't see it the same way as you. I see this as a complaint about the law itself, not a claim that the law shouldn't be enforced because of a "legitimate political cause." If slavery were still legal, and a slave complained publicly about the practice, you (hopefully) wouldn't tell the slave "hey, slavery is legal, that's how it works."
  • dopamean 13y ago
    I think that's kind of an absurd comparison because a slave would be made a slave simply because he exists not because of anything he had done. If you know the consequences of your actions before choose to act and you go ahead anyway then you have, in my mind, stated that you find those consequences to be acceptable. It is odd to me that Hammond would then complain about his prosecution like it was some kind of surprise.
    • baddox 13y ago
      Okay then, imagine the slave runs away, thus breaking the law, and the penalty is being captured, returned, and perhaps beaten or otherwise punished. Also, I've seen a couple of people claim that Hammond seems surprised, but in the article it is very clear and explicit that he expected this to happen.
• ignostic 13y ago
  You shouldn't confuse legitimacy and legality. >"Swartz may have had a "legitimate political cause" but he sullied it (in my opinion) with illegal activities." In this case, the law was part of the problem. Aaron broke the law, but that doesn't necessarily mean his actions weren't for a legitimate cause, nor does it mean that they weren't justified. > "It is wrong to act as if you somehow should be looked at differently by the law because you had a "legitimate political cause." And what if you think the law is wrong? What about civil disobedience? Sometimes it's right to break the law, and sometimes it's worth the risk of punishment to break the law. Whether it was wise is another question entirely. In my personal view, what Aaron did was unwise, but not wrong; and what Hammond and his associates did were both unwise and wrong.
• znowi 13y ago
  This talk of legality is fine and honorable. And I'd certainly stand by it if the law applied to the opposite party respectively. However, those in power are not only in position to craft the law, they're also exempt from it. Until this injustice resolved, I will support people like Swartz, Anonymous, et al.
• nikcub 13y ago
  > It is wrong to act as if you somehow should be looked at differently by the law because you had a "legitimate political cause That isnt what he is arguing. His argument is that the crime he is being prosecuted for would never have taken place without the involvement of the FBI. And second, he is being over prosecuted for political reasons.
  • mpyne 13y ago
    Not quite right. He said he wouldn't have gone after Stratfor specifically had he not been pointed out to it by Sabu. He never said (nor, AFAICT, implied) he wouldn't have hacked some other website he thought was relevant to Anonymous's aims. This is just one example from the linked article of Hammond being disingenuous. As far as over prosecuted, that's only really possible if they're throwing a book at him that contains charges he didn't really commit (e.g. how Russia initially charged the Arctic Greenpeace protestors with "piracy" even after Putin acknowledged it wasn't piracy). I don't see that in this case. He ran afoul of an overly severe law, that much is true. But what happened isn't so much that the government ramped up the charges, as that the government didn't tamp them down like they might for other computer hackers who seem more innocent. But I don't know what Hammond expected here either. If you're going to commit a series of crimes specifically to piss off The Man then you shouldn't be surprised when the judge seems to forget how to be lenient.
    • nikcub 13y ago
      Hence "the crime he is being prosecuted for", he was only charged for Stratfor, and being disingenuous isn't a federal crime.
      • mpyne 13y ago
        The disingenuousness being described here applies to his statement on the interview, not his actions years ago.
        • nikcub 13y ago
          Are you saying you think he did know about Stratfor and likely would have hacked it anyway? There is an IRC log somewhere of lulzsec talking about Stratfor, only one person knew who it was. It has to be characterized in very simple terms for the others (about 8 people there) to get what it was. They all wanted to continue scanning .gov and had to be convinced of Stratfor as being value. I am almost certain the Stratfor idea came from outside of the group. Hammond was the most politically involved and savvy yet he didn't know about them, I really doubt Sabu did. The other part of this is that the Stratfor hack has been represented as the work of one man who only got a little help along the way, when it was a few individuals involved. What distorts this case is that the only source of information is Sabu. Since Hammond trusted Sabu and spoke to him a lot (although I think Hammond knew that Sabu was more operations/motivation than skill). So naturally there is more evidence against Hammond, than there is evidence against Topiary and the europeans who spoke to Sabu much less and didn't trust him. The Sabu evidence gave the feds enough information to issue Hammond an entirely separate indictment for Stratfor, something that happen nowhere else in Lulzsec hacking cases. He has been charged with nothing else. All else that the case established was that he had views sympathetic with parts of Anonymous and he hung out on their IRC channel a lot. Charged with credit card fraud and $1M in theft even though the guy was eating out of a dumpster. I think it would have been fair to imprison him for 18-24 months like a few of the others, he seems reformed in any case.
• john_b 13y ago
  > It is wrong to act as if you somehow should be looked at differently by the law because you had a "legitimate political cause." You've got it backwards. The point of all political protests, whatever form they take, is to get people to look at something in a different way. I know you don't mean it this way, but what you've stated could just as easily have come out of the mouth of a racist during the 1960s.
• pavs 13y ago
  Is there a legal way to leak or expose abuse of political and intelligence use of power? The legality you talk about, the rule books were written by the same (type of) people. They get to break it but you get to do nothing about it.
• paulrademacher 13y ago
  > Swartz may have had a "legitimate political cause" but he sullied it (in my opinion) with illegal activities. Anonymous may also have a legitimate gripe but their actions were illegal and Hammond is now paying the price. That's how it works. It is wrong to act as if you somehow should be looked at differently by the law because you had a "legitimate political cause." http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.h...
• coldtea 13y ago
  >It is wrong to act as if you somehow should be looked at differently by the law because you had a "legitimate political cause." It's not about "the law", it's about justice (the concept of what's "good"). Owning slaves was once OK with the "law". But I'd say, I'd very much agree with someone in 1850 illegaly helping slaves break free, because he had a "legitimate political cause". People should care less about what's legal and more about what's moral. (Admitingly, the second is harder to define. But that's the conversation worth to have, instead of just blindy assuming anyone who did something illegal "deserves" jail).