He sounds like a fairly radicalized activist who did some seriously questionable stuff, and will do it again given a chance. I applaud him for being true to his ethics. But can see why the government goes after him.
Other than the solitary (we shouldn't do that at all the way we do), I cannot support not punishing him for illegal acts he knowingly did.
In February 2013, the defense filed a motion asking presiding Judge Preska to recuse herself from the case on the basis that Preska's husband, Thomas Kavaler, had an email address released in the Stratfor disclosure and works with Stratfor clients that were affected by the hack. Hammond’s legal team stated that Kavaler’s status “as both a victim of the alleged crimes of the accused and an attorney to many other victims creates an appearance of partiality too strong to be disregarded, requiring disqualification”.[48][49] On February 21, 2013, Judge Preska denied the request for recusal because her husband did not recall subscribing to Stratfor's mailing list.[50]
We shouldn't be too surprised given the context, but that is an impressively unbalanced wikipedia page.
>He is currently facing federal criminal charges for allegedly publicizing internal files of the private spying agency Stratfor through the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks.
"spying agency" is a bit loaded
>In the spring of 2004, during his freshman year, he pointed out a security flaw on the computer science department’s website to department administrators, offering to fix it.[5] For pointing out the flaw, Hammond was called before the department chair and ultimately banned from returning for his sophomore year.
The linked article says that he 'pointed out' the flaw by hacking into the university computer system
> His boss at Rome & Company wrote in 2010 that Hammond is "friendly, courteous and polite and while we suspect, he has a low tolerance for corporate posturing, he has never demonstrated any contempt for business in the workplace”.
>"Jeremy is one of the best, most helpful guys I have ever talked to", wrote HackThisSite user Brandon Perry of Texas. "He is a good guy that only taught ethical hacking"
> He sounds like a fairly radicalized activist who did some seriously questionable stuff
Most of his arrests are either for stuff I don't care about (i.e. possession of marijuana, which is just a stupid law) or for things I'm, to some extent, happy someone is doing even if I wouldn't ever do them myself.
The most misguided one seems to be storming a restaurant and harassing the guests, which is just misdirected bullshit even if you do dislike the owner. The guests hadn't done anything wrong.
Beating the shit out of an anti-gay protester I couldn't possibly care less about, though. Going to a pride parade and protesting against homosexuality should get your ass kicked, even if it's against the law. The law isn't "what's right" so while I'm not a violent person myself I can't see an issue with that one.
Getting your ass beat because you're a stupid douchebag is hardly the blow against free speech you're making it out to be. Truth is there are lots of things that make people deserve beatings that are well within the parameters of the law.
From a legal perspective we tolerate lots of things. That doesn't mean it's some big mystery to people that you might get beaten up if you're stupid enough to go to a pride parade and protest against homosexuality. If anything, it's a lesson in not being stupid.
It's not a big mystery, but, unlike you, I care about people getting assaulted for peacefully expressing their dissenting opinion, no matter how stupid they might be. I believe in caring about the right of unpopular opinions to be expressed — this is the essence of free speech.
I care about them being allowed to express their opinions, but I'm also realistic enough to realize there are venues and times where those opinions should get them beat up. They can create whole movements if they'd like to, I don't care.
How you make your voice heard matters and in this case it was so obviously right for them to get "assaulted". Even more so with the almost too obvious possibility that they went there expecting a bunch of docile homosexuals that were too passive to do anything about their shit and learned the hard way that being a fucking asshole can get you in trouble regardless of where you go.
To reiterate: I don't care what their opinions are but I certainly think it's right in every way except the law for them to get beat up when they express it in that way and in that particular setting/venue.
If I recall correctly, in regards to the incident at the restaurant: it wasn't owned by the person the demonstrators had issue with, it WAS the patron (David Irving, who is a Nazi "sympathizer," to say the least) they disliked. One reason it got coverage is that another patron was accidentally hit by a bottle one of the demonstrators threw (not Hammond).
Who does this? Who storms a restaurant because a bunch of sad old Holocaust deniers are having dinner there? What important world problem are they correcting? Holocaust denial? Just calling someone a Holocaust denier is enough to entirely marginalize them. Are these "radicals" living by their principles? Or are they really just looking for excuses to fuck shit up?
Can someone please educate me on what the need for a "time served" sentence is? According to Wikipedia, this guy was (in part?) responsible for hacking Stratfor which resulted in a bunch of credit card fraud [1].
> [posted] stolen credit card data, one containing 3,956 items and the other with 13,191 items. Next they posted a set of over 30,000 items
> ...
> The hackers said they used the credit card data to make donations to various charities, including the Red Cross, Save the Children and CARE. However, one security expert stated that the charities will never receive the payments, claiming that instead, customers will report the fraudulent transaction, and the credit cards will return the money to the customer using a charge back. Ironically, this will most likely be a minus for those charities as they lose out on the fraudulent donations, along with the nominal bank service charge that customers typically must pay simply for processing/re-processing.
As someone whose VPS provider was "compromised" and a few weeks later had fraudulent transactions appeared on my credit card, it's stressful to be arbitrarily out of pocket $500 and then stressful/annoying to go through the chargeback process and get a new card and update your billing details everywhere.
This happened to my Cousin a year ago. A small donation to the PBS in NY. Oddly he was a PBS member but knew he wouldn't put any membership on the card that was charged.
Apparently these small donations are just used to check if a stolen cred card is valid.
So am I to understand that it should be completely fine to compromise systems illegally as long as they belong to a company that can be construed as "evil"? Would this campaign exist if he had physically broken in to Stratfor instead of electronically? Not every hack-tivist is a victim of the system, imho.
Speaking as someone who was familiar with Jeremy many years ago, I feel compelled to say that despite his more "radical" nature (as some have noted), he really is a great person.
I'm not happy that he is currently facing a long time in prison (again). But he's as truer to his beliefs than anyone I've ever met.
Unfortunately, his ideals aren't an excuse for breaking the law. Nonetheless, I wish him the best of luck with his case.
Advocating for comparable sentencing between online crimes and physical crimes seems a lot more supportable than advocating repeal of all online/computer crime laws.
The problem is that even one poorly behaving (h)activist sets a precedent for average people against all other activists including those that perform a societal good in a very ethical but technically illegal manner (Snowden). It also sets a poor example for others coming of age.
How things are accomplished is of more importance than what is accomplished. Activists should plan carefully by seeking out likely anticipated consequences before pulling the trigger. Otherwise, it's just reactive, aggressive chaos that doesn't go very far.
He sounds like a fairly radicalized activist who did some seriously questionable stuff, and will do it again given a chance. I applaud him for being true to his ethics. But can see why the government goes after him.
Other than the solitary (we shouldn't do that at all the way we do), I cannot support not punishing him for illegal acts he knowingly did.