So 13 members of Anonymous were indicted for Operation Payback -- the hacker attack on financial institutions including PayPal and MasterCard and Visa that refused to accept payments for WikiLeaks.
Good!
NBC writes:
Thirteen alleged members of the computer hacking group Anonymous were indicted Thursday on conspiracy charges alleging they participated in coordinated cyberattacks on anti-piracy groups, government agencies, credit card companies and others, dubbed Operation Payback.
The federal grand jury indictment, filed in federal court in Alexandria, Va., alleges that the 13 used distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks against the websites of the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, Kiss founding member and reality TV star Gene Simmons and Hustler magazine, among others.
And do you recognize any of these names?
The 13 defendants were identified as: Dennis Owen Collins, Jeremy Leroy Heller, Zhiwei Chen, Joshua S. Phy, Ryan Russell Gubele, Robert Audubon Whitfield, Anthony Tadros, Geoffrey Kenneth Commander, Phillip Garrett Simpson, Austen l. Stamm, Timothy Robert McClain, Wade Carl Williams, and Thomas J. Bell. They lived in a variety of states, and it wasn't clear if they were custody.
Boingboing.net additionally supplies their ages and the indictment -- so you can see that there are men in their late 20s and as old as 52 or 65 -- and you can see all their leet nicks too. These are not mere script kiddies or teenagers that just get "innocently dragged into LOIC attacks". Truly.
Cue CNET's Declan to whine that they face 50 years in jail, cue all the usual suspects to claim that they are getting more jail time than, oh, rapists or murderers -- but do remember they haven't been tried yet.
They may be let off; they may be given suspended sentences; they may get 2-3 years (most likely). In fact, you can see how this all might go if you look at the plea-bargaining of Kevin Poe (who was more cool online with the nick spydr101) -- one of the hackers who attacked Gene Simmons (who is anti-piracy).
I don't see how Owen Kerr or any other egghead can pull anything out of this indictment under the CFAA as vague or overbroad or blah blah. It's all pretty clear what they did -- viciously attacked websites of people who lawfully and freely refused to be partners in WikiLeaks crime and who lawfully and freely opposed piracy and copyright violations -- which are rightfully crimes.
THAT is what you have to expect when you let hackers run your world -- they in fact are the biggest destroyers of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly.
The indictment is filled with lovely gems like this:
Also on or about September 25, 2010, during the DDoS cyber-attacks on aiPlex and ACS:Law, a mmber of the conspiracy posted a link to a flier entitled "Payback is a bitch, isn't it?" The flier explained that organizations supportive of copyright laws, such as the MPAA, the RIAA, BPI, AFACT, and BREIN, were engaged in "propaganda" and that "[i]n the end, our DDoS efforts have been compared to waiting for a train. What do we have to do to be heard? To be taken seriously? Do we have ot take to the streets, throwing molitovs, raiding offices of those we oppose? Realize, you are forcing our hand by ignoring us. You forced us to DDoS when you ignored the peole, ATTACKED, the people, LIED TO THE PEOPLE."
Well, say, dudes. You aren't "THE PEOPLE". We didn't elect you. You don't represent most people, and barely command even a tiny sect. Most people aren't interested in donating to WikiLeaks and do not support WikiLeaks. They don't have a problem with PayPal and other companies that refuse to process payments to unlawful operations that incite and exploit the hacking and stealing of classified documents.
Even if they download content illegally, they don't feel they have to act out their disagreements by physically sabotaging the RIAA or copyright lawyers. Most people with these perspectives take part in lawful protests to Congress -- even if they were really pretty much a Google-organized flashmob -- and don't crash servers in the process. One could argue that their lawful approach to protesting a bill they didn't like in Congress worked a lot better than your LOIC attack worked which is now getting you in jail.
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