A tiny handful -- not "large numbers" as falsely reported by some lefty media -- gathered to protest Hammond's sentence near the courthouse. Photo by pameladrew212.
Not surprisingly, Jeremy Hammond was sentenced to 10 years -- this was deserved, as I wrote.
The difference between the Guardian and the Times -- the Times at least understands there are crimes involved here. As the Time aptly reports about the court's response to Hammond's antics as an Anonymous leader:
But Federal District Judge Loretta A. Preska was unmoved, telling Mr. Hammond “there’s nothing high-minded or public-spirited about causing mayhem.”
“These are not the actions of Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, John Adams or even Daniel Ellsberg,” she said, referring to the former analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers to several news organizations. Mr. Ellsberg had written a letter to the court praising Mr. Hammond’s hacking campaign.
The script kiddies keep harping on the idea that Judge Preska should have recused herself. Nonsense. My response to a typical idiot in the comments:
- haveagoodlife
- USA
How did this judge not recuse herself, when her husband's email was one of the emails Hammond was accused of releasing?
Take note activists, the system takes no heed and has no need of you.
- Catherine Fitzpatrick
- New York
Because Stratfor has more than 860,000 clients. He worked with one of them and all that happened was his already-public email was exposed. There was no evidence of any intent to retaliate on his or her part, and the petition to recuse failed as it rightly should, because such a tendentious petition, with such a tangential relationship to the case, rightly fails.
Otherwise, you would get things like Google saying no one could judge their case if they ever used Google but complained about it. With this large a victim base, it's inevitable that there could be some relationship to the judge or prosecutors.
In real life, only something like the judge discovering that his in-law was the victim of a crime (a case I actually saw) would lead to a judge having to recuse himself.
Recusing is a concept that means that a judge is removed if there is reason to believe he or she will be biased. Having a relative whose email was in a list of 860,000 is hardly a reason.
One of the provocations introduced into this trial and bruited directly by @ioerror on Twitter (Jacob Appelbaum) and simultaneously promoted by RT.com, Voice of Russia and other Kremlin outlets, was that somehow, the FBI "put Hammond up" to hacking foreign web sites.
This is evidently arrant bullshit.
If the defense had this information, they would have brought it up during the trial proceedings, not had Jeremy himself put it into his own final speech and blurt it out before being told to cease by the judge.
There is no evidence that Sabu, at the behest of the FBI, did this. The sites indicated, in Turkey, Brazil, Iran or Poland, don't have any relationship to anything, and the FBI wouldn't be pursuing hacks abroad. Say, that's the NSA's job! Except, we don't have proof that either engaged in this supposed hack abroad. Sounds like it is just the usual tactic to confuse and distract, like tactics that Hammond has used before.
The Times couldn't resist putting in some of their "progressive" bullshit, however:
On Friday, Mr. Hammond described Stratfor as a “deserving target,” an organization engaged in “intrusive and possibly illegal surveillance activities on behalf of large multinational corporations.” Both he and his lawyers framed his actions as noble efforts to bring greater transparency to a rapidly growing and largely unaccountable private intelligence industry.
There is nothing "unaccountable" about Stratfor. If someone wants to provide a research and risk analysis business and sell that information, they get to do that in a free society with a free market. Attempting to stop it is authoritarian an unfree. If you believe they have somehow done something unlawful, by all means, bring the case. Where is it? There isn't a case.
If a private company wants to watch private and public persons, it gets to do this -- you know, just like Anonymous feels it has the right not only to watch and comment on private and public persons, but even stalk and hack them. Stratfor has committed no crimes. Again, it's a distraction technique.
The judge put it in focus:
But at the end of the hearing, Judge Preska said that Mr. Hammond had caused “widespread harm” beyond his intended targets. Among other things, she said, his 2011 attack on the computer system of the Arizona Department of Public Safety had disrupted the state’s sex offender website and Arizona’s Amber Alert System, which broadcasts messages about abducted children.
Meanwhile, while the purpose of this 10-year-sentence should help deter hackers, Anonymous hasn't been deterred, at least not yet. They have been hacking up a storm, mainly against governmentn and corporate sites that don't fit their harsh, extremist totalitarian worldview where only they and their tribe can decide who gets freedom to manage their organizations and servers as they see fit, and who doesn't.
No media seems to cover cases like this critically -- the tech press is craven to hackers for some reason, although you'd think sites like CNET selling gadgets would be a little more aware of the relationship between hackers causing billions of dollars of damage and the harming of the interests of the main people buying their ads and buying the gadgets on their site. Declan never draws these lines and his managers never think to, but he just goes on spouting what amounts to the technocommunist world view -- when it's not the technolibertarian world view.
But once refreshing thing to see is the way Ars Technica's seasoned geeks has handled this. The overwhelming number of comments to their article are negative about him and rightly explain how he is a criminal, not a "hacktivist" or "whistleblower" or any of that nonsense.
Here's one interesting comment:
Andrew NortonArs Praetorian
I should also add here, I knew him and dealt with him before he went into prison the first time. I then had about a year of dealing with him while he was out on parole, before he went underground to do this.I know for a fact he didn't abide by his parole, because he did the same to some stuff I was working on (including an internal pirate party election, so his friend would win). When I said I'd go to his parole officer, he started threatening me (do I really want to be SWATed... and in the rural south, they just shoot, questions require too much brainpower) and saying over and over that 'snitches get stitches', and 'he doesn't give a fuck about the law'. Oh, and later he tried to rationalise it by saying the guy he wanted to win authorised it. Yeah....
When I heard about his arrest, I can't say I was surprised. He was always arrogant, and thought his farts didn't stink. He also had an UNBELIEVABLE faith in 'solidarity'. As in livng in a predominantly hispanic area gave him solidarity with latinos who were bullied by the cops, because 'living there'. Not because he had to deal with the prejudices every day (being a white male) but because proximity was enough.
I believe Ars Editor Nate Anderson will be covering some of this in his next book.
Hmm. I wonder how critical that book will be...But this is a start...
"Hurray for Anarchy!" cried Hammond as he exited the court room. Juvenile nonsense. Not hurray, but 10 years.
Well, with time served already, with good behaviour, as hard as that seems to predict, this destructive force will be unleashed in no time on society.
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