Hammond, J

see also anon hacktivist pagentbcw BB journalist who did PM pjt ~ Stratforsee sabu bottom for highlights/lnx6/20<a href="https://gizmodo.com/dojs-new-wikileaks-indictment-has-significant-convenie-1844166678" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">https://gizmodo.com/dojs-new-wikileaks-indictment-has-significant-convenie-1844166678</a>In its push to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from the U.K., the U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday published a superseding indictment aimed at broadening “the scope of the conspiracy surrounding alleged computer intrusions with which Assange was previously charged.” The names of certain organizations and individuals are masked, including that of a paid FBI informant who stole money from WikiLeaks and later confessed to having sex with nine underage boys in exchange for money and other valuables.
A decent chunk of the filing relates to Chelsea Manning, her interactions with Assange and other possible ties to known WikiLeaks associates, which serve as the foundation for the bulk of the charges against Assange, including multiple counts of espionage.
But in hopes of linking Assange to other “unlawful overt acts” as part of a broader conspiracy—one goal of which is connecting Assange to crimes against a NATO ally of the country considering his extradition—DOJ describes several alleged interactions between Assange and Anonymous hackers involved in major criminal operations. Considerable context is omitted from the descriptions of these events, however, including the FBI’s own role in furthering attacks by Anonymous against American businesses and foreign governments in South America and the Middle East, based on a review of sealed evidence by Gizmodo.
A section of the indictment titled “Sabu, Hammond, and ASSANGE” begins on the date December 25, 2011, and refers to an attack on servers belonging to a private firm identified only as “Intelligence Consulting Company.” This is obviously Stratfor, the Austin-based private intelligence company whose millions of pilfered emails comprise the WikiLeaks drop known as the Global Intelligence Files.
DOJ omits several crucial details about the Stratfor hack in its attempts to name Assange as a conspirator in a breach that happened without his knowledge. Most notably, prosecutors exclude that the actual breach of Stratfor’s security, in late 2011, occurred 83 days prior to the events they describe, unknownst by anyone DOJ identifies as part of the conspiracy, including Assange.
This has gone mostly unreported due to the fact that all of the evidence related to the hack was sealed by a federal judge in Manhattan. Attempts by the New York Times and other outlets to acquire the evidence in court all failed. Nevertheless, nearly all of it was leaked to a handful of reporters in 2013 and today form the basis of multiple detailed accounts of the hack and surrounding events. (A portion of the material has been publicly accessible for years.)
One key document is a confidential computer forensics report, completed in February 2012, describing the Stratfor breach. The report was completed by investigators working for Verizon, which Stratfor contracted about five days after the public became aware of the breach. It lays out several important facts: The first is that attempts to breach Stratfor’s email server began on September 29, 2011, and that four days later, a brute force attack against a specific user account was successful.
This break-in detailed in the confidential report occurred two months before anyone prosecutors have blamed for the attack even knew of the company’s existence.
On November 16, the data dump containing the credit card information of Stratfor customers was created. Notably, this predates the DOJ’s own timeline of Anonymous’ involvement by 19 days. That this is the actual credit card file ultimately leaked by Anonymous is indisputable: The dataset contains 79,062 credit cards, the exact number of cards held by Stratfor on November 16, according to the forensics report. By the time Anonymous published its list, Stratfor’s database contained an additional 1,860 cards, none of which were included in the leak.[Strategic Forecasting, Inc. computer forensic investigationScreenshot: Sabu Files]The first Anonymous figure identified by DOJ as part of the Stratfor hack doesn’t become aware of the breach until early December, according to DOJ’s own timeline of events. In 2012, the FBI fed news reporters, including those at the New York Times, false information about how this all transpired. The FBI claimed that an Anonymous hacker found a way into Stratfor’s network on December 6 and then notified a member of his team—who happened to be an FBI informant.
In reality, the exact opposite happened.
Prosecutors have never mentioned, nor has the FBI ever acknowledged the capture of, the hacker actually responsible for breaching Stratfor and creating the stolen credit card file. The narrative has always been that Jeremy Hammond, a hacker affiliated with the Anonymous-offshoot Antisec, was chiefly responsible for the breach. (Hammond is currently serving the final year of his 10-year sentence for hacking Stratfor.)
[Strategic Forecasting, Inc. computer forensic investigationScreenshot: Sabu Files]For certain, Hammond gleefully ransacked Stratfor, defaced its website, encouraged others to commit fraud using its stolen credit cards, and on December 24, 2011, inputted the commands that disabled its web server and deleted its file systems. But prior to December 4, the date an FBI informant (“Sabu”) offered him the means to access those systems, Hammond had no apparent knowledge of the company’s existence.Evidence collected by the FBI, which DOJ has fought to keep concealed, shows the hacker responsible for breaching Stratfor (known only as “Hyrriiya”) was closely tied with a group of hackers whose central focus was infiltrating the Syrian government—the same group behind the leak of the Syria Files, more than 2 million emails from Syrian government officials published by WikiLeaks in July 2012.Moreover, the evidence appears to show a clear violation of DOJ’s guidelines for the use of confidential informants, which expressly forbid informants from initiating or instigating “a plan or strategy to commit a federal, state, or local offense.” Despite claiming in court that its informant was under constant surveillance and worked side-by-side with agents throughout his cooperation, an FBI official later said of any alleged unlawful conduct: “It’s not like we watched him every time he got up to get a coke.” (This also appears untrue as prosecutors claimed in 2014 there was a webcam in his apartment.)
In one of the most egregious examples of this violation, records show the informant providing Hammond complete credit card data belonging to a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and an employee of Raytheon as evidence the breach is authentic. Hammond responds that he’s interested and wants to “sink [his] teeth” into the target.
At the time Stratfor was hacked, companies rarely faced any scrutiny for suffering data breaches. Were the same hack to occur today, coverage of the event would likely be different. After Equifax announced its breach in 2017, the company was investigated federally and excoriated publicly, its reputation essentially torched. Stratfor, meanwhile, quietly paid out a meager $1.7 million settlement and was largely portrayed as a victim in the press.
In truth, Stratfor set the stage for its own devastating breach through its own sheer negligence. Its security, or lack thereof, was appalling, according to its own forensic report. The company had virtually no controls over remote access to its network, which was not protected by a firewall and lacked proper file integrity-monitoring. It had no password management policy. According to the report, staff “commonly use the same password to access email as the password to remotely access a system containing sensitive information.”
In 2011, Stratfor was, the report found, ignoring all routine data security standards established by the payment card industry: no firewall, no encryption, no regularly updated anti-virus software, no need-to-know restricted access, no network monitoring, no regular audits of its systems, and no existing policy to address information security. The server that held Stratfor’s unsecured credit card data wasn’t even segregating from its email server, which was the hackers’ point of entry and the only reason any financial information was stolen in the first place.
If the same hack were to have happened this year, the company would wind up eating the lion’s share of the blame.
Perhaps the most absurd twist is that Dallas-based journalist Barrett Brown ended up getting slapped with nearly $900,000 in restitution to Stratfor, even though Brown had no advanced knowledge of the attack and, to be blunt, couldn’t hack his way out of a paper bag.
As with Hammond, Brown took a deal in an effort to avoid potentially decades in prison. But in trying to ensure Brown got the harshest sentence possible, federal prosecutors repeatedly painted him as being closely allied with the hackers behind the Stratfor breach. This despite the fact that DOJ quietly withheld evidence obtained by an informant obliterating that theory. This evidence showed that the hackers secretly loathed Brown and had even discussed implicating him in the crime—textbook Brady material, which would have all but upended the government’s account of Brown being integral to the breach.
As Gizmodo previously reported, there is likely ample evidence to show that WikiLeaks aided the Stratfor hackers in the wake of the attack, after the fact. But in several places, Gizmodo can confirm, the indictment attributes statements directly to Assange when, in reality, those conversations were relayed second-hand. (Assange is also known for using a variety of methods to obscure his identity online including, notoriously, referring to himself in the third-person.) At best, these are copies of exchanges taken from chat rooms in which a user claims to be Assange, which is not likely to hold up in court.
The evidence does show that someone alleging to be Assange provided the Stratfor hackers with a script designed to help them more easily navigate the more than 5 million emails they stole (though, as FBI’s own evidence shows, the hackers found the tool was practically useless.) Nevertheless, like Brown, the evidence also shows Assange had no foreknowledge of the attack. Without WikiLeaks’ involvement, Stratfor’s customers would have still suffered the same amount of financial harm, the company’s systems would have still been destroyed, and its emails would have ended up splattered across the internet anyway, in one form or another.
Regardless of whatever alleged crimes Assange may actually be guilty of—if any—that shouldn’t distract from the fact that DOJ’s timeline of events is woefully misleading. The agency’s handling of the Stratfor breach should not be cast as a model for how to prosecute computer crimes. It is at best a paradigm for evidence mismanagement, and at worst, a glaring case of deliberate prosecutorial misconduct.
9/19https://gizmodo.com/jeremy-hammond-anonymous-hacker-and-wikileaks-source-1837830636<div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div style=""><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">no lnx highlight</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://gizmodo.com/dojs-new-wikileaks-indictment-has-significant-convenie-1844166678">https://gizmodo.com/dojs-new-wikileaks-indictment-has-significant-convenie-1844166678</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
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</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">https://gizmodo.com/jeremy-hammond-anonymous-hacker-and-wikileaks-source-1837830636</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
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</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Jeremy Hammond, Anonymous Hacker and WikiLeaks Source, Summoned to Testify Before a Federal Grand Jury</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Dell Cameron</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">9/03/19 </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Filed to:</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">WIKILEAKS</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[pix</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A leaked FBI surveillance photo taken of Jeremy Hammond on February 29, 2012, six days before the SWAT raid on his Chicago home.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Photo: Federal Bureau of Investigation]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Imprisoned hacktivist Jeremy Alexander Hammond, a former WikiLeaks source once regarded as the FBI’s most-wanted cybercriminal, has been called to testify before a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia, Gizmodo has learned.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On Saturday, the Jeremy Hammond Support Committee announced that the 34-year-old Chicago hacker had been transferred from his medium-security prison in Memphis, Tennessee, to a federal transfer center in Oklahoma City. But on Tuesday he arrived in Virginia, where he’s expected to be questioned before a grand jury regarding his past ties with WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization whose founder, Julian Assange, currently faces a slew of federal charges, including several under the Espionage Act.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Given the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, we don’t know the nature or scope of the grand jury’s investigation. However, our assumption is that this is the same grand jury that Chelsea Manning is currently being incarcerated for refusing to testify before,” his supporters said in a statement.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[Illustration for article titled Jeremy Hammond, Anonymous Hacker and WikiLeaks Source, Summoned to Testify Before a Federal Grand Jury</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">WikiLeaks Helped Hackers Rifle Through Stolen Company Emails, Leaked FBI Docs Show]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The revelation that U.S. prosecutors have prepared an indictment against Julian Assange, a fact the</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Hammond’s transfer and potential testimony, which supporters say he’s unlikely to give, raises new questions about the scope of the government’s criminal case against WikiLeaks. The charges against Assange have thus far been limited to events linked to the release of classified U.S. government documents provided by former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who has herself being held in a Virginia jail for refusing to give a grand jury her testimony.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="">In November, Gizmodo reported that WikiLeaks had provided Hammond and his AntiSec hacking crew with access to a custom search engine tool in early 2012 in an effort to aid the hackers in rifling through a batch of more than 5 million emails, which AntiSec had plundered from the servers of a private intelligence firm the month before. That year, WikiLeaks would begin publishing and sharing with its worldwide media partners the same tranche of emails, which it named the “Global Intelligence Files.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">An anarchist who waged cyberwar against police departments, private security firms, and other institutions he deemed symbols of tyranny and social control, Hammond pleaded guilty in 2013 to attacking Stratfor, the global intelligence firm based in Austin, Texas. Among Stratfor’s clients at the time were the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense, employees of the National Security Agency, countless police agency heads, and, among other notable figures, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="">After stealing some 60,000 credit cards from the company, Hammond and his “revolutionary comrades” carried out what they called an “act of loving egalitarian criminality,” using the cards to donate tens of thousands of dollars to charities, prisoner support groups, and digital rights organizations, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Greenpeace, and the American Red Cross. The hackers’ eventually totaled more than $700,000 in fraudulent charges, according to one FBI estimate.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">To his downfall, Hammond counted among his closest comrades in arms, unknowingly, an informant for the FBI, whose every conversation with him online—including many instigating criminal acts—was closely monitored by federal agents in the bureau’s Manhattan field office.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Jeremy pled guilty to put an end to the case against him,” his supporters said. “He pled guilty because he had no interest in cooperating with the government. He was sentenced to 10 years—the maximum allowed under his plea agreement—and has been serving his time, counting down to the day that he will finally be free. That day was supposed to come in mid-December of 2019.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="">Hammond, his supporters say, has been voluntarily enrolled in an intensive substance abuse program known as RDAP, which studies have found, according to the Bureau of Prisons, to reduce drug relapse and recidivism in prisoners. Those who successfully complete the program are eligible for a 12-month reduction of their sentence. His legal team now believes, however, that because he was called to testify in Virginia, he is no longer eligible for early release, flushing months of hard work down the drain.</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">“The government’s effort to try to compel Jeremy to testify is punitive and mean-spirited,” his supporters said, adding: “In bringing him against his will to the Eastern District of Virginia, the government has put an end to his participation in the RDAP drug program, effectively adding a year to his sentence.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">AntiSec: Anarchists of Anonymous</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Under the flag of Anonymous, Hammond and his team spent most of 2011 laying waste to government websites, with a particular focus on law enforcement. While the group’s chosen name, AntiSec, was derived from the anti-security movement founded over a decade before, in reality, they had little in common with the movement, the chief focus of which was waging war on the security industry. Hammond’s AntiSec was instead primarily virulent towards capitalists, prisons, and police.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="">Unlike LulzSec and most of the other groups who had claimed the Anonymous name for their own, AntiSec, like Hammond, who had once placed on a terrorist watchlist, was purely anarchistic.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="">Citing coordinated crackdowns on Occupy Wall Street protesters in 2011, AntiSec pilfered the emails, passwords, and credit card information of the New York State Association of Chiefs of Police and the California Statewide Law Enforcement Association. They also attacked what Hammond called the police “supply chain,” breaking into the website of a military and law enforcement equipment supplier and then gleefully publishing the home addresses of thousands of its military and police customers.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“While we attacked the institutions of capitalism, it would only make sense to attack those who enforce it, the inherently oppressive protectors of property and purveyors of social control; the pigs, the fuzz... the police,” Hammond wrote in a press release announcing the attacks.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A leaked photo of Jeremy Hammond’s laptop taken at an FBI forensics lap shortly after his arrest.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Photo: FBI]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="">In another post touting the defacement and destruction of some 70 law enforcement websites, which had been carried out in the names of Anonymous hackers arrested by police, AntiSec wrote: “We have no sympathy for any of the officers or informants who may be endangered by the release of their personal information.” For too long, the hackers said, police had spied on them and abused their own personal information. “Retribution,” the hackers declared, “was at hand.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Prior to breaking away from the mostly Britain-based hackers who merely did hacks “for the lulz,” AntiSec published private emails, addresses, and passwords belonging to the Arizona Department of Public Safety. In a statement titled “Chinga La Migra” (fuck immigration enforcement), AntiSec cited as justification SB 1070, an Arizona law that made it a misdemeanor for legal immigrants to be caught without a government ID card.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The ASCII art that accompanied the post, released in the name of LulzSec (even though its core members were not directly involved) included a crudely drawn assault rifle with the phrase “off the pigs” written on the stock.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[</div><div style="">A LulzSec press release that included emails, phone numbers, passwords and home addresses stolen by AntiSec hackers from the Arizona Department of Public Safety in June 2011.]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">While under interrogation by British police the following month, one core LulzSec member would tell two detectives that he thought the attack “was too extreme.” The cops played dumb. “What does it mean, sorry?” one asked.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It means, the underage hacker said while explaining he’d had to Google the phrase himself, “Kill the police.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">FBI’s Misleading Stratfor Account</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In early March 2012, the week of Hammond’s arrest, the FBI began to paint a picture for the press of how the Stratfor hack went down. It rarely resembled reality.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In a story titled “Inside the Stratfor Attack,” a New York Times reporter labeled as “conspiracy theorists” anyone who believed the FBI had simply allowed the attack to occur. The story included a timeline offered by FBI officials that suggested Hammond had first hacked Stratfor and then notified one of the bureau’s informants, Hector Monsegur, a 28-year-old foster parent living in Manhattan’s Alphabet City neighborhood who hacked under the handle Sabu.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The FBI, the Times reported, had not learned of the breach until Dec. 6, 2011, “after the hackers had already infiltrated the company’s network.” But FBI surveillance records leaked to journalists in 2014 told a radically different story.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[pix? An unknown hacker named “Hyrriiya” announces he’s hacked Stratfor on December 4, 2011. </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The files, which remain under seal at the time of writing, revealed that Monsegur had been informed that Stratfor was already compromised two days earlier, on Dec. 4, when another hacker—whom the FBI has yet to charge or even publicly acknowledge—provided him with stolen credit cards belonging to several Stratfor customers. The list included employees of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the defense contractor Raytheon, and the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), among others.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="">“[W]e would love to penetrate their users/network for #antisec,” Monsegur told the hacker, who went by the handle Hyrriiya, “definitely get me details so I can begin working ;)“</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On December 4, 2011, “Sabu,” whose computer was being keylogged by FBI, learns that Stratfor has been hacked.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Screenshot: FBI]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Hammond would not learn about the breach for a full day, records reveal. On Dec. 5, he was pinged by Monsegur, who showed him the stolen credit card data and said another hacker had offered AntiSec “complete control” of a “big intelligence company.” Within a few hours, Monsegur introduced Hammond to Hyrriiya, warning both not to discuss the attack outside a single private room. The FBI was recording everything.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The notion that the FBI was not aware of the events would contradict its claims about its monitoring made later in federal court. Monsegur’s relationship with the bureau was even described by the judge overseeing the case as “virtual around-the-clock cooperation where Mr. Monsegur was sitting with agents.” His own attorney said the FBI was tracking “everything he typed with a key-logging program.” A camera was installed in his home.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The FBI would have had reason to exclude much of this timeline back when it granted interviews to handpicked reporters about the case. Even informants permitted to engage in criminal activity under the Attorney General’s guidelines are forbidden to “initiate or instigate a plan or strategy to commit a federal, state, or local offense.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Before Hammond was sentenced, logs of the conversations showing he’d been prompted to attack Stratfor were handed over to his defense team. But rather than fight the case, and face potentially 30 years in prison, he agreed to a deal limiting his sentence to 10 years instead.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[FBI-logged chats show Monsegur (<sabu>), at the time an FBI informant, introducing Hammond (<sup_g>) to an unknown hacker who to help AntiSec breach Stratfor’s servers. Date: Dec. 5, 2011.</sup_g></sabu></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Screenshot: FBI]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Now that I have pleaded guilty it is a relief to be able to say that I did work with Anonymous to hack Stratfor, among other websites,” he said after entering a guilty plea in May 2013. “Those others included military and police equipment suppliers, private intelligence and information security firms, and law enforcement agencies. I did this because I believe people have a right to know what governments and corporations are doing behind closed doors. I did what I believe is right.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="">About a year before, a letter had surfaced to Hammond’s attorneys signed by someone named Hyrriiya. “I am stating and admitting, AS FACT,” it said, “that I was the person who hacked Stratfor.” The letter also pointed to specific private conversations that occurred between Hyrriiya and Monsegur that could not have been known by anyone else—other than, perhaps, the FBI. Reporters with access to leaked FBI surveillance records have since assessed with high confidence the letter is real.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A leaked confidential forensics report would later show that Stratfor was at least partly to blame for the disaster (or at least would be in the post-Equifax era in which corporations are scrutinized over flawed security practices). The investigation, conducted by a Verizon security team, found that Stratfor had failed to implement proper controls over vital systems, which were not protected by a firewall and lacked proper file integrity-monitoring. The report explicitly states that “several distinct vulnerabilities and network configurations existed” enabling the hackers to easily slip in.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Stratfor’s network was “wide open.” In fact, attaining root access to its servers was so easy it didn’t require a password. A leaked internal memo would later calculate the total cost of the breach at $3.78 million, some of which Texas journalist Barrett Brown was later ordered to pay in the form of restitution, even though he had no part in the attack.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Enter WikiLeaks, After the Hack</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">FBI surveillance records reveal much about the nature of WikiLeaks’ involvement in the Stratfor attack, all of it occurring well after the fact. AntiSec members, including Hammond and Monsegur, both claimed at different times to be in contact with Assange—or, at least, a person whom they believed to be him. It’s impossible to know for certain the identity of the person with whom they were corresponding. (At one point, the hackers even thought that maybe they were talking to Assange while he was pretending to be someone else.)</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Nevertheless, the FBI-captured conversations indicate that WikiLeaks did not formally request access to the emails until after AntiSec had gone public about the attack on Dec. 25, 2011, a day the hacking group referred to as “LulzXMas.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Hammond (@sup_g) discussing the release of Stratfor emails to WikiLeaks with other AntiSec members on December 29, 2011.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Screenshot: FBI]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On Dec. 26 of that year, as AntiSec released some 30,000 Stratfor credit cards to the public, Monsegur informed Hammond that Assange had reached out. “I think wikileaks wants the emails,” he said. “JA says he wants to look at emails first, see if they can do something with it,” he added. “[I]f the mails are in fact juicy to the point wikileaks will accept it then its a wrap.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Being a part of a major WikiLeaks release, Hammond believed, would be “groundbreaking.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="">Close to midnight on Dec. 29, Hammond announced that Assange was “almost done copying the files.” Other hackers in the chatroom, most of whom had been tasked with running up fraudulent charges with credit cards stolen from Stratfor, were warned to keep the partnership under wraps. Hammond wondered aloud: “I wonder how criminally liable JA and folks could be by admitting having received hacked stolen and controversial files from us.”</div><div style="">
</div><div style="">Another hacker replied, “Well, NPR wanted them.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[Hammond (yohoho) and Monsegur (leondavidson) discussing contact with WikiLeaks on January 12, 2012, two months before Hammond was arrested.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Screenshot: FBI]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Two weeks later, Hammond reported that he was back in contact with Assange. The hackers were growing restless and wondered when their partnership with WikiLeaks would be announced.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="">“[H]e gave me access to a search engine script for these [S]tratfor emails,” Hammond said. Asked whether the script worked, Hammond said it was “pretty primitive but it works,” adding that “JA” had also offered to share access with anyone on AntiSec’s team, and that he’d asked WikiLeaks to give Monsegur access. Monsegur, meanwhile, was also secretly hosting the emails on an FBI server.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Just wait for him to hit me up,” Monsegur said back, “these wikileaks are bitches about things. they asked me to hack [the] icelandic government. I did it and they stopped talking to me.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“I felt like a whore,” he said.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Dell Cameron</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Senior Reporter, Privacy & Security</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div><div style="font-size: small;"><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">no lnx</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/25/assange_wikileaks_sabu/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/25/assange_wikileaks_sabu/</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">US govt: Julian Assange tried to recruit hacker to steal hush-hush dirt and we should know – the hacker was an informant</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">WikiLeaker accused of tapping up LulzSec's Sabu as a source</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Thu 25 Jun 2020 // 22:59 UTC47 Reg comments GOT TIPS?</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Shaun Nichols in San Francisco BIO EMAIL</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Prosecutors in the US have upgraded their case against Julian Assange with a second superseding indictment claiming he sought out the services of a notorious hacker who, unbeknownst to the WikiLeaks boss, was secretly working with the Feds.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Department of Justice this week added yet more material to its indictment against Assange, which accuses him of 18 counts of espionage and hacking. The latest filing does not add any charges, though it includes evidence of Assange asking hackers to steal sensitive and scandalous dirt from government systems for WikiLeaks to disseminate. This could blow a hole in Jules' I'm-a-journalist-not-a-spy defense.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In the filing [PDF], it is said Assange worked directly with Anonymous and LulzSec miscreants in a quest to obtain US government documents and publish them on WikiLeaks.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[Assange</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">London court tells Julian Assange: No, coronavirus is not a good reason for you to be let out of prison</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">READ MORE]</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In one instance, prosecutors alleged, Assange employed the services of LulzSec to get files out of a server belonging to an unspecified NATO-member government. Among those who Assange was said to have directly contacted was Hector "Sabu" Monsegur.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Monsegur was the head of LulzSec, and a single father from the Bronx. Under threat of losing his children, he turned informant after being collared in 2011, and helped the Feds dismantle the crew. He was still operating in 2012 when Assange is alleged to have asked him to hack organizations for confidential information.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="">In fact, it is claimed Assange asked both LulzSec hacker Jeremy Hammond and Sabu to help him obtain a number of sensitive documents belonging to various three-letter agencies in Washington DC. The indictment states at one point Hammond and Sabu worried they would not be able to meet the expectations of Assange to exfiltrate and provide material for publication.</div></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
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</div>wiki preska<ul style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="version" d="D" encoding="encoding" utf-8="UTF-8" f="F" e="E" a="A" csvg="Csvg" http="http" fwww.w3.org="Fwww.w3.org" f2000="F2000" fsvg="Fsvg" width="width" height="height" ccircle="Ccircle" cx="cx" cy="cy" r="r" fill="fill" xmlns="xmlns" xmlns:data="data"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_Xavier_Monsegur" class="mw-redirect" title="Hector Xavier Monsegur" style="background: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Hector Xavier Monsegur</a> — On March 9, 2012, Preska presided over the case of the hactivist who participated in activities with some members of the online group Anonymous. It was made public on March 9 that Monsegur, known online as Sabu, was cooperating with the FBI in exchange for dismissal of other charges against him, including attempted drug-dealing for five pounds of marijuana and illegal gun possession, receiving stolen property, hacking an online casino and $15,000 of fraudulent credit card charges, according to a plea deal, reported by Bloomberg News. The agreement, which was made public, stated that Federal charges against the 28-year-old would be dropped.</li></ul>According to FBI documents his role as Sabu was key to charging hactivist Jeremy Hammond.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#cite_note-13" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[13]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#cite_note-14" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[14]</a><ul style="margin: 0.3em 0px 0px 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(" data:image="data:image" svg="svg" xml="xml" c="C" fxml="Fxml" version="version" d="D" encoding="encoding" utf-8="UTF-8" f="F" e="E" a="A" csvg="Csvg" http="http" fwww.w3.org="Fwww.w3.org" f2000="F2000" fsvg="Fsvg" width="width" height="height" ccircle="Ccircle" cx="cx" cy="cy" r="r" fill="fill" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" xmlns="xmlns" xmlns:data="data"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Hammond" title="Jeremy Hammond" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Jeremy Hammond</a> – the activist accused of gaining unauthorized access to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratfor" title="Stratfor" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Stratfor</a>'s computer systems, was denied bail by Preska; who warned that he could face life imprisonment.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#cite_note-15" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[15]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#cite_note-16" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[16]</a> Hammond unsuccessfully sought to have Preska recuse herself, given that information about Preska's husband, Thomas Kavaler, was released in the leak and given that Kavaler has worked in the past with many Stratfor clients.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#cite_note-17" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">[17]</a> However, Preska's husband stated the only information released was his publicly available work e-mail address.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_A.Preska#cite_note-18" style="text-decoration-line: none; background: none;">[18]</a></li></ul>sparrow:
Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison, Jeremy Hammond Uses Allocution to Give Consequential Statement Highlighting Global Criminal Exploits by FBI Handlers Sparrow in activism, eventsNEW YORK, NY — Jeremy Hammond, a 28-year-old political activist, was sentenced today to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to participating in the Anonymous hack into the computers of the private intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor).  The Ceremonial Courtroom at the Federal Court for the Southern District of New York was filled today with an outpouring of support by journalists, activists and other whistleblowers who see Jeremy Hammond’s actions as a form of civil disobedience, motivated by a desire to protest and expose the secret activities of private intelligence corporations.The hearing opened with arguments as to what sections of the court record will remain redacted after sentencing. While Jeremy’s attorneys initially erred on the side of caution in previous memorandums and kept large pieces of the record redacted, both the defense and prosecution agreed this morning that many of the sections should now be made available for public view. The prosecution, however took stiff exception to portions of the court record being made public that indicate victims, specifically foreign governments, that Jeremy allegedly hacked under the direction of Hector “Sabu” Monsegur, the FBI informant at the helm of Jeremy’s alleged actions. Judge Preska ordered that the names of these foreign governments remain sealed.Jeremy’s counsel, Sarah Kunstler, who is 9 months pregnant and due to give birth today, delivered a passionate testimonial as to the person that Jeremy is, and the need for people like Jeremy during this era of exponential changes in our socio-political landscape. (Read Sarah Kunstler’s complete argument HERE)  She was followed by co-counsel, Susan Kellman, who wept as she recalled her own experiences reading the hundreds of letters from supporters to the court detailing Jeremy Hammond’s unbridled selflessness and enthusiastic volunteerism.  She pointed out that it was this same selflessness that motivated Jeremy’s actions in this case.  She closed her testimony by underscoring that, “The centerpiece of our argument is a young man with high hopes and unbelievably laudable expectations in this world.”Susan was followed by Jeremy Hammond himself, who gave a detailed, touching and consequential allocution to the court.  The following is Jeremy’s statement to the court.  We have redacted a portion [marked in red] upon the orders of Judge Preska.  While we believe the public has a right to know the redacted information therein, we refuse to publish information that could adversely effect Jeremy or his counsel.JEREMY HAMMOND’S SENTENCING STATEMENT  |  11/15/2013Good morning.Thank you for this opportunity. My name is Jeremy Hammond and I’m here to be sentenced for hacking activities carried out during my involvement with Anonymous. I have been locked up at MCC for the past 20 months and have had a lot of time to think about how I would explain my actions.Before I begin, I want to take a moment to recognize the work of the people who have supported me. I want to thank all the lawyers and others who worked on my case: Elizabeth Fink, Susan Kellman, Sarah Kunstler, Emily Kunstler, Margaret Kunstler, and Grainne O’Neill. I also want to thank the National Lawyers Guild, the Jeremy Hammond Defense Committee and Support Network, Free Anons, the Anonymous Solidarity Network, Anarchist Black Cross, and all others who have helped me by writing a letter of support, sending me letters, attending my court dates, and spreading the word about my case. I also want to shout out my brothers and sisters behind bars and those who are still out there fighting the power.
The acts of civil disobedience and direct action that I am being sentenced for today are in line with the principles of community and equality that have guided my life. I hacked into dozens of high profile corporations and government institutions, understanding very clearly that what I was doing was against the law, and that my actions could land me back in federal prison. But I felt that I had an obligation to use my skills to expose and confront injustice—and to bring the truth to light.Could I have achieved the same goals through legal means? I have tried everything from voting petitions to peaceful protest and have found that those in power do not want the truth to be exposed. When we speak truth to power we are ignored at best and brutally suppressed at worst. We are confronting a power structure that does not respect its own system of checks and balances, never mind the rights of it’s own citizens or the international community.My introduction to politics was when George W. Bush stole the Presidential election in 2000, then took advantage of the waves of racism and patriotism after 9/11 to launch unprovoked imperialist wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. I took to the streets in protest naively believing our voices would be heard in Washington and we could stop the war. Instead, we were labeled as traitors, beaten, and arrested.I have been arrested for numerous acts of civil disobedience on the streets of Chicago, but it wasn’t until 2005 that I used my computer skills to break the law in political protest. I was arrested by the FBI for hacking into the computer systems of a right-wing, pro-war group called Protest Warrior, an organization that sold racist t-shirts on their website and harassed anti-war groups. I was charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the “intended loss” in my case was arbitrarily calculated by multiplying the 5000 credit cards in Protest Warrior’s database by $500, resulting in a total of $2.5 million.  My sentencing guidelines were calculated on the basis of this “loss,” even though not a single credit card was used or distributed – by me or anyone else. I was sentenced to two years in prison.While in prison I have seen for myself the ugly reality of how the criminal justice system destroys the lives of the millions of people held captive behind bars. The experience solidified my opposition to repressive forms of power and the importance of standing up for what you believe.When I was released, I was eager to continue my involvement in struggles for social change. I didn’t want to go back to prison, so I focused on above-ground community organizing. But over time, I became frustrated with the limitations, of peaceful protest, seeing it as reformist and ineffective. The Obama administration continued the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, escalated the use of drones, and failed to close Guantanamo Bay.Around this time, I was following the work of groups like Wikileaks and Anonymous. It was very inspiring to see the ideas of hactivism coming to fruition. I was particularly moved by the heroic actions of Chelsea Manning, who had exposed the atrocities committed by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. She took an enormous personal risk to leak this information – believing that the public had a right to know and hoping that her disclosures would be a positive step to end these abuses. It is heart-wrenching to hear about her cruel treatment in military lockup.I thought long and hard about choosing this path again. I had to ask myself, if Chelsea Manning fell into the abysmal nightmare of prison fighting for the truth, could I in good conscience do any less, if I was able? I thought the best way to demonstrate solidarity was to continue the work of exposing and confronting corruption.I was drawn to Anonymous because I believe in autonomous, decentralized direct action. At the time Anonymous was involved in operations in support of the Arab Spring uprisings, against censorship, and in defense of Wikileaks. I had a lot to contribute, including technical skills, and how to better articulate ideas and goals. It was an exciting time – the birth of a digital dissent movement, where the definitions and capabilities of hacktivism were being shaped.I was especially interested in the work of the hackers of LulzSec who were breaking into some significant targets and becoming increasingly political. Around this time, I first started talking to Sabu, who was very open about the hacks he supposedly committed, and was encouraging hackers to unite and attack major government and corporate systems under the banner of Anti Security. But very early in my involvement, the other Lulzsec hackers were arrested, leaving me to break into systems and write press releases. Later, I would learn that Sabu had been the first one arrested, and that the entire time I was talking to him he was an FBI informant.
Anonymous was also involved in the early stages of Occupy Wall Street. I was regularly participating on the streets as part of Occupy Chicago and was very excited to see a worldwide mass movement against the injustices of capitalism and racism. In several short months, the “Occupations” came to an end, closed by police crackdowns and mass arrests of protestors who were kicked out of their own public parks. The repression of Anonymous and the Occupy Movement set the tone for Antisec in the following months – the majority of our hacks against police targets were in retaliation for the arrests of our comrades.
I targeted law enforcement systems because of the racism and inequality with which the criminal law is enforced. I targeted the manufacturers and distributors of military and police equipment who profit from weaponry used to advance U.S. political and economic interests abroad and to repress people at home. I targeted information security firms because they work in secret to protect government and corporate interests at the expense of individual rights, undermining and discrediting activists, journalists and other truth seekers, and spreading disinformation.
I had never even heard of Stratfor until Sabu brought it to my attention. Sabu was encouraging people to invade systems, and helping to strategize and facilitate attacks. He even provided me with vulnerabilities of targets passed on by other hackers, so it came as a great surprise when I learned that Sabu had been working with the FBI the entire time.[turned when?  SABU:  sabu caught b/c entered chat room w/o disguise IP addy p215; pled guilty aug 2011, faced 124 yearsfbi kept indictment sealed 1 yr (they ran him as agent for 8 mos? he suggested targets he got from FBI?] mach kills]
On December 4, 2011, Sabu was approached by another hacker who had already broken into Stratfor’s credit card database. Sabu, under the watchful eye of his government handlers, then brought the hack to Antisec by inviting this hacker to our private chatroom, where he supplied download links to the full credit card database as well as the initial vulnerability access point to Stratfor’s systems.I spent some time researching Stratfor and reviewing the information we were given, and decided that their activities and client base made them a deserving target. I did find it ironic that Stratfor’s wealthy and powerful customer base had their credit cards used to donate to humanitarian organizations, but my main role in the attack was to retrieve Stratfor’s private email spools which is where all the dirty secrets are typically found.
It took me more than a week to gain further access into Stratfor’s internal systems, but I eventually broke into their mail server. There was so much information, we needed several servers of our own in order to transfer the emails. Sabu, who was involved with the operation at every step, offered a server, which was provided and monitored by the FBI. Over the next weeks, the emails were transferred, the credit cards were used for donations, and Stratfor’s systems were defaced and destroyed. Why the FBI would introduce us to the hacker who found the initial vulnerability and allow this hack to continue remains a mystery.
As a result of the Stratfor hack, some of the dangers of the unregulated private intelligence industry are now known. It has been revealed through Wikileaks and other journalists around the world that Stratfor maintained a worldwide network of informants that they used to engage in intrusive and possibly illegal surveillance activities on behalf of large multinational corporations. [ proto cambr anal?]
After Stratfor, I continued to break into other targets, using a powerful “zero day exploit” allowing me administrator access to systems running the popular Plesk webhosting platform. Sabu asked me many times for access to this exploit, which I refused to give him. Without his own independent access, Sabu continued to supply me with lists of vulnerable targets. I broke into numerous websites he supplied, uploaded the stolen email accounts and databases onto Sabu’s FBI server, and handed over passwords and backdoors that enabled Sabu (and, by extension, his FBI handlers) to control these targets.These intrusions, all of which were suggested by Sabu while cooperating with the FBI, affected thousands of domain names and consisted largely of foreign government websites, including those of [turkey? Ireland?] XXXXXX, XXXXXX, XXXX, XXXXXX, XXXXX, XXXXXXXX, XXXXXXX and the XXXXXX XXXXXXX. In one instance, Sabu and I provided access information to hackers who went on to deface and destroy many government websites in XXXXXX. I don’t know how other information I provided to him may have been used, but I think the government’s collection and use of this data needs to be investigated. ASSANGE ASKED HIM TO HACK US GOV'T 3 LTR AGY?][Sketch from inside Judge Preska’s courtroom, by Molly CrabappleThe government celebrates my conviction and imprisonment, [PREET B?] hoping that it will close the door on the full story. I took responsibility for my actions, by pleading guilty, but when will the government be made to answer for its crimes?The U.S. hypes the threat of hackers in order to justify the multi billion dollar cyber security industrial complex, but it is also responsible for the same conduct it aggressively prosecutes and claims to work to prevent. The hypocrisy of “law and order” and the injustices caused by capitalism cannot be cured by institutional reform but through civil disobedience and direct action. Yes I broke the law, but I believe that sometimes laws must be broken in order to make room for change.In the immortal word of Frederick Douglas, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”This is not to say that I do not have any regrets. I realize that I released the personal information of innocent people who had nothing to do with the operations of the institutions I targeted. I apologize for the release of data that was harmful to individuals and irrelevant to my goals. I believe in the individual right to privacy – from government surveillance, and from actors like myself, and I appreciate the irony of my own involvement in the trampling of these rights. I am committed to working to make this world a better place for all of us. I still believe in the importance of hactivism as a form of civil disobedience, but it is time for me to move on to other ways of seeking change. My time in prison has taken a toll on my family, friends, and community. I know I am needed at home. I recognize that 7 years ago I stood before a different federal judge, facing similar charges, but this does not lessen the sincerity of what I say to you today.It has taken a lot for me to write this, to explain my actions, knowing that doing so — honestly — could cost me more years of my life in prison. I am aware that I could get as many as 10 years, but I hope that I do not, as I believe there is so much work to be done.sabu served 7 mos<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_Monsegur">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hector_Monsegur</a><span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">=<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">wages of r:<span style="font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> hedges:<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ch vii 7 the rebel defiant<span style="font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">australian diplomatic cables reveals big unprecedented assault on Julian A; at least a dozen US agencies
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">collateral damage in sweep: aaron schwartz CFAAct
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Barrett sic Brown journalist (?) specializes in mil and intel contractors; arrest 9/12
Jeremy Hammond gave WikiLeaks 5.5 stratfor emails w/ clients
<span style="font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Sabu trapped both Hammond and BB (tried for assange and WL JA says); manning trapped by another fbi informant 175.
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">govt says sabu helped in 20 pvt and public entity hacks est at 50M$ damage, but Preska let him walk after giving JH ten years 175.<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">b/c of his "extraordinary cooperation" p175 ie rolled on 8, convicted; worked for fbi 3 yrs,<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> max sent 26 yrs; p176
Anon understood problem before the rest of us, <span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">stopped at airports and induced to 180. eg lawyer Jennifer Robinson.
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">icelander thordarson emailed fbi, next day pvt plane; gov't tossed them, but guy went to US; got 5K$ for stolen WK files 176
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">JA says laptop and luggage stolen, account shut down?, ISP pressed for info;  US denounced WL, and australia and US banks pulled $ ; DoS against WL;
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">contortions of 4th amend to go after JA? 177...<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">manning<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">....
HAMMOND  p189<span style="font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">sentenced NYC? 11/13 10 yrs (4 UK co-def combined got less time) <span style="font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">scary b/c 5 mill emails showed corp/nat sec state blend<span style="font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">? and anti-terror laws use to quash dissent <span style="font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">190;
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hedges used stratfor leaked docs in his lawsuit v BO over section 1021(b)2 of nat def authorization act; co-plaintiff alexa o'brien, fdr Day of Rage to reform elections, <span style="font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Stratfor tried to assoc her with jihadist, so could be detained under new law <span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">190; US district judge katherine Forrest sic said they have credible fear, nullied the law, but overturned in appellate.
JH<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> 10 year one of largest for hacking, and was max 8 under plea deal 190. <span style="font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Preska fedsoc, hubby email and pzwrd; partner at Cahill <span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(she used to work there too) <span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and their client Merrill L 191; National Lawyer's Guild filed a motion for recusal, she refused;
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">judge quoted from Anon chat on bankruptcy and max mayhem; pvt phone # retired Az cop <span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">who claims he got threatening calls 191; [what wa AZ public safety office up to? activist suppression? a reason JH went after cop servers?]
<span style="font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">10 years PLUS 3 years supervised control?; had to submit to random warrantless searches; no contact with electronic disobedience websites or orgs<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">" 191.
<span style="font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">hedges said in order to so rule, judge had to ignore lots, including intel agencies (pvt?) work to attack dissidents, and that JH made no $ from hack<span style="font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> <span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">192;<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">jh called himself an anarchist communist" and know the history; hacks and leaks as ways of exposing wrong-doing but to disrupt corps too; 192
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">organized HS protests ~ gulf 2 but saw protesters ignored and beaten, arrested, called traitors 193;
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">univ of illinois frosh hacked comp sci dept, bounced ; did a talk at defcon in Las vegas; fbi's #1 wanted cybercriminal; inspired by ballsy manning,<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> cd not just work on Food Not Bombs website; 
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">hacked rw Protest Warrior (2 yrs fed prison)<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">goal is to build leaderless collectives, mutual aid, self suff, green. 195
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">thot occupy too vague, so included ron paul ppl and TP and reformist dems, just going for a nicer form of capitalism;<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">thinks civil disobedience dumb; better to NOT get caught 195;<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">peace patrols to stop black bloc are just "2ndary police force" 195
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">knew anon hack cd put him back in jail but felt obligated to use his skills
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">tried trad protest/methods, ignored; power struct does not respect it own checks and bal, never mind rights of cits or the int'l community" 198
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">targeted cops b/c racist and inequality; also mil and pol gear mfg who help suppress in US and int'l. went after pvt intel b/c the protect corps and govt and attack indiv rights, activists, journalists and other truthseekers [whistleblowers?] 196
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">puzzled about why fbi would intro us to sabu (did they?] who found the initial vuln and allow the hack 197??
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">went after turkey, iran, brazil [climate talks?]
<span style="font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">in jail H appalled that 80% never went to trial, pled b/c scared; smoked pot and lost social visits 2 yrs and in the box
sarah harrison: we must // // courage is contagious 199<a href="https://freejeremy.net/the-case/before-stratfor/" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">https://</a><a href="https://freejeremy.net/the-case/before-stratfor/" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">freejeremy.net</a><a href="https://freejeremy.net/the-case/before-stratfor/" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">/the-case/before-stratfor/</a><header class="entry-header" style="padding-top: 20px; line-height: 19px;"><h1 class="entry-title" style="line-height: 30px;">Before Stratfor</h1><div class="entry-meta" /></header><div class="entry-content" style="line-height: 19px;"><h2 id="jeremys-background">Jeremy’s Background</h2>Jeremy Hammond is a 30-year-old activist, anarchist and computer programmer. He was attracted to computers early on and won a high school competition for his coding. Opposition to the Iraq War motivated Jeremy to get involved in activism — on the day of the invasion, he organised a school walkout. After graduating, he founded <a href="http://hackthissite.org/" target="blank">HackthisSite.org</a> to train fellow programmers in various hacking methods and security measures.Read profiles of Jeremy <a href="http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/July-2007/The-Hacktivist/" target="blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/but-can-he-hack-prison/Content?oid=919647" target="blank">here</a>.<h2 id="Anonymous-and-LulzSec" style="font-weight: 300;">Anonymous and LulzSec</h2>In autumn 2010, activists operating under the name of online collective Anonymous launched Operation Payback, a series of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against the websites of corporations and organisations who were themselves engaged in attacks on file-sharing sites. In December 2010, several major banking companies blocked donations to WikiLeaks, which had just started publishing US State Department cables in coordination with an international network of media organisations – and Operation Payback switched focus. DDoS attacks were initiated against organisations including MasterCard, Visa and PayPal. Fourteen defendants (the <a href="http://thepaypal14.com/" target="blank">PayPal 14</a>) were later arrested and <a title="The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act" href="https://freejeremy.net/the-case/cfaa/" target="blank">charged</a> under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for their part in these attacks.Operation Payback arguably marked a turning point in the mainstream visibility of online activism. It also exemplified a changing focus among hacktivists themselves – whereas the concerns of previous campaigns had centred on the copyright lobby and their attempts to restrict the availability of information online, Operation Payback signaled a shift towards the operations of private security companies who, it emerged, also saw Anonymous as a potentially profitable target. In January 2011, Aaron Barr, the CEO of US security company HB Gary Federal <a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/87dc140e-3099-11e0-9de3-00144feabdc0.html" target="blank" style="">told</a> the Financial Times that he had <a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/87dc140e-3099-11e0-9de3-00144feabdc0.html" target="blank" style="">developed techniques</a> to identify members of Anonymous. This was widely interpreted as an attempt to make money while putting people in legal jeopardy and, in early February 2011, online activists compromised HB Gary’s servers and copied tens of thousands of corporate emails.Among the documents seized in the attack was a <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/02/the-ridiculous-plan-to-attack-wikileaks/" target="blank" style="">proposal</a> produced by HB Gary Federal and a group of security companies (including Berico Technologies and Palantir) calling themselves “Team Themis” for US law firm Hunter and Williams, acting on behalf of Bank of America. The proposal discussed ways of targeting WikiLeaks’ systems and support network, including “actions to sabotage or discredit” sympathetic journalists. Another Team Themis proposal for the US Chamber of Commerce <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/02/10/143419/lobbyists-chamber/" target="blank" style="">proposed an attack</a> on US think tank, the Center for American Progress. Publication of the full cache of more than 70,000 HB Gary emails in March 2011 (now only available <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110220044858/http://hbgary.anonleaks.ch/" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">here</a>) inspired a series of crowdsourced analyses of the US private security industry, including the Project PM wiki <a href="http://barrettbrown.blogspot.de/2012/05/purpose-of-project-pm.html" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">founded</a> by Barrett Brown.In the summer of 2011, the Anonymous offshoot LulzSec, which included several of the individuals involved in the HB Gary operation, gained unprecedented notoriety for its “50 Days of Lulz.” During that time, members of LulzSec attacked and defaced the websites of media organisations, including Fox News and PBS, corporations, and government websites including senate.gov and CIA.gov. LulzSec claimed that its actions were apolitical, though its affiliated members attacked PBS after it ran a profile of WikiLeaks that maligned US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning. The aliases of several LulzSec members became well-known through their Twitter accounts and the collective gained unprecedented media attention before it <a href="http://pastebin.com/1znEGmHa" target="blank" style="">formally disbanded</a> on 25 June 2011.<h2 id="informant-inside-anonymous" style="font-weight: 300;">An informant inside Anonymous</h2>The case against Jeremy Hammond, and those against others associated with Anonymous, relied heavily on the cooperation of FBI informant Hector Xavier Monsegur, also known as Sabu.Monsegur, one of the most prominent members of Lulzsec, was arrested on 7 June 2011, but the fact of his arrest was to stay secret for the next eight months while he assisted the FBI. At Monsegur’s first court hearing, Assistant US Attorney James Pastore <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/03/08/hacker-arrested-in-nyc-cooperated-from-day-1/" target="blank">told</a> the presiding Judge Loretta Preska, “Since literally the day he was arrested, the defendant has been cooperating with the government proactively.”While continuing to masquerade as a member of Anonymous, Monsegur ultimately led the authorities to arrest several other hacktivists associated with Lulzsec and Anonymous, including Jeremy Hammond. What prosecutors called Monsegur’s “truly extraordinary” cooperation with the FBI included encouraging followers of <a href="https://twitter.com/anonymoussabu" target="blank" style="">his Twitter feed</a> to participate in a new AntiSec campaign and engaging in what, <a href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/a-hacker-charms-and-disappoints/" target="blank" style="">in hindsight</a>, looks like entrapment, as well as betraying former comrades while <a href="http://nigelparry.com/news/sabu-the-inciter.shtml" target="blank" style="">instigating</a> many of the attacks they would later be charged with.The full list of attacks <a href="https://uk.news.yahoo.com/fbi-informant-sabu-instigated-stratfor-attack-while-under-131911193.html#v8vWRAy" target="blank" style="">instigated and coordinated</a> by Monsegur under the eye of the FBI is still sealed by court order but <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/27/hacker-sabu-walks-free-sentenced-time-served" target="blank" style="">appears</a> to have included the websites of several foreign governments. In a <a href="https://freejeremy.net/2013/08/22/statement-by-jeremy-hammond-on-sabus-sentencing/" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">statement</a> released ahead of Hector Monsegur’s sentencing (he received time served), Jeremy Hammond questioned the motivation of many of these attacks:<blockquote>It is widely known that Sabu was used to build cases against a number of hackers, including myself. What many do not know is that Sabu was also used by his handlers to facilitate the hacking of targets of the government’s choosing – including numerous websites belonging to foreign governments. What the United States could not accomplish legally, it used Sabu, and by extension, me and my co-defendants, to accomplish illegally. The questions that should be asked today go way beyond what an appropriate sentence for Sabu might be: Why was the United States using us to infiltrate the private networks of foreign governments? What are they doing with the information we stole? And will anyone in our government ever be held accountable for these crimes?</blockquote> <h2 id="operation-anti-security">Operation Anti-Security</h2>On 19 June 2011, while working with the FBI, Hector Monsegur announced the launch of Operation Anti-Security (AntiSec). Breaking with the ‘non-political’ philosophy of LulzSec, the Operation Anti-Security manifesto <a href="http://pastebin.com/9KyA0E5v" target="blank" style="">encouraged</a> activists “to open fire on any government or agency that crosses their path… Prime targets are banks and other high-ranking establishments.”On 23 June 2011, AntiSec <a href="http://gizmodo.com/5815031/lulzsec-dumps-classified-arizona-police-documents" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">released</a> a set of documents taken from the Arizona Department of Public Safety (“Chinga la Migra”), followed by two further installments later that month. Accompanying statements stated that the organisation had been <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/23/lulzsec-releases-arizona-law-enforcement-data-in-retaliation-for-immigration-law/" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">targeted</a> in response to anti-immigration legislation.[show us your papers]In early December 2011,  the servers of Strategic Forecasting (<a href="http://www.stratfor.com/" target="blank" style="">Stratfor</a>), a private intelligence firm based in Texas, were compromised. The breach <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/technology/hackers-breach-the-web-site-of-stratfor-global-intelligence.html" target="blank" style="">became public</a> on 24 December, when Stratfor’s servers and backups were wiped and the company was forced to alert its subscribers. In the intervening three weeks, seized material included email distribution lists, subscriber information and company emails stretching back to 2004.That the authorities had allowed Stratfor’s corporate and customer data to remain compromised for weeks did not escape comment. In a <a href="http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/hack-stratfor#axzz3CMevSBRA%20" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">blog post</a> on 11 January, Stratfor Chairman George Friedman confirmed that the company had been alerted to customer details being compromised but had agreed to “cooperate” with the FBI by not alerting anyone. This delay was later the subject of a <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/28/us-stratfor-hack-lawsuit-idUSBRE85R03720120628" target="blank" style="">class-action lawsuit</a> brought by Stratfor customers. In a <a href="http://www.stratforsettlement.com/" target="blank" style="">settlement</a>, Stratfor agreed to compensate customers to the value of $1.75 million in free subscriptions.In the ensuing <a href="http://nigelparry.com/enginefiles/uploads/jeremy-hammond-complaint-ocr.pdf%20" target="blank" style="">indictment</a> against Jeremy Hammond, FBI agents claimed to have first heard about the attack on 6 December in an online chat between Hector Monsegur and Jeremy Hammond. Subsequently published information has cast doubt on this timeline.In Jeremy Hammond’s <a href="http://www.sparrowmedia.net/2013/11/jeremy-hammond-sentence/" target="blank">sentencing statement</a> in November 2013, he said:<blockquote>I had never even heard of Stratfor until Sabu brought it to my attention. Sabu was encouraging people to invade systems, and helping to strategise and facilitate attacks. He even provided me with vulnerabilities of targets passed on by other hackers, so it came as a great surprise when I learned that Sabu had been working with the FBI the entire time.On December 4, 2011, Sabu was approached by another hacker who had already broken into Stratfor’s credit card database. Sabu, under the watchful eye of his government handlers, then brought the hack to Antisec by inviting this hacker to our private chatroom, where he supplied download links to the full credit card database as well as the initial vulnerability access point to Stratfor’s systems.</blockquote>Documents<a href="http://news.firedoglake.com/2014/06/05/new-evidence-shows-fbi-setup-jeremy-hammond-to-break-law/" target="blank"> released</a> in the wake of Monsegur’s own sentencing in 2014 support Jeremy’s contention. ‘Hyrriiya’, who alerted Monsegur to the Stratfor vulnerability, even submitted a <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/228206001/Hyrriiya-s-Letter" style="">letter</a> as confirmation for Jeremy’s defence team. As with the attacks on foreign websites instigated by Monsegur, given the degree of supervision he was subject to, the FBI’s claim that it was not aware of the exploitation of Stratfor’s vulnerabilities before Jeremy Hammond was involved is not credible.--<header class="entry-header" style="padding-top: 20px;"><h1 class="entry-title" style="line-height: 30px;">GI Files and Fallout</h1><div class="entry-meta" /></header><div class="entry-content"><h2 id="wl-publishes-gifiles" style="font-weight: 300;">WikiLeaks publishes the Global Intelligence Files</h2>On 27 February 2012, WikiLeaks, in coordination with dozens of international media outlets, began publishing more then five million Stratfor emails as the <a href="https://wikileaks.org/the-gifiles.html" target="blank" style="">Global Intelligence Files</a>. In the accompanying press release, WikiLeaks explained the journalistic importance of these documents:<blockquote>The emails date from between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal’s Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defense Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor’s web of informers, pay-off structure, payment-laundering techniques and psychological methods[someone says hype? what didthe file reveal? BB on GG]</blockquote>Visit our <a title="Revelations" href="https://freejeremy.net/revelations/" target="blank" style="">Revelations</a> page to read more about what the Stratfor emails reveal about the private intelligence-industrial complex.<h2 id="hammond-fbi-target" style="">Hammond becomes the FBI’s ‘number one target’</h2>Documents released after Hector Monsegur’s sentencing state that Jeremy Hammond was the FBI’s “<a href="http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2014/05/24/says-hacker-helped-prevent-web-attacks/ipsOvL3zpVMDjOPoUy2O0I/story.html" target="blank">number one cybercriminal target</a> at the time of his arrest in 2012.”Over the course of 2011, as online activism became more visible, the US government’s reaction became increasingly disproportionate both in its public statements and what was being discussed behind closed doors. The determination to arrest Jeremy Hammond was just one dimension of the heightened perception of Anonymous as a threat worthy of attention at the highest levels.In June 2011, the United States <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/us/politics/01cyber.html" target="blank">issued</a> a new defence strategy declaring that it would consider cyberattacks as “acts of war.” While the June 2011 document said nothing specifically about non-state actors, the Pentagon presented its new classification of cyberattacks to the press in highly aggressive terms. An unnamed official <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/may/31/washington-moves-to-classify-cyber-attacks" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">told</a> the Wall Street Journal, “If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks.”In an atmosphere where the prospect of cyberattacks was becoming a fixation of defence officials and the interests of online activists were reaching ever closer to home, Anonymous’ political actions were increasingly deemed a threat to national security. In February 2012, the Wall Street Journal claimed that Anonymous was being considered a threat at senior levels of the US government. The newspaper revealed that NSA Director General Keith Alexander <a href="http://www.technobuffalo.com/2012/02/21/nsa-worried-anonymous-could-take-down-u-s-power-grid/" target="blank" style="">had written</a> a letter to the White House expressing his concerns that Anonymous could “disrupt power supplies” and “damage computer networks.” Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/post/anonymous-attacks-wsj-page-hours-after-story-warning-group-is-getting-more-powerful/2012/02/22/gIQA7QlFTR_blog.html" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">told</a> the same newspaper, “A near-peer competitor could give cyber malware capability to some fringe group… Some hacker, next thing you know, could be into our electrical grid. We have to get after this.”In February 2013, US Attorney General Eric Holder <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/02/19/launch-administration-s-strategy-mitigate-theft-us-trade-secrets" target="blank" style="">announced the release</a> of the Administration’s Strategy on Mitigating the Theft of U.S. Trade Secrets. This explicitly identified economic espionage threats emerging from non-state actors. WikiLeaks and the by-then-defunct LulzSec were described as using the “tools of economic espionage”:<blockquote>Cyberspace provides relatively small-scale actors an opportunity to become players in economic espionage. Under-resourced governments or corporations could build relationships with hackers to develop customized malware or remote-access exploits to steal sensitive US economic or technology information… Similarly, political or social activists may use the tools of economic espionage against US companies, agencies, or other entities, with disgruntled insiders leaking information about corporate trade secrets or critical US technology to ‘hacktivist’ groups like WikiLeaks.</blockquote>We now know that these lurid warnings about Anonymous disrupting energy supplies were not restricted to the executive branch. As the New Yorker <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/08/masked-avengers" target="blank">reported</a>, on 8 March 2012, members of  Congress attended a cybersecurity briefing that included top security officials including Keith Alexander, Martin Dempsey, Robert Mueller and Janet Napolitano. According to the New Yorker:<blockquote>Attendees were shown a computer simulation of what a cyberattack on the Eastern Seaboard’s electrical supply might look like. Anonymous was not yet capable of mounting an attack on this scale, but security officials worried that they might join forces with other, more sophisticated  groups. “As we were dealing with this  ever-increasing presence on the Net and ever-increasing risk, the government nuts and bolts were still being worked out,” Napolitano told me. When discussing potential  cybersecurity threats, she added, “We often used Anonymous as Exhibit A.”</blockquote><h2 id="arrest-trial-sentencing">Arrest, Trial and Sentencing</h2>Jeremy Hammond was arrested on 5 March 2012 by the FBI, <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/lulzsec-anonymous-leader-turns-fellow-hacktivists-feds/story?id=15857576" target="blank">along with five others</a> associated with LulzSec, largely as a result of Hector Monsegur’s cooperation with the government. Hammond was charged with several counts of hacking, conspiracy to hack and conspiracy to commit fraud, totaling a potential 35-year prison sentence.Chief District Judge Loretta Preska presided over Jeremy’s case in Lower Manhattan. She <a href="http://www.dailydot.com/news/lulzsec-jeremy-hammond-bail-denied-hacker/" target="blank">declined </a>to release Jeremy on bail, claiming he was a “flight risk,” hampering his ability to prepare for trial with his counsel. Jeremy’s lawyers were willing to agree to home confinement in New York City with electronic monitoring and a total computer ban. He would have only been allowed out of the house to visit his lawyers, and he would have only had a certain amount of time to get from the apartment where he was staying to his lawyer’s office.Nevertheless, Judge Preska denied the motion, asking, “what’s to stop [Jeremy] from stopping at an internet cafe and performing the Stratfor hack all over again?” Jeremy was placed in solitary confinement at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City and had to wait for <a href="http://www.dailydot.com/news/jeremy-hammond-lulzsec-wikileaks-1-year-prison/" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">more than a year</a> in jail to start trial. He was also denied access to his discovery by the prison, logging only 11 hours of access to the laptop which contained the relevant files between 13 February 2013 and 10 April 2013.Judge Preska is married to Thomas Kavaler, a former Stratfor client whose email and encrypted password were revealed in the GI Files. The defence moved to recuse Judge Preska on conflict-of-interest grounds and legal scholars supported that motion. National Lawyer Guild executive director Heidi Boghosian <a href="http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2013/02/judge_in_jeremy.php" target="blank">said</a>, “If Judge Preska stays on this case it goes against everything she is sworn to do as chief judge and degrades the integrity of the court.” However, the decision was Preska’s, and she refused.Jeremy ultimately pleaded guilty to one violation of the <a href="https://freejeremy.net/the-case/cfaa/" target="blank">Computer Fraud and Abuse Act</a> in a non-cooperating agreement that allowed him, as he explained in an accompanying <a href="https://freejeremy.net/2013/05/28/statement-from-jeremy-regarding-his-plea-2/" target="blank">statement</a>, “to tell the world what I did and why, without exposing any tactics or information to the government and without jeopardizing the lives and well-being of other activists on and offline.” That plea carried a maximum sentence of 10 years in jail. Jeremy’s lawyers submitted <a href="https://freejeremy.net/2013/11/05/selected-excerpts-from-letters-calling-for-leniency-in-the-sentencing-of-jeremy-hammond/" target="blank">265 letters of support</a> for their client demanding leniency, but on 15 November 2013 Judge Preska sentenced Jeremy to the maximum: a decade in prison.<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/15/jeremy-hammond-anonymous-hacker-sentenced" target="blank">Calling</a> the sentence a “vengeful, spiteful act,” Jeremy said that his prosecutors “have made it clear they are trying to send a message to others who come after me. A lot of it is because they got slapped around, they were embarrassed by Anonymous and they feel that they need to save face.”---<header class="entry-header" style="padding-top: 20px;"><h1 class="entry-title" style="line-height: 30px;">Jeremy in Prison</h1><div class="entry-meta" /></header><div class="entry-content">Before trialJeremy Hammond has been in confinement since his arrest in Chicago by the FBI on 5 March 2012. Like others imprisoned for crimes of bringing truths to light, Jeremy has been further retaliated against while in prison, as the government works to deter others from following in his footsteps.Jeremy was first held in Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City, until he was sentenced, and he was transferred to several prisons before ending up where he is now, the Federal Correctional Institution in Manchester, Kentucky.Accused of various infractions of prison rules, Jeremy was held in punitive segregation (solitary confinement) at MCC on a number of occasions. Solitary confinement has been <a href="http://ccrjustice.org/solitary-factsheet">described</a> by many psychologists, human rights activists, and scholars as psychological torture. Isolation is extremely harmful. As the CCR <a href="http://ccrjustice.org/files/CCR-Factsheet-Solitary-Confinement.pdf" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">notes</a>,<blockquote>Researchers have demonstrated that prolonged solitary confinement causes a persistent and heightened state of anxiety and nervousness, headaches, insomnia, lethargy or chronic tiredness, nightmares, heart palpitations, and fear of impending nervous breakdowns.</blockquote>After 21 months of pretrial detention and threatened with multiple trials in many jurisdictions, Jeremy agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge in a noncooperation deal. In May 2013 he received the maximum sentence of ten years in prison.Jeremy was denied bail and thus prevented from fully participating in his defense preparation. In denying bail, Judge Preska claimed that there was no way to prevent him from using the Internet. She determined that she couldn’t otherwise prevent him from “stopping at an Internet cafe and performing the Stratfor hack all over again,” even though Jeremy and his lawyers said that they would accept house arrest.Making case preparation even more difficult, Jeremy was also permitted only limited access to his discovery documents by the prison, <a href="https://freejeremy.net/2014/09/13/docket-number-45/">logging</a> only 11 hours of access to the laptop which contained the necessary files between 13 February 2013 and 10 April 2013.After sentencingAfter he was sentenced to a decade in prison, Jeremy was transferred to the medium-security federal prison in Manchester, KY. Jeremy has called his sentence a “vengeful, spiteful act,” and it appears the government intends to continue retaliating against him while he’s in jail.Despite good behavior and <a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america-tonight/articles/2014/8/5/notorious-hackerhammondprisonisatemporaryinconvenience.html">maintaining</a> a laundry job, Jeremy has had visitor and communication issues with the administration at the Manchester prison. Close friend and longtime manager of FreeJeremy.net, Grace North explained:<blockquote>Jeremy has stated that his mail – both paper and electronic – comes in bursts. He will get nothing for an extended period of time, and then he will get bundles of mail. This is consistent with him being placed under investigation by “SIS” or “Special Investigative Services.” SIS functions as a sort of internal prison police unit, and Jeremy is likely being targeted for continuing to speak out from behind prison walls. More recently, letters, articles, books, and even court documents related to Jeremy’s own case have been rejected by the prison, all for nonsensical reasons, making it even more clear that Jeremy is likely being punished for what should be Constitutionally protected free speech.</blockquote>Most recently, Jeremy was <a href="https://freejeremy.net/2014/10/20/jeremy-in-solitary-here-is-what-we-know/">placed</a> in solitary confinement for two weeks in the middle of October 2014, when the prison claimed he stole clothing from his laundry job. In solitary confinement, he is afforded no possessions and is allowed just one book at a time.If Jeremy is not denied good-time credits, he could be released on Christmas Day, 2020. Federal law does not include provision for parole.---<header class="entry-header" style="padding-top: 20px;"><h1 class="entry-title" style="line-height: 30px;">The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act</h1><div class="entry-meta" /></header><div class="entry-content">In his non-cooperating plea deal, Jeremy Hammond pleaded guilty to one violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The CFAA, enacted in 1986, is the primary US law dealing with computer crime, even though it was written for the pre-internet age.The CFAA is a blunt legal instrument whose flexibility gives great power to prosecutors. The meaning of the CFAA’s provisions has changed significantly since it was originally brought into force and, by criminalising violations of terms of service agreements, it effectively allows corporations to determine what should be a criminal offence and what damages should be applied. Partly as a result of this, when compared to the comparable laws in other jurisdictions, the penalties mandated for CFAA violations are grossly disproportionate.Prosecutors can put enormous pressure on defendants to accept plea deals, but the way punishment is determined under CFAA makes no allowance for intent. Not only have recent cases seen the CFAA applied to acts of online activism, the law has also been used against security researchers and others whose actions would not be considered crimes outside of the United States.<h2 id="cfaa-jeremys-case" style="font-weight: 300;">The CFAA in Jeremy’s case</h2>Jeremy Hammond was originally <a href="https://www.scribd.com/doc/216303533/Jeremy-Hammond-Indictment" target="blank">indicted</a> on six counts, including violating the CFAA and identity theft. The indictment cites the allegation that credit card numbers were found in the leaked Stratfor emails as an aggravating factor.As in many CFAA cases, the charges in Jeremy Hammond’s indictment were not to come to court, but were used as a <a title="Statement from Jeremy Regarding His Plea" href="https://freejeremy.net/2013/05/28/statement-from-jeremy-regarding-his-plea-2/" target="blank">bargaining tool</a> to get him to accept a plea deal:<blockquote>even if I was found not guilty at trial, the government claimed that there were eight other outstanding indictments against me from jurisdictions scattered throughout the country. If I had won this trial I would likely have been shipped across the country to face new but similar charges in a different district.</blockquote>While plea deals are endemic in the US justice system, CFAA cases are particularly vulnerable to this kind of prosecutorial overreach. As legislators in favour of reform <a href="http://www.scmagazine.com/aarons-law-to-amend-the-cfaa-introduced-in-congress/article/299735/" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">point out</a>, one of the quirks of the CFAA as it exists today is that it allows prosecutors to generate multiple charges from the same underlying action.The power of prosecutors in CFAA cases is exacerbated by the way the legislation determines penalties. The one count Jeremy Hammond pleaded guilty to led to him being imprisoned for 10 years – for actions he did not seek to benefit from personally. The way penalties under CFAA are <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/03/41-months-weev-understanding-how-sentencing-guidelines-work-cfaa-cases-0" target="blank">determined</a> makes no allowance for motivation, but does factor in losses as estimated by the victim.The CFAA takes an expansive approach to estimating these losses, using different rules to those applied in theft and fraud cases. Damages can, for instance, include proposed remedial security measures. The effect in Jeremy Hammond’s case was that Stratfor could claim <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/825757/hammond-doj-sentencing-memo.pdf" target="blank" style="">massive damages</a> despite the fact that their security practices fell <a href="http://www.dailydot.com/politics/stratfor-verizon-report-security-flaws/" target="blank" style="">well short of industry standards</a>, storing customer information on unprotected, unencrypted databases that were easily accessed.The disproportionate nature of the penalties available to prosecutors under the CFAA becomes particularly glaring when compared to similar offences in comparable jurisdictions. Five other members of Lulzsec were arrested at the same time as Jeremy; three in the United Kingdom and two in Ireland. In fact, all five appear in the same initial indictment.In the event, there was no prosecution of the two men arrested in Ireland. The three British Lulzsec members were sentenced in May 2013. The longest sentence handed down to any of the British Lulzsec defendants was 30 months in prison, of which only half was served – a shorter length of time than Jeremy Hammond spent in prison awaiting trial.As the EFF <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/jeremy-hammond-case-demonstrates-draconian-nature-cfaa" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">noted</a> at the time, “The pleas in the UK were likely the result of the CFAA as well: by pleading guilty these co-defendants potentially precluded extradition to the US.”<h2 id="cfaa-related-cases">The CFAA in related cases</h2>Along with the Espionage Act, the CFAA is a favoured tool of the Obama Administration in its crack down on whistleblowers and digital activists. In addition to Jeremy Hammond,  the CFAA has been used to prosecute the PayPal 14, Chelsea Manning, Barrett Brown, Thomas Drake and Aaron Swartz.<h3 id="paypal-14" style="">The PayPal 14</h3>In 2010, major banking companies, including MasterCard, Visa and PayPal, blocked donations to WikiLeaks after the organisation began publishing US diplomatic cables. In response, members of Anonymous working under the Operation Payback banner initiated Distributed Denial of Service attacks against these corporations, which Jeremy Hammond has <a href="https://freejeremy.net/2014/06/02/in-support-of-paypal14-fundraising-drive/" style="">described</a> as the “largest coordinated electronic civil disobedience sit-in in history.”Arrests were made in July 2011 as a result of <a href="http://www.wired.com/2011/07/op_payback" target="blank">information supplied by PayPal</a> and the PayPal 14 were <a href="http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/sixteen-individuals-arrested-in-the-united-states-for-alleged-roles-in-cyber-attacks" target="blank">charged</a> under the CFAA. This use of the Act ignored the activists’ motivations and treated acts of political dissent as reckless vandalism. Use of the CFAA in this case created felony violations out of  behaviour that would, if it were conducted offline, be recognised as free assembly or, at worst, treated by police as failure to disperse or a similar misdemeanor. Use of the CFAA in this way criminalises what should be protected, democratic speech.In May 2013, eleven defendants <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/05/inside-the-paypal-14-trial.html" target="blank" style="">made a deal</a> in which they agreed to make a formal statement of guilt to individual CFAA felony counts of either ‘intentional damage to a protected computer’ or ‘conspiracy’. Under the terms of the deal, prosecutors will recommend probation instead of jail time if the defendants break no laws before sentencing in December 2014. [other 3?]<h3 id="barrett-brown">Barrett Brown</h3>Barrett Brown is an author, activist, journalist and founder of <a href="http://barrettbrown.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/purpose-of-project-pm.html" target="blank">Project PM</a>, a collaborative resource that aimed to create a “centralized, actionable data set regarding the intelligence contracting industry, the PR industry’s interface with totalitarian regimes, the mushrooming infosec/’cybersecurity’ industry, and other issues constituting threats to human rights, civic transparency, individual privacy, and the health of democratic institutions.”Brown has lauded and been associated with Anonymous, sometimes being referred to as its unofficial “spokesperson”. After multiple indictments earlier in the year, Brown was indicted on 4 December 2012 on 12 charges, including identity theft and “access device fraud” related to the Stratfor documents. According to the US Attorney’s office, Brown was <a href="http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/2012/12/new-federal-indictment-lists-12-more-charges-against-barrett-brown-once-the-self-proclaimed-spokesman-for-anonymous.html/" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">indicted</a> for<blockquote>transferr[ing] a hyperlink from an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel to an IRC channel under his control. That hyperlink provided access to data stolen from the company Stratfor Global Intelligence (Stratfor), which included more than 5,000 credit card account numbers, the card holders’ identification information and the authentication features for the credit cards, known as the Card Verification Values (CVV). By transferring and posting the hyperlink, Brown caused the data to be made available to other persons online, without the knowledge and authorization of Stratfor and the card holders.</blockquote>What was not made clear in that press release is that the link posted by Barrett Brown had already been published. As Glenn Greenwald has <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/21/barrett-brown-persecution-anonymous" target="blank" style="">pointed out</a>, no evidence has ever been produced to suggest that Brown’s posting a URL from one public forum into another “resulted in any unauthorised use of credit cards, and certainly never redounded in any way to his benefit.” Criminalising linking would vastly expand the government’s power to crack down on the sharing of publicly available information.As Adrian Chen <a href="http://gawker.com/5966757/former-anonymous-spokesman-barrett-brown-indicted-for-sharing-a-link-to-stolen-credit-card-information" target="blank">wrote</a>, “This is scary to anyone who ever links to anything… As a journalist who covers hackers and has “transferred and posted” many links to data stolen by hackers — in order to put them in stories about the hacks — this indictment is frightening because it seems to criminalise linking.”On 31 March 2013, the government issued a superseding <a href="http://freebarrettbrown.org/files/BB_superseding2.pdf" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">indictment</a> claiming Brown is an “accessory after the fact to an unauthorized access to a protected computer” under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, for assisting Jeremy Hammond from evading authorities after Stratfor’s communications were compromised and “diverted attention away” from Jeremy. HUH?This new indictment made it possible for Brown to enter into a plea deal with government prosecutors, greatly reducing the potential jail sentence he faced. But the government’s series of indictments shows its willingness to overcharge, broadly interpreting computer violations in order to intimidate defendants into accepting deals that criminalise their journalistic, democratic work.<h3 id="lauri-love" style="font-weight: 300;">Lauri Love</h3>On 25 October 2013, Lauri Love was arrested in the UK on suspicion of committing actions contrary to the UK’s Computer Misuse Act although, as yet, he has <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-suffolk-25409730" target="blank">only been indicted</a> on American charges under the CFAA, which carry penalties far in excess of what would apply under UK law. Love stands accused of accessing US government computers but, after almost a year, still faces no charges in the UK. He was <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-suffolk-28486123" target="blank">released on bail</a> in June 2014.The extraordinary disparity between penalties imposed under the CFAA and typical sentences elsewhere explains why the focus of those facing charges of computer crimes in Europe is often to avoid extradition to the US. That threat is still hanging over Lauri Love. His lawyers have <a href="http://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/news/suffolk_lawyers_will_fight_extradition_of_man_charged_with_hacking_us_government_computers_1_3373949" target="blank">said</a> they will “vehemently oppose” any attempt to extradite him to the US. The <a href="http://freegary.org.uk/" target="blank">ultimately successful</a> decade-long battle to avoid Gary McKinnon being extradited to the US suggests any formal extradition request for Love would prove controversial in the UK.In Feburary 2014, Love <a href="http://freeanons.org/lauri-love-refuses-turn-encryption-keys-uk-demand-ripa/" target="blank">refused</a> to hand over his encryption keys to the UK authorities, which can constitute an offence under the UK’s Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.<h2 id="aarons-law">Aaron’s law</h2>Aaron Swartz was a computer programmer and hacktivist, who founded the internet-rights group Demand Progress. Swartz is alleged to have used JSTOR to download academic journal articles through MIT’s computer network in late 2010 and early 2011. Swartz was <a href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/reddit-co-founder-charged-with-data-theft/" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">charged</a> with wire fraud, computer fraud, obtaining information from a protected computer and criminal forfeiture, including 11 violations under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines. The government offered a plea deal and Swartz countered with an offer of his own. Two days after prosecutors rejected the counteroffer, Swartz hanged himself.“He was killed by the government, and MIT betrayed all of its basic principles,” Aaron’s father, Robert Swartz,<a href="http://www.suntimes.com/business/17594002-420/aaron-swartz-memorialized-at-service.html" target="blank">said</a> at his funeral.Rep. Zoe Lofgren subsequently drafted ‘<a href="https://www.eff.org/document/lofgren-sensenbrenner-cfaa-reform-bill-aarons-law%20" target="blank">Aaron’s Law</a>’ to “prevent what happened to Aaron from happening to other internet users”, a bill which would <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/06/aarons-law-introduced-now-time-reform-cfaa" target="blank">exclude</a> terms of service violations from the CFAA, although <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/01/16/aarons-law-suggests-reforms-to-hacking-acts-but-not-enough-to-have-protected-aaron-swartz/%20" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">those reforms</a> would not have done enough to protect Aaron from the steep punishment he faced. The bill remains stalled, but internet rights groups continue to criticise the CFAA and abusive interpretations of it which criminalise computer activism.  The Electronic Freedom Foundation encourages support for CFAA reform <a href="https://act.eff.org/action/reform-computer-crime-law" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">here</a>.</div></div></div></div>

http://yyy.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/27/hacker-sabu-walks-free-sentenced-time-served

5/14

Hector Xavier Monsegur, who by the US government’s calculations participated in computer hacker attacks on more than 250 public and private entities at a cost of up to $50m in damages, was released from a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday after the judge saluted his<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/26/hacker-fbi-anonymous-leniency-prosecutors-monsegur-sabu." style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; text-decoration: none;">“extraordinary cooperation”</a> with the FBI.

Monsegur, or “Sabu” as the celebrated hacker was known, was sentenced to time served – equivalent to the seven months he spent in prison last year – plus a year’s supervised release, in reward for having spent much of the past three years working as a federal informant. He had been facing a maximum sentence according to official guidelines of more than 26 years.

His lenient sentence seals his reputation as one of the hacker world’s most hated figures, a skilled technician who turned from having been a leading figure of the Anonymous and LulzSec collectives into what was in effect an undercover FBI agent. Dressed in grey trousers and a loose black shirt, Monsegur told the court: “I’m not the same person I was three years ago. I’ve come a long way. I’ve had to do a lot of thinking and soul-searching.”

As she announced her decision, Loretta Preska, the chief judge of the federal district court for the southern district of New York, repeatedly praised what she called his “truly extraordinary cooperation”. She said he had provided “sophisticated and complex assistance to the government allowing them to pierce the secrecy surrounding LulzSec and successfully prosecute its members”.

Preska added that his work as an informant was all the more exceptional because it was carried out at considerable personal risk, federal officials having revealed that Monsegur was working for them early on in the operation. “There is no question that Mr Monsegur and his family were subject to threats and assaults,” she said.[what? as way to intimidate/turn more ppl?]

But condemnation from those who Monsegur had betrayed was swift and strong. A spokesperson for Anonymous told the Guardian that “Monsegur is, first and foremost, a criminal; the FBI’s cyber crime task force are his co-conspirators. While operating under their supervision, Monsegur committed numerous felonies which should in no way be excused due to his protected informant status.”

Anonymous added: “The FBI continues to use captured informants, who commit egregious crimes in pursuit of reduced sentences, for the sole purpose of creating ‘examples’ to frighten the public. They do this with the hope of pacifying online dissent and snuffing out journalistic investigations into the US government’s misconduct.”

In a <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1173871-monsegur.html" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; text-decoration: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">sentencing memorandum</a> released by Preet Bharara, the US attorney for the southern district of New York, on Friday the government <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/26/hacker-fbi-anonymous-leniency-prosecutors-monsegur-sabu" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; text-decoration: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">revealed that Monsegur</a> had directly helped to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/mar/07/lulzsec-sabu-informer" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; text-decoration: none;">identify and convict</a> eight of his peers in the Anonymous and LulzSec hacker collectives. Most notably, he was seminal in nailing Jeremy Hammond, who at the time was the FBI’s number one most wanted cybercriminal in the world, for his role in hacking into the private intelligence firm Stratfor.

Hammond was <a href="http://nation.time.com/2013/11/15/hacktivist-jeremy-hammond-sentenced-to-10-years-in-jail/" style="font-weight: normal; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; text-decoration: none;">sentenced to 10 years </a>in prison last November for his role in the computer breach. What was not discussed during Monsegur’s sentencing on Tuesday was that when he was convicted, Hammond claimed that Monsegur himself had directed much of his criminal activity, including attempts to break into the websites of foreign governments.

Hammond said that Monsegur, operating as “Sabu”, had supplied him with lists of foreign countries vulnerable to attack including Brazil, Iran and Turkey. Hammand went so far as to suggest that the FBI had been using him to launch cyber-attacks around the world, with Monsegur acting as the coordinator.

Hammond told Preska – the same judge who let Monsegur walk free on Tuesday – as she sentenced him to 10 years: “The government celebrates my conviction and imprisonment, hoping that it will close the door on the full story. I took responsibility for my actions, by pleading guilty, but when will the government be made to answer for its crimes?”

In addition to Hammond, Monsegur was also key to the convictions of other LulzSec members, including in the UK Jake Davis, who went by the internet handle “Topiary”, who was sentenced to two years in a young offender institution; Ryan Ackroyd, aka “Kayla”, sentenced to 30 months’ imprisonment; Ryan Cleary, sentenced to 32 months in prison; and Mustafa Al-Bassam, aka “T-Flow”, sentenced to 20 months suspended for two years. LulzSec members in Ireland, Darren Martyn and Donncha O’Cearrbhail, were also caught in the Sabu net.

One defendant, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/mar/14/reuters-matthew-keys-indicted-anonymous" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; text-decoration: none;">Matthew Keys</a>, a former Reuters journalist, is <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/mar/14/reuters-matthew-keys-indicted-anonymous" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; text-decoration: none;">awaiting trial </a>in the US on charges that he permitted unauthorized access to the computer systems of an old employer, the Tribune Company.<p style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 13px; border-collapse: collapse; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 18.9871px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-repeat: no-repeat;">

The sentencing hearing and memorandum have opened a window into the extent that the FBI will go in turning prominent hackers into informants. Monsegur’s defence attorney, Peggy Cross-Goldenberg, told the court that a camera had been installed in his apartment in a public housing project in Manhattan so that his computer activities could be monitored 24 hours a day. “For nine months, he gave everything he had,” she said.

The memorandum discloses that in order to catch Hammond, Monsegur had been put at the hub of a vast web of surveillance. During the Hammond investigation, it says, Monsegur in New York “engaged in online chats with Hammond (who was then in Chicago), while coordinating with FBI agents in New York, physical surveillance teams deployed in Chicago, and an electronic surveillance unit in Washington DC.”

Monsegur began hacking computers in 2003, and by 2006, the government says, he was engaged in criminal hacking for his own personal gain. His first act of political “hacktivism” appears to have been with Anonymous when he took part in distributed denial of service DDoS attacks on PayPal, Mastercard and Visa in protest at the companies’ refusal to handle donations to the free information group WikiLeaks.

In May 2011 he became a founder member of LulzSec, a splinter of Anonymous, that operated as a tight team of highly skilled hackers in the US, UK and Ireland. Together they went on an audacious spree of attacks, ranging from the internet security firm HB Gary, the website of X-Factor on Fox Television, Nintendo’s computer system and the website of the US senate. An FBI affiliate in Atlanta, Infragard/Unveillance, was also breached.

On 7 June 2011, FBI agents knocked on Monsegur’s door in Manhattan. His transformation from a hacker legend into an informant was instantaneous – he agreed to cooperate with the government immediately. The speed of his conversion was significant, and praised by Preska during her sentencing on Tuesday, as it prevented a security mechanism kicking in among LulzSec members who had agreed to destroy all their files should any of them go offline for any length of time.

As Monsegur begins his year’s supervised release, including close monitoring of his computer use, questions are likely to remain over the nature of his lenient sentence, and particularly his alleged role in spearheading attacks on foreign governments while acting on behalf of the FBI.

Professor Ahmed Ghappour of UC Hastings college of the law, an expert in computer law, said it was one thing to help the FBI in a sting operation on perpetrators of a crime already in motion, another “when you contribute to the creation, inducement and execution of a crime that never was. Particularly when those crimes may very well affect our foreign policy.”

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good on ya mite:

Today is hacktivist Jeremy Hammond’s birthday. The Anonymous affiliated hacker made headlines with a massive leak of documents from Stratfor and his subsequent arrest. Recently, some have questioned whether Hammond cooperated with the federal government

Digital Journal has obtained the <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/817795/hammond-56.pdf" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">documents</a> needed to lay the question to rest.

Hammond was <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/15/jeremy-hammond-sentenced_n_4280738.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">sentenced</a> to 10 years in prison for activities related to the Stratfor leak that disclosed thousands of secrets about the private intelligence firm and their <a href="http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/activist-connects-dots-from-bhopal-to-hammond-stratfor-and-dow/article/364803" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">clients</a>. Recently, questions arose surrounding Hammond’s sentence, and whether he traded information to the feds in order to receive his 10-year sentence.

An activist within the <a href="http://freeanons.org/" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">#FreeAnons</a> movement, Sue Crabtree, said simply

Court documents demonstrate that her unquestioning belief is correct. Hammond entered a guilty plea to a count of Conspiracy to engage in computer hacking in violation of 18 U.S.C. Sections 1030(a)(2)(C), 1030(c)(2)(B)(iii), and 1030(c)(2)(C) and was sentenced under federal sentencing guidelines section <a href="http://www.ussc.gov/Guidelines/2011_Guidelines/Manual_HTML/2b1_1.htm" target="_blank" style="text-decoration: none;">(2B1.1(a)(2)</a>.

As the image below, taken directly from court documents, shows Hammond was sentenced under these guidelines and his total offense level was calculated to be 31 points. Hammond has a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/06/jeremy-hammond-anonymous_n_1325260.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">lengthy</a> list of prior convictions placing him in Criminal History Category IV. Following the two calculations on the Federal Sentencing Guidelines <a href="http://www.ussc.gov/Guidelines/2012_Guidelines/Manual_PDF/Sentencing_Table.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration: none;">Chart</a> would place Hammond in the sentence range of 151-188 months.</div><div style="padding-bottom: 15px;">
<div style="padding-bottom: 15px;">While Hammond’s sentencing guidelines placed him in the 151-188 month range, he received a sentence of 120 months. This sentence below the guidelines was not in exchange for any cooperation given to the federal government. The statute he violated contained a provision allowing for a maximum sentence of 120 months, which is also noted in the court documents.</div>

Read more: <a href="http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/crime/hammond-court-documents-show-no-reduced-sentence-for-cooperating/article/365348#ixzz2qgseL6jc" style="text-decoration: none;">http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/crime/hammond-court-documents-show-no-reduced-sentence-for-cooperating/article/365348#ixzz2qgseL6jc</a>

==

AMY GOODMAN: Earlier this month, the computer hacker Jeremy Hammond was sentenced to 10 years in prison for hacking into the computers of the private intelligence firm Stratfor. The Stratfor hack revealed, among other things, that Dow Chemical had hired the firm to monitor and harass activists speaking out about the Bhopal disaster. It also showed Coca Cola employed Stratfor to spy on PETA activists. Hammond’s sentence is one of the longest ever in a criminal hacking case. His attorney, Sarah Kunstler, said Hammond’s sentencing judge had overlooked his political motivations.

SARAH KUNSTLER: The words that the judge used a lot and that the government used a lot in their sentencing submission were, "maximum mayhem." And the government and the judge felt that the idea of causing mayhem or causing destruction was incompatible with Jeremy’s stated political goals. We disagree with that. Advocating for political change, struggling for political change, involves being disruptive, it involves being destructive at times. These are someways — sometimes the only pathways to change.

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<p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; padding: 0px; direction: ltr; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 19.5938px; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">AMY GOODMAN: That was attorney Sarah Kunstler who represents Jeremy Hammond. Gary Ruskin.

GARY RUSKIN: What we know about corporate espionage against nonprofit organizations is very fragmentary and so we have very little information on it at all. So, a little bit comes from Jeremy Hammond’s hack. So, the guy is now going to go to jail for 10 years for really what’s a form of civil disobedience, or maybe you ought to call it commercial disobedience. So, that’s a very large price to pay.

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Jeremy Hammond, the Anonymous hacktivist who released millions of emails relating to the private intelligence firm Stratfor, has denounced his prosecution and lengthy prison sentence as a “vengeful, spiteful act” designed to put a chill on politically-motivated hacking.

Hammond was sentenced on Friday at federal court in Manhattan to the maximum 10 years in jail, plus three years supervised release. He had pleaded guilty to one count under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) flowing from his 2011 hack of Strategic Forecasting, Inc, known as Stratfor. In an interview with the Guardian in the Metropolitan Correction Center in New York, conducted on Thursday, he said he was resigned to a long prison term which he sees as a conscious attempt by the US authorities to put a chill on political hacking.

He had no doubt that his sentence would be long, describing it as a "vengeful, spiteful act". He said of his prosecutors: "They have made it clear they are trying to send a message to others who come after me. A lot of it is because they got slapped around, they were embarrassed by Anonymous and they feel that they need to save face.”

Most pointedly, Hammond suggested that the FBI may have manipulated him to carry out hacking attacks on “dozens” of foreign government websites. During his time with Anonymous, the loose collective of hackers working alongside WikiLeaks and other anti-secrecy groups, he was often directed by a individual known pseudonomously on the web as “Sabu”, the leader of the Anonymous-affiliated group Lulzsec, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/mar/06/lulzsec-sabu-working-for-us-fbi%20" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; text-decoration: none; background-repeat: no-repeat;">who turned out to be an FBI informant</a>.

Hammond, who is under court orders restricting what he says in public, told the Guardian that Sabu presented him with a list of targets, including many foreign government sites, and encouraged him to break into their computer systems. He said he was not sure whether Sabu was in turn acting on behalf of the FBI or other US government agency, but it was even possible that the FBI was using Sabu’s internet handle directly as contact between the two hackers was always made through cyberspace, never face-to-face.

“It is kind of funny that here they are sentencing me for hacking Stratfor, but at the same time as I was doing that an FBI informant was suggesting to me foreign targets to hit. So you have to wonder how much they really care about protecting the security of websites.”

In the interview, conducted in a secure prison meeting room hours before the 28-year-old Chicagoan was sentenced, he was sanguine about his prospects. “I knew when I started out with Anonymous that being put in jail and having a lengthy sentence was a possibility. Given the nature of the targets I was going after I knew I would upset a lot of powerful people.”

Dressed in a brown prison jump suit, and with a long wispy goatee and moustache (he planned to shave both off before the sentencing hearing), Hammond was scathing about the way the CFAA was being twisted in his view for political ends. “They are widening the definition of what is covered by the Act and using it to target specifically political activists,” he said.

He invoked the memory of Aaron Swartz, the open-data crusader who <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jan/12/aaron-swartz-hacking-reddit-dies" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; text-decoration: none; background-repeat: no-repeat;">killed himself in January </a>while awaiting trial under the CFAA for releasing documents from behind the subscription-only paywall of an online research group. “The same beast bit us both,” Hammond said. “They went after Aaron because of his involvement in legitimate political causes – they railroaded charges against him, and look what happened.”

Hammond has been in custody since March 2012 having been arrested in Chicago on suspicion of the Stratfor leak of millions of emails that were<a href="http://wikileaks.org/the-gifiles.html" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; text-decoration: none; background-repeat: no-repeat;">eventually released by WikiLeaks</a> as the Global Intelligence Files. His sentence is an indication of the aggression with which prosecutors have been pursuing political hackers in the US – other Anonymous members in Britain involved in the breach of Stratfor were sentenced to much shorter jail terms.

Hammond stressed that he had not benefitted personally in any way from the Stratfor email release, that exposed surveillance by private security firms on activists including Anonymous members themselves, Occupy protesters and campaigners in Bhopal, India involved in the push for compensation for victims of the 1984 industrial catastrophe. “Our main purpose in carrying out the Stratfor hack was to find out what private security and intelligence companies were doing, though none of us had any idea of the scale of it.”

Paradoxically, Hammond insists that he would never have carried out the breach of Stratfor’s computer system had he not been led into doing it by Sabu – real name Hector Xavier Monsegur – the fellow hacker who is himself awaiting sentencing having pleaded guilty to 12 hacking-related criminal charges. “I had never heard of Stratfor until Sabu brought in another hacker who told me about it. Practically, I would never have done the Stratfor hack without Sabu’s involvement.”

Hammond discovered that Monsegur was an FBI informant the day after his own arrest. As he was reading the criminal complaint against him, he saw quotes marked CW for “co-operating witness” that contained details that could only have come from Sabu.

“I felt betrayed, obviously. Though I knew these things happen. What surprised me was that Sabu was involved in so much strategic targeting, in actually identifying targets. He gave me the information on targets.”

Part of Sabu’s interest in him, he now believes, was that Hammond had access to advanced tools including one known as PLESK that allowed him to break into web systems used by large numbers of foreign governments. “The FBI and NSA are clearly able to do their own hacking of other countries. But when a new vulnerability emerges in internet security, sometimes hackers have access to tools that are ahead of them that can be very valuable,” he said.

Looking back on his involvement with anonymous, the Chicagoan said that he had been drawn to work with Anonymous, because he saw it as “a model of resistance – it was decentralised, leaderless.” He grew increasingly political in his hacking focus, partly under the influence of the Occupy movement that began in Wall Street in September 2011 and spread across the country.

Chelsea Manning, the US soldier formerly known as Bradley who leaked a massive trove of state secrets to WikiLeaks now serving a 35-year sentence in military jail, was a major influence on him. Manning showed him that “powerful institutions – whether military or private security firms – are involved in unaccountable activities that the public is totally unaware of that can only be exposed by whistleblowers and hackers”.

Hammond has often described himself as an anarchist. He has a tattoo on his left shoulder of the anarchy symbol with the words: “Freedom, equality, anarchy”. Another tattoo on his left forearm shows the Chinese representation of “leader” or “army”, and a third tattoo on his right forearm is a glider signifying the hacking open-source movement that is drawn from the <a href="http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/" style="padding: 0px; margin: 0px; border-collapse: collapse; text-decoration: none; background-repeat: no-repeat;">computer simulation Game of Life </a>.

He says he plans to use his time in prison “reading, writing, working out and playing sports – training myself to become more disciplined so I can be more effective on my release”. As to that release, he says he cannot predict how he will be thinking when he emerges from jail, but doubts that he would go back to hacking. “I think my days of hacking are done. That’s a role for somebody else now,” he said.

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<div>By John Knefel</div>

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<div>Jeremy Hammond pleaded guilty today to the infamous Stratfor hack, as well as taking responsibility for eight additional hacks of law enforcement and defense contractor websites in 2011 and 2012. As a condition of the plea, the radical hacker will face a maximum of 10 years in federal prison, and restitution costs of up to $2.5 million. After Hammond entered his plea, his legal team framed his prosecution as part of the government's larger attempt to control the flow of information and punish those who seek to distribute it to journalists and the public.</div>

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<div>"There's a war going on about corporate spying and access to information," said defense attorney Sarah Kunstler at a press conference immediately following the hearing. "Jeremy is someone who worked toward making information public."</div>

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<div>In a statement posted online after the plea deal, Hammond echoed this point. "I did this because I believe people have a right to know what governments and corporations are doing behind closed doors," Hammond wrote. "I did what I believe is right."</div>

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<div>The Rise and Fall of Jeremy Hammond: Enemy of the State</div>

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<div>Hammond entered his plea – admitting to one count of conspiracy to engage in computer hacking – in a federal courtroom in lower Manhattan, surrounded by observers and supporters. One of those in attendance was his twin brother, Jason, who had just flown in from Chicago. When Hammond initially addressed the judge, he raised his right hand to be sworn in, and clenched his fist in a symbol of defiance.</div>

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<div>The hack Hammond pleaded guilty to involved accessing information from the servers of Stratfor, a private intelligence company, and providing it to Wikileaks, who then published some of the information. Hammond was charged under the controversial 1984 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the same law used to charge the late Aaron Swartz and other cyber-activists. "Included among the leaked internal documents were millions of emails that exposed Stratfor's wide-ranging spying activities, including surveillance of Bhopal activists at the behest of Dow Chemical, of PETA on behalf of Coca-Cola, and of Occupy Wall Street under contract to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security," supporters said in a statement.</div>

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<div>Beyond Stratfor, Hammond took responsibility for eight other hacks, all of which involved either law enforcement, intelligence firms or defense contractor websites. From June 2011 to February 2012, Hammond obtained unauthorized information from the Arizona Department of Public Safety, the FBI virtual academy, a marketing firm that builds websites for law enforcement called Brooks Jeffreys, Special Forces Gear, Vanguard Defense Industries, the Jefferson County sheriffs department, the Boston Police Patrolman's Institute and a Pennsylvania firm called Combined Systems that makes tear gas. Hammond was granted immunity from federal prosecution for any of those hacks in exchange for taking responsibility for them. Kunstler said he could potentially face charges at the state level, though she said there may be some double jeopardy protection.</div>

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<div>The New Political Prisoners: Leakers, Hackers and Whistleblowers</div>

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<div>Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center For Constitutional Rights and lawyer for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, said that journalists should stand up for Hammond. "He should be looked at as a source, as a whistle-blower," Ratner said after the plea deal. "He, like other whistle-blowers in this country, ought to be protected, because they're the only thing that let us know what our government and our private security companies are doing and they're the only things that can keep this government even close to honest."</div>

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<div>Earlier in the case, Hammond's legal team made a motion for Judge Loretta Preska to recuse herself because her husband was a victim of the Stratfor leak. That motion was denied. (Full disclosure: This reporter previously spoke at a rally that called for Preska to recuse herself.)</div>

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<div>Other hackers in the Anonymous-affiliated group called Lulzsec who were charged in similar leaks – but were tried in the U.K. – have received much lighter sentences, from 20 to 32 months. Jason Hammond has asked supporters to sign a Change.org petition on his brother's behalf calling for Judge Preska to sentence Hammond to time served. Jeremy Hammond's sentencing hearing is scheduled for September 6th.</div>

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<div>Related</div>

<div>The Brilliant Life and Tragic Death of Aaron Swartz</div>

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<div>Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/jeremy-hammond-pleads-guilty-to-stratfor-hack-20130528#ixzz2Y7UuHMho </div>

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