I wonder how he would be treated if he had picked up a stack of paper printouts an AT&T employee had left on a park bench and taken it to a news outlet in order to showcase AT&T's recklessness with customer information? Would Aaron Swartz's case have been handled the same way if he'd gone into a library and photocopied a whole heap of journal articles? The powers that be seem terrified that someone might use technology in a way which they can't control. Apart from the disgusting human rights abuse that these cases illustrate, I worry about the future when people like judges and prosecutors think it's at all fair or reasonable to put people in jail for freely accessing information.
Andrew 'Weev' Auernheimer Faces Jail
31–40 of 71 posts
Re: Andrew 'Weev' Auernheimer Faces Jail
#32Re: Andrew 'Weev' Auernheimer Faces Jail
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess you must live in China. Here where I live, the government is made up of ordinary people who are also subject to the law, and we can vote to change the law whenever and however we want.
Just out of curiosity, where do you live?
The UK, but my answer would equally well apply to the US or the majority of democratic nations. There's not a Big Conspiracy. There's just lots of people, often stupid and ill-informed, but nevertheless people voting for what we want.
Re: Andrew 'Weev' Auernheimer Faces Jail
#34It seems to that the real villain is AT&T, for making this private data entrusted to its care freely available to the public. What criminal and civil liabilities will it face?
Re: Andrew 'Weev' Auernheimer Faces Jail
#35When everyone is a criminal all the time, with selective enforcement, it makes it easier to tax and control. When political winds shift, you can eliminate anybody you want, because you just make an excel spreadsheet of political enemies and then forward it by email to law enforcement for increased survallence, and whamo, felony convictions, how much you want? 1 year? 5 years? 10 years? The government is just trying t…
I guess you must live in China. Here where I live, the government is made up of ordinary people who are also subject to the law, and we can vote to change the law whenever and however we want.
Sounds to me like you're manufacturing normalcy.
Reality is too complex to fit into a narrative. Our system manages to be both corrupt and democratic at the same time, with money, fame and influence all helping to distort outcomes, both on behalf of private interests and We The People.
Re: Andrew 'Weev' Auernheimer Faces Jail
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess you must live in China. Here where I live, the government is made up of ordinary people who are also subject to the law, and we can vote to change the law whenever and however we want.
Sounds to me like you're manufacturing normalcy. Reality is too complex to fit into a narrative. Our system manages to be both corrupt and democratic at the same time, with money, fame and influence all helping to distort outcomes, both on behalf of private interests and We The People.
There is corruption in pretty much any system without a complete and total police state. Most western democracies are highly imperfect. But they're a lot better than pretty much anything else that has been tried, and if people work hard, they can continue to improve them.
Hard work means "getting out of the building" though.
Re: Andrew 'Weev' Auernheimer Faces Jail
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just out of curiosity, where do you live?
The UK, but my answer would equally well apply to the US or the majority of democratic nations. There's not a Big Conspiracy. There's just lots of people, often stupid and ill-informed, but nevertheless people voting for what we want.
This assumes people are intelligent enough to know what they actually want. Not being mean, just a sad truth about the state of culture right now.
Re: Andrew 'Weev' Auernheimer Faces Jail
#38This website just showed a full page advertisement, then kicked me back to their home page when I clicked the continue button. Monumentally useless.
Re: Andrew 'Weev' Auernheimer Faces Jail
#39"In 2010, Auernheimer and a compatriot, Daniel Spitler, discovered that visiting an unsecured AT&T Web server and entering a number associated with the customer's wireless account allowed him to obtain that customer's email address.
By altering the number and repeatedly querying the server, Auernheimer and Spitler were able to obtain hundreds of thousands of email addresses, which they then released to Gawker."
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Amazing that something as simple as that landed him 10 years. This is something even I have done with some servers for telecoms in my country. And trust me, I'm no hacker. I just know basic HTTP GET request parameters, and what asshole doesn't know about those?
The laws in the US are terrible.
Re: Andrew 'Weev' Auernheimer Faces Jail
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
In many countries simply accessing a public server without consent is illegal. Here in the UK the Computer Misuse Act contains the following gem: > It is an offense to make a computer perform a function and for that function to be deemed unauthorised by the owner of that computer This is fantastically broad. I believe it's similar in the US. It's led to convictions for things like directory traversal, XSS testing, an…
> In many countries simply accessing a public server without consent is illegal 1) Set up a public server 2) Wait for google bot to show up 3) Press charges against google 4) Sue in civil court 5) Profit.
And in some countries you can only sue on the basis of an actual loss so as you haven't lost anything you have nothing to sue for...