If someone posts that same link on HN, and we all comment on it, are we all guilty? This seems like a very slippery slope. Wake up America, please!
A Journalist-Agitator Facing Prison Over a Link
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Re: A Journalist-Agitator Facing Prison Over a Link
#12These types of articles are depressing to me because they mask what could be a good moral and legal question behind claims which border on dishonest. Saying that the Feds are charging Barrett for the crime of "posting a URL" is like saying that the Norwegian police would be charging Breivik for "pulling a metal lever" hundreds of times. I mean sure, he did that, but that's not what the claimed "crime" is. Imagine a g…
Bullshit. Typing out http://some.website should never be a crime. Period. Look up the first amendment.
Re: A Journalist-Agitator Facing Prison Over a Link
#13These types of articles are depressing to me because they mask what could be a good moral and legal question behind claims which border on dishonest. Saying that the Feds are charging Barrett for the crime of "posting a URL" is like saying that the Norwegian police would be charging Breivik for "pulling a metal lever" hundreds of times. I mean sure, he did that, but that's not what the claimed "crime" is. Imagine a g…
Bullshit. Typing out http://some.website should never be a crime. Period. Look up the first amendment.
So if I should find out someone is HIV positive and looking for employment, I should be able to type out the preceding sentence to the HR departments of all prospective employers due to my First Amendment rights?
How about inciting a lynch mob (you know, the kind that hang 'uppity' persons off of trees)? It's just speech, right?
Re: A Journalist-Agitator Facing Prison Over a Link
#14These types of articles are depressing to me because they mask what could be a good moral and legal question behind claims which border on dishonest. Saying that the Feds are charging Barrett for the crime of "posting a URL" is like saying that the Norwegian police would be charging Breivik for "pulling a metal lever" hundreds of times. I mean sure, he did that, but that's not what the claimed "crime" is. Imagine a g…
>Imagine a guy gets passed the key to a storage locker by his friends, and is told that the storage locker holds stolen trade secrets, credit cards, etc. This guy had nothing to do with the theft itself, but he knows about it.
I can imagine, but it's not what happened. LulzSec shotgunned the release out onto the web, where everyone picked it up, not just Brown.
>Let's say further that this guy duplicates the key and mails it to a gang to do with as they will. If providing that gang access to that locker is illegal then homeboy here has certainly "aided & abetted" in that behavior,...
It isn't illegal. LulzSec is responsible for the release. Specifically, Jeremy Hammond has been charged and convicted with the actual crime of hacking into Stratfor and releasing the material. He was facing a life sentence and received 10 years and 2.5 million dollars in restitution upon pleading guilty. The liklihood that he could ever get that restitution dropped, via bankruptcy or other means, is minimal. Financially, he has effectively been given a life sentence. Brown no more aided and abetted anyone than Cryptome or any of the other numerous actors that linked to and received the link or, heaven forbid, downloaded the material, and yet Brown is facing punishment of similar magnitude to the guy who actually committed the crime.
>Likewise our intrepid, noble and completely objective storywriter uses the maximum legally-possible sentence as a FUD factor without so much as a single reference to the sentencing guidelines which would be used to determine an actual eventual sentence.
What typically happens is irrelevant. It shouldn't be possible for someone like Hammond to face life in prison, or Manning to face the death penalty, or Brown to face 105 years at all. To make that possible is to make a "lighter" sentence of 10 years for Hammond (and 2.5 million dollars), or 35 years for Manning, or 5 years for Brown, seem graciously reasonable. The constant whiny poo-pooing that "they won't really get that much," and cheeky linking to blog posts intended to inform the uninformed masses about the federal sentencing guidelines, is nothing more than noise. It truly intends to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
>There is a question to be asked here: Should these types of forcibly-exfiltrated secrets have any special inherent legal protection?
>The answer isn't obviously "no" either, by the way, otherwise our current protections against identity theft could hardly apply, not to mention the Privacy Act of 1974, medical record protections, etc.
It really is an obvious "no." Hacking into customer databases and pilfering the contents is a crime. A crime that has been tried in court with the accused convicted and serving time in prison. Once information is out in the clear, it makes absolutely zero sense to try and claim some sort of retroactive "special inherent legal protection." The protection already exists, with punishment for its violation. The crime is for putting documents into the clear, not propagating them, no matter their contents.
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http://cryptome.org/0005/stratfor-hack.htm
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|->http://pastebin.com/f7jYf5Wd
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|->http://ibhg35kgdvnb7jvw.onion/lulzxmas/stratfor_full.tar.gz
Re: A Journalist-Agitator Facing Prison Over a Link
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bullshit. Typing out http://some.website should never be a crime. Period. Look up the first amendment.
So if I should find out someone is HIV positive and looking for employment, I should be able to type out the preceding sentence to the HR departments of all prospective employers due to my First Amendment rights? How about inciting a lynch mob (you know, the kind that hang 'uppity' persons off of trees)? It's just speech, right?
Inciting a lynch mob is conspiracy to commit murder, so it's not a restriction on free speech that would prevent you from doing so.
Telling everyone an applicant has HIV is disgustingly immoral but I don't know if/why you should be barred from doing it. That's a much better question than the lynch mob.
Re: A Journalist-Agitator Facing Prison Over a Link
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bullshit. Typing out http://some.website should never be a crime. Period. Look up the first amendment.
So if I should find out someone is HIV positive and looking for employment, I should be able to type out the preceding sentence to the HR departments of all prospective employers due to my First Amendment rights? How about inciting a lynch mob (you know, the kind that hang 'uppity' persons off of trees)? It's just speech, right?
Neither of those actions are 'just speech', quite in fact they are punishable through the existing legal framework and in neither case is the crime specifically the speech. The crime is what you use the speech to do, whether it is oppress someone, punish them, or bring harm to them.
Pasting a link to the stratfor archive - content that was already available in lots of places - does not do measurable harm to anyone. The idiots at Stratfor who stored CC information without proper security, or the people who leaked that information without paying attention, are the ones who did harm. Once that information was out there on the internet, no single link was going to magnify or increase the magnitude of that disclosure.
Re: A Journalist-Agitator Facing Prison Over a Link
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
So if I should find out someone is HIV positive and looking for employment, I should be able to type out the preceding sentence to the HR departments of all prospective employers due to my First Amendment rights? How about inciting a lynch mob (you know, the kind that hang 'uppity' persons off of trees)? It's just speech, right?
Inciting a lynch mob is conspiracy to commit murder, so it's not a restriction on free speech that would prevent you from doing so. Telling everyone an applicant has HIV is disgustingly immoral but I don't know if/why you should be barred from doing it. That's a much better question than the lynch mob.
Discrimination of that type in hiring contexts is illegal already, IIRC.
Re: A Journalist-Agitator Facing Prison Over a Link
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bullshit. Typing out http://some.website should never be a crime. Period. Look up the first amendment.
So if I should find out someone is HIV positive and looking for employment, I should be able to type out the preceding sentence to the HR departments of all prospective employers due to my First Amendment rights? How about inciting a lynch mob (you know, the kind that hang 'uppity' persons off of trees)? It's just speech, right?
Jesus. What do either of those situations have to do with this case? (Spoiler: nothing at all.)
Re: A Journalist-Agitator Facing Prison Over a Link
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
The relevance of your analogy of a storage locker filled with trade secrets hinges on a crucial question: Did Brown have specific knowledge that the file dump contained credit card numbers, and if so, was his intent in posting the link to the chatroom to disseminate those credit card numbers for the purpose of furthering identity theft? Because if not, then given the crimes he's been charged with (aside from those re…
I forget the fancy legalese for it, but some crimes do not require mens rea (or have a lesser charge for an action without the required mens rea ). I'm not sure if that applies to the data in question in this case though, but it's a great point to consider for the general question.
"Strict liability" is the term of art I think.
Re: A Journalist-Agitator Facing Prison Over a Link
#20"The article was based on, and linked to, documents that were stolen by Edward J. Snowden..."
"...are suggesting that to share information online is the same as possessing it or even stealing it."
I find the choice of the verb "steal" rather bizarre, particularly given the slant of this article. If leaking information is theft, then the New York Times is a frequent recipient and trafficker of stolen goods. I'm not necessarily criticizing their decision to steal the Pentagon Papers, but I think it would be cool if they returned them.