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United States Sentencing Commission website hacked

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Re: United States Sentencing Commission website hacked

#101

Post by 3327 »

tokenadult wrote: post #70

[Shakes his head in disgust.] Hackers, it's time for me to hack the discussion. You and your first world problems have NO IDEA how to fight for freedom. This is the wimpy way to protest whatever it is you are protesting. Unlike most people who post here, I have actually lived under a dictatorial regime that ruled a territory that later had a peaceful transition to democracy and legally protected civil rights. Anonymo…

TO start: I am not saying what they did is right, but I am saying you do not have a right to call it "Cowardice".

>The biggest problem with website-defacing movements is their cowardice (no one in Anonymous seems courageous enough to go to prison)

There is no right or wrong way to fight for freedom. IT is a fight a fight is a war. There are very few rules in war. Many actual freedom fighters have died in places like Bhutan, Burma, etc. This does not make them superior fighters, this diminishes the power to the cause (because they perish and are hard to replace), prolongs the struggle.

I am sure you have seen more than most people and work hard and I am not saying you didn't do this or accusing you of anything because I do not know you enough, but your short essay needs to be more tactile in certain locations specially in this context. You call upon Hacker News to grow up but must of your statements in your piece are childish:

>I know actual freedom fighters, that is publishers of opposition magazines and organizers of nonviolent protests, from Taiwan >If you really want to learn about effective popular action to bring about more freedom, point your Web browser to the Albert Einstein Institute publications

>You and your first world problems have NO IDEA how to fight for freedom

>The biggest problem with website-defacing movements is their cowardice

WHY? Because staying in prison is not a tough guy thing. Doesn't make you smarter or an "Actual freedom fighter". It inhibits you to fight. I am focusing on the concept of a fight as you realize, a struggle, a battle...

You cannot know when it will manifest, when it will ignite and when it will finish. There are stages of undetermined amounts. Not to mention collateral damage. So if you think there is a "fight" here from the beginning, which, by your essay you seem to think so, please analyze what a fight is. A fight, battle or whatever you may label it, does not go through an essay out of some institute. It has strategical value and may come in handy at some point, but it is not a doctrine and going by it will actually put you at an disadvantage. So I suggest before calling people coward and claiming you know "Actual Freedom" fighters and starting your comment with a childish statement that literally translates to "you don't know what you are doing, I am the real deal", I suggest you read on Sun Tzu, The Prince, On guerrilla warfare. If you think there is a fight for freedom going on because what they do may serve a purpose that depends on the length, importance and tactical situation in the fight. Yes these are strategy books and maybe you will claim you are a peaceful activist and don't need these which is fine, but, make no mistake if there is a fight - there will only be one winner.

Re: United States Sentencing Commission website hacked

#102

Post by knowtheory »

vy8vWJlco wrote: post #99
knowtheory wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are comparing apples and oranges. This was not a protest in rural China where corrupt local communist party officials are going to come and disappear you. This was an attack on a US Federal Government website. Whoever defaced the site might get prosecuted for their endeavor, but the only purpose for anonymity here is for the instigators to avoid official reprisal and prosecution (.e.g to get away with it). Nobody…

"Nobody in the US is going to persecute you because you think academic articles should be free (they'll largely just ignore you)." What good is the belief without the ability ("freedom") to act on it? Aaron acted on it, which was arguably a more effective form of protest, and he paid a high price too, even if one doesn't attribute the suicide to his persecution (ehem, sorry, "prosecution")... "Whoever defaced the sit…

Well, i was responding to the notion that there is nobility in this particular use of the shield of anonymity.

I just happen to disagree that this is a noble use of anonymity.

And, yeah, if you're going to break the law in an act of intentional protest, yeah, i hope they have the strength of conviction to own up to what it is that they're doing. Otherwise it is sort of a cowardly act of opportunity.

The thing that distinguishes aaron swartz's case is that every one thinks it is insane that he was being threatened with jail time, and it isn't reasonable for him, or anyone else (save for the prosecutors) to consider 35 years in prison a proportional response for his circumstances and actions.

Attacking government websites solely for the purpose of defacing them, out of protest or not, is moving out of the grey area that aaron swartz was operating in (this information is supposed to be public anyway, and he had a means to scrape them), into intentional vandalism (even if you think they are a legit cause).

Anonymity in such a circumstance, again, is just a shield for people who are breaking the law. I'm not saying anonymity is a bad thing, or that we shouldn't have it, but imo, this is more an abuse of anonymity than a use.

P.S. Aaron Swartz is a lamentable and reprehensible aberration, but it is an aberration. Larry Lessig certainly agrees with Swartz's objectives (just not the means). Nobody is leading a crusade against Lessig, or trying to murder, injure or incarcerate him for what he believes, or the actions he takes to further his aims. That's persecution. Abortion providers are persecuted. Information activists are not persecuted.

Re: United States Sentencing Commission website hacked

#104

Post by downandout »

tokenadult wrote: post #70

[Shakes his head in disgust.] Hackers, it's time for me to hack the discussion. You and your first world problems have NO IDEA how to fight for freedom. This is the wimpy way to protest whatever it is you are protesting. Unlike most people who post here, I have actually lived under a dictatorial regime that ruled a territory that later had a peaceful transition to democracy and legally protected civil rights. Anonymo…

> Going after the United States Sentencing Commission website is beyond stupid. The federal sentencing guidelines were a helpful reform.

This is somewhat true. Sentencing guidelines spell out suggested sentences within, and almost always far under, the maximum sentences allowed by law (although judges are free to ignore them and impose statutory maximum sentences). A more appropriate target for them would have been the place where the maximum sentences are specified, since those are the big problem. The site also happens to belong to the body responsible for setting those maximums: http://uscode.house.gov (the criminal code is title 18 - http://uscode.house.gov/download/title_18.shtml ).

This is not a suggestion that anyone undertake any illegal activity - it is just an observation that it would have been a better target. I'm certain that an actual suggestion of that nature would yield significant prison time under these very sentencing laws.

Re: United States Sentencing Commission website hacked

#105

Post by analog »

eaurouge wrote: post #98
analog wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It worked out with the Arab Spring didn't it? "Manning and WikiLeaks were credited as catalysts for the Arab Spring that began in December 2010, when waves of protesters rose up against rulers across the Middle East and North Africa after the leaked cables exposed government corruption" [1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning

Manning and WikiLeaks may have been credited by some as catalysts for the Arab Spring, but they were not. Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation was the catalyst for the Arab Spring. It's not as if Tunisians needed anyone to tell them how corrupt their government was. Once Tunisia looked like it might fall, revolutionaries in other countries started planning their own protests.

Have you got any references refuting this claim then. "but they were not" just isn't that convincing on it's own.

Re: United States Sentencing Commission website hacked

#106

Post by hermannj314 »

twoodfin wrote: post #76
hermannj314 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exposing emails, hacking the FBI? This is not at all helpful. Murdering politicians, assassinating police officers and judges, freeing the wrongly imprisoned by force. A willingness to die fighting. Any or all of those would change things, possibly for the better. But this, this is a waste of your time and ours.

hernmannj314, this comment could be read as encouraging the ("helpful") deaths of a variety of civic officials. Even if there were an appropriate forum for such loathsome sentiments, hn is certainly not it.

It could also be read as a dramatic exaggeration of the parent's claim that one class of crime was better than another and that we should be willing to commit crimes of civil disobedience based on pragmatism and not be tethered by morality or legality. I tried to point out the absurdity of that claim by extending it as far as I could, by arguing that we should murder government employees so long as it "might" make the world a better place.

I thought it was clear by copying the words of the parent in my post what I was doing.

Re: United States Sentencing Commission website hacked

#107

Post by analog »

eaurouge wrote: post #98
analog wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It worked out with the Arab Spring didn't it? "Manning and WikiLeaks were credited as catalysts for the Arab Spring that began in December 2010, when waves of protesters rose up against rulers across the Middle East and North Africa after the leaked cables exposed government corruption" [1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning

Manning and WikiLeaks may have been credited by some as catalysts for the Arab Spring, but they were not. Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation was the catalyst for the Arab Spring. It's not as if Tunisians needed anyone to tell them how corrupt their government was. Once Tunisia looked like it might fall, revolutionaries in other countries started planning their own protests.

Amnesty International are one of the organisations that credit Wikileaks as being a catalyst for the Arab Spring.

"One example highlighted by Shetty was Tunisia, where WikiLeaks revelations about Ben Ali's corrupt regime combined with rapidly-spreading news of the self-immolation of a disillusioned young man, Mohamed Bouazizi, to spark major protests." [1]

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/13/amnesty-internat...

Re: United States Sentencing Commission website hacked

#108

Post by AnthonyMouse »

mpyne wrote: post #94
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

35 years was the maximum under the laws he was originally charged with. 50 years was the maximum after the supplemental indictment that added additional charges. Under the sentencing guidelines a judge shouldn't, but still could have sentenced him to the maximum. If the goal is to change the law and the argument is that the penalties are absurd, the fact that the penalties are absurd is very relevant and not an exagg…

"Win the lottery and you could receive up to $200 million!!! Buy your ticket today!!!" And yet we say the lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the sentencing guidelines based on the maximum penalty? In other words, the absurdity of 50 years in theory is what creates the absurdity of seven or ten years in practice. If the maximum penalty was one year or less then the guidelines would have discounted that to something entirely rational for cases like Aaron Swartz, but it wasn't, causing the disproportionality.

Buying a $1 lottery ticket would be a whole lot more rational if the rare case resulting in $200M caused the average case to result in $35M.

Re: United States Sentencing Commission website hacked

#109

Post by mindcrime »

tokenadult wrote: post #70

[Shakes his head in disgust.] Hackers, it's time for me to hack the discussion. You and your first world problems have NO IDEA how to fight for freedom. This is the wimpy way to protest whatever it is you are protesting. Unlike most people who post here, I have actually lived under a dictatorial regime that ruled a territory that later had a peaceful transition to democracy and legally protected civil rights. Anonymo…

You make it sound as though the goal should be to go to prison, or to become a martyr for your cause. I suppose you think suicide bombers are effective freedom fighters as well?

I'm reminded of an old quote, which I think is attributed to General Patton: The goal is not to die for your country, the goal is to make the other guy die for his country.

IOW, you're not out there intentionally trying to sacrifice yourself and take yourself out of the game. That would be silly.

Look, I'm not saying that what Anonymous did was right in any objective sense, but it is what they did, and it's real easy for us to play "monday morning quarterback" and sit here and criticize. At least they did something, which is more than most of us can claim. And, yes, members (or purported member) of Anonymous have gone to jail for their activities.

Re: United States Sentencing Commission website hacked

#110

Post by mpyne »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #108
mpyne wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Win the lottery and you could receive up to $200 million!!! Buy your ticket today!!!" And yet we say the lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the sentencing guidelines based on the maximum penalty? In other words, the absurdity of 50 years in theory is what creates the absurdity of seven or ten years in practice. If the maximum penalty was one year or less then the guidelines would have discounted that to something entirely rational for cases like Aaron Swartz, but it wasn't, causing the disproportionality. Buying a $1 l…

As far as I understand them, the sentencing guidelines group related charges into a single charge. E.g. the "computer fraud" and "wire fraud" charges that are for some reason separate under CFAA would count as just one conviction under FSG. So even if we was convicted for 1 or 5 charges relating to the same underlying accusation you should still get the same recommended sentence.

Since I'm not a lawyer I don't want to try to analyze further but there's also provisions about whether to make multiple sentences concurrent or sequential (which can also add time).

You don't have to take my word about the maximum sentence though: Jennifer Granick was very critical of the U.S. Attorney's handling of the case and her estimate of the FSG recommendation (based on trumped-up loss calculations) was 1-2 years in prison.

There is a reason to add charges though: It can make the jury more likely to convict by helping along their sense of "splitting the difference", makes the court of public opinion turn that much more against you, etc.

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