From the Chicago Tribune: When “hacktivist” Jeremy Hammond stood in a Chicago federal courtroom seven years ago and explained that his cybercrimes were altruistic acts of civil disobedience, he was cut a break by a judge who chalked it up to youthful folly.
Not this time.
A New York federal judge on Friday sentenced Hammond, 28, to the maximum 10 years in prison for a 2011 hacking spree that exposed confidential and sometimes personal information about law enforcement officers, private intelligence firms and U.S. government contractors and cost millions of dollars in damages. He had pleaded guilty in May.
In a lengthy statement to the court, Hammond, part of a loose band of politically motivated hackers known as Anonymous, said he knew what he was doing was illegal but had become frustrated with the ineffectiveness of peaceful demonstrations....
But U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska drew a sharp distinction between Hammond and activists such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. or Nelson Mandela.
“There’s nothing high-minded or public-spirited about causing mayhem,” Preska said.
Prosecutors said Hammond hacked into more than half a dozen secure sites to cause what he called “maximum mayhem.” His most high-profile hack came in December 2011 when he stole at least 200 gigabytes of confidential information from Stratfor, a private Texas intelligence firm. Thousands of employee emails were released to WikiLeaks and posted over a series of weeks, exposing a host of secret operations Stratfor was conducting, from tracking the Occupy movement on behalf of the U.S. government to corporate spying for heavyweights such as Dow Chemical Co. and Coca-Cola. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-chicago-hacker-sentenced-20131115,0,2826104.story
He is nothing more than a thug with a computer and deserves the 10 years in prison.
Good bye and enjoy the company of Bubba.
At the Post-Christmas Café...
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