TJX Hacker Claims US Authorized His Crimes 159
doperative writes "Convicted hacker Albert Gonzalez is asking a federal judge to throw out his earlier guilty pleas and lift his record-breaking 20-year prison sentence, on allegations that the government authorized his years-long crime spree. From the article: 'The government has acknowledged that Gonzalez was a key undercover Secret Service informant at the time of the breaches. Now, in a March 24 habeas corpus petition filed in the US District Court in Massachusetts, Gonzalez asserts that the Secret Service authorized him to commit the crimes. “I still believe that I was acting on behalf of the United States Secret Service and that I was authorized and directed to engage in the conduct I committed as part of my assignment to gather intelligence and seek out international cyber criminals,” he wrote. “I now know and understand that I have been used as a scapegoat to cover someone’s mistakes.”'"
It's illegal... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's illegal... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. Possibly he has accomplices in Government who should also be behind bars but I don't see how that undermines his own conviction.
Re:It's illegal... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes but perhaps his sentence will be taken into consideration considering these new facts (if they are true). That is why these sentences have a range of penalties...
Seems like government agents breaking laws like these (theft and fraud) should be subject to harsher penalties. Something's seriously wrong if they get lighter ones.
Re:It's illegal... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be very doubtful unless he has good proof he was working for the government.
the government can do a lot of things and authorize it's agents to do a lot of things which would be illegal otherwise.
For a trivial example:The executioner is not guilty of murder for executing a person sentenced to death.
Police can take someone against their will and lock them up overnight for very flimsy reasons without the same penalties as a kidnapper who does the same thing for the same reasons.(Just try locking up your neighbor in your basement against his will to punish him for being drunk in public and see how it turns out for you)
If someone believes their actions are at the behest of their government it shouldn't be a total defense but intent is important.
Re:It's illegal... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems like government agents breaking laws like these (theft and fraud) should be subject to harsher penalties to the people who ordered them.
Re:It's illegal... (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless he has documented proof that he was receiving these directions (e-mails, recorded conversations (legally recorded or not), etc.) I think his status declines from "government agent" to "sucker."
Re:It's illegal... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be very doubtful unless he has good proof he was working for the government.
Uhm.. the government ALREADY ADMITTED that they were using him as an undercover informant.
One of those things about the word "undercover" is that unless you are participating in what is going on, chances are the people you are trying to inform on will peg you real quick. "Hey, don't talk to that guy, everyone he talks to gets busted by the feds."
The Secret Service is no different than any other law enforcement agency. The dirtiest, most corrupt wing is always "Vice", simply because in order to find the guys they're trying to bust the cops have to get very, very, very dirty themselves. Sometimes they go native [guardian.co.uk], sometimes they really go native [gawker.com], sometimes they get really freaking insane [google.com] (more here [rawstory.com]. Sometimes it's even worse. Undercover cops on major mafia infiltration cases have had almost carte blanche to participate in anything that went on, so long as they testified later.
Am I completely convinced he's telling the truth? No. Is it reasonably plausible that someone in the Secret Service gave him verbal instructions to do certain things in order to keep his credibility up so as to set up future busts, but then decided he wasn't worth it and used him as a scapegoat? Absolutely.
Re:It's illegal... (Score:4, Insightful)
actually the break goes the other way if he was promised a suspended sentence and the Judge gave him a "couple dimes" then the state broke the agreement.
Goverment + Hackers = Scapegoat (Score:3, Insightful)
Having had... friends... involved in similar situations, I can attest to the case that if this guy worked for the Government, and was a scapegoat, they basically set him up for failure.
If he succeeded and was able to hide his tracks of hacking, the Government got their information and won.
If he failed and was unable to hide his tracks of hacking, the Government got partial information and won.
If the guy failed gloriously, the Government got what information they could, and have an instant scapegoat. Just add press. And won.
Win win for the government, and they can say at any time plausible deniability.
The friend in question I had was an excellent hacker. He hacked into banks for shits and giggles, went into government systems like a person would skip in the park. One day, he screwed up, the government found out, the guy disappeared. No jail time, no newspaper/press of him hacking. And all his college entrance and time spent at college disappeared as well. For all intents and purposes the guy never went to college, and I'll be surprised if there was anything other than a clean-record of the guy other than being born, his SS#, and place of residence. White-washed history for government signed-on hacker. And because of the dirt the government now had on this guy, he became Uncle Sam's bitch.
How the good ol' government gets these people to accept said positions of scapegoatness is fairly simple.
They find dirt on someone exceptionally good at computer espionage, or if they can't find legit dirt, they create some and seed it throughout the gold ol' internet and stack false records against them, at least in such a way to make it... difficult... for the target individual to live a decent life without cow-towing to the government officials.
Said person signs documentation that makes them 'legally' work for said government that is their 'get out of jail free' card. Except, the documentation doesn't really exist unless it is in the best interests of the government. Ergo, they have the hacker by the balls. The hacker continues to do a good job, and can cover their tracks enough to not point a finger at the government in -any way- or can hide their existance in such a way to be not backtraced, any and all possible ability to nail the guy goes up in smoke. All logs, all reports, disappear. If they can point their finger in anyway at either the hacker or the government, the 'get out of jail free' card becomes toilet paper and the guy's head goes to the block as the scapegoat.
May sound like bullshit, but as I've seen this shit first hand, it's not a pleasant experience.
It's not paranoia when they really are out to get you.
Just food for thought.
Re:It's illegal... (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems like government agents breaking laws like these (theft and fraud) should be subject to harsher penalties. Something's seriously wrong if they get lighter ones.
So, you're saying that narcs should get jail time for buying illegal drugs, in order to catch dealers "in the act"?