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.”'"
Re:It's illegal... (Score:5, Interesting)
Thought he was full of it, until I saw his handler (Score:5, Interesting)
Ummmm, not buying the bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry, but this sounds really implausible to me. I'd need to see some solid proof before Id' accept this. For one, I can't see what the Secret Service would hope to gain. I mean if they need records for credit card transactions at stores they've got a far easier way to get them: Just subpoena the CC processors. They can have whoever the stores use (companies like Paymentech or the like) hand over all the records. Not only is that legal, but it is also much more covert since the companies themselves are not compromised.
This would be how investigations work. They just get a court order for the people who have the info to hand it over, they don't hire some random guy to try and hack your shit. They get a subpoena or a warrant (depending on what they need, in some cases they might want to monitor traffic live for that they'd have a wiretap warrant) and they go to the people with the info. It's legal, maintains the chain of evidence, and gets much more guaranteed results than hacking.
Also I find it hard to believe that if he really was working under orders from the SS that he wouldn't have told his lawyers and they wouldn't have done something. In my experience federal public defenders aren't morons. It is a good job, they can get good people. I can't imagine if he had opened up with "Guys I didn't think I was doing anything wrong! The Secret Service told me to do this!" they wouldn't have investigated that.
To me, sounds like something he invented in a way to try and get out of jail. I'm not saying it is impossible, but I find it rather beyond credibility.
Re:It's illegal... (Score:4, Interesting)
According to the article, the government has already admitted that he (Gonzalez) worked for them.
The strange thing about this is that Gonzalez signed a plea bargain and is now trying to break it. I'm not clear on all the details. Maybe it was one of those situations where someone in the government told him: "Plead guilty and we'll get you a suspended sentence and then you can continue to work for us" but then the judge, not wanting to appear weak on a "cyber" criminal, dropped the 20-bomb on him. That's a long bit for a young nerd to do, even someone who played with Russian mobsters.
Again, I'm not clear on the details, but I could see the government playing with a guy's life like that, especially someone who was already breaking the law when he first got involved with the Feds.