LulzSec Member Pleads Not Guilty In Stratfor Leak Case 89
TheGift73 writes with an update on one of the many LulzSec court cases. From the article: "A former LulzSec member has pleaded not guilty to federal charges that he hacked into the servers of global intelligence company Stratfor and stole credit card data and personal details of 860,000 of its clients. Jeremy Hammond entered the plea on Monday during a brief hearing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, the Associated Press reported. He's been held in federal custody since an initial court appearance in Chicago in early March, when federal prosecutors named him as a lieutenant of LulzSec ringleader Hector Xavier 'Sabu' Monsegur. There was no request for Hammond to be released on bail during Monday's hearing, according to the AP report."
The best defense is a good offense. (Score:5, Informative)
News that Stratfor, the "private intelligence service," has been whacked by Anonymous has brought the former organization and its reputation into sharp focus. The fact that Stratfor hadn't bothered to fulfill one of the lowest requirements of cybernetic security -- encrypting sensitive client data -- is one of the most damaging things that can be said about any company in the digital age, much less an "international security organization." This intrusion went quite a bit farther than most -- the Guy Fawkes boys actually managed to extract funds (a reported $500,000 worth) from Stratfor's clients (whom the company insists on calling "members"), which they then gave to charities. The humiliation here is total, and Stratfor will be lucky to survive.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/01/the_stratfor_scandal.html [americanthinker.com]
Re:Evidence... (Score:4, Informative)
Who is to say? Anyone who has read the indictment could speak to that point. The feds have Mr. Hammond right where they want him and he doesn't want to be. They watched his apartment and correlated his presence there with the presence of "anarkaos" on IRC chatting with Sabu. Gosh, anarkaos left the chat right when Jeremy went to the store! His previous felony conviction for a similar crime is not going to help at sentencing, either.
Re:Evidence... (Score:4, Informative)
What is interesting is they name him the lieutenant of LulzSec ringleader Hector Xavier 'Sabu' Monsegur but in court the FBI testified that Hector Xavier 'Sabu' Monsegur was only a participant. Just so the FBI sort of drops the bullshit a lieutenant normally commands a platoon of around 30 men.
Now with the stooley the boss of 5 people, so as number 2, that only leaves 4 people that would make him more of a corporal not a lieutenant but I suppose if you are already lying in court and the ringleader becomes only a participant and then reverts to ringleader when you are accusing the claimed number 2, you might as well keep on lying. Now how exactly is the court meant to treat the FBI agents testimony when they lie and grossly exaggerate straight off the bat.
Lieutenant is not intended here as a military rank. Lieutenant has always been used in regards to crime as essentially middle management. A lieutenant isn't the top guy, but he usually takes his orders from the top guy and passes them down to the minions doing all the dirty work. Think of any old, bad mafia movie you may have seen. You have the Don sitting in his chair. The 2 guys standing behind him on either side of the chair? Those are his lieutenants. This is not the FBI lying to make him seem in charge of more people. They are using a common term for what they allege was his role in this attack.
Re:The Real Lulz (Score:4, Informative)
Spoken like someone who never used their services.
StratFor is completely different from HuffPo. StratFor staff aren't unpaid people looking for exposure, they're full-time employees. They don't have more access then anybody else, but they do tend to know stuff in their narrow specialties. They don't have an ideological axe to grind, and they won't be beaten up by party thugs under any circumstances.
Look at it this way. Is there an ITAR-TASS article that tells you that the Rwandan-backed Congolese Militia is winning the war because the Rwandan regular Army is capable of coordinating long-distance flanking attacks with satellite phones? Did Xinhua even bother publishing a single story on that war, that didn't focus on Chinese economic performance and/or human interesty crap like how much it sucks to run from said Rwandan Army? I'm not saying that stuff doesn't have it's place, or that it wasn't really important that the Rwandans were causing a massive refugee crisis that probably killed more people then the genocide. I'm just saying that if you wanted a clear view of what was happening on the ground, without distractions intended to suck in viewers who don't understand/care about the difficulties of coordinating flanking movements in the African bush; Stratfor was a godsend.
Or another example. Which ITAR TASS story tells the Somali faction is associated with the Marehan sub-clan of Clan Darod? Did it include a handy map, allowing you to see which areas of the country said faction controlled? Did it mention whether enough Red Berets survived the fall of the Barre regime to stiffen that organization?
I'll be the first to admit that Stratfor is a shitty intelligence agency. It's probably inferior to the Danes, Mozambicans, or any country bigger then Iceland. But it's also the only one available to ordinary Americans who are interested in intelligence.
Re:the fact that we refer (Score:4, Informative)
Some of those card numbers belonged to people. If I'd gotten a real job right out of college I woulda been one of the first to buy their service. It was $99 a year, and I was too poor/cheap to swing it.
I doubt many of those people were actually screwed by the hack. Contesting charges is not hard. The last analysis I saw actually indicated that the charities Anon "gasve" money to actually lost out on the deal because they had to process both the payment and cancelling the payments.
Yeah, and I was one of those people to whom one of those credit card numbers belonged. I got a deeply discounted membership to Stratfor for a year, but then didn't renew it because I didn't think their news service was worth $99 per annum. While I didn't get any false charges on my credit card, I was inconvenienced by the perpetrators of this hack because my bank cancelled my credit card, and required me to get a new one. I then had to contact to everyone who was automatically billing my charges to that credit card, and give them the new number. Inevitably, I missed a couple, and got some late charges. It wasn't a disaster, but it was certainly inconvenient.
What really angers me about incidents of this type is the tone of moral superiority taken by their perpetrators and certain members of the community who support them. Somehow, these faceless actors are ascribed the right to judge which people and which organizations are evil, and to mete out punishment accordingly. If they have such a right, then we will soon arrive at the stage where no one has any rights.