Prison Is For Dangerous Criminals, Not Hacktivists 337
In late 2011, defense contractor Stratfor suffered a cybersecurity breach that resulted in a leak of millions of internal emails. A few months later, the FBI arrested hacktivist Jeremy Hammond and several others for actions related to the breach. Hammond pleaded guilty to one count of violating the CFAA, and today his sentence was handed down: 10 years in prison followed by three years of supervised release. He said, [The prosecutors] have made it clear they are trying to send a message to others who come after me. A lot of it is because they got slapped around, they were embarrassed by Anonymous and they feel that they need to save face." Reader DavidGilbert99 adds,
"Former LulzSec and Anonymous member Jake Davis argues that U.S. lawmakers need to take a leaf out of the U.K.'s legal system and not put Jeremy Hammond behind bars for his part in the hack of Stratfor. 'Jeremy Hammond has a lot to give society too. Prisons are for dangerous people that need to be segmented from the general population. Hackers are not dangerous, they are misunderstood, and while disciplinary action is of course necessary, there is nothing disciplined about locking the door on a young man's life for 10 years.'"
Sorry, but not here (Score:5, Insightful)
Here we have prison to punish people. It doesn't exist as a means to control risk by controlling dangerous people. We've collectively decided that we should put people in cells(and let them be raped) like it's telling 5 year olds to stand in the corner.
"misunderstood"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why just limit that label to hackers?
"It's just a misunderstanding that makes you think she is dead, sure you have a body that lacks a pulse..."
"Why yes, I did burn down that orphanage... but you misunderstand why."
"No officer, I did have a lot to drink tonight, but you don't understand that my driving abilities get better when I'm wasted!"
We are not talking about an accidently committed crime here... my understanding is he deliberately did what he did... so should be punished hard as a reminder.
Should have been a VP (Score:5, Insightful)
If only he was a bank VP. Then all crimes are forgiven with a sizable bonus.
Prisons need to be fixed before patents (Score:5, Insightful)
There are so many problems with prisons in this country it's not funny.
Lets see...
I'm sure there's more....
You break the law (Score:0, Insightful)
How does that saying go? "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time."
Re:Sorry, but not here (Score:5, Insightful)
Worse: The really, really bad people in prison enjoy having all these non-violent young men in there to torture and rape. It's like handing them lollipops.
Re:Fuck off (Score:4, Insightful)
Motive is relevant when considering crimes. It's the difference between first degree murder and involuntary manslaughter(or even justified self-defense).
Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
I have no issue stating that prisons are over populated with people who are not physically dangerous, and/or shouldn't be there (guys busted for pot for example) but saying they're "misunderstood" is akin to saying they're just children who didn't know any better. Um, a little personal responsibility please? There still must be some repercussions, commensurate to the hacking/stealing/damage they perpetrated.
Re:Sorry, but not here (Score:0, Insightful)
Also this full client list of over 4000 individuals and corporations, including their credit cards
Yeah we went from hactivism to criminal in 1 sentence. Meaning they were planing on blackmailing or using those cards...
Just because you commit a crime does not mean you 'get off' because it was a 'nice crime'. Also targeting power brokers like this will get you nailed to the wall. They know guys who take care of things.
If they had left it at 'hey pile of emails' instead of 'hey pile of emails *AND* juicy credit cards'. The guy would have got off with less. But probably in this case not much less.
This is the same issue we have with many patents. Doing things we used to do before 'with a computer'.
Also you are correct about our prisons aka 'correctional facilities'. They suck. We are warehousing criminals little more. What if instead of warehousing we forced all of them to learn skills. Usable skills not just bending metal into license plates and digging ditches. Things like you end up here welcome to your new school. Think if instead of bottom of the rung people who have little choice in what they do we ended up with master level graduate students?
Re:Sorry, but not here (Score:2, Insightful)
Screw 'em then (Score:2, Insightful)
This is why people should stick to more conventional terrorism, like bombs and murder. Then the ROI is far better.
Re:Fuck off (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sorry, but not here (Score:4, Insightful)
Also you are correct about our prisons aka 'correctional facilities'. They suck. We are warehousing criminals little more. What if instead of warehousing we forced all of them to learn skills. Usable skills not just bending metal into license plates and digging ditches. Things like you end up here welcome to your new school. Think if instead of bottom of the rung people who have little choice in what they do we ended up with master level graduate students?
The why is obvious, isn't it? The basic idea feeding it is people who do bad things are bad people. It comes from an absolutist moral position. It's Calvinism directing political beliefs centuries after it should have died.
They are dangerous criminals.. (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference, of course, is dangerous to who?
Being dangerous to authority is much worse than being dangerous to the public, and is treated accordingly.
Re:Sorry, but not here (Score:5, Insightful)
Here where I live, prisons are privatized, with an extremely strong lobby. If a DA doesn't throw the book at defendants, they get replaced next election by one that will. If a judge doesn't rubber-stamp maximum sentences and keep a high conviction ratio, they also get voted out. Even the local police have "quotas" where they have to slap cuffs on x amount of people per outing or they end up being passed up for promotions by people with better arrest tallies.
So, prisons are not for punishment; they are for profit. If you look at the two private prison companies, they actually have Apple-like growth in the past few years, with no upper bound in sight.
Ironic this... even China is getting rid of its work/re-education camps, while we are getting them here in the US.
Re:Sorry, but not here (Score:5, Insightful)
Well having a 5 year old stand in the corner does have a purpose more then just punishment.
Normally when a 5 year old gets into trouble it is because they are over stimulated and over excited, and act without thinking. Having them go to the corner puts them in an environment with less stimulation, and lets them calm down a bit.
However Prison doesn't have that effect, there is too much stimulation, and hardens the criminal. This is appreciate for people who are too dangerous to be in public, either because their crimes are dangerous, or are at a high risk of repeating the crime in public. However for a lot of these crimes that people get locked up in, isn't really worth it for them. House Arrest, where their movements are tracts and they can only go to designated places, is one good option. Monetary fines work too, and for some people, just getting yelled at is enough.
The US has this tough on crime mentality, which doesn't work, and all it does is increase fear of the general public of getting put in jail for some petty crime they didn't really think things threw.
Re:Fuck off (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no alleging about it. People who deliberately break into someone else's systems are criminals. By your logic if I leave my door unlocked and you walk in and steal my stuff, I'm the one at fault. Nice way to blame the victim. Do I need to drag out the rape example?
Re:Sorry, but not here (Score:2, Insightful)
It's one of those "it's so bad that lots of alternatives are better" situations in the US.
"white collar crimes" (Score:5, Insightful)
I think there's an argument to be made that people who commit assaults or other acts of violence against others are an entirely different class of individual than people who run pyramid schemes, hack web sites, etc.
There -is- an aspect of prison that says "we're going to keep this person out of society for a while as a way to protect society". Taking phones/internet away from a cracker is more than sufficient to protect society, and arguably is a significant punitive action against someone with the time/skills/interests to be successful.
People who commit mail fraud or steal long distance shouldn't share cell space with sex predators, murderers, etc. It's not in the interests of society, the individuals in question, or any efforts at reforming criminals prior to re-introduction to society.
What's going to happen to a nerd in prison is that they'll do anything possible to survive. Historically, hackers have joined up with mafia or gangs for _physical_ protection, and in exchange, provide black-hat services to the groups providing them with protection.
This is NOT how you reform geeks. This plunges them deeper into the realm of criminal enterprise, with higher stakes, and more damage to everyone.
Re:Sorry, but not here (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not concerned with whether they are good people or bad people. Prison serves multiple purposes. You can look at it as a place to try to institutionalize people, so they won't do whatever they did when they get out, because they, in theory, won't want to go back. You can look at it as punishment.
None of those things really matter. Prison is, first and foremost, a place to put people away so they will be unable to do what they did again in society. I simply don't care about the other reasons. Looking at it from that perspective, you could probably put this person in a minimum security prison for a long time; I doubt he's being sent to San Quentin.
No, you fuck off (Score:5, Insightful)
When Google and Facebook do this for a profit, hide the data collection behind an EULA, and then sell your personal data to third parties, they are called geniuses and made billionaires.
Furthermore, the individual in question did not seek to make a profit. You can disagree with his methods, but back when the scales of justice were still capable of measuring anything at all, these sort of considerations were commonly implemented.
In 1750: "Stop making excuses for those who commit treason against the King. They are criminals, pure and simple."
In 1850: "Stop making excuses for those people who steal slaves under the guise of making them free. They are criminals, pure and simple."
In 1950: "Stop making excuses for those people who participate in race riots. They are criminals, pure and simple."
Legitimate power and systems of law do not justify themselves without some reasoning. So can you tell me why people who commit physical assaults, armed robberies, and sexual assaults should see less jail time that someone who made a copy of an email archive to try and expose overreach of our privatized military economy?
How is putting this individual in prison going to
1) repair the damage they are accused of
2) improve society at large
3) cost effectively return them to society
Questions 1-3 are routinely ignored because the American incarceration system is not designed to help American society. It causes more harm than good, has shoved millions of people into a cycle of poverty and violence that few escape from, and the costs (upwards of 60-100k per prisoner per year) to perpetuate the broken system are far more than simpler, more humane justice systems found throughout the industrialized world.
This is not 1600. America is not a puritan state. Keep your dead ideas about corporal punishment in the distant past where they belong.
Re:Sorry, but not here (Score:5, Insightful)
No one should ever have a government incentive to promote crime. Privatized prisons are exactly that. But enough of a radical that I believe that all government work should be direct hires, and that government contracts and privatization in general are a failure.
Re:Sorry, but not here (Score:5, Insightful)
The worse criminal you are, the less punishment prison actually is. In the words of Richard Speck: [wikipedia.org] "If they knew what a good time I was having, they'd turn me loose."
Re:Sorry, but not here (Score:2, Insightful)
The sad thing is that these premises aren't lost on the people who study crime. The problem is almost entirely populist, which in the U.S. is a very hard force to counter.
Re:Sorry, but not here (Score:2, Insightful)
Prison, as you describe it, is managed without concern for the prisoners, as human beings. When as this decided collectively, as you assert?
It seems to me that such a penal system is managed under a politically conservative ethic which puts the financial interests of those outside that system above society as a whole, at least if you believe that society has an interest in promoting general welfare. You can't expect that prisoners released from a system which ignores their needs, abilities and potential while they are 'inside' to be capable of anything greater once they've been released. Penalization without rehabilitation is profoundly ignorant. There has to be a goal of rehabilitation, or at least education, if society expects to do anything but avoid and delay recidivism and/or worse behavior from the incarcerated.
The 'hard on crime' set, who promote such abuse in order to construct profitable prisons without responsibility for the outcome appeal to the ignorant fundamentalists who discount the value of a nurturing existence. Conservatism of this ilk is a disease.
Re:No, you fuck off (Score:4, Insightful)
I wish I had mod points. The only thing I would add to this is:
1. The cost of keeping people in prison and the rise of the prison-industrial complex. People make millions off of other Americans' misery.
2. The absolute disgrace of sentencing CHILDREN to adult prison. No attempt at rehabilitation. No effort made to protect their freedoms - which is unconscionable, as we remove their rights to pursue their particular happiness.
The prison system in the United States should make each and every one of us physically ill.
Re:Fuck You! (Score:4, Insightful)
Fuck you!
Do the crime, serve the time! I'm totally down with that.
That is quite insightful. I've never heard that before.
Now that I've heard that, I can finally move on and forget about the fact that the US has such an absurdly high incarceration rate, disproportionate prosecution of minorities, crazy sentencing schemes, so many people arrested that our courts can't even handle them all without plea bargains (which are accomplished by stacking so many charges against a person that it can be rational for even the innocent to take the plea in order to avoid losing a gamble that destroys their entire life), for-profit organizations running prisons that lobby to create more prisoners and prison time, and...
There's no reason to go on, because you solved it all. Nothing to see here. We should move on.
Re:"misunderstood"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe, maybe not. As mentioned in a previous comment, prison is primarily used as a punishment here not as much for protection of general society. In a country founded on the principal of various innate freedoms taking away someone's freedom seems the ultimate punishment. Fines = Taking your means to buy what you want = Taking your freedom to acquire. Revocation of licenses (drivers, professional) take away your freedom to legally perform certain activities. Prison, and the associated probation/parole system, go steps farther by explicitly removing all, or almost all, but your barest freedoms. Execution takes your final freedom (Life) away.
Personally I think a 10 year sentence is pretty excessive. Your average privileged American is pretty shell shocked by even small amounts of time behind bars. Months to a couple years is enough of a penalty to reform the vast majority. Those that don't fit that mold become repeat offenders where the penalties deservedly go up. Extreme example: I could walk out of my office right now and gun down someone in cold blood and I wouldn't end up with 10 years. I don't disagree at all with Prison being the style of punishment but I find the duration to be excessive and honestly for first offense pending aggravating circumstances a friendly prosecutor would probably be happy with a number of years of probation in-lieu of. The whole concept of "Trying to send a message" is an abortion of our legal system and should be weeded out with appropriate diligence.
PS: The whole misunderstood argument is similarly BS. I break laws all the time and when I get caught I pay the price. I am truly understood by only myself but that is no argument that I shouldn't be judged based on the same laws my fellow citizens are. I instead work to change those laws I disagree with so I can spread my own understanding.
Re:Fuck off (Score:3, Insightful)
The claim that I was making was that the prison sentence was excessive (probably because the Judge's husband was a victim of the crime). Somewhere in the 2-4 year range would probably make more sense.
Prison is not primarily to punish (Score:4, Insightful)
Here we have prison to punish people. It doesn't exist as a means to control risk by controlling dangerous people. We've collectively decided that we should put people in cells(and let them be raped) like it's telling 5 year olds to stand in the corner.
Prison is not primarily to punish. I know when someone is a victim of a crime, they like to believe it exists to punish criminals. That's not what is intended.
The intent of any punitive action by a court is to discourage an activity in such a way that the rest of society doesn't engage in the behaviour.
Think about it: do the police arrive before a crime and prevent it, or do they show up afterwards? Do we penalize manslaughter to a lesser degree because we think the victim is any less dead than if it had been second or first degree murder instead? Punishment is clearly intended to send a message to the rest of society, not make the victim or the victims families feel better about themselves.
The message is clearly intended as "Don't do this; if you get caught, this is what will happen to you, and you should fear that penalty enough that you don't engage in the proscribed behaviour". We tend to lose sight of this because of cases that drag on for years, rather than having the penalty assessed immediately; delayed punishment = delayed threat. But until Tom Cruise starts showing up at your house to prevent murders which you are about to commit, in no way is the system about punishing criminals.
Re:Sorry, but not here (Score:5, Insightful)
We really need to take a look at which countries successfully release prisoners who go on to lead lawful, fruitful lives, and then emulate those systems.
Won't work.
Not so long as being "tough on crime" wins votes.
Re:Sorry, but not here (Score:5, Insightful)
One can tell a lot about a country in how they treat the people that they can't stand, be it prisoners or "terrorists".
As a US citizen, it is just shameful. However, the lobby of "why spend money on a convicted murderer, he should be punished" is very strong here.
The problem is that there is a point when punishment turns into an attack, similar to the difference between a spanking versus flaying skin off with barbed wire. A punishment creates respect. An attack creates contempt, fear, and anger which has a blowback effect.
If for some reason I had the ability to rework the penal system here in the US, it would be along the lines of what even Eastern Europe has done:
1: Most prisons are warehouses. This would change to factories and farms. Before the 1980s, most prisons had their own farms and were fairly self-sufficient. Now, food has to be imported in [1]. Great for sub-contractors, destroys the purpose of the prison. Instead, there needs to be something for prisoners to do other than gas COs or flood tiers.
2: Make it "un-cool" to act up. US prisons, it is viewed as an achievement to get the four-point bed or the restraint chair. In Europe, the same behavior is looked upon as pure idiocy by other inmates.
3: Give something to work for, be it a university, or a GED, or heck, just the basic ability to read and write at the level of a sixth-grader.
4: Some real-world job training. A prison intranet perhaps with no access to the outside world and some sites mirrored.
5: Arrests and trivial convictions would be private. Only felonies would be public record. This way, some guy who gets drunk and is slurped up for PI by the local popo doesn't have a rap sheet.
6: Jails would be relegated to two functions. One is a place to house (not punish) defendants waiting for their trial date, the second is to deal with the convicted. Some jails punish all inside, and that should not be the case unless the US wants to go Italy's route of "guilty until proven innocent."
7: The punishment would fit the crime. Killing someone's career means that the person is a ward of the state for the rest of their lives, and so is their family. Keeping them earning money means more revenue from taxes.
8: Private prisons will not go away anytime soon. Instead, the companies would be given contracts to build schools and libraries, so their bread and butter does not depend on how many beds are filled. This way, there is no pressure on judges to convict or else be removed from office next election.
9: Actual mental health care. Right now, if someone is mentally ill, there are no hospitals for that. They end up in the psycho cellblock in the local jail.
[1]: In Texas, this seemed to be deliberate. Look up Vita-Pro for example.
More reason to put hackers in prison than not (Score:4, Insightful)
If you are going to base the argument around who needs to be separated from society, there's MORE reason to put hackers in a prison than most other criminals there - because a hacker can easily affect tens of thousands of people, unlike a criminal who can only really affect a handful. Being in prison is the only sure way to control computer access for hackers.
If you want to argue there needs to be a separate place to put hackers because they don't deserve to be at the mercy or violent hackers, well that's why we have white collar prisons is it not? There were "soft targets" going to prison long before hackers.
Re:Sorry, but not here (Score:3, Insightful)
The US has this tough on crime mentality, which doesn't work, and all it does is increase fear of the general public of getting put in jail for some petty crime they didn't really think things threw.
That may be true for the large majority of crimes and criminals, but that isn't true in the case of Jeremy Hammond. Jeremy Hammond is someone who doesn't even believe he committed a crime. He felt and apparently still feels a moral obligation to break the law, and only accidentally disclosed personal information. He's not someone that lacks the tools to be a productive member of society. He's not someone that would seem to benefit from any normal form of rehabilitation. He believes he's the good guy. Prison ironically might be the only real deterrent for someone like him, insofar as making him incapable of furthering his activist agenda. Its what's important to him, and if he's willing to sacrifice almost anything to further it, nothing else besides removing his freedom to further it is likely to be considered meaningful to him.
I don't think Jeremy Hammond belongs in prison myself, but I don't really know what the suitable alternative is for someone who a) doesn't believe he did anything wrong, b) is not even remotely repentant, and c) I believe would likely commit similar crimes if given the opportunity. The system isn't perfect, and sometimes it isn't even very good, but the same system Hammond believes he has the moral obligation to ignore is also the only thing preventing all the people whose personal information he stole and exploited from forming a lynch mob and resolving their dispute with Hammond directly.
The question I would ask Jeremy Hammond, and many other people like him, is this: if he believes he has the moral authority to disregard the system if it doesn't generate the results he wants, does he believe the victims of his actions have the same moral authority if they decide the system fails to generate the results they want, specifically in dealing with him.
Re:Sorry, but not here (Score:5, Insightful)
The worse criminal you are, the less punishment prison actually is.
It may be a punishment, but it's not a deterrent of any kind, in even the slightest. The fact is that most crimes are crimes of opportunity. Most offenders are first-time. They made a bad call, and they got busted. But our lack of focus on rehabilitation, the fact that somewhere around 80% of Americans are now near or below poverty guideline according to recent reports coming out now, suggests that the major motivator of criminal activity today is desperation. And we reward them for our society's lackluster economic performance, high expectations, taxes, and cost of living, pushing them to do it, by taking away any future potential to get a real job. Every job that pays much more than minimum wage requires a background check. If you have ever even been arrested, let alone charged with a crime, chances are good you will not get any job, regardless of qualifications, that's any better than burger flipping, telemarketing, or cleaning rich people's houses.
And you know what that does? It pushes them into more crime. Prisons might as well be named Crime University. Everyone who's in will tell you there schemes. You go in for check fraud, and you come out knowing fifty new types of fraud, and no job prospects. It leads to one, inevitable conclusion.
And people wonder why the whole goddamned country is falling down all around us? It's easy: We're a good Christian country. And as a good christian country, we punish and oppress, we guilt, we lie, and we shit on the poor and downtrodden, while offering them token charity and telling ourselves they're morally weak and thus deserve what's done to them. We turn a blind eye to the suffering of others.
And then we wonder why record numbers of them are snapping, grabbing a gun, and going around shooting up schools, hospitals, and every other place where people congregate and there's a government presence. Because we don't let anyone cry, we don't help anyone who asks for it, and because they can't cry tears, and can't find help, they cry bullets, and find an outlet for their anger in the blood of innocent people.
Re:Sorry, but not here (Score:5, Insightful)
The USA's engine is money. Call it capitalism. Somewhere the idea was coined; "Anything for money.". Because they don't understand what capitalism is really about or why it would work. So, there are a great many schemes in the country revolving around income. Crime is a booming industry, ask any commercial prison. You can find them everywhere.
Not just money but control. There's no way to rule innocent people. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, they must be made. This is done by making so many things a crime it becomes impossible for people to live without breaking laws.