LulzSec Hackers Sentenced To Short Prison Terms 104
mask.of.sanity writes with news of the jail sentences for three members of LulzSec. From the article: "Three members of the hacktivist group LulzSec have been sentenced to a total of six years in prison. Ryan Ackroyd, Jake Davis and Mustafa al-Bassam were charged with attacks on the Serious Organised Crime Agency, Sony, Nintendo, 20th Century Fox and governments and police forces in a 50-day spree in the summer of 2011. Davis was sentenced to 24 months in a young offender's institution and he will serve half of the sentence. Al-Bassam received a 20-month sentence, suspended for two years and 300 hours unpaid work. Ackroyd was given a 30-month sentence; he will serve half. Cleary also pleaded guilty to possession of child abuse images following a second arrest on October 4, 2012. He will be sentenced at separate hearing."
The Guardian has a short article on the remaining loose ends in the story of LulzSec.
Let's hope they learned a lesson (Score:1)
Don't get caught
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And don't believe people who tell you that you're anonymous.
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I'd imagine the FBI got Sabu to flip when they caught wind of him leading to other arrests is how these things typically work.
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The best way to not get caught, is to not do it.
A very few hackers can actually make themselves untraceable. For the most part most of them just don't get hunted down because no one wants to put the resources to find them. Even with tough talk from Corporate Execs, and government officials, They usually just check to make sure the guy wasn't obviously dumb. But if they get hit hard enough to make tracking them down worth it, they could dig down and catch many more hackers who think they are doing a good
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I think you are losing perspective of the original article. Yes, crime is bad, mmm-Kay?
"mmm-Kay"? What the fuck is that?
Pathetic.
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I do have cable. But since I'm no longer 14, I've moved on from South Park.
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Yes, crime is bad
Not necessarily.
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Not necessarily.
I would say that crime is always a problem: if people are doing bad things, then that is a problem and if people doing reasonable things are crimianlised then that too is a problem.
Cleary who? (Score:2)
Re:Cleary who? (Score:5, Funny)
Right. "Ryan Ackroyd, Jake Davis and Mustafa al-Bassam were charged" and as a result of this "Cleary also pleaded guilty to possession [...]"
So the missing detail here is "Who's Cleary"? Everyone else gets to have a full name while Cleary is just the fourth crewmember who beams down wearing a red shirt and gets eaten by a monster.
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He "posessed images of child abuse". Perhaps this redshirt was the monster.
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...and that certainly is using a euphemism to make it sound less bad than it is.
Short prison terms? (Score:5, Interesting)
These aren't short prison terms by UK standards. It's uncommon to get sentenced to more than two years for computer crime. [computerevidence.co.uk] Ryan Cleary, who got the longest sentence, apparently ran a large botnet for hire, when he wasn't doing it for the lulz. Bot herders tend to get treated relatively severely (rightly so IMHO).
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You forget to disable the hyperbole filter before posting. You best be careful with that, miss. Were you to post on the wrong topic, you could find a constable at the door, and yourself up on charges.
. . . the very same words can be proof of two entirely different hate crimes. Iqbal Sacranie is a Muslim of such exemplary "moderation" he's been knighted by the Queen. The head of the Muslim Council of Britain, Sir Iqbal was interviewed on the BBC and expressed the view that homosexuality was "immoral," was
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I'm all ears if you actually want to have a conversation. Here, I'll start:
Saying homosexuality is "immoral" is an attack on homosexuality, and saying Islam is "a barmy doctrine" is an attack on Islam. These are not "exactly the same thing," and they deserve different responses. Unless Steyn was selective quoting things to make his stance look weaker? Neither GALHA nor Iqbal restrained their words to strictly objective observations; GALHA in particular could have avoided flak by citing Iqbal's statements an
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And none of these guys got sentenced to more than 2 years in prison. It's a misleading summary. It's less than 6 years if you add up all of their terms together.
Re:Short prison terms? (Score:5, Insightful)
Only in the US could this be considered a "light" sentence, but then this is where we (collectively) are into "lets-always-mete-out-totally-disproportionate-punishment-to-individuals-hoping-that-it-might-make-others-think-twice".
Not every country shares US values of callously destroying individuals to give the Law a veneer of menace.
Manual for growing bad hackers (Score:2)
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The hackers making money don't brag about their exploits. The hackers making money do not trust anyone they might correspond with on the Internet. The hackers making money are way more talented than these script kiddie knuckleheads who basically used known exploits against systems not up to date with the latest security patches.
That's... Surprisingly Reasonable (Score:3)
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They could still be extradited to the US. That could still happen.
Hopefully not given that they've been charged, found guilty and sentenced here already.
I wont hold my breathe though, I bet this isn't the end for them knowing how badly broken our extradition agreement with the US is.
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That's a pretty stupid way to announce it...
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Re:Six years is not a short term (Score:4, Interesting)
It is, I've no idea why the British press do this. (Maybe they do it elsewhere as well, I dunno.)
Profit. This is the most profitable way to put the news.
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Re:Six years is not a short term (Score:5, Insightful)
at least they didn't download some music or a movie while they were doing this. They may have had to pay millions in restitution as well...
Re:Six years is not a short term (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Six years is not a short term (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't you mean billions of dollars? If you're going to pull figures out of your ass you might as well go big.
Re:Six years is not a short term (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is exactly what the criminals were hoping you'd say. Rather than say "each received sentences of 15-24 months," it packs more punch to word it ambiguously, and leave people feeling sorry for these punk kids who "got sentenced to up to 6 years in prison! For minor crimes!"
"24 months in a young offender's institution and he will serve half of the sentence" = 12 months in juvie. Poor kid, he'll have to leave his mom's basement for a year.
"20 month sentence, suspended for 2 years and 300 hours unpaid work" = keep out of trouble, and do 300 hours of community service over the next 2 years, and he doesn't go to prison at all.
"30 month sentence, he will serve half" = 15 months in prison. The harshest of the penalties, and still a pretty fucking light sentence.
Rape can get you imprisoned up to and including a life sentence in the UK [cps.gov.uk], Not sure where you get that there's a "maximum of 5 years" for rape. In fact, the most lenient of the "starting points" and "typical ranges" list 5 years at the LOW end of the punishment, before aggravating/mitigating factors are considered.
tl;dr: fuck your idiotic ignorance of the law.
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County jail is worse than prison. And these are federal crimes, so they'll probably spend it in a federal prison.
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Maricopa County is real bad
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OR drive by it. Arizona Motto: "Come on vacation, leave on probation"
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Prison is for long term stays. They have a library, exercise facilities, chapel (if you're into that sort of thing). County is for holding people. They provide only the absolute minimum necessary to keep the person alive, if you're lucky.
Check out this thread [prisontalk.com] from people with experience on both sides. I'll quote:
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Are you on crack? Prison is far worse than county.
Sorry, but not always accurate.
When I was in county they served some of the nastiest food I've ever seen. Everyone kept saying how much better the food was in state...
I'll take prison over county any day, It's honestly the difference between molding bread/fruit and freshly baked pizza. The inmates likened it to the US Army v. US Navy when it comes to rations. The longer you're away from civility, the better the meals have to be. Even the inmates that worked in the kitchen were retentive about how food was
Re:Six years is not a short term (Score:5, Informative)
This is England. There's no such distinction.
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But there are distinctions made among prisoners that determine where you end up. . .
Prisoner security categories in the United Kingdom [wikipedia.org]
Assuming you make it so far as prison . . .
In soft-bellied Britain, it's hard to stay in prison for long. Even getting into jail is difficult [telegraph.co.uk]
Might be a tougher ride in the future.
Do prisoners get a cushy ride in British jails? [express.co.uk]
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But there are distinctions made among prisoners that determine where you end up. . .
Of course, but that's in terms of security. Not severity of punishment. Though I'm sure the harshness does vary in practice, I'd imagine most of that is who you have to share the prison with. Maximum security murderers or minimum security computer hackers and politicians...
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And these are federal crimes, so they'll probably spend it in a federal prison.
Doubtful, unless the US tries to extradite them from the UK. Despite one of the targets being the USAF they would still face some opposition in the face of the McKinnon debacle.
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I know someone personally (not a friend, but went to school with them) who hit and killed someone with his car driving 60mph in a 30mph zone.
Not a single day spent in prison.
So to be fair, you can do things that are, in the grand scheme of things much more awful, and still get a much lighter sentence.
Re:Six years is not a short term (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering a trillion dollars worth of security fraud goes completely unpunished, this is way out of scale.
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"It is not necessary for us to think we can do only one thing and suspend everything else."
- Barack Obama
Re:Six years is not a short term (Score:5, Insightful)
The 2008 financial crisis caused the destruction of far, far more wealth than *ALL PROPERTY CRIME PUT TOGETHER*. If we chose to do "only one thing and suspend everything else", that is prosecute the criminals behind the 2008 financial crisis, and ignore all other property crimes, we'd still be ahead of where we are now.
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The 2008 financial crisis caused the destruction of far, far more wealth than *ALL PROPERTY CRIME PUT TOGETHER*. If we chose to do "only one thing and suspend everything else", that is prosecute the criminals behind the 2008 financial crisis, and ignore all other property crimes, we'd still be ahead of where we are now.
but it was destruction of value which never was in the first place, doh.
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None of them are serving 6 years, the sum of their sentences is 6 years. Did you bother reading the summary?
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Rape has a maximum sentence of life imprisonment in the UK
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Well it is actually an average about 2 years of punishment, with most of them getting time out.
But if you think about it how much time should you really put someone in jail for in a white collar crime.
The idea of a Jail is more about keeping dangerous/people who will run away people in a place where they cannot escape to create more harm to the community.
For punishment a year or two in jail, is often enough to get the idea what you did was wrong, enough time to break you. Especially for kids where a year s
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How is your post even remotely insightful when its terribly wrong?
Under federal law, the punishment for rape can range from a fine to life imprisonment. The severity of the punishment is based on the use of violence, the age of the victim, and whether drugs or intoxicants were used to override consent. If the perpetrator is a repeat offender the law prescribes automatically doubling the maximum sentence.
--From Wikipedia
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