Russia Jails Hacker For Spilling Top Government Officials' Secrets (reuters.com) 35
A Russian court sentenced a prominent hacker to two years in jail on Thursday after a secret trial which heard how he had accessed and leaked the email accounts of top government officials, Russian news agencies reported. From a report: The court found Vladimir Anikeyev, named as head of a famous hacking collective called Shaltai Boltai (Humpty Dumpty), guilty of illegally accessing computer data in collusion with a criminal group. The TASS news agency said he was accused of breaking into the email account of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's spokeswoman as well as the account of an official in the presidential administration among many others.
I'm guessing he's not part of an opposition party (Score:5, Insightful)
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Besides, the jail is located at a Black Sea resort, it's more like a vacation.
Re:I'm guessing he's not part of an opposition par (Score:4, Informative)
Don't forget there's also the Russian opposition party early retirement plan: get shot on the footsteps of the Kremlin.
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Don't forget there's also the Russian opposition party early retirement plan: get shot on the footsteps of the Kremlin.
In all seriousness, the fact that they didn't just have some underlings "get rid of him" and are pretending to obey rule of law suggests that he's not guilty at all of what they claim and he's being sent up for something else (ie. political activities they don't like) or they've got someone in prison waiting to "take care of the problem".
On the other hand (Score:2)
In the US, truly good hackers are generally given limited sentences as long as they promise to work for the government and not break the law in the future. I'm guessing that Russia has a similar policy.
A 2 year sentence for that type of crime is relatively light. In the US, the minimum sentence is 5 years _per_ criminal act (which does a good job of explaining the Aaron Schwartz suicide.) As with government employment, I'm guessing Russia would have similar sentencing.
The "Green" Party (Score:2)
And don't forget about Smurfication. [telegraph.co.uk]
One is either very brave, very naive, or suicidal to run against, or even speak up against Putin. He's pure liquid KGB. Russia is a democracy in name only.
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If he had been an American in America and did that to an American government, he would have got a life sentence or worse a death sentence, so what the fuck is your point. Fuck the stupid what ifs, fucking hell, the dude only got 2 years.
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He may or may not be part of any opposition party but when he broke into Medvedev's email the information that came out provided the opposition [wikipedia.org] with enough evidence to start a large investigation (which ended up posted as a video) [wikipedia.org] into corruption that made Medvedev a billionaire.
Currently Navalny is in jail for 25 days from the 12th of June (8 days after his birthday) until the 7th of July for being popular enough that people listened to him and came out to protest corruption on the 12th of June across Russ
Russia is hacking Russia? (Score:4, Funny)
I thought it was Russia hacking the US, Now you're telling me Russia is hacking Russia?
Re:Russia is hacking Russia? (Score:4, Insightful)
In mother Russia, you hack everybody but mother Russia....
He should escape to the US (Score:1)
Obviously, this hacker should escape from Russia to the US, and then we can trade Snowden for him in a swap.
Right?
Lame joke, but too bad. (Score:3)
In Soviet Russia, irony laughs at you.
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No. Leaking MY secrets is bad, leaking OTHERS' secrets is good (for me). Each government has laws that benefit itself at the expense of others...nothing surprising in that.