Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said in a letter, "I believe the actions taken by Jeremy Hammond need to be viewed in a context that considers the profound consequences of private surveillance of political activists in the United States." Jesselyn Radack, a Justice Department whistleblower, said Hammon "performed an act of civil disobedience out of a deeply held belief that the people have a right to know what the government and unregulated corporations are doing behind closed doors against them." Professor Gabriella Coleman, who focuses on computer hacking, electronic dissent and Anonymous, said there as no doubt in her mind that Hammond's actions had been "politically principled and constitute civil disobedience." The Yes Men said, "It is distressing to us that he faces such repercussions for taking actions that were only meant to bring positive change."
Brad Thomson, a paralegal with the People's Law Office in Chicago, knows Hammond and said he had been active in the movements in the city to "end hunger, to end sexism and to end environmental degradation and the negative health impacts from it." He had volunteered to help "community computer clinics that assist young people and underprivileged individuals from the community in learning basic computer skills necessary to do their homework, write a resume or design a website."
"Jeremy's worldview is a communal one, where people take care of each other and support one another" Debra Michaud, a Chicago business owner and founder of the Chicago Chapter of the Rainforest Action Network, wrote. "His home had an open door--if someone needed a place to stay, a warm meal, or an ear, they found a haven there."
Hammond was arrested in March 2012. He has been denied bail and been in prison since that arrest. He has been in jail for over a year and a half.
Prosecutors have put great emphasis on the leniency shown by the judge when he was convicted of hacking and sentenced to 24 months. He was 19 and was given a break by the judge because his offenses were not "done out of unguided malice, a desire to wreak havoc, which motivates many hacking offenses."
Important to prosecutors is the fact that Hammond's sentence should send a message to others not to do what Hammond did.
"More leniency now would hardly serve as just punishment for a repeat offender nor would it serve as deterrence either to Hammond or to others who may be inclined to undertake similar activities," prosecutors argue. "Hammond was already given a second chance to demonstrate that he could lead a law-abiding life. Instead, having been given leniency, he chose to dramatically escalate his prior offense in scope and consequences. As a result, he caused financial harm and emotional distress, violated privacy and jeopardized public safety, to various entities and numerous individuals he had never met--in other words, he wreaked havoc, just as he hoped to. His conduct now deserves the strongest possible condemnation."
The request to have Hammond sentenced to 10 years in prison stands in sharp contrast to the sentences of LulzSec hacktivists in the United Kingdom. Ryan Ackroyd and Jake Davis were both sentenced to 30 months and two years in prison, respectively. Mustafa al-Bassam, who also was involved in hacking, was given a two-year suspended sentence and 300 hours of community service. And another hacktivist, Ryan Cleary, was sentenced to 32 months in prison. (Both Ackroyd and Davis are likely to serve only half of their sentences in prison.)
As the National Lawyers Guild points out, this is all due to the incredible power the government has to use an "outdated" and "vague" computer crimes statute to come down hard on hacktivists:
"[T]he CFAA has seen increasing use against information activists in an effort to criminalize everything from the sharing of links to violating terms of service agreements. The most highly publicized CFAA case involved 26 year-old information activist Aaron Swartz, who was threatened with decades in prison for downloading freely available documents from the academic database JSTOR. Swartz took his own life earlier this year"
The Electronic Frontier Foundation pointed out in a letter submitted to the court in support of Hammond that his potential sentence of 10 years is closer to sentences "handed down in the Southern District of New York" for individuals involved in "traditional fraud schemes, which have larger losses and were motivated by the defendant's desire for personal financial gain." For example, one defendant was convicted of Medicare fraud that involved a "$100 million loss" and was sentenced to 125 months in prison. The loss from Hammond's act was much smaller and did not provide him with any personal financial gain.
Hammond is being punished, to some extent, for the fact that the FBI was unable to control its informant and contain an operation before it destroyed a private intelligence firm. It also is true that there should be a differentiation between hacking operations that are a part of "civil disobedience" and hacking operations that are for otherwise malicious purposes. Yet, as with leaks prosecutions where it is impossible to mount a whistleblower defense, the government would prefer there be no distinction so it can protect corporations and government agencies from acts of resistance.
I will be at Jeremy Hammond's sentencing hearing tomorrow morning in New York. I will be there in the morning to cover a rally before his sentencing and then I will be at the press conference/rally scheduled for after the sentencing.
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