The horrible treatment of just about anyone that enters the prison system is the primary driver of our plea-based justice system. While Weev's friends may think that the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is afraid of their public complaints, the opposite is true. Such public stories help get other defendants to plead guilty in exchange for reduced sentences, hopefully in minimum security, "Club Fed" type facilities, before significant resources have to be spent on their prosecution. By discussing it here and spreading it online, we are actually advancing the goals of federal prosecutors across the country.
As far as Weev himself, not much can be done. The feds are permitted to house any inmate in essentially any conditions they want as long as they meet certain (incredibly low) standards. Once you are in their grasp, you are at their mercy. Theoretically, they can keep him in segregation for the duration of his sentence. The bra thing is ordinary for jails and prisons. He is being threatened with "Diesel Therapy" - being moved from prison to prison - in order to disrupt his posts to the Internet which violate their rules.
Basically, he hasn't learned (but will soon) that he is no longer in control. The harder he fights against the rules, no matter how idiotic those rules may be, the more difficult his life will become. This is true both while in custody and during the entire term of his Supervised Release. None of this is necessary or right in the eyes of anyone with half a brain, but it is the system we have and he exposed himself to it.
What you say seems to logically makes sense, but if you think about it, in the end boils down to "better be quiet or the bullies will make it even worse".
Better be quiet or the bullies will make it even worse. There are so many thoughts I have on this but it all boils down to this.
Do you submit that not talking about something very wrong that is happening right now in your justice system and is supported by it, are you saying that keeping quiet about it is a "better" option than making it open, public and letting people know?
That is exactly the logic of an abused kid. I am sorry.
The details of prisoner mistreatment in the US have been widely reported. The issue isn't that people are keeping it quiet; it is that no one who can do anything about it cares or has the political will to change it. Essentially, everyone knows and no one cares. The fact that prison rape jokes are common and acceptable fodder for comedians in the US shows our society's lack of any form of empathy for prisoners.
The complaints that Weev has are the same complaints that prisoners in the federal system have had for decades. Prisoner treatment in the US has been litigated to death with no significant reform. Courts have made explicitly clear that current law effectively allows for barbaric treatment of inmates. Given the virtual impossibility of changing the status quo in the US political system, it is doubtful that our laws will be changed to upgrade the experience of criminals (which is how the cynical US public views such proposals).
So, when it comes to our unyielding government, I suppose every US citizen is an abused child. It is a bully that will not ever go away, and can and does abuse anyone it wants to without consequence. Ironically, this bully is empowered by its own pool of potential victims, most of whom are in favor of all of this right up until the time they become its target - which is becoming increasingly easy to do.
If you've ever been accused of even the smallest crime with the flimsiest of evidence, know that there are multiple salaries at stake once the handcuffs are on:
1. The police who arrested and charged you.
2. The prosecutor who decided to go ahead with the charges.
3. Your lawyer.
4. The judge (if it ever gets there)
5. Yours - you probably lost your job as soon as you were arrested anyway and good luck finding a new one with that on your record.
There is only one person on this list who even cares about your innocence. That's right, you.
Even your lawyer? S/he doesn't really care. For him/her, it's about getting the "best" deal. Because going in front of a judge is like flipping a coin and if you fit any stereotype, you are likely fucked.
Ever had a tax audit? Same idea. No one cares about fairness or justice in the government. They only care about their salary and performance.
The police are given more funding, the more arrests they make. The prosecutor has a full pipeline ensuring his/her job. The judge likely doesn't even need to see a single case in a week.
There is no way out. Talking about it doesn't help because anyone who takes a plea is assumed to be guilty: "Yeah he wasn't found guilty, but he must have done something otherwise why would he take a deal instead of go to trial?"
That is the way the layman thinks. If I was to tell you that I was arrested for walking in a room a police officer told me to walk into, you'd laugh and say I was lying. But it's true. And I had to plea out of it. Because it's my word against his. And I took a plea after he tried to steal $400 from me and burned my watch while I was in custody.
The government is a mechanism for satisfying bullies. Is it any wonder why small government is desired by some?
He wasn't justifying it, he was explaining it. It's the real world out there. If you live in China in 1989, it's better to be quiet than to be dead in Tiananmen Square, and if you're in the prison system it's better to be quiet than to be in solitary.
Really? Because to me it sounded like he was describing the type of thinking, not making a statement about the person engaged in that thinking -- I don't even know which person it is supposed to be an ad-homienem attack on.
I'm not sure how, but that was not the intention. It means exactly what it says. I disapprove of the line of reasoning, that's what the comparison was about, not his person. It reminded me of something.
I could see how some people might interpret it as such, but my impression was that tripzilch was aiming for a more general metaphor. The term "stockholm syndrome" might also have been fitting. I interpreted it as a general statement about victims becoming inured to their suffering to the point where they start to defend it.
As someone not previously involved in this thread, it doesn't read that way to me. Abuse is one of many areas where there's a tendency for pretty much everyone to keep quiet, even third parties who see the signs. That's why organizations trying to help devote so much of their time trying to get people to openly talk about things.
This has been going on for decades and virtually every aspect of prisoner treatment has been challenged through civil rights lawsuits against the government. Not surprisingly, the government wins nearly all of these cases, and most are thrown out long before trial. No one - not the public, judges, politicians, or the media - seems to care. In the eyes of most, prisoners are, well, prisoners.
Have you read the Thirteenth Amendment which abolished slavery? Not only are prisoners comparable to slaves, they are slaves.
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction"
The way I grokked is that this is the first thing really comparable to slavery since it "officially" ended. It's not a novel opinion; blacks are incarcerated at six times the level of whites (1). http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet
Statistics are what you make them, considering that blacks are more likely to victims of violence to other blacks, when they are not the majority, how can the outcome of incarceration rates be remedied?
Most people in the prison system are there for non-violent offenses. [1] In Chicago, blacks were arrested (before decriminalisation last year) for cannabis consumption at a rate of 15 persons for every 1 white person despite similar rates of cannabis consumption among blacks and whites. [2] People who have gone to prison for any of offense have a 40% chance of eventually going back to prison. [3] I would suggest that the change in incarceration rates starts with less racist policing.
I don't take drugs. I think there are good reasons for people to not take cannabis. I am strongly in favour of cannabis legalisation.
The amount of time and money spent dealing with cannabis is mind-boggling. About 50,000[1] Mexicans have been murdered in the recent drug wars. Some of those are because cannabis is illegal.
Cannabis prohibition is going to be viewed with horror in the future.
Well, because it's prison. By historical standards, this is pretty mild.
I'd like to know why we have so many awful laws on the books. Seems like we have so many, that most of us could be locked up, if they happen to irk the wrong people.
I'd like to know why we have so many awful laws on the books. Seems like we have so many, that most of us could be locked up, if they happen to irk the wrong people.
"Cop on the beat: the last true dictatorship in America." -- Jimmy McNulty (paraphrased).
When you have so many laws, everyone is a criminal. And when everyone is a criminal, those enforcing the laws become the ones who make them. Why is the speed limit still laughably low in most of the country? Most drivers are consistently driving 10-15 mph over the speed limit, at least where I live. It gives cops the ability to pull you over whenever they see fit.
Yeah, but no one goes to jail for speeding. And they can already pull you over whenever they want. This is how they catch dunk drivers. Swerving, driving too fast for conditions, driving erratically or all sorts of other subjective terms. They can set up a checkpoint and pull you over just because. Speed limits are really the least of it and don't serve your argument well.
Edit: I want to point out that I've defended speed limits here before because speed limits, like building codes, are created by engineers, not some arbitrary big government conspiracy. Like most laws, they are well thought out and for everyone's safety.
Speed limits in most areas start out as defined by engineers then manipulated to fit local opinion on how fast the road should be. I believe many areas allow public comment and petition to change the speed limit of local roads so if someone lives near by and is scared of the cars going 45mph then might raise a fuss enough to reduce it down to 25mph. (Obviously this isn't as much of an issue for state run/maintained highways)
There seems to be a variety of reasons. Two that come to mind:
- No matter how well you write it, it seems that law will always be subject to a certain degree of interpretation. You could even argue that good law intentionally leaves room for interpretation- see "reasonable person" clauses. This is because people are not black and white, and society changes over time.
- Some laws probably really are too broad, left that way to ensure you can pin people. As always when this subject comes up, I recall Al Capone, who was brought in on tax evasion (not mobstering)
More like, because it's happening to someone that is: a) 'one of us' and b) he's someone high profile, that is attempting to remain so even after going to prison. I have a feeling that if Weev was black or Asian it would still be a big deal to us[1]. I don't remember hearing much about Kevin Mitnik's issues with his jailers. I'm sure he had at least some.
[1] Though there is the remote possibility that it would be cared about 'less' because it would be seen as racial discrimination rather than just out right maliciousness, but I'm optimistic that this wouldn't be the case.
"White middle/upper class" are statistically much less likely to be personally affected by these prison policies. Nothing about Weev's treatment is unusual; it's just that nobody cares when it happens to "normal criminals" who are disproportionately not white or rich.
Humans are likely to ignore a problem that doesn't affect anyone they know or identify with.
| Humans are likely to ignore a problem that
| doesn't affect anyone they know or identify
| with.
That's what I was trying to hit on with 'one of us.' That we (the HN crowd) care mostly because he's part of the 'techno elite' so to speak. Less so because he's white/middle-class. It just happens that the 'techno elite' is (seemingly) disproportionately white (not sure about middle-class). It also doesn't hurt that we see him as a bit of a martyr because he got a prison sentence that we don't feel fit the crime (and therefore feel that he's drawn the ire of 'the man' so to speak).
I'm not sure I agree with the last part of this. Setting aside whether he should be in prison at all, he is, and being in prison is not about just locking someone up for a while. The whole 'you are not in control' thing is part and parcel with the experience. I think it's kind of the point.
What I've read about weev suggests that he's the type of guy that will try to push every button on every person at every opportunity. If this is true about him, that he's being mistreated in this way is not a surprise at all. Maybe some good will come of the attention, but I would be surprised if it's a positive change in the way the BOP responds to irritant prisoners.
Club Fed is easy (btw: club fed usually means camp)...they sold cigarettes where I was (that narrows it down since there is only 1 that does). It was hard for my family for me to be away, and of course it was emotionally hard for me. I had access to computers while on pretrial and right when I got out on supervised release, but only NOW have I actually started really using that privilege (and NO I don't have monitoring software on my systems).
The halfway house in Oakland sucked more than being inside (they had shootings and people died), but hope compelled me to go there.
You can tell a lot about a country when you look at the way it treats those that are in its power, especially those in the prison system.
The conditions of inmates tell you a lot more about the state of affairs compared to the 500 richest guys/girls or the GNP. America is still very low on the totempole when it comes to being civilized in this way, and by the looks of it things are getting worse rather than better. Plea bargaining, the largest in-jail population of any country (both in absolute numbers as well as percentage wise), ridiculous legal costs and a prison system that is rife with structural problems.
It's almost as if America has decided that prisoners are not people.
Interesting, I have not read Dostoevsky but I don't think you need to be particularly smart or well read to come up with that line of reasoning, it seems common sense to me that when the other side has no power at all the freedom that gives to the side in power will show them at their worst. If that worst then is pretty good that would be a hallmark of a good society.
Agreed, it's not too dissimilar to the old mantra often totted out on HN that a person should be judged on how he treats those below him, rather than his equals - just on a larger scale. (Forgive me for not remembering / looking up a better worded quote.)
It's also like the common advice that you should watch carefully how your date interacts with the waitstaff. It's too bad Americans can understand the one but not the other.
>It's almost as if America has decided that prisoners are not people.
Yup, that's pretty much the idea. But this is common that people who get criminal records often think of their own self as well though.
I wrote programming down to keep to myself occupied and NOT listen to the people in there who want to talk and say what they could've done different to not get caught or explain how they're innocent. Granted, there are actually really nice people in there, and the sentencing for white collar crimes is way off.
Speaking from experience (myself), I did my time at a camp (10mnths), then like 2 months at a hold over in Dublin (I got violated at Oakland's halfway house, because I had an iPhone and I was creating a program on it).
In all honesty, I think Weev pissed off the wrong people. If I remember right, didn't he even release emails on politicians. So of course the BOP will lean towards appeasing the parties (gov officials) that can make changes. Being in the hole is unusual for him, since he was non-violent, unless he showed up intoxicated (media articles and people for that matter tend to leave out details).
I know it's the beginning of his sentence, but there's nothing you can do...start reading, working out, and writing code (that's what I did). Oh, and everyone in there seems to be studying commodities and currencies (doesn't hurt, cause getting a job will be hard).
ADDED: just read weev's wiki, the feds hated him, I heard (thankfully heard), the transfer center he went to (Federal Transfer Center, Oklahoma City) is NOT somewhere you want to EVER be. And I was told not to talk to the media while I was doing my case (didn't help that Wired and every other tech blog was calling)
BTW @downandout, your terms sounds like you know too.
> In all honesty, I think Weev pissed off the wrong people.
Pissing off people is what Weev does, and every step along the way, pissing off people is what got him there. And he'll probably keep on doing it, because it's Weev and not just some average "difficult person", he's really really good at it.
I don't know what that means, it probably won't make things any easier for him.
An example is, I was assigned a counselor in there (everyone is), and if you piss them off, they can take away who you can have contact with and how much good time credit you'll get, or when an "opening," at a halfway house is.
Stay quiet and keep to yourself...to build on my earlier post... the program I was making on my iphone at the halfway house that violated my time there was just a probability and statistics auto trade program for forex. I got told on from inside by someone because I didn't want to plug them in on it. The person who decided if I stay or not, looked at the code, looked at my offense, and assumed I was doing dirt...handed my iphone to secret service (who gave it back to me when I got out).
So for Weev's sake, I hope he simmers down. It'll be easier, he'll get out of the shoe, get out early, and be trolling in no time.
So what you saying is, going to prison (for a non-tech related crime) is a good way to become a (better) programmer. No distractions, very clear time schedule, no distraction by everyday bs etc.
Not at all. What everyone does when they're inside, really depends on their own character. Some people work out, others read, become overly religious, study commodities (and trade from inside).
I wrote code to keep to myself, to distract me from missing my fiance and kids...and what else could I do when I got out, I lost my honor.
1) It sounds like he's not necessarily in 'solitary confinement' because he's got a cellmate. Sure he's separated from the rest of the prison population, but it's not the same situation as if he were really in solitary confinement.
2) Not allowing him access to his lawyer, or allowing his lawyer to be informed of his situation seems like it has to be against some sort of rule/law/regulation. If it isn't then we need to start calling up some legislators.
3) What's the deal with the 'you must wear a bra' rule? Someone in another thread said that this was standard. Why? I could maybe understand a rule that said "no bras" if they thought that a bra could be used to smuggled something somehow, but forcing all women visiting to wear bras seems odd. Are they afraid of a prison riot over a bra-less woman?
4) Are there really rules against him distributing information to the outside world via friends or his lawyer? What is the point of such rules? For some stupid edge-case of suppressing mafia bosses from operating from prison? Are they trying to stop criticism of the jail conditions from reaching the outside (i.e. anti-whistle-blower)?
5) If Weev really did break some sort of prison rules, then why will they not confirm why he was put in administrative detention? He's obviously there for a reason, why will they not disclose it? Makes it come across like they feel that disclosing the reason would look worse than just withholding it and waiting for all this to blow over.
6) Why are they not giving him gluten-free meals if that's 'what the doctor ordered?' If something is medically necessary, and it's withheld from an inmate, why is this not a punishable offense?
Are there really rules against him distributing information to the outside world via friends or his lawyer
I think you may have misread:
The penitentiary also threatened to (list of actions) if he tries to communicate with the outside world via Internet again.
They don't object to him communicating with friends or his lawyer; they don't want him active online.
What is the point of such rules? For some stupid edge-case of suppressing mafia bosses from operating from prison?
That's what comes to my mind as well. Weev isn't a mafia boss, but he is a black hat hacker, and he is (was?) a part of Goatse Security. The Internet is his medium. If you throw him in prison and grant him free access to the Internet, have you really done anything? It's actually kind of an interesting conundrum- a thief is removed from the streets to stop him from thieving. Here we have a hacker we have tried to put into a system meant for a thief, when maybe the better analogue would be to remove him from his streets, i.e. the Interenet, instead of putting him in prison to remove him from the street.
House arrest and monitored or limited access to the Internet has always seemed like one of the better options the penitentiary system has tried for "Internet criminals".
How? I thought that the Tweets weren't directly from him, but were posted to Twitter at his request by friends that had his credentials. So he's not allowed to pass messages to friends that are then distributed to the world via Twitter?
I disagree. His friends could communicate on their own with the internet, saying "This is what Weev said when he was talking to me...", or in some other way make it clear that it's not weev talking to the outside.
That would likely still piss people off and get him in hot water, though.
How does this not violate several Constitutional amendments? Unexplained solitary confinement sounds like cruel and unusual punishment, and not allowing his lawyer to see him is clearly a denial of fair representation.
I'm not sure about the legality of the diet, but maybe someone more informed on prison law could step in.
Rooming him with terrorists and gang members? Denying entry for a woman not wearing a bra? (which, in addition to making no sense, is also creepy) This is clear abuse of state power, and I don't understand how people aren't outraged over it. But then again, the state effectively owns the media, so there's yet another obstacle in Weev's path.
There are serious problems with the way this story is reported. It relies primarily on Tweets, and the author made no effort to contact officials for comment.
Having worked as an investigative journalist, I know that most authors hold themselves to finding at least three solid sources. If that's impossible to do for a given article, the author should either hold off on the lead until it matures or give the reader a firm caveat that what he or she is reading might be speculative.
Yes what he did is wrong. But prison for non-violent offenses is violence itself, cruel and unusual punishment. This would make monarchies proud.
Hardline can deter people but do you really want to support solitary confinement and prison for non-violence? The cost is too great on many levels not just monetary. Money spent on locking up non-violence is money lost for other public services. We are all going to pay at least $30,000 per year in taxes for this one instance.
Why create criminals? This is no rehabilitation, this is creating life long criminals. Maybe there is something I am missing, but find no value in locking up non-violence unless it is repeat offenses or crimes that result in violence.
I have a friend who was jailed for counterfeiting. He weed from someone and received counterfeit bills as change. Next day, he bought a pizza with the change. After he got home, he realized the money looked weird.
He tried to do the right thing and called the pizza place and told him that he thinks he received counterfeit bills as change from somewhere and told them that he was going to bring them some new money.
When he arrived he was jailed. He refused to give up his friend and ended up jailed for a while.
Thankfully, his attorney was able to work some magic after his initial sentencing and get him switched to house arrest at a significantly reduced sentence.
It just seems weird to me that unintentional possession of something can get you into so much trouble.
What happens if I end up with a counterfeit bill from somewhere and a cop decides to search me? Does he notice? If so, then what? What if I honestly don't know where it came from?
It's a Constitutional right to refuse to give testimony that would incriminate yourself. In certain contexts it's a statutory or common law privilege to refuse to give testimony that would incriminate a spouse. There is no privilege recognized for family members or friends, nor has there ever been in the Anglo-American tradition, nor am I aware of any other country in which there is a privilege against testifying against family or friends.
In refusing to tell the police where he got the counterfeit bills, the person in the story above helped cover up his friend's crime. Helping other people commit crimes is bad and deserves punishment--whether they are your friends or not.
You have a strange sense of justice. He didn't help anyone commit any crimes. He simply opted out of participating. It's not his problem, and he did nothing wrong. To punish him defies reason.
There is a threshold at which you could make the argument that there is a moral obligation to turn in one's friend if they are committing atrocities, but no one can argue that this is an example.
It's not my particular sense of justice, it's how our justice system is structured and how it always has been. There is a strong presumption that individuals will cooperate with police to help investigate crimes. That's why the 5th amendment protection against self-incrimination even exists--it's an exception to our general practice that people can be compelled to testify about crimes. As a general rule, our society does not consider it acceptable to "opt out" of participating in a criminal investigation, especially in a case like this one where the person being asked to help is a suspect by virtue of the circumstances.
Aside from your argumentum ad antiquitatem, I think it is rather presumptuous to speak for "society" this way. For starters, I think both left- and right-libertarians, as well as most journalists, would disagree with you. I would also guess that society in general would be outraged if a journalist was jailed for that particular offense, so what you claim is clearly not universally true.
I also disagree that this person is a reasonable suspect, any more than the pizza restaurant, who probably either gave it to a customer as change, used it to pay a vendor, or deposited it.
Although the orwellian term "justice system" is undoubtedly convenient for such an argument, I'm going to suggest thhat your statement be read with a substitution of "legal framework" in its place. It's important to remember that law and justice are not synonymous. In fact, a founding father of our "society" himself (Thomas Jefferson) made this distinction: "If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so."
So we must ask, was justice served? An honest man unwittingly committed a minor crime of minimal or no public harm (at worst, someone was out $20 or so) and returned to correct his error, making all parties whole. In return, his life is ruined and he is sent to prison, which cost him and the taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars, at least. The answer is unequivocally no, justice was not served.
Edit: It also seems like you're conflating refusing to testify with being an accessory. Your claim was the latter, which is much more serious than contempt of court. Passive concealment by non-participation after the fact is in no way "assisting", by definition, because the crime already happened. If that was the claim, it's absolutely an abuse of the spirit of the law.
When you commit a crime it's not just actually doing the thing that's the hard part. It's also getting away with it. If you don't accomplish the getting away with it bit, well, then you've pretty much failed as a criminal right?
The main character in this story assisted in the getting away with it part of the crime. That's an accessory. And it's absolutely a crime to be an accessory, and I'm confused as to why anyone would have a problem with that.
We can't have a civilized society if people don't help the authorities catch the bad guys.
You made it sound like he knew where the bills came from and that he was just unwilling to sell out his friend.
Look at it from the police's perspective. Someone passes counterfeit currency, but then claims he didn't know, and is unwilling to help find who the money came from. What do you do? If the answer is: nothing, then anyone caught passing counterfeit currency, or crimes of a similar nature, could just claim that they got the money from someone else and declined to disclose who. If he had cooperated with the police regarding the source of the money, it's quite unlikely that he would have gotten jailed.
Oh, I know. I'm a bit cloudy on whether or not he knew where they came from immediately. He did eventually figure it out. I'm just wondering about cases where you really honestly do not know.
I have a (maybe unnatural?) fear of something like that happening and not being able to prove that I truly have no idea and then being forced into some kind of a plea deal.
I can definitely see the police's perspective too.
Do you have a source for that? My understanding is that otherwise inadmissible evidence can be used in a grand jury hearing, but you are still free to "plead the Fifth" in front of a grand jury without being held in contempt. Meaning, if you were previously compelled to self-incriminate, that might not be admissible in your trial, but it would be admissible in a grand jury hearing (same for the Fourth and Sixth).
Now, the Fifth only guarantees protection against self incrimination, so I assume you could still be held in contempt for refusing to incriminate others.
> He was indicted by a federal grand jury in 2009 on charges related to resisting a federal grand jury investigating local illegal animal rights activities, mainly concerning fur farm raids in Utah. He was jailed for nearly four months under a contempt of court order to compel him to testify.
After reading some of your sources, it doesn't appear to me that anyone was held in contempt for exercising their Fifth Amendment rights. Rather, they seem to have refused to cooperate with the Grand Jury at all [1]. You can be compelled to cooperate with the government to incriminate others so long as you aren't compelled to incriminate yourself.
[1]: Perhaps for good reasons -- it seems people are fighting against what appears to be an over-reach of Grand Juries. But that would just be an example of civil disobedience, which often carries the risk of jail time, not an example of the Fifth Amendment not applying in a Grand Jury hearing.
Right, hence my 'I'm not a lawyer.' I guess I tend to associate 'not incriminate yourself' with 'not talking,' which is not true 100% of the time. Thanks for pointing out this difference.
The end result is the same, though, especially given the post I was responding to.
You don't have the right to "not talk." You're expected as a citizen to cooperate with the justice system. The 5th amendment protection from testifying against yourself is an exception to this general expectation.
Sadly, the real lesson here is that he should have just forgotten about it, disposed of the remaining counterfeit money, and hoped nothing ever came of the matter. Doing the "right thing" in these situations just opens the door to someone with more power or authority misinterpreting the situation or acting maliciously.
I learned this during my first week of high school, fortunately in a manner not involving law enforcement or anything more severe than school rules involving attendance. :)
Story I heard from a social worker. Guy's mom calls him up and asks for her prescription medication. Takes a few in a ziploc, drives it over and is stopped by a cop on the way. Gets out his registration, cop sees the baggie and arrests him. Crime #1 was having prescription meds not prescribed to him, but simply by putting it in a ziploc it's automatically raised to intent to sell/distribute. Seems like something a lot of people would have done innocuously.
>prison for non-violent offenses
I agree with you to an extent. Justice still needs to happen at some level, whether it's restitution, home confinement (which most hackers, like me hope for), halfway house, or prison. What I agree with is that some white collar crimes, shouldn't see the inside. But to be so black and white...what if you invested in Bernie Madoff, would you still think the same?
I would've gotten a reduction in my points for sentencing if I could've helped out Google (not the others, only Google).....I would have volunteered and worked for them my entire sentence (15mnths) if I could've. In the words of the judge that sentenced me "I am sentencing you in an effort to deter others...," so in the PR sense, my lawyer was right to tell me NOT to do what weev did, and talk to Wired and the media.
Weev is a raging douche, who appears to take a perverse kind of pleasure in being as brazenly reprehensible as possible, but no one deserves this kind of treatment.
That's not really correct. If you take a typical rapist or murderer, and a typical grey-hat hacker, the latter will be better off in prison than the former, at least at the start of their sentences.
However, a prisoner can choose to make it worse for himself by not obeying rules once in prison.
As much as I dislike the guy, he's still a human being and he is already being punished (serving time).
The fact that he is a (black hat) hacker should not make his life any worse than if he were a bankrobber or a burglar. Weev strikes me as an excellent touchstone for your own personal ethics, how much can you despise what a person does or stands for and still demand that we treat him with respect?
Is respect the right word? Maybe I'm just socially undeveloped, but while I am for treating people with humanity, I'm not sure all people deserve my respect simply by virtue of being people.
Actually, I believe that people from post-totalitarian countries might be more sensitive to human rights related issues than people from countries that never experienced totalitarian regime.
As an adult I had lived in both US (only 7 months) and UK (2.5 years) but I grew up in communist eastern bloc and my experience leads me to believe that our collective bad experience made us sensitive to warning signs that people from always-free countries just don't see.
I know this is highly subjective and I might be over-sensitive but if I were an American I would freak out about news like "a guy not given gluten-free food in prison" or "TSA forcing dying woman to strip in public" or "warrantless surveillance" or "indefinite detention"... because I would perceive them as not only signs of serious erosion of respect for human rights but also signs of pre-totalitarian state, and I would be scared shitless that really bad times are coming again.
I cannot comprehend that Americans mostly just don't care.
I think it's not like that at all. The bulk of population can rationalize (and kind of push out of sight) poor and homeless because most of the population are not poor and homeless... it's just 'them' and we don't care about them that much.
But living in a totalitarian country was different. Human right violations were so widespread that basically everybody was somehow affected. Everybody had some grandma who had her family farm taken away by communists or uncle who was not allowed to study because their family was not loyal enough, everybody was not allowed to travel... It's way harder to rationalize things when you are directly affected by them - when it's 'you' and not just 'them' any more, you become sensitive and when you see that happening to other people you can relate more and your reaction is stronger. Also, you are more afraid that if it's happening to them now, you are going to be the next.
But that's obviously just my experience - I don't have any research to back it up, just some anecdotal evidence based on nothing more than just me observing things in different countries.
It's clear that there's no real interest in reforming people and simply punishing them in any way possible regardless of what it means when they finally come out of the US jail system.
That just seems to be the way in the US and other countries, however in a lot of others there's effort to actually reform people instead of punish. A lot of people also facepalm or complain that criminals in other countries serve a fraction of time compared to Americans as well as them having really good living conditions and programs available to them in jail.
I'm really confused here, what is the use of 'solitary' in a shared cell? He's either a threat to others or he's not. If he is, he should be on his own, not with a cell mate, why wouldn't he be a threat to the cell mate? And if he's not a threat to others, he shouldnt' be in solitary. Isn't that the point of solitary?
Still seems pretty pointless to put somebody else in the cell with him, but I guess that makes more sense. My speculation would be they have more in solitary than they have space for, but I'll avoid trying to infer anything from that.
It's not necessarily intended to get him alone - in fact they might intentionally want to avoid full isolation because it is massively problematic not just because of space but because of the dramatic mental health issues it can cause (have a look at the amount of mental health problems at the Supermax prisons). Note the restrictions on showering, and presumably there's lots of other restrictions on access to recreational facilities etc.. Could be abusive enough even before they decide to withdraw the last shred of human contact.
He's not being treated inhumanely, he's being punished for repeatedly trying to skirt the system. You put people in jail who break the rules of society. You put people in isolation who break the rules of the prison system. He can "fight the system" all he wants but I don't see any reason to shed tears over it each time he gets caught and punished. He's an adult acting like a child getting punished like an adult.
> Is it really worth the cost of imprisoning people for non-violent crimes?
Are you suggesting they should go unpunished?
> It doesn't appear to deter people from committing crimes.
The suggestion that the threat of imprisonment does not act as a deterrent to criminal activity is absurd.
> It certainly doesn't help criminals rehabilitate and become productive members of society.
Do you really not see "I'm here because I screwed up. I probably should try to not screw up in the future." going through the mind of prisoners as they sit in their cells?
It is odd that you go from "don't imprison non-violent offenders" straight to "don't punish non violent offenders".
There's a bunch of stuff that we can do that is cheaper than prison, and better at stopping people from committing more crime. Restorative justice programmes are pretty good.
> The suggestion that the threat of imprisonment does not act as a deterrent to criminal activity is absurd.
Why are you not a thief? Is it because you're afraid of prison, or is it because you know that stealing is wrong?
The rate of recidivism is pretty high, the US imprisons so many people yet still has crime.
> Do you really not see "I'm here because I screwed up. I probably should try to not screw up in the future." going through the mind of prisoners as they sit in their cells?
But it doesn't. Really, it doesn't. People pass the blame onto others. Prisoners may well think "I screwed up by getting caught. I probably should try harder not to get caught in future".
Not to mention that a large factor in crime is an (apparent) lack of legitimate avenues to find work. Just the fact that one has set foot in a prison eliminates the vast majority of potential career paths. If our goal is to reduce crime rates, jailing anyone and everyone is the exact opposite of what we need to do.
Well I'm with you on the restorative justice philosophy.
I am a thief. I relentless pirate movies, television shows, and music. I do so because I know my chances of getting caught are next to zero.
I'm sure there are some who think that way and by the numbers hobs references it's probably a large number. Maybe a restorative justice based system could change this? Either way, I don't feel like using weev as the poster-child for the restorative justice agenda.
>Are you suggesting they should go unpunished?
I believe he is suggesting there are other methods which are more effective, less costly, and meet current societal goals. Remember that prison is partly about punishment, but to society, we just want productive people who do stuff that falls into the category of pro-social behaviors.
>The suggestion that the threat of imprisonment does not act as a deterrent to criminal activity is absurd.
I think that this point cannot really be proven anyway, so I will let it lie.
>Do you really not see "I'm here because I screwed up. I probably should try to not screw up in the future." going through the mind of prisoners as they sit in their cells?
Maybe? Who cares? The actual thing I am interested in is recidivism, and according to pew:
About 43 percent of prisoners who were let out in 2004 were sent back to prison by 2007, either for a new crime or violating the conditions of their release, the study found. That number was down from 45 percent during a similar period beginning in 1999.
So we are sitting at 43% re-offend AFTER going to prison... looks like our system works!
I can agree with you that maybe a restorative justice-based system would work better. It would be interesting to see how that worked in practice. I've always thought the prison system was too easy and that prisoners should be put to work in factories and farms. However, I don't feel like using weev as the poster-child for the restorative justice agenda.
That's why he is in jail for the time he is, and that's why he is in SHU. Person who doesn't want to be in jail says "Your honor, doing what I did was a terrible mistake, and I will remember it for the rest of my life and will behave responsibly in the future and apply my knowledge for good, not for evil". Person who wants to end up in SHU says "Fuck you, judge, fuck you, system, you're not the boss of me, I'll keep doing what I want to do and I'll do it worse next time. Yeah, you thought your puny jail would stop me from doing it again?! Fuck you!".
If he was some kind of Ghandi that refuses to cooperate with the system for a noble cause, I'd feel sympathy for him even though his conduct is contrary to what a reasonable person would do. Struggle for freedom requires people to do unreasonable things to push the boundaries and improve the system. But he's no Ghandi, he's a douchebag and the only cause I can see about him is his own douchebaggery. So my sympathy for him is very minimal.
And repeated proclamations from his supporters in the vein of "oh, he's treated so badly, he'll burn you all to the ground once he's out" is not helping either. Threatening is usually not the best way to gain sympathy.
No. It's pretty much entirely because he and his group spoke loudly about what a horrible job AT&T was doing.
Because other than that they scraped a website and sent a list of email addresses to journalists.
> Person who doesn't want to be in jail says "Your honor, [...]
Sure, and a photographer who'd just taken an incriminating picture of the police but who didn't want to go to jail would say "Yes, sir, here's the card."
> But he's no Ghandi, he's a douchebag
Your main reason for thinking that he's no Ghandi is that he's a douchebag. Circular reasoning always justifies itself.
You'd probably be one of the many standing around watching, lecturing, about how the smelly hippy should have given the police the memory card if he didn't want to be beaten, without asking why the police are trying to confiscate photographs.
> So my sympathy for him is very minimal.
That's good. Conserve your sympathy. Wait for the moment, then unleash it when they least expect!
> repeated proclamations from his supporters
Who, me? Doubtful. I'd likely find him to be a douchebag. No, seriously. I don't know him.
And what's a proclamation then? If it's cold and I say it's cold, have I proclaimed it or complained about it?
> in the vein of "oh, he's treated so badly, he'll burn you all to the ground once he's out" is not helping either.
Gosh no. Not in the vein of - exactly like.
But I don't mean him. He's done here because he's too visible. Weev's final troll is going to be costing $80k a day forever for a team of secret-service to follow him around making sure he never tweets anything in violation of his parole.
I mean the next person who for their own reasons stumbles onto a vulnerability and realizes what the company is like to other hackers - douchebags or not.
> Threatening is usually not the best way to gain sympathy.
You misread my intent again. It's not to win sympathy for weev, it's to point out that they've made an enemy of their own choosing.
They're kicking a hornets' nest. If they stopped, it'd stop spewing hornets. Then maybe they'd discover it was honey-bees after all.
>>> No. It's pretty much entirely because he and his group spoke loudly about what a horrible job AT&T was doing.
Nope. It is because he stole tons of private info from AT&T and then boasted about it and then said he would totally do it again and with worse consequences to the victim. Law enforcement usually doesn't like people that say "I'll do it again and worse" too much.
>>> Sure, and a photographer who'd just taken an incriminating picture of the police
Very nice, now do you have anything to say that is not wildly offtopic?
>>> Your main reason for thinking that he's no Ghandi is that he's a douchebag.
My main reason to thing he's a douchebag because I've read about him and his actions. My main reason to think he's no Ghandi is the same - nothing in these actions points at anything but being a docuhebag. Name me what he did that nominates him for being Ghandi - is it GNAA, maybe?
>>> about how the smelly hippy should have given the police the memory card
Very nice, now do you have anything to say that is not wildly offtopic?
>>> They're kicking a hornets' nest.
There's no hornet's nest. There's a bunch of douchebags on the internet that could think of nothing better to do that cause mayhem and suffering to those around them. Those despicable and miserable creatures would be around us forever, probably, but they are not honey-bees. They're more like dung flies - both by their tastes, their places of habitation and their behavior, and their attractiveness. Of course, even dung fly can cause an epidemic, given improper sanitation and bad luck - but I wouldn't be too proud to be one.
> Nope. It is because he stole tons of private info from AT&T and then boasted about it and then said he would totally do it again and with worse consequences to the victim.
Wrong. It wasn't private info, it was email addresses. They aren't treated as private and no harm comes from someone else knowing them. These were on unpassworded, public-facing URLs because nobody cared.
Another way to tell you're just manufacturing outrage here is that you pretend to care about sensitive data but don't give a shit that without the leak the hole would have remained indefinitely. If it really was sensitive, it could have been exploited.
Repeatedly your main complaint about weev has been his disrespect for authority, and your hastily-formed notions about his personality. Nothing about actual harm, because you know there was none - or if there was it was because of AT&T's dereliction of duty.
To the degree that there were victims, they were the customers who were implicitly lied to. Without this security audit they'd still be in the dark.
>>> Someone who didn't want to go to jail would say "...
>> Someone who didn't want to get unfairly arrested would say "...
> Very nice, now do you have anything to say that is not wildly offtopic?
Sorry, but it's not off-topic, it just shows your point is full of holes the size of a truck. You brought up "what someone who didn't want to go to jail" would say, but upon examination it fails to help your case and now you don't like that tangent.
You're more concerned with jailing those who disrespect your surrogate authority than in patching whatever hole there is.
> There's a bunch of douchebags on the internet that could think of nothing better to do that cause mayhem and suffering to those around them.
God, I know. Don't you just hate idiot politicians who try to control things they don't understand with the same blunt-object laws they fail to fix anything else with.
> Those despicable and miserable creatures
You're conflating what they thought would be funny with what they actually did.
> they are not honey-bees.
Really? They look like it from my point of view. They're useful if farmed with care but harmful if mistreated.
> My main reason to thing he's a douchebag because I've read about him and his actions.
Well, your interpretations of things are pretty weak - that doesn't mean much. Was this before you were told what to think? Because following links from an echo chamber is just going to reinforce your preconceived notions.
You seem easily led by anyone who says something catchy - you're using a juvenile phrase implying weev resembles a menstrual pad. It's like the rash of ideological clones saying "mansion arrest" in any discussion of Wikileaks, indicating not a single one of them had ever had an original thought.
> Law enforcement usually doesn't like people that say "I'll do it again and worse" too much.
It's pretty obvious you're upset because you're an authoritarian and you see someone flouting the rules. You're fixated on it.
>>> It wasn't private info, it was email addresses. They aren't treated as private
Maybe not by you. But for those to whom they belonged they certainly were private and not meant to be disclosed. BTW, somehow I don't see your email address in your profile either even though you could easily put it there.
>>>> Another way to tell you're just manufacturing outrage here
I'm not "manufacturing" anything, I just state the facts - one of the facts is the the emails were private and Auernheimer accessed them without authorization, thus committing a crime.
>>> Repeatedly your main complaint about weev has been his disrespect for authority
This is completely false, it wasn't neither my "main" complaint, not any other complaint - I never complained about anything like that, which is obvious to anybody who read it. Which of course does not prevent you to claim the contrary, as you seem to be an expert at ignoring reality and substituting your own fantasy instead.
>>> Without this security audit they'd still be in the dark.
It was "security audit" the same way as a mugging is "personal belongings safety audit". Word games are not going to change reality anywhere but in your head.
>>> You're more concerned with jailing those who disrespect your surrogate authority
Again, this is completely false - nobody talked about any respect to any authority. What we were talking about is unlawful and unauthorized access to private data - which of course has nothing to do with filming public servants appearing in public and your subsequent fantasies on what may happen next.
>>> God, I know. Don't you just hate idiot politicians
You're trying to change the topic again. By now you should have noticed I would detect such attempts and point them out.
>>> Really? They look like it from my point of view.
This is because your point of view has nothing to do with reality and is completely based in fantasy, which I amply illustrated here. You think if you call something by different words and misrepresent facts, they would actually be something completely different, but that is not going to happen. Bunch of trolls getting into private data store and unlawfully taking data remains a bunch of trolls getting into private data store and unlawfully taking data, call it "audit" or "honey bee" or "bologna sandwich".
>>> You seem easily led by anyone who says something catchy
As I do not know if English is your native language, I give you benefit of the doubt and inform you that calling somebody a "douchebag" in English does not actually implies he looks like a hygienic product and can be used as one. It implies he is an arrogant, insufferable and extremely repulsive personality, compounded with over-inflated self-worth and actions often characterized with complete disregard over the harm they cause to others. There's nothing "juvenile" in using this to describe someone who actually fits this description, it is very common turn of phrase.
>>> It's pretty obvious you're upset because you're an authoritarian
I'm not upset at the least - why would I be? I'm not the one getting in trouble here, so I have nothing to be upset about. I just point out the reasons why Auernheimer is treated like he is, and the fact is that he and his personality the main cause of it. Your attempts to telepathically read my brain over the internet and deduce my political and moral leanings resulted in a miserable failure.
Seriously. The only thing this episode teaches me is that instead of gaining publicity or attempting to help in any way at all, exploit the victims as hard and as fast as possible, doing maximum damage once financial and information gains have been appropriately optimized.
I think a more rational takeaway would be responsible disclosure. That or avoiding these situation entirely by not meddling where you're not supposed to.
> I think a more rational takeaway would be responsible disclosure.
The takeaway, happy or not, is that most companies see no disclosure as the only right disclosure and will punish you beyond reason if you're even connected to something that hurts them a little - even if they're the ones who caused themselves the hurt.
So, responsible for who?
Because the fastest way to guarantee this stops sooner than later is leak every address publicly with information about every error AT&T made and let civil suits from pissed-off customers fry them.
This is all just manufactured panic anyways so it's not like anyone would even get hurt. Email addresses aren't secrets and we don't act like they are or we'd be arresting spammers.
> That or avoiding these situation entirely by not meddling
No, then it'd still be broken and nobody would know.
> where you're not supposed to.
Sorry, but if you have my data or provide a service I need, I've got an interest in your systems.
> The takeaway, happy or not, is that most companies see no disclosure as the only right disclosure and will punish you beyond reason if you're even connected to something that hurts them a little - even if they're the ones who caused themselves the hurt.
But we don't know this is true for Apple because Weev didn't try to responsibly/ethically disclose his findings. He boasted about it on IRC and then to a reporter.
So maybe Apple would have sued him if he tried to bring it to their attention. Still, he could have disclosed it to them anonymously.
> Because the fastest way to guarantee this stops sooner than later is leak every address publicly with information about every error AT&T made and let civil suits from pissed-off customers fry them.
I don't know whether you're a programmer or not, but one thing you learn very quickly when you are one is that programmers are humans and humans make mistakes. Bugs happen all the time, and no one wants to be on the receiving end of some kid who finds ones and takes rubbing it in your face as his divine mandate. Dumping all the info you pull from a hack is neither responsible nor ethical. Doing so dons you with the blackest of hats and destroys your reputation to all except like-minded sociopaths.
> No, then it'd still be broken and nobody would know.
If it's broken and nobody knows, is it still broken? I do understand where you're coming from though.
> Weev didn't try to responsibly/ethically disclose his findings.
Going to a journalist is the ethical answer.
Sending phishing emails or extorting people would be the unethical answer.
> Bugs happen all the time, and no one wants to be on the receiving end of some kid who finds ones and takes rubbing it in your face as his divine mandate.
Did the customers want their email addresses leaked?
> Dumping all the info you pull from a hack is neither responsible nor ethical.
Bullshit. Depends on the hack. Dump Scientology docs pertaining to harassment of critics, awesome. Dumping private medical records of random people, pretty nasty.
You may notice that email addresses are not considered sensitive information. In fact, I'm sure Apple and AT&T reserve the right to share customer information with "select partners". Leaking customer email addresses doesn't actually hurt the customers, but does hurt the company's reputation for providing a secure service - which is exactly what should happen. Anything less and there's no motivation to change.
> Doing so dons you with the blackest of hats and destroys your reputation to all except like-minded sociopaths.
Oh yeah, the blackest. My kitten-eating hat. The one I wear when I trick people into slavery or prostitution, when I plot to exterminate entire subraces of humanity because of their lack of rhythm. That hat.
Yeah, right. Because only sociopaths think major corporations should have their feet held to the fire and that it's best it happens on a zero-value attack like email addresses rather than anything important.
As far as Weev himself, not much can be done. The feds are permitted to house any inmate in essentially any conditions they want as long as they meet certain (incredibly low) standards. Once you are in their grasp, you are at their mercy. Theoretically, they can keep him in segregation for the duration of his sentence. The bra thing is ordinary for jails and prisons. He is being threatened with "Diesel Therapy" - being moved from prison to prison - in order to disrupt his posts to the Internet which violate their rules.
Basically, he hasn't learned (but will soon) that he is no longer in control. The harder he fights against the rules, no matter how idiotic those rules may be, the more difficult his life will become. This is true both while in custody and during the entire term of his Supervised Release. None of this is necessary or right in the eyes of anyone with half a brain, but it is the system we have and he exposed himself to it.