{"id":92112,"date":"2013-11-18T15:58:15","date_gmt":"2013-11-18T14:58:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/activist-hacker-hammond-slams-government-crimes-at-sentencing\/"},"modified":"2013-11-18T17:36:54","modified_gmt":"2013-11-18T16:36:54","slug":"activist-hacker-hammond-slams-government-crimes-at-sentencing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/activist-hacker-hammond-slams-government-crimes-at-sentencing\/","title":{"rendered":"Activist Hacker Hammond Slams Government Crimes at Sentencing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Hacker Jeremy Hammond, a so-called \u201chacktivist,\u201d or an activist who uses hacking to further a cause, was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison on Friday for his role in stealing documents and financial data from the private intelligence-gathering outfit Stratfor and handing the material he obtained to WikiLeaks<\/a> \u2013 part of an effort he says was aimed at exposing government criminality to the world. Hammond accepted responsibility for his actions by pleading guilty to the charges against him, but despite an outpouring of support, the federal judge overseeing the case handed down the maximum possible sentence.<\/p>\n

Apparently, the fact that an FBI operative, Hector Xavier Monsegur, known online as \u201cSabu,\u201d allegedly stood beside and directed Hammond throughout the hacking exploits was not enough to avoid a lengthy prison term. However, like his legions of followers and supporters across the political spectrum and around the world, Hammond is now publicly wondering how long it will take for the government to be held accountable for its own crimes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe acts of civil disobedience and direct action that I am being sentenced for today are in line with the principles of community and equality that have guided my life,\u201d Hammond said<\/a> in a prepared sentencing statement offered to media outlets and widely published across the web. \u201cI took responsibility for my actions, by pleading guilty, but when will the government be made to answer for its crimes?\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most significant article produced by The New American<\/em> so far based on the material obtained through Hammond’s \u201chacktivism\u201d involved the revelation that the U.S. government was deliberately allowing Mexican cartel assassins into the United States<\/a>. According to senior law enforcement sources cited in stolen Stratfor e-mails, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was letting its \u201cinformants\u201d cross the border knowing full well that they planned to murder.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey [ICE] were handling big hit men from Juarez and letting them kill in the U.S.,\u201d explained the federal law enforcement supervisor quoted in the e-mail, a claim the agency would neither confirm nor deny in a statement<\/a> to The New American<\/em>. The Stratfor source, identified only as \u201cUS714,\u201d whom the firm described as a \u201cUS law enforcement officer with direct oversight of border investigations,\u201d also confirmed that U.S. troops were in Mexico<\/a> working with Mexican forces in a variety of controversial schemes.<\/p>\n

Other explosive revelations from the massive hack included more evidence that federal authorities in the United States have been quietly supporting certain Mexican criminal empires \u2013 especially the Sinaloa drug cartel. According to Stratfor e-mails from a U.S.-based Mexican diplomat, the goal was to solidify the syndicates’ reign as dominant powerbrokers in particular territories. If cartel chiefs cooperate with authorities, \u201cgovernments will allow controlled drug trades,\u201d the diplomatic source added<\/a> in the leaked document.<\/p>\n

Hammond’s rhetoric against what he apparently sees as the products of \u201ccapitalism\u201d and \u201cimperialism\u201d has dampened support among conservative and libertarian elements, though his supporters come from across the political spectrum. In his statement, Hammond said he hacked into dozens of high-profile corporations and government institutions for what he believed in: Exposing the truth.<\/p>\n

All of it was done even though Hammond understood \u201cclearly\u201d that it was against the law and that the actions could land him back in prison, he said. \u201cBut I felt that I had an obligation to use my skills to expose and confront injustice \u2013 and to bring the truth to light,\u201d he added in the statement, quoting Frederick Douglass. \u201cYes I broke the law, but I believe that sometimes laws must be broken in order to make room for change.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his sentencing remarks, Hammond also wondered rhetorically whether or not he could have achieved the same goals through legal means. His short answer appears to be a resounding \u201cno.\u201d Noting that he had already tried voting, petitions, peaceful protests, and more, Hammond said he consistently found that \u201cthose in power do not want the truth to be exposed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we speak truth to power we are ignored at best and brutally suppressed at worst,\u201d Hammond continued. \u201cWe are confronting a power structure that does not respect its own system of checks and balances, never mind the rights of its own citizens.\u201d More specifically, he slammed the U.S. government’s unconstitutional wars and the fact that protests against the lawlessness were allegedly met with beatings, arrests, and accusations of treason.<\/p>\n

While his rage was originally focused on the crimes of the George W. Bush administration, Hammond soon realized that the problem was actually bipartisan in nature. \u201cThe Obama administration continued the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, escalated the use of drones, and failed to close Guantanamo Bay,\u201d he said in the sentencing statement.<\/p>\n

Soon, Hammond said, he became inspired by WikiLeaks, the loosely knit \u201cAnonymous\u201d hacktivist network, and convicted leaker Pfc. Manning, who publicly released hundreds of thousands of State Department cables and other official documents to expose war crimes and other criminality. So, despite his previous run-ins with the law, Hammond decided to target law enforcement, the military-industrial complex, and more.<\/p>\n

\u201cI targeted information-security firms because they work in secret to protect government and corporate interests at the expense of individual rights, undermining and discrediting activists, journalists and other truth seekers, and spreading disinformation,\u201d he said. While Hammond had never heard of Stratfor, the FBI informant \u201cSabu,\u201d who had been arrested and apparently coerced into government service, proposed and facilitated the hacking operation, he argued.<\/p>\n

After successfully breaking into the Texas-based intelligence firm’s systems, Hammond stole millions of its e-mails, \u201cwhich is where all the dirty secrets are typically found,\u201d he said. Eventually, Stratfor customers’ hacked credit card details were used to donate huge sums of money to charities around the world, causing major disruptions for the company, its customers, and the non-profit organizations involved. The e-mails were published by WikiLeaks<\/a> as part of what it called the \u201cGlobal Intelligence Files.\u201d<\/p>\n

Working with the FBI informant, and allegedly at the government’s insistence, Hammond was also inadvertently manipulated into helping to hack multiple foreign governments, he said. While U.S. authorities had imposed a \u201cprotective order\u201d forbidding disclosure surrounding the targets, Hammond alleged that they included the regimes in Brazil, Iran, Turkey, and others before being cut off by the judge.<\/p>\n

According to Hammond’s backers and Hammond himself, who collaborated with \u201cAnonymous\u201d and has been in detention for 20 months, the government criminality uncovered in recent years is infinitely more serious than hacking computers to expose official lawlessness. In sentencing, however, U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Preska disagreed.<\/p>\n

Blasting Hammond as a self-styled \u201cmodern-day Robin Hood,\u201d the federal judge said his actions could not be compared with Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who has been an outspoken supporter of Hammond and other high-profile transparency activists. The sentencing judge, citing Hammond’s comments, also claimed there was \u201cnothing high-minded or public spirited about causing \u2018mayhem.’\u201d<\/p>\n

At the November 15 sentencing hearing, with the courtroom reportedly packed with his supporters, Hammond also noted that his activities were aimed only at exposing the truth. He also apologized to innocent victims caught in the crossfire whose privacy he invaded. \u201cI believe in the individual right to privacy \u2013 from government surveillance, and from actors like myself, and I appreciate the irony of my own involvement in the trampling of these rights,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Hammond claimed in his note that, even though he is committed to making the world \u201ca better place for all of us\u201d and he still believes in the \u201cimportance of hactivism as a form of civil disobedience,\u201d he plans to seek other avenues for change going forward. The now-notorious 28-year-old hacker had already found himself in legal trouble before the latest incidents, but he now says he understands that he is needed at home. \u201cStay strong and keep struggling,\u201d his sentencing statement concluded.<\/p>\n

In a Twitter post, WikiLeaks argued that the 10-year sentence was part of a pattern. \u201cHammond is just the latest to be targeted in [a] global witch-hunt against brightest minds of a generation,\u201d the transparency group said. Indeed, as The New American<\/em> has been documenting, the Obama administration and the U.S. government more broadly have fiendishly pursued leakers and whistleblowers with unprecedented ferocity. Hammond, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden<\/a>, and Pfc. Manning<\/a> are simply among the most high-profile recent targets.<\/p>\n

Despite their contributions to public awareness, all of the whistleblowers \u2013 or leakers from critics’ point of view \u2013 have stirred controversy in their choice of methods. However, with out-of-control governments around the world perpetrating ghastly crimes every day while acknowledging no limits on their power, it is hard to legitimately compare the actions of some hackers and whistleblowers with the gross abuses perpetrated under the guise of legitimate authority. Plus, if governments have nothing to hide, transparency should be welcomed.<\/p>\n

Photo of Hammond supporters outside a courthouse in 2012: AP Images<\/em><\/p>\n

Alex Newman is a correspondent for<\/em> The New American, covering economics, politics, and more. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Source: The New American<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hacker Jeremy Hammond, a so-called \u201chacktivist,\u201d or an activist who uses hacking to further a cause, was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison on Friday for his role in stealing documents and financial data from the private intelligence-gathering outfit Stratfor and handing the material he obtained to WikiLeaks \u2013 part of an effort he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1213,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-92112","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92112\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}