Andrew Auernheimer, known online as "weev" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev), is nothing like Aaron Swartz. I speak from personal experience with weev.
Thanks to weev and his associates, my business partner, many of my volunteers, some family members of the above, and everybody who weev and his "trolls" could reach were subjected to a months-long campaign of constant harassement.
* One volunteer had to interview with Child Protective Services and the police because of false complaints made by weev and his friends.
* Another volunteer had trouble at her university because they tracked down her professors and made false claims.
* Our business faced several Denial of Service attacks and false complaints to our merchant processors and hosting providers.
In the end, it stopped when (I can only assume) he got bored. We developed a strong relationship with our hosting provider, our new payment processor, and we did as much as we could to help people who were put in bad situations because of weev's actions. Ultimately, we lost some volunteers and bled money for 3 months, but we survived.
So, weev has a good enough story to get his "confession" in TechCrunch and on Twitter and people think that he's another example of the over-broad reach of law and the destruction of young lives by powerful corporations/organizations.
Maybe it is.
But if you value the legacy of Aaron Swartz, do not for one minute confuse him and Andrew Auernheimer. One was a man driven by a vision who helped defeat SOPA and did many other good and noble things, the other is a self-described troll who spent years of his life doing his best to extract "lulz" from the pain and suffering of his fellow human beings.
Everything I've read about him with the partial exception of some of his writing makes him seem like an ass. Being an ass shouldn't be criminal but some of the things you list should be. Harassment and wasting police time are both offences in the UK although I've no idea about in the US (probably state dependent). DOS attacks may also be illegal and in my view are more serious than the action in this case.
All that doesn't make accessing a sequence of URLs, joking about selling the resulting personal data, giving it to a journalist to expose the flaw and then deleting the data worthy of a long prison sentence (if any at all). If this offence gets a large penalty what room is there for someone who does sell the data from such a break for profit? There is also the risk that it sets a norm for this offence and the next person being threatened by a prosecutor hears about how this guy got 10 years for just crawling a sequence of URLs.
My conclusion is that it is OK to hate this guy, think he deserves a long spell in prison but not to want this action to lead to a long sentence.
The story here is not about the person, but about the prosecution. weev is an ass, but the story should be about the persecution from the US DoJ. Being an ass doesn't mean you're not entitled to fair justice.
Did Andrew try to sell the data for profit? He took a sample of the output to a journalist at Gawker and notified AT&T [0]. Why would one do that if he wants to sell data? However, what worries me is that in the same article it is mentioned that
Since a member of the group tells us the script was
shared with third-parties prior to AT&T closing the
security hole, it's not known exactly whose hands the
exploit fell into and what those people did with the
names they obtained.
It's pretty hard to know what really happened. I don't understand Auernheimer's actions at all - on one hand he informs AT&T/Gawker and on the other he sends the script to third parties. Even if his intentions were not malicious, Auernheimer acted immaturely. The lengthy blog post he wrote explaining his actions is no longer available and here's a cached version [1]. Some of the points directly contradict with the earlier Gawker article.
The only person to receive the dataset was Gawker
journalist Ryan Tate who responsibly redacted it.
So, does this mean he didn't reveal the dataset but revealed the script?
It doesn't quite answer your question on what he did in this case, but it shows his perspective on it.
He is correct that the end result of disclosure is shades of gray - not black and white, as we've seen recently with the student in Montreal who was suspended.
On the contrary, imo this actually highlights the gross injustice in Aaron's case, considering the outrageous imbalance in the potential sentencing in the two cases.
I'm assuming here that the following two press accounts are not grossly misrepresenting the facts:
Here at least you have clearly stated malicious intent, which may or may not have been serious, in jest or otherwise, but clearly the potential harm in Andrew Auernheimer's case is real, so much so that they 'joked' about shorting ATT stock before they released the data.
They were facing potentially only 10 years each max, compared to Aaron's 50.
To me, the disproportionate charges in the two cases is the most galling thing and should serve to highlight how out of control the prosecutors were in the Swartz case. 10 years may even disproportionate in Auernheimer's case as well, but at the moment I'm quite unsympathetic given what I've read.
I say all of that fully ready for the inevitable "HN Turnaround" when more facts and POVs are brought to bear and I change my mind on this. But at the moment I see very little in common between two self-aggrandizing lulzing jokers and Aaron Swartz.
As far as I can tell, Auernheimer is indeed a spectacular idiot. But that's kind of the problem. What he did was idiotic but still shouldn't have been criminal. What he did was, in is essence, pointing out that AT&T was allowing people worse than he is to easily get access to this information. Proof by demonstration, in a way that was almost entirely harmless -- no one malicious was given access to any new information, since the actual malicious parties could have about as easily exploited the exact same vulnerability if these idiots had done nothing.
But here's the thing. Screw Auernheimer. Forget about him. He's a jerk, nobody is going to be motivated to fix anything to help someone like that. He opens his mouth and stupid comes out and it makes otherwise helpful people dislike him.
And we need to fix the laws. For everyone. Not even these idiots deserve to be felons. But I agree that we shouldn't be touting them as examples, because they probably smell funny and it would be a great shame for the stench to rub off.
I have played the middle ground on this issue. I was trying to see it from the eye's the prosecutors or the law as it is concerned with the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
How do they craft law that is generic enough to catch guys like meev but flexible that people like Aaron are found not guilty.
I tell others, maybe the severity of the charges were harsh in Aaron's case but I was wondering if we should have had a trial proceed and hear the facts. Others argue that we shouldn't have had a trial and the prosecutor should be fired. But how do we know for sure that Aaron didn't commit a crime?
Say you have a journalist who suspects a company is doing something not kosher or has a big acquisition coming. That company has a strict policy that employees may not talk to the press without permission. Despite that the journalist probes, he tries a bunch of people, he then finds someone inside the company who is willing to talk and reveal the company is doing something unethical or is going to buy a company.
The journalist then publishes that info and hopes, as a sign of the power of the story, that it is market-moving news. In an e-mail to an editor, she jokes that they ought to short the company. Or if you are Mark Cuban's short-lived venture, one actually shorts the company.
Given the journalist has exceeded authorized access to an employee and hoped to do damage to a company, should that journalist be prosecuted and charged with a felony?
If not, why is Weev being charged with a felony for doing the same exact thing by getting the info from a publicly available server that had no password protection?
Even if they are similar cases (an assessment I disagree with), I doubt Auernheimer will get nearly as much sympathy among the hacker community given his history of trolling and malicious behavior, compared to Swartz's history of creative and constructive actions.
Yeah, there are some pretty significant differences here. Among other things, weev more or less stated that he intended to harm AT&T by leaking their customer data and driving down their stock price, and that he was, at one point, considering selling the leaked data for profit.
Exactly. This guy was very publicly trying to either blackmail or sell the data. As someone who had an iPad 3G and was alerted my info was stolen, I was pissed at the future spam I knew I'd end up getting out of the whole thing.
Weev is a troll. That's not a judgment, that's fact. His antics weren't about liberating data or making a bigger statement, it was about embarrassing a company. He did it for the lulz.
The law might not see these as different cases (though like you, I know I do), but public opinion certainly will.
To be totally honest, I'm sort of disgusted that he's using Aaron's suicide as fodder to try to gain sympathy or sentiment ahead of his sentencing.
The community has an opportunity to publicly judge whether the charges levied on Auernheimer match the severity of the actions he allegedly took. Specifically, is the prosecution trying to "make an example" of him by heaping charge upon overlapping charge? Are they pursuing a strategy of maximum years in jail in order to obtain a plea deal for an easy win? Are they claiming to the press that they Auernheimer is a Arthur C. Clarke-ian "frightening technology wizard or witch"? Do the prosecutors involved have an unreasonable stake in this case or political aspirations?
The knee jerk force is strong... just as HN excused itself from supporting Aaron because he was financially successful (he should "man up" and pay his own legal costs, etc.), weev's trolling serves as another excuse to withhold support.
I absolutely agree with this point. There seems to be an ongoing pandering for some individual characteristics that made it somewhat okay to put someone in prison on ridiculous charges. Sure, Auenheimer is no saint, but these 'but he made babies cry' stories are just trying to distract from the real issue at hand.
I thought what had happened was they used his (pretty benign) hacking to justify a raid on his place then nailed him on drug charges? Or did they also pin hacking charges on his as well?
They dropped all the local drug charges and stuck to federal hacking charges.
Fayetteville, AR is a very poor/bad place and I think someone with a trivial amount of drugs, who is also a supreme internet troll, is not someone they'd want to prosecute locally.
[+] [-] xb95|13 years ago|reply
Thanks to weev and his associates, my business partner, many of my volunteers, some family members of the above, and everybody who weev and his "trolls" could reach were subjected to a months-long campaign of constant harassement.
* One volunteer had to interview with Child Protective Services and the police because of false complaints made by weev and his friends.
* Another volunteer had trouble at her university because they tracked down her professors and made false claims.
* Our business faced several Denial of Service attacks and false complaints to our merchant processors and hosting providers.
* Harassing voicemails, phone calls, emails, IMs, IRC messages, etc etc etc.
The list of things that weev and the so-called Gay Niggers Association of America (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_Nigger_Association_of_Ameri...) did to us is pretty long. It's sad, really.
In the end, it stopped when (I can only assume) he got bored. We developed a strong relationship with our hosting provider, our new payment processor, and we did as much as we could to help people who were put in bad situations because of weev's actions. Ultimately, we lost some volunteers and bled money for 3 months, but we survived.
So, weev has a good enough story to get his "confession" in TechCrunch and on Twitter and people think that he's another example of the over-broad reach of law and the destruction of young lives by powerful corporations/organizations.
Maybe it is.
But if you value the legacy of Aaron Swartz, do not for one minute confuse him and Andrew Auernheimer. One was a man driven by a vision who helped defeat SOPA and did many other good and noble things, the other is a self-described troll who spent years of his life doing his best to extract "lulz" from the pain and suffering of his fellow human beings.
[+] [-] josephlord|13 years ago|reply
All that doesn't make accessing a sequence of URLs, joking about selling the resulting personal data, giving it to a journalist to expose the flaw and then deleting the data worthy of a long prison sentence (if any at all). If this offence gets a large penalty what room is there for someone who does sell the data from such a break for profit? There is also the risk that it sets a norm for this offence and the next person being threatened by a prosecutor hears about how this guy got 10 years for just crawling a sequence of URLs.
My conclusion is that it is OK to hate this guy, think he deserves a long spell in prison but not to want this action to lead to a long sentence.
[+] [-] jrockway|13 years ago|reply
But incrementing a number at the end of a URL should be legal even if Hitler is doing it, plain and simple.
[+] [-] lessnonymous|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mike_esspe|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] denzil_correa|13 years ago|reply
[0] http://gawker.com/5559346/apples-worst-security-breach-11400...
[1] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PChrEDR...
[+] [-] Cushman|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SoftwareMaven|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmix|13 years ago|reply
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2012/11/hacking-choice-and-disc...
It doesn't quite answer your question on what he did in this case, but it shows his perspective on it.
He is correct that the end result of disclosure is shades of gray - not black and white, as we've seen recently with the student in Montreal who was suspended.
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] davesims|13 years ago|reply
I'm assuming here that the following two press accounts are not grossly misrepresenting the facts:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/18/us-apple-ipad-idUS... http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/01/goatse-security-trolls-...
Here at least you have clearly stated malicious intent, which may or may not have been serious, in jest or otherwise, but clearly the potential harm in Andrew Auernheimer's case is real, so much so that they 'joked' about shorting ATT stock before they released the data.
They were facing potentially only 10 years each max, compared to Aaron's 50.
To me, the disproportionate charges in the two cases is the most galling thing and should serve to highlight how out of control the prosecutors were in the Swartz case. 10 years may even disproportionate in Auernheimer's case as well, but at the moment I'm quite unsympathetic given what I've read.
I say all of that fully ready for the inevitable "HN Turnaround" when more facts and POVs are brought to bear and I change my mind on this. But at the moment I see very little in common between two self-aggrandizing lulzing jokers and Aaron Swartz.
[+] [-] AnthonyMouse|13 years ago|reply
But here's the thing. Screw Auernheimer. Forget about him. He's a jerk, nobody is going to be motivated to fix anything to help someone like that. He opens his mouth and stupid comes out and it makes otherwise helpful people dislike him.
And we need to fix the laws. For everyone. Not even these idiots deserve to be felons. But I agree that we shouldn't be touting them as examples, because they probably smell funny and it would be a great shame for the stench to rub off.
[+] [-] berlinbrown|13 years ago|reply
How do they craft law that is generic enough to catch guys like meev but flexible that people like Aaron are found not guilty.
I tell others, maybe the severity of the charges were harsh in Aaron's case but I was wondering if we should have had a trial proceed and hear the facts. Others argue that we shouldn't have had a trial and the prosecutor should be fired. But how do we know for sure that Aaron didn't commit a crime?
[+] [-] rsingel|13 years ago|reply
Say you have a journalist who suspects a company is doing something not kosher or has a big acquisition coming. That company has a strict policy that employees may not talk to the press without permission. Despite that the journalist probes, he tries a bunch of people, he then finds someone inside the company who is willing to talk and reveal the company is doing something unethical or is going to buy a company.
The journalist then publishes that info and hopes, as a sign of the power of the story, that it is market-moving news. In an e-mail to an editor, she jokes that they ought to short the company. Or if you are Mark Cuban's short-lived venture, one actually shorts the company.
Given the journalist has exceeded authorized access to an employee and hoped to do damage to a company, should that journalist be prosecuted and charged with a felony?
If not, why is Weev being charged with a felony for doing the same exact thing by getting the info from a publicly available server that had no password protection?
[+] [-] dubfan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duskwuff|13 years ago|reply
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/01/goatse-security-trolls-...
[+] [-] filmgirlcw|13 years ago|reply
Weev is a troll. That's not a judgment, that's fact. His antics weren't about liberating data or making a bigger statement, it was about embarrassing a company. He did it for the lulz.
The law might not see these as different cases (though like you, I know I do), but public opinion certainly will.
To be totally honest, I'm sort of disgusted that he's using Aaron's suicide as fodder to try to gain sympathy or sentiment ahead of his sentencing.
[+] [-] politician|13 years ago|reply
Let's get some answers to these questions.
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mcantelon|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1337biz|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcantelon|13 years ago|reply
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20007827-245.html
[+] [-] rdl|13 years ago|reply
Fayetteville, AR is a very poor/bad place and I think someone with a trivial amount of drugs, who is also a supreme internet troll, is not someone they'd want to prosecute locally.
[+] [-] Anechoic|13 years ago|reply