[consultant23522]

Releasing information can be civil disobedience and imho should be shown leniency when it is. I don't suggest that I'm the one that should determine whether something should qualify as civil disobedience or not, but there's some wisdom to the idea that the court should not harshly punish someone who technically broke the law for the greater good. Your intent is often a factor in not only what you are convicted of but also the sentence handed to you.

[pyrocat]

Putting someone in jail for 10 years when they haven't harmed another person is ludicrous, but that's the American justice system for you.

[duairc]

I oppose all prisons everywhere of course, but The American justice system is fucking grim.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/13/us-prisoners-se...

[einehexe]

I'm sure some EU state would give him a backrub.

[dandelany]

You'd consider releasing credit card numbers of all subscribers to an organization you don't like to be "civil disobedience"? Even if you accept the (deeply flawed IMHO) premise that Stratfor was an evil shadowy organization, it's clients are a step removed and clearly not all of them had bad intentions (I know because I was a subscriber). Next time your employer or a company you are a client of does something bad, I assume you won't mind if I leak your personal information under the guise of civil disobedience.

[ThrowFarAway]

Agreed. I have a number of clients who are subscribers. They made better business decisions by virtue of reading the output of a group of talented forecasters.

These weren't businesses looking to crush people who voted a certain way, these were businesses who may have had a supplier in Japan and wanted more rational, reasoned coverage of Fukushima than most everyone else was providing. Or, companies that employ Latin American immigrants and wanted a more nuanced view of the future than the standard "instant voting blocs good!/evil brown people bad!" narrative.

[snowwrestler]

The whole point of civil disobedience as a form of protest is to suffer the legal consequences of a law in order to demonstrate its injustice.

If Jeremy Hammond had hacked Stratfor for the express purpose if getting arrested, in order to demonstrate the injustice of computer crime law, your comment would be right on. But that's not what he did, or why he did it.

[sigzero]

It can but don't try to brush it away with "therefore what I did wasn't illegal" which is what Mr. Hammond sounds like he is trying to do. The only thing that he and Aaron have in common is what they did was illegal.