Jeremy Hammond Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison

[seemslikeadream]

Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison, Jeremy Hammond Uses Allocution to Give Consequential Statement Highlighting Global Criminal Exploits by FBI Handlers
NOV 15, ’13 12:01 PM


[NEW YORK, NY] Jeremy Hammond, a 28-year-old political activist, was sentenced today to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to participating in the Anonymous hack into the computers of the private intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor). The Ceremonial Courtroom at the Federal Court for the Southern District of New York was filled today with an outpouring of support by journalists, activists and other whistleblowers who see Jeremy Hammond’s actions as a form of civil disobedience, motivated by a desire to protest and expose the secret activities of private intelligence corporations.jeremy hammond by molly crabapple
Jeremy Hammond, by Molly CrabappleThe hearing opened with arguments as to what sections of the court record will remain redacted after sentencing. While Jeremy’s attorneys initially erred on the side of caution in previous memorandums and kept large pieces of the record redacted, both the defense and prosecution agreed this morning that many of the sections should now be made available for public view. The prosecution, however took stiff exception to portions of the court record being made public that indicate victims, specifically foreign governments, that Jeremy allegedly hacked under the direction of Hector “Sabu” Monsegur, the FBI informant at the helm of Jeremy’s alleged actions. Judge Preska ordered that the names of these foreign governments remain sealed.Jeremy’s lead counsel, Sarah Kunstler, who is 9 months pregnant and due to give birth today, delivered a passionate testimonial as to the person that Jeremy is, and the need for people like Jeremy during our changing socio-political landscape. She was followed by co-counsel, Susan Keller, who wept as she recalled her experiences reading the hundreds of letters from supporters to the court detailing the Jeremy Hammond’s selflessness and enthusiastic volunteerism. She pointed out that it was this same selflessness that motivated Jeremy’s actions in this case. She closed her testimony by underscoring that, “The centerpiece of our argument is a young man with high hopes and unbelievably laudable expectations in this world.”Susan was followed by Jeremy Hammond himself, who gave a detailed, touching and consequential allocution to the court. The following is Jeremy’s statement to the court. We have redacted a portion [marked in red] upon the orders of Judge Preska. While we believe the public has a right to know the redacted information therein, we refuse to publish information that could adversely effect Jeremy or his counsel.JEREMY’ HAMMOND SENTENCING STATEMENT | 11/15/2013


Good morning. Thank you for this opportunity. My name is Jeremy Hammond and I’m here to be sentenced for hacking activities carried out during my involvement with Anonymous. I have been locked up at MCC for the past 20 months and have had a lot of time to think about how I would explain my actions.Before I begin, I want to take a moment to recognize the work of the people who have supported me. I want to thank all the lawyers and others who worked on my case: Elizabeth Fink, Susan Kellman, Sarah Kunstler, Emily Kunstler, Margaret Kunstler, and Grainne O’Neill. I also want to thank the National Lawyers Guild, the Jeremy Hammond Defense Committee and Support Network, Free Anons, the Anonymous Solidarity Network, Anarchist Black Cross, and all others who have helped me by writing a letter of support, sending me letters, attending my court dates, and spreading the word about my case. I also want to shout out my brothers and sisters behind bars and those who are still out there fighting the power.The 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. I hacked into dozens of high profile corporations and government institutions, understanding very clearly that what I was doing was against the law, and that my actions could land me back in federal prison. But I felt that I had an obligation to use my skills to expose and confront injustice—and to bring the truth to light.Could I have achieved the same goals through legal means? I have tried everything from voting petitions to peaceful protest and have found that those in power do not want the truth to be exposed. When we speak truth to power we are ignored at best and brutally suppressed at worst. We are confronting a power structure that does not respect its own system of checks and balances, never mind the rights of it’s own citizens or the international community.My introduction to politics was when George W. Bush stole the Presidential election in 2000, then took advantage of the waves of racism and patriotism after 9/11 to launch unprovoked imperialist wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. I took to the streets in protest naively believing our voices would be heard in Washington and we could stop the war. Instead, we were labeled as traitors, beaten, and arrested.I have been arrested for numerous acts of civil disobedience on the streets of Chicago, but it wasn’t until 2005 that I used my computer skills to break the law in political protest. I was arrested by the FBI for hacking into the computer systems of a right-wing, pro-war group called Protest Warrior, an organization that sold racist t-shirts on their website and harassed anti-war groups. I was charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the “intended loss” in my case was arbitrarily calculated by multiplying the 5000 credit cards in Protest Warrior’s database by $500, resulting in a total of $2.5 million.My sentencing guidelines were calculated on the basis of this “loss,” even though not a single credit card was used or distributed – by me or anyone else. I was sentenced to two years in prison.While in prison I have seen for myself the ugly reality of how the criminal justice system destroys the lives of the millions of people held captive behind bars. The experience solidified my opposition to repressive forms of power and the importance of standing up for what you believe.When I was released, I was eager to continue my involvement in struggles for social change. I didn’t want to go back to prison, so I focused on above-ground community organizing. But over time, I became frustrated with the limitations, of peaceful protest, seeing it as reformist and ineffective. The Obama administration continued the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, escalated the use of drones, and failed to close Guantanamo Bay.Around this time, I was following the work of groups like Wikileaks and Anonymous. It was very inspiring to see the ideas of hactivism coming to fruition. I was particularly moved by the heroic actions of Chelsea Manning, who had exposed the atrocities committed by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. She took an enormous personal risk to leak this information – believing that the public had a right to know and hoping that her disclosures would be a positive step to end these abuses. It is heart-wrenching to hear about her cruel treatment in military lockup.I thought long and hard about choosing this path again. I had to ask myself, if Chelsea Manning fell into the abysmal nightmare of prison fighting for the truth, could I in good conscience do any less, if I was able? I thought the best way to demonstrate solidarity was to continue the work of exposing and confronting corruption.I was drawn to Anonymous because I believe in autonomous, decentralized direct action. At the time Anonymous was involved in operations in support of the Arab Spring uprisings, against censorship, and in defense of Wikileaks. I had a lot to contribute, including technical skills, and how to better articulate ideas and goals. It was an exciting time – the birth of a digital dissent movement, where the definitions and capabilities of hacktivism were being shaped.I was especially interested in the work of the hackers of LulzSec who were breaking into some significant targets and becoming increasingly political. Around this time, I first started talking to Sabu, who was very open about the hacks he supposedly committed, and was encouraging hackers to unite and attack major government and corporate systems under the banner of Anti Security. But very early in my involvement, the other Lulzsec hackers were arrested, leaving me to break into systems and write press releases. Later, I would learn that Sabu had been the first one arrested, and that the entire time I was talking to him he was an FBI informant.Anonymous was also involved in the early stages of Occupy Wall Street. I was regularly participating on the streets as part of Occupy Chicago and was very excited to see a worldwide mass movement against the injustices of capitalism and racism. In several short months, the “Occupations” came to an end, closed by police crackdowns and mass arrests of protestors who were kicked out of their own public parks. The repression of Anonymous and the Occupy Movement set the tone for Antisec in the following months – the majority of our hacks against police targets were in retaliation for the arrests of our comrades.I targeted law enforcement systems because of the racism and inequality with which the criminal law is enforced. I targeted the manufacturers and distributors of military and police equipment who profit from weaponry used to advance U.S. political and economic interests abroad and to repress people at home. I 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.I had never even heard of Stratfor until Sabu brought it to my attention. Sabu was encouraging people to invade systems, and helping to strategize and facilitate attacks. He even provided me with vulnerabilities of targets passed on by other hackers, so it came as a great surprise when I learned that Sabu had been working with the FBI the entire time.On December 4, 2011, Sabu was approached by another hacker who had already broken into Stratfor’s credit card database. Sabu, under the watchful eye of his government handlers, then brought the hack to Antisec by inviting this hacker to our private chatroom, where he supplied download links to the full credit card database as well as the initial vulnerability access point to Stratfor’s systems.I spent some time researching Stratfor and reviewing the information we were given, and decided that their activities and client base made them a deserving target. I did find it ironic that Stratfor’s wealthy and powerful customer base had their credit cards used to donate to humanitarian organizations, but my main role in the attack was to retrieve Stratfor’s private email spools which is where all the dirty secrets are typically found.It took me more than a week to gain further access into Stratfor’s internal systems, but I eventually broke into their mail server. There was so much information, we needed several servers of our own in order to transfer the emails. Sabu, who was involved with the operation at every step, offered a server, which was provided and monitored by the FBI. Over the next weeks, the emails were transferred, the credit cards were used for donations, and Stratfor’s systems were defaced and destroyed. Why the FBI would introduce us to the hacker who found the initial vulnerability and allow this hack to continue remains a mystery.As a result of the Stratfor hack, some of the dangers of the unregulated private intelligence industry are now known. It has been revealed through Wikileaks and other journalists around the world that Stratfor maintained a worldwide network of informants that they used to engage in intrusive and possibly illegal surveillance activities on behalf of large multinational corporations.After Stratfor, I continued to break into other targets, using a powerful “zero day exploit” allowing me administrator access to systems running the popular Plesk webhosting platform. Sabu asked me many times for access to this exploit, which I refused to give him. Without his own independent access, Sabu continued to supply me with lists of vulnerable targets. I broke into numerous websites he supplied, uploaded the stolen email accounts and databases onto Sabu’s FBI server, and handed over passwords and backdoors that enabled Sabu (and, by extension, his FBI handlers) to control these targets.These intrusions, all of which were suggested by Sabu while cooperating with the FBI, affected thousands of domain names and consisted largely of foreign government websites, including those of XXXXXXX, XXXXXXXX, XXXX, XXXXXX, XXXXX, XXXXXXXX, XXXXXXX and the XXXXXX XXXXXXX. In one instance, Sabu and I provided access information to hackers who went on to deface and destroy many government websites in XXXXXX. I don’t know how other information I provided to him may have been used, but I think the government’s collection and use of this data needs to be investigated.jeremy hammond hearing
Sketch from inside Judge Preska’s courtroom by Molly Crabapple


The government celebrates my conviction and imprisonment, hoping that it will close the door on the full story. I took responsibility for my actions, by pleading guilty, but when will the government be made to answer for its crimes?The U.S. hypes the threat of hackers in order to justify the multi billion dollar cyber security industrial complex, but it is also responsible for the same conduct it aggressively prosecutes and claims to work to prevent. The hypocrisy of “law and order” and the injustices caused by capitalism cannot be cured by institutional reform but through civil disobedience and direct action. Yes I broke the law, but I believe that sometimes laws must be broken in order to make room for change.In the immortal word of Frederick Douglas, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”This is not to say that I do not have any regrets. I realize that I released the personal information of innocent people who had nothing to do with the operations of the institutions I targeted. I apologize for the release of data that was harmful to individuals and irrelevant to my goals. I believe in the individual right to privacy – from government surveillance, and from actors like myself, and I appreciate the irony of my own involvement in the trampling of these rights. I am committed to working to make this world a better place for all of us. I still believe in the importance of hactivism as a form of civil disobedience, but it is time for me to move on to other ways of seeking change. My time in prison has taken a toll on my family, friends, and community. I know I am needed at home. I recognize that 7 years ago I stood before a different federal judge, facing similar charges, but this does not lessen the sincerity of what I say to you today.It has taken a lot for me to write this, to explain my actions, knowing that doing so — honestly — could cost me more years of my life in prison. I am aware that I could get as many as 10 years, but I hope that I do not, as I believe there is so much work to be done.STAY STRONG AND KEEP STRUGGLING!To schedule interviews with Jeremy Hammond’s attorneys and supporters following today’s sentencing please contact Andy Stepanian, 631.291.3010, andy@sparrowmedia.net.

[Wombaticus Rex]

I took responsibility for my actions, by pleading guilty, but when will the government be made to answer for its crimes?

Koan: Can answers be extracted from an abstract noun?

[dqueue]

So freaking sick. He seems a stalwart guy. I respect the hell out of his courage. Whenever, and wherever he gets situated, be sure to write him, and send him commissary funds. Does he have computer restrictions for his three years of supervised release?

How many banksters are serving time for the trillions in financial malfeasance targeting the American people?

[Grizzly]

It is sickening, we should be honoring this guy, instead we're punitively punishing him, like someone whom told the family secrets, in a dysfunctional alcholic/addict home. This whole goddamn country needs an intervention. Soul sick America, drunk w/power, and wanting more, more, more...

[conniption]

Truth Dig

The Revolutionaries in Our Midst

By Chris Hedges
Posted on Nov 10, 2013


AP/Cook County Sheriff's Office - Jeremy Hammond in a March 2012 booking photo from the Cook County Sheriff’s Office in Chicago.

[seemslikeadream]

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

The Real Criminal, Our Government, Jails the Real Hero
The Hero and the Villains: The Jeremy Hammond Sentence
by ALFREDO LOPEZ
This past Friday, Internet activist Jeremy Hammond stood in a federal courtroom and told Judge Loretta A. Preska why he released a trove of emails and other information uncovering the possibly illegal and certainly immoral collaboration of a major surveillance corporation called Stratfor with our government.

He also stressed what followers of his case already knew: that his activities were encouraged, organized and facilitated by an FBI informant turned operative. In short, his partner in these “violations of United States law” was the government of the United States.

He acknowledged that the Judge could sentence him to 10 years in jail but he never apologized for his actions or questioned their validity as political activism. And, in a statement remarkable for his courage and political principle (after 20 months in jail on this case), he established himself as one of the heroes of the struggle over for freedom and justice.

In a world in which people often seek to defend themselves in court by questioning whether they did what they are accused of, Hammond defended himself by saying that he did what they said he did and more — and that he was right to do it.

“The 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,” he told the court. “I hacked into dozens of high profile corporations and government institutions, understanding very clearly that what I was doing was against the law, and that my actions could land me back in federal prison. But I felt that I had an obligation to use my skills to expose and confront injustice–and to bring the truth to light.”

Expecting justice from Judge Preska was probably a stretch. She had previously refused to recuse herself from the trial after it was learned that her husband was one of the targets of Hammond’s Stratfor hacks. But when she hit him with the maximum jail sentence, a decade, and then churlishly hit him with three extra years of probation upon release during which he can’t use encryption on the Internet — which essential forbids him from living a modern life — she put the exclamation point on the statement this case makes about our government. While conducting surveillance on all its citizens (and using drones and agents and wars to trample on the human rights of people world-wide), it also uses elaborate stings and agent strategies to lure Internet activists into gathering information it wants but can’t legally obtain and then puts them in jail to shut them up.

It is, without question, a chilling story.

At the age of 29, Hammond is already a seasoned, experienced and “struggle-weathered” political activist. He was an anti-war activist in High School at 18 when he launched the legendary website HackThisSite [2], “a free, safe and legal training ground for hackers to test and expand their hacking skills” that remains one of the most popular and respected hacking education on-line communities.

His history during the last decade is sprinkled with a series of arrests during protests against the Iraq war, the trampling of gay rights, the erosion of democratic rights and the disruptive activities of extreme right-wing groups. He’s been beaten and arrested on more than a half dozen occasions for these actions.

In fact, in 2007, Hammond was imprisoned for hacking into the website of the right-wing group Protest Warrior, known for attacking anti-war demonstrations. The hack captured all kinds of information and brought the website down. Some of that info included credit card numbers for contributors to Protest Warrior and, although no card was ever used or charged to as a result, the government charged Hammond with what amounts to card theft and jailed him to two years.

When he was released he returned to protest but, he told the court, “The Obama administration continued the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, escalated the use of drones, and failed to close Guantanamo Bay.” Believing more direct action was needed, he returned to hacking and began targeting police departments and law enforcement agencies “because of the racism and inequality with which the criminal law is enforced” and hitting military and police equipment manufacturers as well as surveillance and security contractors.

Then he met Sabu.

Hector Xavier Monsegur (known on-line as Sabu) was the most visible figure in LulzSec, a hacker collective known for several high-profile hacks of of government and corporate sites. Monsegur, who lived in the Jacob Riis Projects of New York’s Lower East Side, had a reputation among activists as a prankster who seemed to hack power sites more for enjoyment and rebellious “rush” than for principled politics. His statements and tweets were, in fact, never that political. It’s safe to say that many on-line activists were wary of Sabu and that was well-founded because Sabu was working for the FBI.

As Assistant U.S. Attorney James Pastore said at a secret bail hearing on Aug. 5, 2011 about a month after Sabu was arrested by the FBI, “Since literally the day he was arrested, the defendant has been cooperating with the government proactively.” Sabu wasn’t just a snitch (although he appears to have given the FBI every name, email and detail about hackers and activists he knew), he was an active provocateur, using his LulzSec “cover” to ensnare other Internet activists in criminal acts.

Using FBI servers, he coordinated hacker projects that would land Internet activists, including almost the entire LulzSec collective, in jail — the equivalent of committing crimes in the FBI’s offices. He targeted dozens of other activists and even tried to involve Nadim Kobeissi [3], the respected Canadian technologist and author of the secure communication software Cryptocat, but Kobeissi rebuffed those overtures and that ensnarement project was dropped.

In December, 2011, Sabu hit the jackpot. He obtained exploits (programs that allowed entrance into a server) to the credit card database of Statfor, a security and surveillance contractor that works for a literal who’s who of corporations. Under FBI supervision, Sabu logged onto a private chatroom run by the hacker collective AntiSec (of which Hammond was a member) and began distributing links and passwords to Statfor’s servers. Hammond got involved, spending a week attempting access to Stratfor’s email systems and then loading the information he and others gleaned onto servers owned and run by the FBI.

The resulting information, mostly released by Wikileaks, was stunning.

The emails showed that Stratfor had spied on movements in other countries, movements and organizations in the U.S. and individual activists. It targeted PETA, the political “prankster” organization the YesMen and activists involved in the campaign against Dow Chemical over the catastrophic Bhopal, India gas leaks. It conducted, in cooperation with the government, a remarkable campaign of intense surveillance and infiltration of the Occupy movement. “And,” as journalist Chris Hedges said in an interview with the Real News Network [4], “we also found from those email exchanges that there was a concerted attempt on the part of security officials, both inside the government and within the private security contracting agency, to link, falsely, nonviolent dissident groups with terrorist groups so that they could apply terrorism laws against these groups.”

According to his statement, after the Statfor hack, Hammond continued using Sabu’s information to hack corporate sites and several official government sites. He also supplied Sabu and other hackers with information similarly used. “I don’t know how other information I provided to (Sabu) may have been used,” Hammond says, “but I think the government’s collection and use of this data needs to be investigated.”

Part of his statement, stricken by the Judge after Prosecution objections but made available at the Pastebin site [5], reads like a spy novel:

“Sabu also supplied lists of targets…At his request, these websites were broken into, their emails and databases were uploaded to Sabu’s FBI server, and the password information and the location of root backdoors were supplied. These intrusions took place in January/February of 2012 and affected over 2000 domains, including numerous foreign government websites in Brazil, Turkey, Syria, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Nigeria, Iran, Slovenia, Greece, Pakistan, and others. A few of the compromised websites that I recollect include the official website of the Governor of Puerto Rico, the Internal Affairs Division of the Military Police of Brazil, the Official Website of the Crown Prince of Kuwait, the Tax Department of Turkey, the Iranian Academic Center for Education and Cultural Research, the Polish Embassy in the UK, and the Ministry of Electricity of Iraq.”

According to Hammond, Sabu also infiltrated a group of hackers that had access to hundreds of Syrian systems including government institutions, banks, and ISPs. “The FBI took advantage of hackers who wanted to help support the Syrian people against the Assad regime, who instead unwittingly provided the U.S. government access to Syrian systems, undoubtedly supplying useful intelligence to the military and their buildup for war.”

“All of this happened under the control and supervision of the FBI.” he adds. “…However, the full extent of the FBI’s abuses remains hidden. Because I pled guilty, I do not have access to many documents that might have been provided to me in advance of trial, such as Sabu’s communications with the FBI. In addition, the majority of the documents provided to me are under a ‘protective order’ which insulates this material from public scrutiny…I believe the documents will show that the government’s actions go way beyond catching hackers and stopping computer crimes.”

Sometimes the stunning nature of a story actually blinds us to its real meaning and this may be one such case. What shines here is, of course, that the U.S. government engaged in criminal behavior. One of its agents facilitated Hammond’s “crime” by giving him necessary information, then encouraging him to use it and supporting him as he did. The government itself helped Hammond load the huge amount of information by giving him access to government servers. The FBI then encouraged and facilitated Hammond’s continued hackactivism against many other sites including those of other governments — there’s no way of telling how much information on other governments it ended up with but, given recent NSA surveillance revelations, nothing would surprise.

If you did what the government did, you would be in jail. After doing what it did, the government is throwing someone else in jail. But the more important issue is why.

It’s clear that the U.S. government was using Hammond and other progressive activists to spy and gather data on other governments world-wide. Coupled with recent revelations about the NSA’ Muscular and Prism programs, these facts paint a picture of a government that conducts surveillance on the world through the Internet circumventing the normal channels of law and courts that are built to restrict this kind of activity.

While information providers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden have demonstrated how the government uses information technology to spy on the world (and its own citizens), Hammond’s revelations show that it uses Internet activists to do the same and then, to shut them up, punishes them for doing it.

What’s more, Hammond’s case exposes the almost non-existent lines between intelligence agencies of this government and the network of contractors it hires to do some of its work. While the government can be slapped for ignoring the laws of privacy that it has consistently violated, these companies are immune to such criticism because they don’t operate under those laws.

Finally, though, it’s not what Hammond did but what he is and what he represents. Other well-known whistle-blowers are often people working for governments or involved in Internet data work who suddenly see the sins of the United States’ immoral and destruction policies — and then act on those light-bulb moments. But Jeremy Hammond is an activist first and foremost, a person whose activities have been as much “on the streets” as in front of a computer. In that sense, he is much more representative of the Internet activists who serve the progressive movement of this country and others throughout the world: people who believe in democracy and justice and then use their computer skills as a logical extension of those beliefs.

To a repressive government likes ours involved in a frenzied search for a way to maintain its control over a decaying and dismantling system, they are the greater danger. Whether through hack work like Hammond’s or through the facilitating of movement communications and organizing on-line, these are the people who manage, design and protect the tools of movement communication.

Jeremy Hammond’s arrest and conviction appear to be a chilling message to us but the most powerful message is the warming one he gave us in his court statement.

“I took responsibility for my actions, by pleading guilty, but when will the government be made to answer for its crimes?” he told the court. “The U.S. hypes the threat of hackers in order to justify the multi billion dollar cyber security industrial complex, but it is also responsible for the same conduct it aggressively prosecutes and claims to work to prevent. The hypocrisy of ‘law and order’ and the injustices caused by capitalism cannot be cured by institutional reform but through civil disobedience and direct action. Yes I broke the law, but I believe that sometimes laws must be broken in order to make room for change.”

A person who makes that statement facing ten years in jail is a “hero”…without qualification.

(Disclaimer: I am proud to serve on the May First/People Link Leadership Committee with attorney Gráinne O’Neill who is one of Jeremy Hammond’s lawyers.)

[seemslikeadream]

An FBI informant led hacks against 30 countries—now we know which ones


By Dell Cameron (Google+) on October 01, 2014
A Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) informant targeted more than two dozen countries in a series of high-profile cyberattacks in 2012. The names of many of those countries have remained secret, under seal by a court order—until now.

A cache of leaked IRC chat logs and other documents obtained by the Daily Dot reveals the 30 countries—including U.S. partners, such as the United Kingdom and Australia—tied to cyberattacks carried out under the direction of Hector Xavier Monsegur, better known as Sabu, who served as an FBI informant at the time of the attacks.

The actual attacks were carried out by highly skilled hacktivist Jeremy Hammond, who broke into countless international websites identified by his partner, Monsegur. At the time, Hammond was unaware that Monsegur was working as an FBI informant. Hammond was arrested in March 2012 on charges based largely on information provided by the man he knew as Sabu.

Amassed by federal agents with direct access to communications between Anonymous hacktivists, the private correspondence of Hammond and Monsegur, cofounder of hacktivist crew LulzSec, reveals the facilities of the AntiSec hacking group, who, under the FBI’s constant surveillance, launched successive cyberattacks against foreign government networks.

Databases containing the login credentials, financial details, and private emails of foreign citizens, and in some cases government agents, were exfiltrated by hackers tasked by Monsegur to do as much damage as possible. After they stole the data, it was routinely uploaded, at Monsegur’s instruction, to a server under the FBI’s control, according to court statements.

The names of the countries involved in these attacks remain redacted by order of Judge Loretta A. Preska of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan. However, a sentencing memorandum filed last year reveals that Hammond’s attorneys, Susan G. Kellman and Sarah Kunstler, believed the criminal nature of Monsegur’s undercover activities warranted closer scrutiny by the court.

“Why was our government, which presumably controlled Mr. Monsegur during this period, using Jeremy Hammond to collect information regarding the vulnerabilities of foreign government websites and in some cases, disabling them,” Hammond’s attorneys wrote in December 2013.

“This question is especially relevant today, amidst near daily public revelations about government’s efforts, worldwide, to monitor the communications of, and gather intelligence on, world leaders.”

Two weeks after the memorandum was filed, Preska sentenced Hammond to 10 years behind bars, the maximum allowed under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Monsegur, however, walked free in May with a year of probation. Preska, who also ruled over Monsegur’s case, and the U.S. Attorney’s office praised Monsegur for his role in Hammond’s conviction.

The FBI refused to comment on Hammond's case or Monsegur's involvement as an informant, saying only that the agency adheres strictly to the U.S. Attorney General's guidelines.

The 94-page memorandum from Hammond’s legal team was eventually published in April 2014 by the document-leaks website Cryptome. It contains a summary of discovery materials—evidence collected by the FBI against Hammond—that details Monsegur’s integral role in a slew of computer crimes. Due to the protective court order, however, the names of all foreign countries involved in the 2012 cyberattacks were all carefully blacked out.

Memorandum redacted

A section of Kellman and Kunstler’s letter, redacted by the court.

The names of several countries allegedly targeted by Monsegur have been published by major news sources in the past, including the New York Times, which listed the names of six countries in an article published last April.

A joint investigation this summer by the Daily Dot and Motherboard further revealed that Monsegur ordered fellow hackers to deface government websites and steal confidential information from servers in Turkey and Brazil, according to sealed court documents leaked to the reporters. Additionally, Monsegur played a crucial role in staging high-profile cyberattacks against FBI security contractor ManTech, and the Texas intelligence firm Stratfor, the latter of which suffered an estimated $3.78 million in damages as a result of the breach.

Below is an unredacted version of Hammond’s sentencing memorandum drafted by the Daily Dot. Although the original document was unavailable, leaked chat logs, which correspond to the bates numbers cited next to each bullet point, identify the names of the countries censored by the court.

This is the first time this information has been made public.

Note: Text in yellow indicates the names previously redacted from the court document. Click on the linked "BS" numbers to view the corresponding chat logs between Monsegur (“leondavidson“) and Hammond (“yohoho”), which were used by the Daily Dot to un-redact the names.

Discovery timeline pertaining to hacks of foreign websites

Jan. 23, 2012:

• Mr. Monsegur gives Mr. Hammond a list of Brazil targets with Plesk vulnerabilities and asks him to “hit these… for our brazilian squad.” (BS 104988 - 104989)

• Hammond hacks one of these targets and shows Monsegur the site contains 287 domains and 1330 different email accounts. Monsegur says he will give these targets to Brazillian hacker “Hivitja” (actually Havittaja) to hack the sites. Monsegur tells Hammond to create a root backdoor (“just backdoor urls”) so the sites can be accessed again. Hammond also gives Monsegur passwords for some of the sites. (BS 104989 - 104990)

• Monsegur identifies additional targets for Hammond. Hammond confirms that he successfully gained access to two of them. One of the servers contains 3520 domains, many of them in Netherlands and Belgium. Another contains 392 Brazil domains. (BS 104991 - 105013)

• Hammond explains to Monsegur how to use root backdoors and where to find the emails and databases. (BS 105013 - 105014)

• Monsegur says he is finding more targets (“finding new juicy targets”) and asks for root backdoor instructions again, which Hammond provides. (BS 105014)

• Monsegur provides Hammond with targets in Slovenia. Hammond gains access to one that contains 62 domains and 96 email accounts. (BS 105028 - 105029)

• Monsegur provides more international targets and says he is “looking for embassies [sic] and consulates” [sic]. Hammond provides access to two of them. (BS 105029 - 105030)

• Monsegur asks Hammond to access a Brazil site, but he is unable to gain access. (BS 105041)

• Monsegur gives Hammond more Brazil targets, including Globo, which he describes as a “big target.” Hammond provides passwords. (BS 105041 - 105042)

• Monsegur provides more Brazil targets. Hammond gains access to one of them and provides the password, as requested. (BS 105044-105046)

• Monsegur provides a long list of targets from many different international countries including United Kingdom, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Republic of Maldives, Philippines, Laos, Libya, Turkey, Sudan, India, Malaysia, South Africa, Yemen, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Trinidad and Tobago, Lebanon, Kuwait, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Argentina (BS 105061-105063)

• Monsegur tells Hammond that he will give the Turkey government sites to a Turkish hacking group known as RedHack (“the .gov.tr’s will be handled Redhack famous Turkish hackers”) and tells Hammond that the sites he has given him are “high priority”—as if he were placing an order. (BS 105063)

• Monsegur invites Hammond to the RedHack channel so Hammond can provide the Turkey sites (“accept invite”). Monsegur also provides more Turkish domains (BS 105065 - 105066)

• Hammond tells Monsegur that one of the servers has mail for 22 Turkey government domains and another has mail for about 600 domains. (BS 105067)

• Monsegur creates a chat room and invites Hammond and an alleged member of RedHack. They exchange information regarding thousands of Turkey sites. (BS 62889)

• Hammond explains to the alleged Redhack member how to access the root backdoors of the Turkey sites. (BS 62889-62897)

Jan 26, 2012:

• Monsegur follows up on foreign government targets he provided Hammond “last night.” Hammond sends back a list of the sites he did not gain access to, including government sites in Libya, Yemen, Sudan, Philippines, Iran, and United Kingdom. (BS 105077-105078)

• Monsegur asks for the list again. Monsegur again asks for instructions on how to access root backdoors. Hammond gives Monsegur the information. (BS 105080-105081)

• Monsegur provides more Iran targets to which he wants access. (Monsegur: “lend me an hour of your time to bang out these Iranian targets.”) Hammond gains access to one that hosts seven domains and 56 email accounts. (BS 105091)

• Monsegur provides two targets in India. Hammond cannot gain access to either. (BS 105091 - 105092)

Feb 2, 2012:

• Monsegur provides more targets, including a government site in United States and government sites in Nigeria, Republic of Maldives, Paraguay, Saint Lucia, and Puerto Rico. Mr Monsegur asks again for instructions on how to access root backdoors. (BS 67554)

• Monsegur provides targets in Greece, United Kingdom, and Turkey. Hammond accesses one of the Greece sites that contains 135 domains and 287 email accounts. (BS 67559 - 67561)

Feb 15, 2012:

• Monsegur provides targets in Slovenia. He tells Hammond that these sites are for “tony, the guy who hacked kingcope.” (BS 105191)

• Monsegur tells Hammond he is “setting up a new box to serve as another for onion for us as a third backup” and says, “I want us to have redundant backups for all our shit.” (BS 105192-105193)

• Hammond provides access to some of the Slovenian sites. He creates three backdoors and tells Monsegur that they contain hundreds of domains and emails. Hammond comments “hopefully were getting something out of all this.” Monsegur responds, “trust me…everything i do serves a purpose ;P” (BS 105195)

• • •

Update 11:54am ET, Oct. 2: The FBI has refused to comment on any aspect of Jeremy Hammond's case.

Techno-Fascism (NSA) and the Obama Administration
by NORMAN POLLACK
History is a holistic political-structural process, Marx’s dialectical framework notwithstanding, because even allowing for contradiction there are successive stages of integration, from each of which conflicting tendencies are generated. There is nothing deterministic here, merely the assertion that reality has a unified character, whether or not experiencing social struggle. And in America, regrettably not, upper groups maintaining internal economic-ideological supremacy, beginning, I suspect, from the late-19th century, and progressively tightening its control over society through time up to and including the present. This is not an empty formula that radicals have learned through rote—the experience of gradually shrinking boundaries within which to achieve social change becomes apparent on an almost daily basis, the rapidity of the process now sufficient cause for alarm—yet met with false consciousness below, constant movements toward confrontation and war both to instill among the populace loyalty, consensus, silence, and among upper groups, the impetus for militarism and capitalist expansion (themselves structurally integrated), false consciousness above of another sort: a pathological quest for global dominance of the international system when that system itself no longer fears America.

America in decline, or even in not absolute terms, but rather, within a world system that in power terms is becoming de-centered (a multipolar framework), is losing its way, becoming desperate, striking out at real and imagined enemies (some from the past, as in an anticommunism never put to rest), tempted to manufacture crises as a way of preserving domestic cohesion, paramount for clinging to the unilateral military dominance to which it had been accustomed since World War 2, or at least its symbols if not its substance. Decline is never hospitable ground for democracy, particularly a democracy that requires, as a condition of its functioning, a permanent state of war—where we have been since perhaps the Korean War; and hence, a questionable democracy at best, and since the Bush-Obama years no longer subject to debate. I say, the shrinking boundaries on a daily basis for achieving social change: Therefore, let’s go back several days to three separate signs bearing out the foregoing discussion, all, I believe, interrelated, because rooted in the needs of an American capitalism struggling to protect its hegemonic status on top the global pyramid.

I

In my CounterPunch article, “FBI Authorized Cyberattacks: Further Signs of Unfolding Fascism,” (May 6), we met Hector Monsegur, a true American PATRIOT, as advertised by, and from the standpoint of, the US government, one whom, because the FBI, through harsh threats of criminal prosecution against the hacker group, Anonymous, had been turned (gleefully, it would seem) him into an informer helping to direct the Bureau’s cyberwarfare campaign against foreign governments and corporations. In the USG’s telling, i.e., the federal prosecutor’s drawn indictment to the Court (praising him to the hilt for his cooperation in implicating the other members of the group—Jeffrey Hammond, for one, serving a 10-year sentence), he moves from Patriot to National Hero for the big snitch and tech-savvy assistance in what amounts to highly illegal attacks, not least because obviously stretching the FBI’s actions beyond US boundaries as well as the nature of the espionage (although possibly cleansed through the Patriot Act responsible for still more gross violations of civil liberties and international law).

With this background, we move to last week in illustration of Obama’s full-court press toward incipient if not also actualized fascism. I say “Obama,” because in this case the FBI but more important a discussion to follow on NSA, one finds a direct projection of/from the government; neither one, again, especially NSA, can be dismissed simply as a “rogue” agency, and instead reflect the pith of Administration policy: pursuit of continued global hegemony through solidification, beyond obviously powerful military forces, of a National Security State, a prime requirement being the practice of surveillance at home and abroad. One of the tests of a democratic polity is accountability at the very top—and regrettably America has neither, the lack of the latter testifying to the absence of the former.

Conversely, the situation now worsens, each daily flagrancy, as in the violation and near-destruction of privacy, equally, rule of law, in government’s working toward that end, reveals the deadly metastasizing of American institutions in general, the courts, Congress, ultimately the people: ramifying consequences of cynicism, corruption, and, to be more charitable than the situation warrants, false consciousness, all in the service of ruling groups integrated in the form of financial-industrial-commercial-military elites, with what is now termed the political class (a designation I find, as to its role and independent power, a nifty slogan yet wholly inadequate ) merely their man/maid servants, for an older generation of radicals, then, following Veblen, the Swiss Guards of the Vested Interests, servicing their needs in domestic and foreign policy.

Take the last week in May (let’s skip over the “political class” in favor of the institutionalized structure of power, starting with POTUS in collaboration with the FBI and CIA), here our friend Monsegur (known by the alias “Sabu”), the Guardian (June 1) in its subhead saying it all: “Authorities credit Hector Xavier Monsegur with helping them cripple Anonymous in lenient sentence of time served.” He gets off—the corruption of the courts noted above. Monsegur, the Guardian reports, “who by the US government’s calculations participated in computer hacker attacks on more than 250 public and private entities at a cost of up to $50m in damages, was released from a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday after the judge saluted his ‘extraordinary cooperation’ with the FBI.”

Who is more guilty in this farce, Monsegur, or Loretta Preska, chief judge of the federal district court of the southern district of New York, is a moot question, and, standing behind her, the FBI’s crass practices of intimidation from which the federal court system looks away or actively praises. Monsegur had faced “a maximum sentence according to official guidelines of more than 26 years.” Nope. In pronouncing sentence the judge “repeatedly praised what she called his ‘truly extraordinary cooperation,” providing USG “sophisticated and complex assistance” enabling it “to pierce the secrecy surrounding LutzSec [a UK and US hacker group that had broken away from Anonymous] and successfully prosecute its members.” Informant on others, FBI cyberwarrior par excellence—not a hero, however, to members of Anonymous, which, as one told the Guardian: “Monsegur is, first and foremost a criminal; the FBI’s cyber crime task force are his co-conspirators. While operating under their supervision, Monsegur committed numerous felonies which should in no way be excused due to his protected informant status.”

Well-put, and to me, chalk up another score for fascism, the leading domestic federal law-enforcement agency in the commission of crimes, turning those it prosecutes for criminal punishment into informants in exchange for leniency—while in addition pursuing more sinister ends, to wit, seeking (as does mass surveillance itself) to cow the populace into submission. Here the Anonymous spokesperson is right on target: “The FBI continues to use captured informants, who commit egregious crimes in pursuit of reduced sentences, for the sole purpose of creating ‘examples’ to frighten the public. They do this with the hope of pacifying online dissent and snuffing out journalistic investigations into the US government’s misconduct.” This is what I meant by the metastasizing effects of government policy on behalf of global hegemony and domestic social control, both defining a unified whole. (Hammond, convicted, operated under Monsegur’s direction, “launch[ing] cyber-attacks around the world,” and then sentenced because failing to be turned. In addressing the court, he told Preska: “The government celebrates my conviction and imprisonment, hoping that it will close the door on the full story. I took responsibility for my actions, by pleading guilty, but WHEN WILL THE GOVERNMENT BE MADE TO ANSWER FOR ITS CRIMES?” (my caps.)

Monsegur went on to secure convictions of others. In the court memorandum disclosing how Hammond was caught, an obvious case of entrapment, it becomes clear that Monsegur “had been put at the hub of a vast web of surveillance,” for it was revealed that while he remained in New York, he “’engaged in online chats with Hammond (who was then in Chicago), while coordinating with FBI agents in New York, physical surveillance teams deployed in Chicago, and an electric surveillance unit in Washington DC.’” When in June 2011 the FBI came knocking on his door, “[h]is transformation from a hacker legend into an informant was instantaneous—he agreed to cooperate with the government immediately,” to which, at sentencing, Preska was in fulsome praise, the quickness allowing the FBI to move against LutzSec before its members could be warned. As a UC Hastings law professor (obviously not John Yoo of White House Counsel torture-authorization fame), summarizing Monsegur’s work for the FBI in launching attacks against foreign governments, stated: a sting operation for a crime already in motion was one thing, but it was quite another, “’when you contribute to the creation, inducement and execution of a crime that never was. Particularly when those crimes may very well affect our foreign policy.’” Welcome Team FBI USA, Obama coach-cheerleader, etc.

II

Turning next to the NSA, one sees techno-fascism in full parade-dress, massive surveillance, here, facial recognition data, now combined with practically every other conceivable means of collecting and storing information on Americans—and as much as possible, globally. (Hayden, Alexander, Clapper, the whole leadership crew, past, present, future, listen up: how about the measurement, via forced registration, of men’s private parts—in millimeters, of course, to ensure accuracy in order to intimidate against dissent, facilitate government prosecution, induce apathy toward and complicity with public policy, therefore carrying further the purposes of massive surveillance? Seemingly, no stone can be left unturned in discovering and uprooting subversion.) Here, James Risen and Laura Poitras—both of whom deserve and have earned the respect of those committed to civil liberties—in their New York Times article, “N.S.A. Collecting Millions of Faces from Web Images,” (May 31), present a breaking story in what one might call a chapter in runaway fascism, particularly odious on top of everything else, including, if I may digress to establish the spirit of government making facial recognition a viable tool of the megalomaniac NSA in its quest to obliterate privacy in world-dimensional terms.

I press for small details to illumine the institutional core of repression, here a societal pattern, if we keep to the short-term, which has been well-established since the enshrinement of Sect. 25 of the Patriot Act (with that Act legitimating so much of government policy, one wonders why any demurral about naming fascism for what it is—the signs, from militarism, to surveillance, to financial-corporate concentration, to xenophobic and ethnocentric mental patterns, all around us and germane to the public acceptance of hegemonic goals). Charlie Savage’s NYT article, “U.S. Seeks to Censor More of Memo That Approved Drone Strike on American,” (May 28), refers both to Obama’s personally authorized assassination of a US citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki—drone assassination, as I see it, itself a form of, even prime example of, techno-fascism, the pressing of a button halfway around the world to leave a blood spat where a human being once stood—and the white-collar version of techno-fascism of the more routine kind, REDACTION, as a means of protecting government from the charge of, and evidence demonstrating, war crimes. He does not call either, a war crime; emphasis is on cover-up as a general proposition of hiding illegality.

Obama-Holden, the Castor-Pollux of Censorship, have, short of rewriting the Constitution, done all in their power to forestall condemnation for the killing of an American citizen without an indictment, the right to counsel, a jury trial of his/her peers, due process in all its manifold accordance of rights, and instead—no boots on the ground—murder via impersonal technological magic, an Obama favorite, given his usage far exceeding that of his predecessor (metastasizing, in this case, down to the nitty-gritty of conducting warfare, already plagued with atrocities enough). Savage writes: “One week after the Obama administration said it would comply with a federal appeals court ruling ordering it to make public portions of a Justice Department memo that signed off on the targeted killing of a United States citizen, the administration is now asking the court for permission to censor additional passages of the document.” Disgraceful, no, nauseating—why? Not only the stall-tactic, but that the death-authorization was a SECRET MEMO, only seeing the light of day through being forced through an FIA lawsuit. Suppose the memo were allowed to stand, and then gather motion as binding precedent: the killing of citizens, whether on grounds of national security or, say, anticommunism, or counterterrorism, would be standard operating procedure. Hide the memo, it stinks to high heaven!

The designated driver/culprit, the memo’s principal author, fresh from Harvard Law (an ideal soul mate of Obama, who as president of the Law Review had not written an article for it—HLS, what a staggering decline since the days of Holmes and Roscoe Pound), is David Barron, confirmed the week before “to an appeals court judgeship,” what he had been to DOJ Monsegur had been to FBI, complicit through direct involvement in murder. The memo, July 16, 2010, al-Awlaki struck down in Yemen September 2011, it was only the ACLU-NYT suit seeking the memo’s public disclosure that got us this far. Savage: “The Justice Department said it would soon disclose a version of the memo with the additional passages it wants to keep redacted blocked out. It said the additional passages discussed classified fact not legal reasoning.” Classification, the mother of all redactions, has been the handy device behind which the Obama government hides, and the basis for its forays into somewhat clumsy storm-trooper-like attacks on whistleblowers via the Espionage Act. This is truly an embarrassment, if not outright sign of fascism.

In January 2013 a Federal District Court judge “ruled that the government could withhold the memo from the public entirely,” which was overturned this past April by a panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (NY), ruling “that the government must make public portions of the memo that lay out legal analysis, though not facts based on classified intelligence.” Even this did not satisfy USG which in a new filing claimed that what “the court had designated for public release contained further information that should be exempt from disclosure.” An assistant US attorney—DOJ at all times up to its neck in fighting disclosure—chastised the higher court, essentially for its stupidity (its decision based on “inadvertence or mistake”) and moved “to keep its entire motion seeking additional redactions SECRET” (my caps.), a nerviness I should think beyond the pale, to which the court denied “that request” and said “that as much of the motion as possible would have to be made public.” The court then went one step further, revealing “new details about several previous rounds of then-secret negotiations between the court and the government, dating back to February [2014], over what would be redacted.”

The National Security State can be seen here to vitiate the rule of law, secrecy being in the DNA of the Executive permeating through all its agencies and bureaus, not least, DOJ. Will we ever get the truth? A week ago Solicitor General Verrilli Jr. said with release of the memo another appeal for redaction would follow, including the identity of the agency responsible for al-Awlaki’s killing—which everyone knows was the CIA. A disheartening conclusion: “Although it is widely known that the C.I.A. operates drones, including from a base in Saudi Arabia, and that it participated in the operation that killed Mr. Awlaki, the Obama administration still officially treats that information as secret.”

III

Nor is it especially forthcoming about the mass collection of facial recognition data. We return to Risen and Proteus and the discussion of an NSA practice that is not really new, only newly revealed—be it noted–through the Snowden disclosures (their import, more vital, in exposing government usurpation than ever thought possible). The reporters state that NSA “is harvesting huge numbers of images of people from communications that it intercepts through its global surveillance operations for use in sophisticated facial recognition programs, according to top-secret documents.” As indicated before, no area of human identity is safe from government spying. To see a brief list of sources is to gain a sense of the range of surveillance. They write: “The spy agency’s reliance on facial recognition technology has grown significantly over the last four years as the agency has turned to new software to exploit the flood of images included in emails, text messages, social media, videoconferences and other communications, the N.S.A. documents reveal.” (Without Snowden’s revelations, here as with so much else, we would be in the dark, which government, demonstrated by its actions, prefers, the attacks on him from Obama down showing the fear of revelations.) For NSA, technology summons the future—perhaps why I thought of the title, techno-fascism, as though a window had been opened to the utter destruction of privacy, and for Obama, particularly, a pseudo-sophisticated concept of warfare, in effect, that pushing buttons can rule the world. They observe further: “Agency officials believe that technological advances could revolutionize the way that the N.S.A. finds intelligence targets around the world, the documents show. The agency’s ambitions for this highly sensitive ability and the scale of its effort have not previously been disclosed.”

What are we speaking of? “The agency intercepts ‘millions of images per day’—including about 55,000 ‘facial recognition quality images,’” an NSA document summarizes from 2011, as part of enlarging “its mission of tracking suspected terrorists” in what amounts to a dystopian wave-of-the-future position. A 2010 document calls for adopting a “full-arsenal approach,” beyond “traditional communications,” so as to include “biographic and biometric information,” the latter especially not unlike what had been heard in the eugenics movement at the turn of the last century. Whatever the surveillance methods of choice, the act itself does not change, nor the permissiveness of acting: “It is not clear how many people around the world, and how many Americans, might have been caught up in the effort. Neither federal privacy laws nor the nation’s surveillance laws provide specific protections for facial images.” But the phrase of choice in these operations, from whatever source, is SCOOP UP, in turn giving on to a sense of range and scope: “Given the N.S.A.’s foreign intelligence mission, much of the imagery would involve people overseas whose data was scooped up through cable taps, Internet hubs and satellite transmissions.” We expect this from the bulk collection of metadata, but THIS is somehow different, a stripping away of identity per se. A wondrous world of possibilities for repression awaits, as a Carnegie Mellon researcher perhaps unwittingly describes: “’There are still technical limitations [on the total erosion of privacy], but the computational power keeps growing, and the databases keep growing, and the algorithms keep improving.’”

It is fair to say that NSA joins CIA, FBI, FISA Court–but why stop there?—president, Congress, judiciary (with few exceptions), in hunting down human aspiration and social democracy as threats to an America determined to keep its priorities straight: the greatest military the world has ever seen, increasing class differentiation with concentrated wealth confined to a numerically infinitesimal upper group matched symmetrically by a disproportionately growing underclass (a perfect pyramid in the making), and to fill in what is becoming essentially a moral void, a flourishing authoritarianism taking form and expression in global hegemony, intervention, counterrevolution. Painless, at least to the American people, should techno-fascism have its way—with, of course, one catch: fascism of every sort becomes self-devouring, hatred of others, either because they’re different or fail to see the splendiferous light about America, is finally channeled inward as self-hatred, something all of the surveillance and images cannot prevent and probably only accelerate.
MY New York Times Comment on the Risen-Poitras article, same date, follows:

Facial recognition data–in the words of Joseph Welch to Joe McCarthy, “Have you no shame, sir?”, applies equally today, if not more so, addressed to NSA under precisely the same circumstances: the abrogation of American civil liberties.

What is this country coming to? A Surveillance State, National Security State, and, if a may, proto-Totalitarian State–for what else can be said of a government sponsoring the total destruction of privacy of its own people, and attempting the same for the world?

In a society where such destruction is passively accepted–an outrageous assault on human dignity, people simply taking it, is another useful description of totalitarianism. All three branches of government are complicit, each in its own way, in this assault on human dignity. Political party, here bipartisan consensus; Executive, integral part of Obama’s enlargement of power; judiciary, FISAC a travesty, Supreme Court culpable in allowing an/or promoting the invasion of rights.

Facial recognition data merely the next step in a cumulative series of abuses accompanied by the supineness of government to check its own USURPATION. There appear to be no checks left, leaving the nation defenseless against its own inner devils, starting from a pathological anticommunism that has morphed into counterterrorism, with a heavy dose of militarism, xenophobia, and resentment about facing the challenges of a now multipolar world.
A decentralized world structure is seen as abhorrent.

The Strange Case of Barrett Brown

The Death of Truth

LulzSec taken down

[seemslikeadream]

Natasha Bertrand
‏

NEW: A potential development in the Assange case. Jeremy Hammond, who was convicted of computer fraud in 2013 for hacking the private intel firm Stratfor and releasing data to WikiLeaks, has been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia

Per Hammond's team, he was removed last week from prison in Memphis where he's serving a 10-year sentence and moved to VA. Here's more from his spokespeople. (EDVA has not returned request for comment.) This signals a potential expansion of the federal WikiLeaks investigation.

https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/sta ... 4895592450

Barrett Brown
‏
Barrett Brown Retweeted Jeremy Hammond Support Committee
Having heard from Jeremy Hammond a few months back, I know that he's been rather unhappy with Assange for quite a while now (as could be expected, given Hammond's history of active opposition to fascism). Here, his defense committee head provides further background.
11:47 AM - 13 Aug 2018
https://twitter.com/BarrettBrown_/statu ... 1611983872

DOJ Wants To Question Wikileaks Associate Jeremy Hammond, His Supporters Claim
His supporters say that Jeremy Hammond, who took part in the hack of a government intelligence contractor, has been called in by a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia.

Betsy Woodruff
Political Reporter
Updated 09.03.19 10:33AM ET / Published 09.03.19 9:59AM ET

Justice Department investigators want to question a hacker connected to Wikileaks, according to a group of his supporters.

The supporters announced Tuesday that Jeremy Hammond, who participated in the hack of government intelligence contractor Stratfor, has been called in by a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia.

Hammond is currently incarcerated, serving a ten-year prison sentence related to his role in the Stratfor hacks. Emails he hacked from Stratfor subsequently went to Wikileaks.

Last week, authorities removed Hammond from the prison in Memphis, Tenn. where he has been serving his sentence. The statement from his supporters says he is currently in transit and expected to be incarcerated near Alexandria, Virginia.

“Given the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, we don't know the nature or scope of the grand jury's investigation,” the committee said in a statement. Hammond's supporters say they assume this is the same grand jury that Chelsea Manning refused to testify before, leading to her present incarceration.

The statement also said there is “no way he would ever testify before a grand jury,” and that his sentence—which could have ended as soon as December 2019—may now be prolonged indefinitely.

A spokesperson for the Eastern District of Virginia declined to comment.

Manning, the former army intelligence analyst who served seven years in prison after sharing hundreds of thousands of government documents with Wikileaks, is currently incarcerated because of her refusal to answer questions from a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia about Wikileaks.

Hammond’s supporters say they believe he would face questions about the same investigation.

Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District have helmed the Justice Department’s investigation and prosecution of Wikileaks.

In May, the DOJ charged Wikileaks founder Julian Assange with violating the Espionage Act for revealing government secrets. The move horrified some free speech advocates, who noted that it was the first time the U.S. government charged anyone under that law just for publishing material.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/doj-wants ... ters-claim

Jeremy Hammond, Anonymous Hacker and WikiLeaks Source, Summoned to Testify Before a Federal Grand Jury
Dell CameronToday 10:00am
An FBI surveillance photo taken of Jeremy Hammond on February 29, 2012, six days before the SWAT raid on his Chicago home.
An FBI surveillance photo taken of Jeremy Hammond on February 29, 2012, six days before the SWAT raid on his Chicago home.
Photo: Federal Bureau of Investigation (Leaked
Imprisoned hacktivist Jeremy Alexander Hammond, a former WikiLeaks source once regarded as the FBI’s most-wanted cybercriminal, has been called to testify before a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia, Gizmodo has learned.

On Saturday, the Jeremy Hammond Support Committee announced that the 34-year-old Chicago hacker had been transferred from his medium-security prison in Memphis, Tennessee, to a federal transfer center in Oklahoma City. He is likely in transit, they said, to Virginia, where he’s expected to be questioned before a grand jury regarding his past ties with WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization whose founder, Julian Assange, is currently facing a slew of federal charges, including several under the Espionage Act.

“Given the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, we don’t know the nature or scope of the grand jury’s investigation. However, our assumption is that this is the same grand jury that Chelsea Manning is currently being incarcerated for refusing to testify before,” his supporters said in a statement.

Article preview thumbnail
WikiLeaks Helped Hackers Rifle Through Stolen Company Emails, Leaked FBI Docs Show

The revelation that U.S. prosecutors have prepared an indictment against Julian Assange, a fact the …

Read more
Hammond’s transfer and potential testimony, which supporters say he’s unlikely to give, raises new questions about the scope of the government’s criminal case against WikiLeaks. The charges against Assange have thus far been limited to events linked to the release of classified U.S. government documents provided by former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who has herself being held in a Virginia jail for refusing to give a grand jury her testimony.

In November, Gizmodo reported that WikiLeaks had provided Hammond and his AntiSec hacking crew with access to a custom search engine tool in early 2012 in an effort to aid the hackers in rifling through a batch of more than 5 million emails, which AntiSec had plundered from the servers of a private intelligence firm the month before. That year, WikiLeaks would begin publishing and sharing with its worldwide media partners the same tranche of emails, which it named the “Global Intelligence Files.”

An anarchist who waged cyberwar against police departments, private security firms, and other institutions he deemed symbols of tyranny and social control, Hammond pleaded guilty in 2013 to attacking Stratfor, the global intelligence firm based in Austin, Texas. Among Stratfor’s clients at the time were the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense, employees of the National Security Agency, countless police agency heads, and, among other notable figures, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

After stealing some 60,000 credit cards from the company, Hammond and his “revolutionary comrades” carried out what they called an “act of loving egalitarian criminality,” using the cards to donate tens of thousands of dollars to charities, prisoner support groups, and digital rights organizations, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Greenpeace, and the American Red Cross. The hackers’ eventually totaled more than $700,000 in fraudulent charges, according to one FBI estimate.

To his downfall, Hammond counted among his closest comrades in arms, unknowingly, an informant for the FBI, whose every conversation with him online—including many instigating criminal acts—was closely monitored by federal agents in the bureau’s Manhattan field office.

“Jeremy pled guilty to put an end to the case against him,” his supporters said. “He pled guilty because he had no interest in cooperating with the government. He was sentenced to 10 years—the maximum allowed under his plea agreement—and has been serving his time, counting down to the day that he will finally be free. That day was supposed to come in mid-December of 2019.”

Hammond, his supporters say, has been voluntarily enrolled in an intensive substance abuse program known as RDAP, which studies have found, according to the Bureau of Prisons, to reduce drug relapse and recidivism in prisoners. Those who successfully complete the program are eligible for a 12-month reduction of their sentence. His legal team now believes, however, that because he was called to testify in Virginia, he is no longer eligible for early release, flushing months of hard work down the drain.

“The government’s effort to try to compel Jeremy to testify is punitive and mean-spirited,” his supporters said, adding: “In bringing him against his will to the Eastern District of Virginia, the government has put an end to his participation in the RDAP drug program, effectively adding a year to his sentence.”

AntiSec: Anarchists of Anonymous

Under the flag of Anonymous, Hammond and his team spent most of 2011 laying waste to government websites, with a particular focus on law enforcement. While the group’s chosen name, AntiSec, was derived from the anti-security movement founded over a decade before, in reality, they had little in common with the movement, the chief focus of which was waging war on the security industry. Hammond’s AntiSec was instead primarily virulent towards capitalists, prisons, and police.

Unlike LulzSec and most of the other groups who had claimed the Anonymous name for their own, AntiSec, like Hammond, who had once placed on a terrorist watchlist, was purely anarchistic.

Citing coordinated crackdowns on Occupy Wall Street protesters in 2011, AntiSec pilfered the emails, passwords, and credit card information of the New York State Association of Chiefs of Police and the California Statewide Law Enforcement Association. They also attacked what Hammond called the police “supply chain,” breaking into the website of a military and law enforcement equipment supplier and then gleefully publishing the home addresses of thousands of its military and police customers.

“While we attacked the institutions of capitalism, it would only make sense to attack those who enforce it, the inherently oppressive protectors of property and purveyors of social control; the pigs, the fuzz... the police,” Hammond wrote in a press release announcing the attacks.

A leaked photo of Jeremy Hammond’s laptop taken at an FBI forensics lap shortly after his arrest.
A leaked photo of Jeremy Hammond’s laptop taken at an FBI forensics lap shortly after his arrest.
Photo: FBI
In another post touting the defacement and destruction of some 70 law enforcement websites, which had been carried out in the names of Anonymous hackers arrested by police, AntiSec wrote: “We have no sympathy for any of the officers or informants who may be endangered by the release of their personal information.” For too long, the hackers said, police had spied on them and abused their own personal information. “Retribution,” they declared, “was at hand.”

Prior to breaking away from the mostly Britain-based hackers who merely did hacks “for the lulz,” AntiSec published private emails, addresses, and passwords belonging to the Arizona Department of Public Safety. In a statement titled “Chinga La Migra” (fuck immigration enforcement), AntiSec cited as justification SB 1070, an Arizona law that made it a misdemeanor for legal immigrants to be caught without a government ID card.

The ASCII art that accompanied the post, released in the name of LulzSec (even though its core members were not directly involved) included a crudely drawn assault rifle with the phrase “off the pigs” written on the stock.

A LulzSec press release that included emails, phone numbers, passwords and home addresses stolen by AntiSec hackers from the Arizona Department of Public Safety in June 2011.
A LulzSec press release that included emails, phone numbers, passwords and home addresses stolen by AntiSec hackers from the Arizona Department of Public Safety in June 2011.
While under interrogation by British police the following month, one core LulzSec member would tell two detectives that he thought the attack “was too extreme.” The cops played dumb. “What does it mean, sorry?” one asked.

It means, the underage hacker said while explaining he’d had to Google the phrase himself, “Kill the police.”

FBI’s Misleading Stratfor Account

In early March 2012, the week of Hammond’s arrest, the FBI began to paint a picture for the press of how the hack on Stratfor went down. It rarely resembled reality.

In a story titled “Inside the Stratfor Attack,” a New York Times reporter labeled as “conspiracy theorists” anyone who believed the FBI had simply allowed the attack to occur. The story included a timeline offered by FBI officials that suggested Hammond had first hacked Stratfor and then notified one of the bureau’s informants, Hector Monsegur, a 28-year-old foster parent living in Manhattan’s Alphabet City neighborhood who went by the name Sabu.

The FBI, the Times reported, had not learned of the breach until Dec. 6, 2011, “after the hackers had already infiltrated the company’s network.” But FBI surveillance records leaked to journalists in 2014 told a radically different story.

An unknown hacker named “Hyrriiya” announces he’s hacked Stratfor on December 4, 2011.
An unknown hacker named “Hyrriiya” announces he’s hacked Stratfor on December 4, 2011.
The files, which remain under seal at the time of writing, revealed that Monsegur had been informed that Stratfor was already compromised two days earlier, on Dec. 4, when another hacker—whom the FBI has yet to charge or even publicly acknowledge—provided him with stolen credit cards belonging to several Stratfor customers. The list included employees of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the defense contractor Raytheon, and the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), among others.

“[W]e would love to penetrate their users/network for #antisec,” Monsegur told the hacker, who went by the handle Hyrriiya, “definitely get me details so I can begin working “

On December 4, 2011, “Sabu,” whose computer was being keylogged by FBI, learns that Stratfor has been hacked.
On December 4, 2011, “Sabu,” whose computer was being keylogged by FBI, learns that Stratfor has been hacked.
Photo: FBI (Leaked
Hammond would not learn about the breach for a full day, records reveal. On Dec. 5, he was pinged by Monsegur, who showed him the stolen credit card data and said another hacker had offered AntiSec “complete control” of a “big intelligence company.” Within a few hours, Monsegur introduced Hammond to Hyrriiya, warning both to keep the conversations in a single private room. The FBI was recording everything.

The idea that the FBI was not aware of the events runs contrary to the government’s claims in federal court. Monsegur’s relationship with the bureau was described by the judge overseeing the case as “virtual around-the-clock cooperation.” Monsegur’s own attorney announced in court that the FBI was tracking “everything he typed with a key-logging program.” By that time, logs of the conversations that showed Hammond had been encouraged to attack Stratfor were already in the hands of his defense team. But rather than fight the case, he agreed to a deal, which limited his sentence to 10 years behind bars.

FBI-logged chats show Monsegur (Sabu), at the time an FBI informant, introducing Hammond (@sup_g) to an unknown hacker who to help AntiSec breach Stratfor’s servers.
FBI-logged chats show Monsegur (Sabu), at the time an FBI informant, introducing Hammond (@sup_g) to an unknown hacker who to help AntiSec breach Stratfor’s servers.
Photo: FBI (Leaked
The FBI would have good reason to exclude these details, however, when it granted an interview to the New York Times and other reporters. Even informants permitted to engage in criminal activity under the Attorney General’s guidelines are forbidden to “initiate or instigate a plan or strategy to commit a federal, state, or local offense.”

In May 2012, a letter surfaced attributed to “Hyrriiya” and addressed to Hammond’s defense team. “I am stating and admitting, AS FACT,” it said, “that I was the person who hacked Stratfor.” The letter pointed to specific private conversations between Hyrriiya and Monsegur that could not have been known by anyone else—other than the FBI.

A leaked confidential forensics report would later show that Stratfor was at least partly to blame for the disaster (or at least would be in the post-Equifax era in which corporations are scrutinized over flawed security practices). The investigation, conducted by a Verizon security team, found that Stratfor had failed to implement proper controls over vital systems, which were not protected by a firewall and lacked proper file integrity-monitoring. The report explicitly states, in fact, that “several distinct vulnerabilities and network configurations existed” that enabled the hackers to easily slip in.

Stratfor’s network was “wide open,” it said. Attaining root access to its servers was so easy it didn’t even require a password. A leaked internal memo would later calculate the total cost of the breach at $3.78 million, some of which Texas journalist Barrett Brown was later ordered to pay in the form of restitution, though he took no part in the attack.

Enter WikiLeaks, After the Hack

FBI surveillance records reveal much about the nature of WikiLeaks’ involvement in the Stratfor attack, all of it occurring well after the fact. AntiSec members, including Hammond and Monsegur, both claimed at different times to be in contact with Assange—or, at least, a person whom they believed to be him. It’s impossible to know for certain the identity of the person with whom they were corresponding. (At one point, the hackers even thought that maybe they were talking to Assange while he was pretending to be someone else.)

Nevertheless, the FBI-captured conversations indicate that WikiLeaks did not formally request access to the emails until after AntiSec had gone public about the attack on Dec. 25, 2011, a day the hacking group referred to as “LulzXMas.”

Hammond (@sup_g) discussing the release of Stratfor emails to WikiLeaks with other AntiSec members on December 29, 2011.
Hammond (@sup_g) discussing the release of Stratfor emails to WikiLeaks with other AntiSec members on December 29, 2011.
Screenshot: FBI (Leaked
On Dec. 26 of that year, as AntiSec released some 30,000 Stratfor credit cards to the public, Monsegur informed Hammond that Assange had reached out. “I think wikileaks wants the emails,” he said. “JA says he wants to look at emails first, see if they can do something with it,” he added. “[I]f the mails are in fact juicy to the point wikileaks will accept it then its a wrap.”

Being a part of a major WikiLeaks release, Hammond believed, would be “groundbreaking.”

Close to midnight on Dec. 29, Hammond announced that Assange was “almost done copying the files.” Other hackers in the chatroom, most of whom had been tasked with running up fraudulent charges with credit cards stolen from Stratfor, were warned to keep the partnership under wraps. Hammond wondered aloud: “I wonder how criminally liable JA and folks could be by admitting having received hacked stolen and controversial files from us.”

Another hacker replied, “Well, NPR wanted them.”

Hammond (yohoho) and Monsegur (leondavidson) discussing contact with WikiLeaks on January 12, 2012, two months before Hammond was arrested.
Hammond (yohoho) and Monsegur (leondavidson) discussing contact with WikiLeaks on January 12, 2012, two months before Hammond was arrested.
Screenshot: FBI (Leaked
Two weeks later, Hammond reported that he was back in contact with Assange. The hackers were growing restless and wondered when their partnership with WikiLeaks would be announced.

“[H]e gave me access to a search engine script for these [S]tratfor emails,” Hammond said. Asked whether the script worked, Hammond said it was “pretty primitive but it works,” adding that “JA” had also offered to share access with anyone on AntiSec’s team, and that he’d asked WikiLeaks to give Monsegur access. Monsegur, meanwhile, was also secretly hosting the emails on an FBI server.

“Just wait for him to hit me up,” Monsegur said back, “these wikileaks are bitches about things. they asked me to hack [the] icelandic government. I did it and they stopped talking to me.”

“I felt like a whore,” he said
https://gizmodo.com/jeremy-hammond-anon ... 1837830636

and news that helps us remember there are 29 ongoing federal investigations into Trump and his campaign—yes, 29

[seemslikeadream]

Imprisoned Activist Jeremy Hammond Called Against His Will to Testify Before Federal Grand Jury in the EDVA

Virginia Grand Jury Believed to be the Same Probe that Previously Called on Chelsea Manning, David House
—

Alexandria, VA — Imprisoned information activist Jeremy Hammond has been called against his will to testify before a Federal Grand Jury in the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA). Last week Hammond was removed from the Federal Correctional Institution in Memphis, Tennessee where he was serving a 10-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to charges he hacked the private intelligence contractor Stratfor Global Intelligence. At the time of his transfer Hammond was enrolled in the Federal Bureau of Prison’s intensive Residential Drug Abuse Program (RDAP) which upon completion qualifies participating inmates for early release. Hammond’s prison release date was projected to come around mid December of 2019 but because of his removal from the RDAP program and the summons to this grand jury his time incarcerated could be extended by over two years. Although Hammond is still in transit it is believed he will be detained in or near Alexandria, VA for the duration of his proceedings.

The following is a statement from the Jeremy Hammond Support Committee regarding these developments:

“It’s with great sadness and anger we announce that Jeremy Hammond is being brought to the Eastern District of Virginia in an effort to compel him to testify before a grand jury. Given the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, we don’t know the nature or scope of the grand jury’s investigation. However, our assumption is that this is the same grand jury that Chelsea Manning is currently being incarcerated for refusing to testify before.

“Jeremy pled guilty in 2013 in the Southern District of New York to one count of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. He agreed to plead guilty pursuant to a non-cooperating plea agreement that granted him immunity from further prosecution in all 94 federal judicial districts. At the time of his guilty plea, Jeremy made a statement that made it clear that he was pleading guilty so that he could speak freely about his actions and move on with his life without putting anyone else in jeopardy:

‘Today I pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. This was a very difficult decision. I hope this statement will explain my reasoning. I believe in the power of the truth. In keeping with that, I do not want to hide what I did or to shy away from my actions. This non-cooperating plea agreement frees me to tell the world what I did and why, without exposing any tactics or information to the government and without jeopardizing the lives and well-being of other activists on and offline.’

The full statement is available here

“Jeremy pled guilty to put an end to the case against him. He pled guilty because he had no interest in cooperating with the government. He was sentenced to 10 years —the maximum allowed under his plea agreement— and has been serving his time, counting down to the day that he will finally be free. That day was supposed to come in mid-December of 2019.

“The government’s effort to try to compel Jeremy to testify is punitive and mean-spirited. Jeremy has spent nearly 10 years in prison because of his commitment to his firmly held beliefs. There is no way that he would ever testify before a grand jury. The government knew this when they gave him immunity in every federal jurisdiction in exchange for his guilty plea. In bringing him against his will to the Eastern District of Virginia, the government has put an end to his participation in the RDAP drug program, effectively adding a year to his sentence. (If Jeremy had been permitted to complete the 9-month program, he would have earned a 12-month sentence reduction.) When he refuses to testify, his sentence will be prolonged indefinitely when he is punished with further incarceration for contempt of a court order to testify.



“Like brave grand jury resisters before him, including Chelsea Manning, Jeremy firmly believes that grand juries are repressive tools of the government, used to investigate and intimidate activist communities and are abused by prosecutors to gain access to intelligence to which they are not entitled.

“The U.S. government’s blatant abuse of the grand jury process in this case continues a clear pattern of targeting, isolating, and punishing outspoken truth-tellers and activists. We must stand up and say that enough is enough. We cannot allow the government to use fascist intimidation tactics to target, imprison, silence, and torture, those who threaten their power. We must not let the government fracture us or our support for those who need us most, no matter how they may try to pit us against one another, and we must not allow them to sow fear and distrust in our communities. We must come together as one, united in our support for truth and transparency, and for those who have paid the ultimate price to bring it to us.”


Note to Editors

Jeremy Hammond is being represented by attorneys Sarah Kunstler and Susan Kellman. You can learn more about the Jeremy Hammond Support Committee by visiting freejeremy.net or following them on Twitter at twitter.com/freejeremynet
https://www.sparrowmedia.net/2019/09/im ... -the-edva/

New York Times reporter accused me of threatening her, then called me a hacker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juNBlCH40NU

Barrett Brown
‏
I'm informed I went to prison because I "hacked a company and tipped off an FBI informant", two things I've never been accused of doing. Meanwhile she has recovered well from my threat to "better luck next time", which is admirable, given the sheer brutality of my attack.



Just spoke to Jeremy Hammond’s mother at length for the first time. Among other things, she’s astounded at degree to which FBI’s documented lies about @Stratfor hack - a crime they oversaw for weeks before charging Jeremy and myself - have been accepted as fact despite documents
https://twitter.com/BarrettBrown_

[seemslikeadream]

Imprisoned Activist Jeremy Hammond found in Contempt for Failure to Testify Before Federal Grand Jury in the EDVA

Sparrow in newson Oct 10, 2019
Same Virginia Grand Jury Probe Holding Chelsea Manning on Contempt also finds Hammond in Contempt

Alexandria, VA — Imprisoned information activist Jeremy Hammond has been found in contempt today for refusing to testify in front of a Federal Grand Jury in the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA). Earlier this year Chelsea Manning was remanded into custody for failure to provide testimony before the same Grand Jury.

The following is a statement from the Jeremy Hammond Support Committee regarding these developments:

“Today, in Federal Court in the Eastern District of Virginia, Jeremy Hammond was found in contempt for refusing to answer questions posed to him by a grand jury. This grand jury is the same grand jury currently holding Chelsea Manning in contempt for bravely refusing to answer their questions.

“Due to the secretive nature of grand juries, we don’t know what his sanctions for contempt may be. We also do not know what questions the grand jury is investigating. What we do know, however, is that the federal prison sentence he was serving for which he was due to be released from just two short months from now, will be suspended.

“Jeremy’s sentence, the one that he was handed almost six years ago and that he has been diligently serving and making plans to be released from, will not resume until he either agrees to testify, or the life of the grand jury has expired. Jeremy has made it clear the former will never happen.

“By removing him from FCI Memphis before his time in RDAP was completed, the government has added a minimum of six months onto Jeremy’s sentence. Judge Trega has the option of jailing him indefinitely for contempt. The decision to compel Jeremy to testify despite his outspoken, long-standing anarchist beliefs and support for myriad brave grand jury resistors, only to place him under contempt when he adheres to those same core beliefs should be seen as little more than cruel and punitive.

“Jeremy has held strong to his beliefs over the past seven years. In fact, being subjected to the horrors of the legal system over and over again has been one of the defining factors that has strengthened Jeremy’s beliefs. There is nothing a grand jury could do or say that could compel Jeremy to testify. Jeremy made it clear from the beginning of his case that he had no intention of cooperating with the government, and that hasn’t, and will never change. Any attempts to try to force him to testify through prolonged incarceration serves to do nothing but further punish Jeremy for his political beliefs. This highlights one of the many problems with grand juries, and one of the many reasons why they should not exist, and why it is the correct and moral stance to resist them.”

Recent Events
In late August Jeremy Hammond was removed from the Federal Correctional Institution in Memphis, Tennessee where he was serving a 10-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to charges he hacked the private intelligence contractor Stratfor Global Intelligence. At the time of his transfer Hammond was enrolled in the Federal Bureau of Prison’s intensive Residential Drug Abuse Program (RDAP) which upon completion qualifies participating inmates for early release. Hammond’s prison release date was projected to come around mid December of 2019 but because of his removal from the RDAP program and the summons to this grand jury his time incarcerated could be extended by over two years. Hammond is currently confined at William G. Truesdale Correctional Center in Alexandria, VA and will likely remain there for the duration of these proceedings.

Additional Information
Jeremy is being represented by attorneys Susan Kellman, Sarah Kunstler, and local counsel Jeffrey D. Zimmerman. His legal team also includes Elisa Y. Lee and Beena Ahmad. For information on how you can support Jeremy, and for updates on his case please visit freejeremy.net or follow the Jeremy Hammond Defense Committee on twitter @freejeremynet

https://www.sparrowmedia.net/2019/10/im ... -the-edva/