Two LulzSec Members Plead Guilty To DDOS Attacks

[Aeonknight]

I feel kind of bad for these guys. Yeah they broke the law but two computer nerds wouldn't last a day in prison without getting... well y'know.

How long would they serve for this?

And who do they have to blame for the horrible fate that awaits them? Themselves? Ok, any pity/sympathy gone.

Sorry, I feel no pity for anyone who willingly breaks the law and actually has consequences dealt to them. It happens far too little in society nowadays.

 

[DiamanteGeeza]

Is the inclusion of the Asperger's thing supposed to make people sympathetic to the guy? All that means is the guy has trouble with social interaction and an abnormally intense interest in a particular subject, not that he doesn't know right from wrong, or that he has superpowers, or that he's somehow not responsible for what he did.

Do you mean inclusion in the article, or inclusion in the trial (if it was). If it's the former, I'm not sure. If the latter, then his defense lawyer is probably clinging onto every last straw she can to have his sentence reduced. If I were in her shoes, I'd do the same... wouldn't you?

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

Not even slightly sorry for them.

Hate the lot of them, glad at least some of them are getting their comeuppance.

 

[DiamanteGeeza]

Hum, wonder why they pleaded guilty? Do they feel responsible? Is there a deal going on with the police? Are they arrogant as all hell? I'll probably never know.

Probably because they are scared shitless. They're a pair of kids who broke very serious laws against massive corporations, and it was all a game to them because they had the anonymity of the internet to hide behind.

Suddenly the FBI kicks down their front door and it's not a game any more... it's the real world. Long, drawn out interrogations from the Police and the FBI, threatened with many years in horrible jails, locked in a cell for the rest of your time in custody... serious shit. I'd be utterly terrified in that situation.

It's not like they're old, wisened Mafia dons that you see in the movies, sitting in the interrogation room in stoic silence. ;-)

 

[DiamanteGeeza]

I find it incredibly interesting that laws exist that protect corporate ineptitude as well as corporate greed but we can take a year to focus on punishing those evil evil hackers that are manipulating everyone out of their money, demanding digital distribution as a means to undermine economic stability and then subject personal information obtained through that campaign to easy unsolicited access.... oh wait, thats not right.

I find it incredibly interesting that people feel that criminals should get a free pass because 'fuck big corporations'.

+1.

 

[DiamanteGeeza]

Not even slightly sorry for them.

Hate the lot of them, glad at least some of them are getting their comeuppance.

Totally agree.

My favorite part of this whole thing was the "Arrest us. We dare you." tweet, which then saw them get arrested. Awesome!

 

[Albino Boo]

I feel kind of bad for these guys. Yeah they broke the law but two computer nerds wouldn't last a day in prison without getting... well y'know.

How long would they serve for this?

They will get about 2 years, but with a guilty plea they will only serve 8 months. They will end up in an low security open prison, i.e. very few locked doors, tv, toilet and washstand in every cell and xboxs(with no internet) to play with. They aren't going to face hard time in the UK.


However I hope they spend the next 10 years or so getting extradited, tried and jail time to every country they played silly buggers in.

 

[Xaio30]

Asperger's Syndrome sufferer

If this wasn't on the internet, I might've taken offense to that. Now I am merely concerned.
You portray it like a disease one would detest. How is Asperger even relevant to the topic?

I also did not find any mention of his syndrome at the source page. Please tell me this isn't name-calling by the Escapist.
It was probably from another article.

 

[RaikuFA]

Asperger's Syndrome sufferer

If this wasn't on the internet, I might've taken offense to that. Now I am merely concerned.
You portray it like a disease one would detest. How is Asperger even relevant to the topic?

I also did not find any mention of his syndrome at the source page. Please tell me this isn't name-calling by the Escapist.
It was probably from another article.

Cause their lawyer thinks it will get them off scott free.

 

[viranimus]

And exactly what "crime" was committed? Overloading a server with trivial data requests? I wasnt aware that was exactly made a crime.

This has been a crime for a long time, whether you were aware of it or not.

These kids may or may not have broken "laws"

Nope, they definitely did break laws. Even if you don't agree with the law, it's still a law.

Much as I said, I was not aware that overloading a server with traffic was made a crime. Would you care to cite the source of the longstanding US law that makes it illegal to overwhelm a server please so as I do not make this error again?

 

[Sixcess]

I hope they don't get extradited.

The US government and legal system is just in this weird place at the moment, driven by fear, paranoia and even some genuine concern, and these poor bastards would probably end up getting tried as terrorists and sentenced to 25 years in maximum security.

No offence intended to any americans reading this, but right now I simply would not trust your legal system to approach this in a measured way, with punishment proportionate to the crime.

 

[ResonanceSD]

I don't know if I should be sorry for him or not.....

If you invite the FBI to arrest you, and they do, I don't see why you deserve sympathy. So he's got Aspergers. So fucking what?

[/quote]


Also why is the fact that he's got Aspergers even mentioned in the article?

 

[Thespian]

These guys are such dorks. That's the only way I can describe them. They thought they were so epic "hacking" and performing "take downs". You DDoS'd a few sites guys. You aren't Batman. You just inconvenienced a few people. Now you're going to Jail because tried to be a badass.

 

[Beardly]

And exactly what "crime" was committed? Overloading a server with trivial data requests? I wasnt aware that was exactly made a crime. Walking thru a backdoor left wide open that just happened to hold data stores of personal information? Again if the door had been properly locked and secured, yes, but honestly these guys hacking skill is actually not as impressive as the results suggest.

And honestly Im sorry you disagree, but any corporation that chose to try to railroad, screw over and ruin the life of an individual in the name of protecting corporate profits despite there being legal precedent that made that action perfectly legal, and then challenged people to screw with them, had no reason to expect any other response and should not be protected for not anticipating the very expected response.

These kids may or may not have broken "laws"(because in many cases the charges are improper modified stop gap charges for laws that do not exist) but these are not the "criminals" that need looking for.

I do have to correct you, a backdoor is a backdoor. Regardless of whether or not it is secure. You go through it, you've broken the law.
Now, I'm not saying the corporations are in the right, but if people want an internet like we've enjoyed in the past, some rules have to be followed. I'm still mad that my PSN account got hacked. Am I mad at Sony? Nope. They didn't hack it. They had shitty security, I knew that (seriously, what counts for secure on the internet these days anyway?), but I still trusted it.
There are rules. You don't blame a B&E rape victim because she didn't use Schlaage deadbolts on her door. You don't blame a victim for poor security.

But Sony wasn't the victim. You and everyone else with a PSN account was the victim. The situation is more like if I was house sitting for someone and forgot to lock their doors. If someone breaks in, then some of the fault is on me. Not all of it because obviously people shouldn't be breaking into houses but still, I fucked up in that situation.

 

[maninahat]

Is the inclusion of the Asperger's thing supposed to make people sympathetic to the guy? All that means is the guy has trouble with social interaction and an abnormally intense interest in a particular subject, not that he doesn't know right from wrong, or that he has superpowers, or that he's somehow not responsible for what he did.

Its like when news articles refer to a murdered teenage victim as "black teenager" John Doe. Implying that being black was somehow instrumental to the whole thing, without even explicitly saying so. See also, when a person who's muslim commits a murder; the headline will always read "Muslim Commits Murder". You just know that if they were buddhist or christian or whatever, the headline would simply read "Man Commits Murder", 'coz whats the point in telling a story, if you can't pander to established stereotypes and images?

 

[FalloutJack]

Heh heh heh heh... You can never truly escape. Once you do something that big and that irritating, you're marked for life, and people want you taken down. And in the end, they will find you, and they will kill you.

Wait... No, sorry. That was Liam Neeson.

However, the part about being marked and eventually found is true. Once you go too far, you are on a timer winding down until you are caught. No escape, no hope, no salvation... Being needlessly destructive and foolish like that carries with it that burden, that you have to watch your back forever and run for your life. And in the end, you run out of places TO run IF you ran at all.

The best way to avoid being caught is not doing anything like that at all.

 

[Eveonline100]

Spoiler: Skilled Hacker

If they had actually had a point behind what they were doing, then I'd feel slightly sympathetic, but they were just bored kids who decided to be massive douchebags. If they had legitimately cared about the security of the targetted sites they would have not DDOSed, and they wouldn't have made public leaks of confidential information. Their case is about the only time when I've wanted someone to get a long sentence for hacking.

i agree with you on the 2nd point you make but (being a guy who isn't a computer expert) explain to me how take down the CIA website without hacking into their computers.

 

[Radelaide]

Is it just me, or is Asperger's Syndrome now becoming the new "it" disease. I'm pretty sure most people are self-diagnosed sufferers who just want an excuse to be an uncouth ****.

 

[ResonanceSD]

I feel that this image is appropriate.


Also, daring the FBI to catch and arrest you after you piss off several major companies? Is that not the dumbest move ever?

 

[nightwolf667]

Is it just me, or is Asperger's Syndrome now becoming the new "it" disease. I'm pretty sure most people are self-diagnosed sufferers who just want an excuse to be an uncouth ****.

Well, it's certainly become the media's new favorite disorder. I wouldn't call it a disease as it's not catching, it just means the person in question's mind functions differently than the "average" person. And with all disabilities, there is a range from high functioning to low functioning. It's also surrounded by many misdiagnoses and it's over diagnosed (much like ADD and ADHD) by professional psychiatrists for kids that don't have it, while sometimes ignoring kids that do.

What bothers me about saying he's a "sufferer" is that it seems like they're trying to say that the person in question is mentally incompetent. But that's far from the case, a person with Asperger's approaches the world differently than other people and their interactions with it are a reflection the way they see it. But most are perfectly rational and reasonable people, capable of understanding their own actions and the consequences of them.

Actually, it bothers me because it shows the inherent bias of multiple cultures towards people with "mental disabilities". I have ADD and though it's become much more common in the past decade, I'm sometimes treated like there's something wrong with me. There isn't.

I'm not trying to come down on you, it's just calling it a disease is kind of offensive. Sheldon on the Big Bang Theory is also offensive in the same way. Some people with Asperger's certainly do behave like terribly offensive, uncouth idiots regardless of whether or not they're diagnosed. But other people do too, regardless of age, gender, skin color, or culture. Saying he acted out this way because he's Asperger's doesn't excuse his actions, it may be part of the legal plea but it just makes me want to slam my head into the table.