[liberationtech] weev (@rabite) makes a Statement of Responsibility

Petter Ericson pettter at acc.umu.se
Fri Jan 25 02:32:06 PST 2013


Hi,

I thought this was very well written and powerful, though I don't
necessarily agree with absolutely everything.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/21/ipad-hack-statement-of-responsibility/

iPad Hack Statement Of Responsibility

ANDREW AUERNHEIMER

Monday, January 21st, 2013

(Editorbs note: Andrew Auernheimer, also known by his pseudonym weev, is
an American grey hat hacker and self-described Internet troll. Follow
him on Twitter @rabite.)

In June of 2010 there was an AT&T webserver on the open Internet. There
was an API on this server, a URL with a number at the end. If you
incremented this number, you saw the next iPad 3G user email address. I
thought it was egregiously negligent for AT&T to be publishing a
complete target list of iPad 3G owners, and I took a sample of the API
output to a journalist at Gawker.

I did this because I despised people I think are unjustly wealthy and
wanted to embarass them. I thought this is the United States of America
where we have the right to do basic arithmetic and query public
webservers.

I was convicted of two consecutive five-year felonies, and am now
awaiting sentencing.

I left the Aaron Swartz memorial tonight emotionally exhausted. Here is
a guy who was beloved by many of my close friends, whose suffering and
miseries I have shared in kind. Ibll never forget when the Secret
Service started following me. My lover at the time and I treated it like
a game, spending our days ditching surveillance in the best ways
possible: speedboats, helicopters, club bouncers.

Over time, this has become less and less of a game. It soon became clear
that I could not be both an activist and a capitalist. I quit my six
figure job at the time because the former was more important to me. Then
one day, everything changed. FBI agents tried to frame me for terrorism
in 2008. Twice. They ruined my career, my relationship, my life. Nobody
believed that I could be a terrorist so now they try to libel me as an
identity thief.

Lawrence Lessig said of Aaronbs indictment that the prosecutor Ortiz was
beither an idiot, or a liar.b I know this feeling all too well.

One of my prosecutors, Michael Martinez, claimed that our querying a
public webserver was criminal because bit isnbt like going to ESPN and
checking your sports teambs scores.b

The facts: AT&T admitted, at trial, that they bpublishedb this data.
Their words. Public-facing, programmatic accesses of APIs happen upwards
of a trillion times per day. Twitter broke 13 billion on their API ages
ago. This is something that happens more than the entire population of
Earth, daily. The government has no problem with this up until you
transform the output into something offensive to important people.
People with bdisruptiveb startups, this is your fair warning: They are
coming for you next.

The other one of my prosecutors, Zach Intrater, said that a comment I
made about Goatse Security, my information security working group,
starting a certification process to declare systems bgoatse tightb was
evidence of my intent to personally profit. For those not in on the
joke: Goatse is an Internet meme referencing a man holding open his anus
very widely. The mind reels.

I canbt survive like this. I am happy to be hitting a prison cell soon.
They ruined my business. The feds get approval of who I can work for or
with: they rejected one company because the CEO had a social network
profile with an occupation listed as bhacker.b They prohibit me from
touching any computer that isnbt federally monitored. I do my best to
slang Perl code on an Android device to comply with my bail conditions.
It isnbt pretty.

Ivy league educated and wealthy, Aaron dealt with his indictment so
badly because he thought he was part of a special class of people that
this didnbt happen to. I am from a rundown shack in Arkansas.  I spent
many years thinking people from families like his got better treatment
than me. Now I realize the truth: The beast is so monstrous it will
devour us all. None will be spared.

So now I stare at a form that the government wants me to fill out before
sentencing labelled bacceptance of responsibilityb and wonder what I can
possibly fill in this slot. This letter is it.

I accept my responsibility, and hope you do too, of dismantling this
terrible empire so that this canbt happen to anyone.

This is the difference between the prosecutors and FBI agents and I.
They wish me utterly destroyed, and have been hounding me for years of
my life. They have been surveilling me, by their own admission, since I
was 15. You know what I wish for? A world where no man may abridge the
liberty of another. Not me, not you, not the FBI, not federal
prosecutors. I actually hope they have fulfilling lives, and come to
realize the mistake of treating our Constitution like toilet paper.

This is a country where if you express ideas that federal agents donbt
like you, you will be beaten, imprisoned, or killed. I accept my
responsibility for offending seditious thugs, liars and tyrants.  I say
this is the duty of all decent citizens left.

God bless.

Andrew Auernheimer

(*Those who assert our right to access public web APIs can donate to the
 effort to overturn the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. More info at
 cfaadefensefund.com. - Andrew Auernheimer)




-- 
Petter Ericson (pettter at acc.umu.se)
Telecomix Sleeper Jellyfish
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