[consultant23522]

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

[pyrocat]

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

[duairc]

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

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

[Jtsummers]

I oppose most prison sentences, but not strictly prisons. I'm curious what your alternative is?

For clarity, I'm for rehabilitation and not retribution -- it gains us nothing. When it comes to drug crimes and youthful offenders, community service and rehab seem like far better things than X days/months/years in jail with a grabbag of offenders running the gamut from arsony to grand theft to smoking a joint. And while I think the purpose of imprisoning them should be to offer rehabilitation, would you not imprison murderers or would you put them in mental health institutions rather than "prisons"?

[steveklabnik]

It's a big topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_abolition_movement

[Jtsummers]

Thanks for the link. That's actually a pretty good enumeration of my issues with the current system in the US. I don't think I'd go so far as to say eliminate all prisons, the sorts of prisons we have today are not the sort that we should be using.

[einehexe]

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

[mjn]

It would be a crime anywhere, but not likely to receive a 10-year sentence. As far as I know, the only sentence approaching that length issued in Denmark for a non-violent crime in recent years was Stein Bagger, who was sentenced to 7 years for defrauding investors of about $250 million, then fleeing to Dubai. His sentence was that high because it was very clearly willful fraud on a large scale intended to enrich himself, and included a number of subsidiary elements such as invented degrees, faked financial information, tax fraud, etc.

[pyrocat]

You're being facetious, but you have to agree that even thought there is strict sentencing in the EU, America goes beyond the pale.

We have higher incarceration rates than China, and even with their massive population we have more people in prison than China does. [1](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rat...) We are roughly tied with North Korea for highest % of population in prison by country. [2](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcerat...)

[einehexe]

It makes me very angry that this known scumbag tries to associate himself with a true hero like Aaron Swartz, so in my opinion he is getting what he deserves, regardless of drug law incarcerations.

[angersock]

Look, in cases like this, we have to stick up for the scoundrels, because that's when the common behavior of the system is borne out. It's easy to make exceptions for a pretty face, but if you want real change you have to look at how it affects the worst people.

[einehexe]

This has nothing to do with exceptions for a pretty face. If you cede the high ground then you are worse than nothing in terms of helping your cause, as has been born out through history over and over.

[dandelany]

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

[ThrowFarAway]

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

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

[snowwrestler]

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

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

[sigzero]

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