Vigilantism & AnonymousFollow

The writing on it is a bit misleading. "Is facing up to...", ok sure. But the rapists were also facing more time than they received. Seems wrong to compare potential time with actual time.

Plus there's a question of how many charges the hacker dude is facing. If he's facing five charges with a maximum sentence of two years per charge (example, I don't know), then yeah he's theoretically facing ten years. This doesn't mean that all charges will ultimately be pursued, that he'll be convicted on all of them or that he'll serve the maximum time. And it really isn't a reason to decrease the maximum sentence for any specific law.

The bit about the FBI was just sensationalism. The article says the kid hunts (owns a gun) and has a pit bull. Showing up in force is just common sense. Never understood people who seem to think the time to put on riot gear is after the rocks start flying or else you're being too mean and scary.


And there's the crux of it. This is less about worrying about rapists and more about weakening laws that restrict hacking.

I also think that there's a false equivalence between what he did and exposing the rape, as though he's being punished for doing that (or taking part in in really). There are lots of ways to expose a crime. And sending the videos to the authorities and posting them on youtube/wherever would seem to be the first and most logical one (and did result in the investigation which ultimately resulted in criminal charges being filed, so the system worked). What wasn't necessary was the hacking of the school website. Which is what he's being charged for (at least from what I could glean from the article).

Working for the "greater good" doesn't magically empower you to do anything you want along the way. If the goal was really just about getting the message out, there were lots of ways to do so that didn't involve hacking into a public school network. It just feels more to me like that was an excuse to hack something than something that was necessary to get the word out about what was going on. He (they) made it about hacking when it should have been about making sure a crime didn't go unreported and unpunished.

He's just a good ole boy, spendin' some lazy time down at the ole hackin' hole after a day of plowin' and milkin'.