Andrew "weev" Auernheimer is an unrepentant douchebag of an internet troll. He also just got sentenced to 41 months in jail, triple the time that the Steubenville rapists, for the internet equivalent of walking into an unlocked garage. What, precisely, did he do?
In 2010 he discovered that AT&T had failed to protect user account information. The info was on the web without any form of security and could be accessed with the difficult and highly skilled hacker technique known as "manually typing the address into his web browser". His primary crime was releasing the information to Gawker before notifying AT&T, thereby embarrassing the company and earning the ire of the FBI.
Fast forward to today and he recieved more than three years in jail for it thanks to the outdated "Computer Fraud and Abuse Act" (CFAA), the same law prosecutors used to threaten late activist Aaron Swartz with up to 35 years in prison. Unfortunatlye for weev, he's not nearly the sympathetic character that Swartz was so there is very little outcry about this.
So why should you care about Auernheimer? It's another example of how US lawmakers are both ignorant and afraid of the internet. They have no idea what differentiates a hacker from a hypertext transfer protocol, yet that doesn't stop them from creating legislation and prosecuting "cybercrimes" like they're chasing communists from the cold war.
So speak out, spread this around, and try and help get some publicity going for this to help free the troll, because as they say: First they came for the trolls, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a troll. Then they came for the hackers, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a hacker. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.
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