The hacker known as KYAnonymous went after the rapists in the Steubenville case:
he obtained and published tweets and Instagram photos in which other team members had joked about the incident and belittled the victim.
The FBI busted him, and if he’s convicted he could get a lot more time than the rapists did.
He’d read about the Steubenville rape in the New York Times, but didn’t get involved until receiving a message on Twitter from Michelle McKee, a friend of an Ohio blogger who’d written about the case. (You can read about her story here.) McKee gave Lostutter the players’ tweets and Instagram photos, which he then decided to publicize because, as he put it, “I was always raised to stick up for people who are getting bullied.”
Oh, she wasn’t getting bullied. That was just dissent and disagreement. She needs to get a thicker skin. She needs to ignore the trolls.
At first, he thought the FBI agent at the door was with FedEx. “As I open the door to greet the driver, approximately 12 FBI SWAT team agents jumped out of the truck, screaming for me to ‘Get the fuck down!’ with M-16 assault rifles and full riot gear, armed, safety off, pointed directly at my head,” Lostutter wrote today on his blog. “I was handcuffed and detained outside while they cleared my house.”
Because hackers are notoriously violent.
Lostutter believes that the FBI investigation was motivated by local officials in Steubenville. “They want to make an example of me, saying, ‘You don’t fucking come after us. Don’t question us.”
If convicted of hacking-related crimes, Lostutter could face up to 10 years behind bars—far more than the one- and two-year sentences doled out to the Steubenville rapists. Defending himself could end up costing a fortune—he’s soliciting donations here. Still, he thinks getting involved was worth it. “I’d do it again,” he says.
Ten years for hacking, one or two years for rape with aggravated Twitter. Something amiss here.
Yeah, and it’s pretty much SOP, innit?
I took a screenshot of someone’s twitter comments once.
I never realized that made me an elite, nefarious “hacker.”
Welcome to America, where saying something’s wrong is a worse crime than doing something wrong.
I’m trying to understand what law prevents you from publicizing something that was already on public media, that was given to you by someone else. Like, the NYT doesn’t get charged for posting WikiLeaks stuff, only the leaker is charged. The article says it’s an “investigation”, so I guess there are no charges. But they must have gotten a warrant to bust into his house like that. Sounds like a fishing expedition, hoping they can find something to bust him with. And the warrant was based on what, I wonder. The fact that he helped publicize the rape? Can you have a warrant declared illegal after the fact? Cause if “saying something bad about the football team” is now probable cause, I, uh… What hi-tech companies are hiring in New Zealand?
Johnny Vector:
If I’m reading it correctly, he’s actually being busted for the hacking and defacement of the RollRedRoll.com team website, which someone else has claimed responsibility for. He’s effectively being SWATed and harassed “officially by mistake” to punish him for his legal activism against the do-nothing local law enforcement.
And while vandalizing a website should be a crime, the idea that it’s a crime worthy of more severe punishment than rape makes me want to throw shit.