Romanian Hacker 'Guccifer' Sentenced To 52 Months In US Prison (reuters.com) 117
Romanian hacker "Guccifer" who targeted high-profile US politicians has been sentenced for 52 months in prison. Guccifer, whose real name is Marcel Lazar, pleaded guilty in May on charges of aggravated identity theft and unauthorized access of a computer. Lazar targeted former Secretary of State Colin Powell and the Bush family and was arrested on hacking charges in Romania in 2014 and was sentenced four years. He was extradited to the U.S. to face charges in March 2016. Reuters adds: Lazar has said in interviews he breached Clinton's private server at her home in Chappaqua, New York, but law enforcement and national security officials say that claim is meritless. Lazar is believed to have hacked into email accounts of about 100 victims between 2012 and 2014. They include prominent political figures such as former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a relative of former President George W. Bush and Sidney Blumenthal, a former Clinton White House aide and an unofficial adviser to Clinton. Clinton is now the Democratic nominee for president. Lazar leaked online memos Blumenthal sent Clinton that were addressed to her private email account, which was used during her time as secretary of state to conduct both personal and work business in lieu of a government account.
Frau Hillary will be pleased (Score:1, Funny)
Sieg Hill!
Anyone surprised (Score:1)
Nope?
This guy did commit crimes. He also committed them against powerful people. It's not at all surprising he's going to be spending a fair bit of time in prison. The interesting part is more in regards to the extradition, and possibly that he didn't suffer an "accident" on his way to the US for trial.
Re:Anyone surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
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then your 'friends' are a bunch of idiots
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Only 30? Her wars in the middle east have lead to many thousands of killed people.
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Funny that. You start a war on trumped-up allegations that kills a hundred thousand people, and voters soon forget.
Put get caught pushing *one* reporter in front of a train and all hell breaks loose. Which is why it just happens in fiction.
Modern democracy is an odd thing.
Re:Anyone surprised (Score:4, Funny)
Pretty much. I live below the Mason-Dixon line. The above 2 examples wouldn't even make a top ten of "Dumbest Ways Floridians Killed Themselves in 2016".
Re:Anyone surprised (Score:4, Funny)
Oh please, those people were clearly left alive for plausible deniability.
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vote trump and he may make it in to WPP
Re:Anyone surprised (Score:4, Insightful)
Guccifer exposes Hillary's illegal email server and goes to jail for it.
Hilary gets off Scott Free.
BTW, Comey said "Leeeeave Hillary Alllloneeee" because there were more appropriate administrative punishments available.
And? What were they? Were the ever applied?
But she wasn't indicted (Score:5, Informative)
Guccifer exposes Hillary's illegal email server and goes to jail for it.
Hilary gets off Scott Free.
BTW, Comey said "Leeeeave Hillary Alllloneeee" because there were more appropriate administrative punishments available.
And? What were they? Were the ever applied?
It's 'kinda worse than that.
Hillary Clinton sent classified E-mails after leaving the state department [foxnews.com], after the FBI concluded its investigation more deleted E-mails turned up that they should have been given [thehill.com], even more E-mails turned up that should have matched the FBI search terms Hillary was given [thepoliticalinsider.com].
(Also, Bill Clinton used tax dollars to subsidize the private E-mail server and pay for employees at the Clinton foundation [politico.com].)
Looking at the media reports, things like Sigh. Yet Another Non-Scandal at the Clinton Foundation [motherjones.com] come up.
Nothing to see here, no smoking gun. She wasn't indicted, so let's leave her alone.
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I guess you were one of the "witch hunters" back then, wasn't you? Did it work? Did any of those criminals get any jail time?
Depends what you mean. I hated Bush, thought his administration was completely lawless, and there were crimes for which people should have done jail time.
But screwing up the IT? That wasn't one of them.
I believe most people that heard about the issue (specially here) would say, even at the time, that they should be prosecuted.
They should be prosecuted, just like Clinton.
That's an interesting idea... if only /. had some magical archive where we could look back 9 years and see...
Well golly I found it!! [slashdot.org]
Hmm, lets see. 59 comments with a score of +4 and +5. I see one comment speculating that congress is trying to get Gonzales to perjurer himself in front of congress so they can s
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Where to start?
OK, how about we start with the firing of
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Let me add this:
Two years later, it was revealed that potentially 22 million emails were deleted. - The "deleted" emails were recovered - nearly all 22 million of them [stuff.co.nz]. (Though on an obscure NZ website, the story is a Reuters story.)
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She wasn't indicted, so let's leave her alone.
That's the price of 20 years of crying wolf, you get ignored.
Or they can keep on passing around their death list if you want.
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And you can't really trust the news to expose things. People like the Washington Post were too busy holding illicit fundraisers with the DNC.
But you don't have to take my word for it.
Source: https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/2699 [wikileaks.org]
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It's 'kinda worse than that.
Hillary Clinton sent classified E-mails after leaving the state department [foxnews.com]
We already knew that Hillary was using her private email server for work, and that some of that information was classified.
So what is the shocking new scandal? That the previous secretary of state emailed information to an official at the state department?
, after the FBI concluded its investigation more deleted E-mails turned up that they should have been given [thehill.com], even more E-mails turned up that should have matched the FBI search terms Hillary was given [thepoliticalinsider.com].
FTA,
"At this time, we have not confirmed that the documents are, in fact, responsive, or whether they are duplicates of materials already provided to the Department by former Secretary Clinton in December 2014.”
So yeah, gimmie a call when they find
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I'm not clear what he should have done otherwise.
Acted with ethics and integrity?
Is it really too hard to use Government money for Government business and Foundation funds for Foundation work?
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I'm not clear what he should have done otherwise.
Acted with ethics and integrity?
Is it really too hard to use Government money for Government business and Foundation funds for Foundation work?
Did you read my post? That's exactly what he did.
He just had them share resources because do to otherwise would be stupid and would waste money.
Re:Anyone surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
Failing to maintain Public Records, and sending and receiving classified information that isn't properly secured (and possibly involved in the murder of a scientist in Iran) actually IS illegal. Her having an email server wasn't the issue. The issue was using that server in an illegal way, which is ... illegal.
Quit trying to make it about the actual email server, rather than WHY she set it up, and how she actually used it. I have an email server, it isn't illegal to have an email server. I use that server as a tool in a commission of a crime ... that server is important evidence. She shredded that evidence, when she was required .. by law .. to maintain that evidence.
And we all know why she did this, she is on record as saying as much, to avoid congressional oversight (which is ALSO against the law).
So, Email server was legal, all the illegal things she did, was caught doing, reasons for doing ... all of that was ... illegal.
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Failing to maintain Public Records
Do you know of people who went to jail for that?
No? You mean people generally don't even care about it??
Then why is Hillary different?
and sending and receiving classified information that isn't properly secured
Can you show someone who went to jail for similar actions?
No? You just realized those one or two instances of jail time are fundamentally different cases?
Then why should Hillary go to jail?
(and possibly involved in the murder of a scientist in Iran) actually IS illegal.
WTF? So an Iranian scientist publicly gives information to the US, then voluntarily returned to Iran (against the advice of anyone), and then gets predictably arrested and then executed.
And
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And this is somehow Hillary's fault because there's an email where she made a vague reference to trying to convince him to not go back to Iran in an email?
Yes. Remember Vallarie Plame? Oh wait that is an (R) so that is bad, but Hillary is (D) so it is excused.
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Trump .....
I'm voting for Gary Johnson, the ONLY grownup running for President. Nice try though.
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Honestly, this is the lamest argument and I say that as somebody who would like to see all of the criminals from both of your silly little teams in jail where they belong.
So what if the loyal party members only speak out when the other team does something wrong? Do you really expect anything else from all of these idiotic partisan hypocrites? Here you are acting as an apologist for another criminal and trying to deflect the argument away from her because she's on your stupid team. How is that any different?
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But there are degrees of bad, aren't there? There are 2 people, one mishandled classified information, and the other tortured people. You only have enough room in prison for one. Who gets to walk?
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Who gets to walk?
Clearly, your opinion on that depends solely on which political party you swear fealty to and which party your favorite criminal belongs to. Then you go out of your way to downplay and excuse the crimes of one and amplify the other's to a state of ridiculous hyperbole. But you're so steeped in the party politics that you see your actions as perfectly reasonable and are certain that anyone who disagrees with you is evil or stupid.
In reality, who gets to walk depends on who has the more powerful political con
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Honestly, the problem here is that people are excusing illegal activity, by pointing to other people's illegal activity as if it were only a binary choice.
Tommy: "Mom, Billy spit in my food"
Billy: "Mom, Sam's brother shit in his kitchen and got away with it"
Why does this shit work at all? Because the people actually making the "So and so was worse" argument are just little kids who know what they are doing is wrong and trying to deflect blame are nothing more than grownup children. It is time for adults of
Legal vs Justice System (Score:5, Insightful)
He may be guilty under our legal system, but as many people are starting to understand a legal system and a justice system are not the same thing. If we had a justice system, the Bushes and Clintons would be in prison and Guccifer would be free. People like this should be considered heroes for exposing the criminals that lay claim to positions of leadership. The legal (not justice) system that those criminal leaders have set up are designed to keep themselves wealthy and powerful, and people like Snowden and Guccifer threaten their wealth and power.
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Did your mother drop you on your anonymous head too many times as a baby?
Re:Legal vs Justice System (Score:5, Insightful)
Certainly, because the ends always justify the means. Hack your way in to discover evidence of crimes -- it's ok so long as they deserve to go to prison.
"People like this should be considered heroes for exposing the criminals" says every U.S. TLA when deploying Stingrays, "Network Investigative Techniques," and other exploits against the very not wealthy and very not powerful.
Yet what happens when they don't find evidence of a crime -- are they still guiltless? If some of the roughly 100 people Guccifer raided in his quest to expose were not themselves reasonably suspected of a crime, are they just acceptable collateral damage? When a TLA runs with this principle, are your fellow citizens just acceptable collateral damage?
Sorry, I don't buy it.
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Who watches the watchers? Who enforces the rules against the people who make the rules? The US has one of the largest percentages of its citizens in prison, yet our "leaders" get away with just about anything. And you want to talk about fairness?
Cry me a river.
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Well, nobody appointed Guccifer, or you.
I don't have to cry you a river; I'll cheer them locking up vigilantes and, as a bonus, probably piss you off.
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Cheer away if it makes you feel better as this country falls into obsolescence as all empires do.
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Really, you logged in three days later to drop that pearl of wisdom? Vigilante hackers aren't any sort of solution. And halfhearted attempts to link them to prophecies of societal decay in the indefinite future do not constitute a justification.
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I don't believe criminal trespass on IT systems will ever be considered legal. Otherwise, what stops the police/NSA from legally hacking everyone's computers, reading everything, finding illegal content then prosecuting after the fact? Oh right, that's still technically illegal, even for them, even in your tin foil hat brandishing lunacy. So can you please just drop your rhetoric?
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Technically illegal? That's adorable. Now run along and play, young man.
aggravated identity theft? (Score:1)
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Lesson here is (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't mess with powerful people.
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These particular powerful people are more powerful than most governments.
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These particular powerful people are more powerful than most governments.
Unlike powerful governments, powerful *people* can be stopped by a nobody with the motivation and a 50-cent bullet in a sub-$200 military-surplus rifle.
Why do you think the gun-banners are going after rifles first instead of handguns which are used in orders-of-magnitude greater numbers of crimes/murders? The powerful know a sniper with a rifle is a far more deadly threat to them than someone with a handgun which requires being close and visible to security personnel.
Strat
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A sniper rifle requires high quality manufacturing and accurate long range shooting, which is difficult even under the best of circumstances.
Sniping is a tactic, any ranged weapon can be employed to snipe a target.
Lee Harvey Oswald used a WW2 (mfg. ~1940) surplus Italian Carcano 91/38 6.5mm bolt-action carbine with a 4x Ordnance Optics telescopic sight to kill JFK with a headshot in a moving car. Neither the weapon nor 'scope were of what would be considered 'high quality' even by normal hunting/sport standards.
LHO was a good shot, achieving the "Sharpshooter" qualification twice while in the Marines, but that is not that unusual. My father also
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I've found that usually the gun is more accurate than the shooter. Someone who has practiced can make pretty consistent shots within a rifle's normal range. Someone who is extremely good can shoot accurately beyond that range. Even 800+ yards is pretty reasonable for a Mosin-Nagant 91/30. It would take someone with some serious skill to go beyond 1000 yards with it, especially if the target or weather conditions were not ideal.
1000 yards is a crazy distance in an urban or suburban area, draw a circle with
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He didn't expose any crimes anyway, but fucking morons like you who are too fucking stupid to actually use your fucking brain will
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Sometimes "crimes" are defined to be crimes even if they are not unethical, usually this is done to protect special interests.
Is political transparency in the interest of the general populous? If not, then I guess it was a serious crime. Let's execute him just to be sure.
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The flippancy of my statement is not the same as a formal debate. Which is good, because your ad hominem isn't terribly endearing either.
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Not really, he likely wouldn't have to serve more than 2 years in prison. Even one of the prosecuting attorneys (Heymann) threatened only 7 years in prison as if that was the maximum he could have really gotten. It's a far cry from the 50 years or 35 years that was bandied about in the media. (7 years is no joke though, for essentially B&E and some very minor wire fraud)
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Don't mess with powerful people.
To be fair, he only got 4 years in prison. He'll be out in 3 as they need the room for the really dangerous criminals, like copyright infringers.
Had he done the same thing to Putin, he'd have woken up to a Polonium waffle and have shot himself in the back of the head three times
Seriously, he should have been imprisoned just for using the name Guccifer.
Which Clinton? (Score:2)
ARSTechnica smear... (Score:2)
The first sentence of the ARSTechnica article by David Kravets with the same headline reads-
"The Romanian hacker who helped expose Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's use of private e-mail as secretary of state was sentenced Thursday to 52 months in prison in connection to an admission that he broke into about 100 Americans' mail accounts."
Talk about a wicked psyop. It paints the picture that Hillary's use of private e-mail was a secret of some kind. I wonder how many hundreds or thousands
And yet rape will only get a wrist slap (Score:2)
This kind of sentencing is extraordinary especially in light of other recent verdicts and sentencing.
He should have just assaulted them in an alleyway (Score:1)
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The government writes its own rules for itself. The rules you and I have to follow do not apply to government agencies.
The US military even operates its own court system that isn't based on Constitutional law. If you had any doubts of there being under a separate system.
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As far as military tribunals - they do operate out of bounds of the constitution. The Constitution only applies to areas that are part of the US; so military actions taking place out side of the US are outside the purview of the Constitution. (Assuming that Congress has authorized force a
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The US military even operates its own court system that isn't based on Constitutional law. If you had any doubts of there being under a separate system.
And all this statement really says is you never had the balls to actually serve your country. First week of basic you get a history lesson on why the military is different than civilian life. I get it, though... you're just someone who doesn't want any of the responsibilities that come with the freedoms you're using, and you've never sacrificed a single thing for this country.
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Trump's RICO trial is moving forward. But it's just a civil trial, there won't be any consequences that would prevent him from being President.
Re:When are the Blumenthal & Clinton Trials? (Score:4, Informative)
Right after the Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld ones. A week from Never.