
A Man Who Made the Mistake of Trying to Help Wikileaks - dsr12
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/jason-katz-wikileaks
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cmdkeen
A systems administrator downloads a random zip file and a password cracker
onto his work computer, when he works for the Department of Energy, gets
caught and fired. The first part of the article is surprising only in that he
found it so easy to get a good job in finance afterwards.

To be honest I'm not entirely sure what the point of the article is at all. He
freely admits that the FBI had cause to be suspicious about his travel to
Iceland, it coincided with a massive breach of information and he definitely
fit the bill to warrant investigation. He and his associates all were afforded
the right to counsel etc, in terms of US law enforcement stories this is more
of an example of how things should be done within the context of the law as it
stands.

~~~
ithought
The FBI raided his girlfriend's parents house and harassed and disrupted the
lives of all his friends and family prior to him going to Iceland.

All he did was download a file. The FBI knew he was politically motivated but
treated him like a criminal.

Sure his first employer is within their rights to fire him. But the hedge fund
only fired him (despite him already giving notice to leave) after the FBI
showed up to harass and disrupt his life.

This is not how law enforcement should work.

~~~
salesguy222
And yet, because of the prevailing attitude of the poster to whom you are
replying, this is probably how law enforcement will remain.

"THEY GET WHAT THEY DESERVE" is an easy and natural philosophy to have, until
it happens to you and your family.

And then still, many people are subtley and/or overtly pressured (terrorized)
into not joining any kind of activist or opposition movement

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peterwwillis
I remember when this happened. I didn't get to talk to Katz for a year or more
after the server got taken down. He confirmed later his move was basically due
to fear of the feds trying to come down on him however they could while
collecting scalps in response to the Wikileaks/Manning leaks. All of this
wouldn't have been possible without Lamo feeding virtually useless information
to the feds to try to score brownie points with them, and Strutt doing
absolutely nothing to protect the server he hosted for his "friends" in the
hacker community. It was a sad wake-up call.

~~~
yownie
Heya Jason here, have we talked in the past? I was actually already in the
process of my way out of the states when all this went down. In a general
sense Fedz rely on disrupting the support networks (familial and friend) of
those persons whom they deem targets. It's a common pattern when they've got a
high profile case and they're being pressed by administration for somebody,
anybody to prosecute.

~~~
cf
Hey this is cf. I had no idea this was all going on, and I appreciate you
trying to shield me and other people from getting pulled into this. You
dropped off Jabber and I worried if you were alright. I'm glad to see you
thriving in Iceland.

~~~
yownie
oh hey! yea I definitely cut contact with a lot of folks without explaining to
them that it was to keep them out of a position where they might inadvertently
lie to LEO and themselves then be coerced into helping.

I don't think many people understand that lying to Federal officials, even
innocuous ones can be prosecutable, depending on zealous they want to be.

~~~
cf
I appreciate it. Anyway all my old email addresses still work if you want to
get back in touch.

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aw3c2
Warning, this "website" eats 100% CPU every time you dare to scroll to _read
text_.

~~~
metaphorm
not on my browser. probably ad-block related, i.e. I'm using ad-block and the
page doesn't eat all my CPU.

~~~
BoorishBears
I have Ad Block and it spikes to 60% CPU

~~~
bradknowles
Have you tried uBlock Origin?

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ElijahLynn
Unfortunate the clickbait headline says it was a "mistake". A mistake is
something you wish you hadn't done.

"I don't regret my actions, because they led me on a really interesting
journey."

~~~
ssully
It's not click bait, what you are defining is regret and regret is not needed
for something to be a mistake.

I have made many mistakes in my life - some I regret, others I do not.

~~~
ElijahLynn
I disagree.

