
Weev placed in solitary confinement for tweeting from prison - bifrost
http://www.dailydot.com/news/andrew-weev-aurenheimer-solitary-prison-tweets/
======
DanBC
So far it's only Weev (and his lawyer) saying that tweeting is the reason for
being put in solitary.

Like the article says,

> According to the National Institute of Justice, "administrative segregation"
> is a synonym for solitary, and is reserved:

> _for violent or disruptive behavior. AS typically involves single-cell
> confinement for 23 hours daily; inmates are allowed one hour out of the cell
> for exercise and showers._

That disruptive sticks out. It fits Weev pretty well.

I wouldn't be surprised if he's alone to protect himself.

~~~
jbooth
Disruptive behavior includes pissing off the guards with wisecracks and a smug
air of intellectual superiority. I'd bet $10 to 1 that's why he's in there.

~~~
jlgreco
Wisecracks can probably be defined, but what exactly is _"smug air of
intellectual superiority"_? I have seen people accused of that for merely
wearing glasses and using words not in the accusers vocabulary. It is
arbitrary as hell.

Let's say he was making fun of the guards for all having G.E.D.s though....
putting somebody in solitary for that is abhorrent.

~~~
barry-cotter
They're prison guards. It would be amazing if they didn't do stuff like that.
I'm assuming Weev is in a federal prison so at least he's not likely yo be
raped.

------
enraged_camel
Auernheimer is a tremendous cretin. The fact that he has the gall to compare
himself to Aaron Swartz makes me want to vomit.

As for tweeting from prison, I have no idea what he was thinking. Then again
it is hardly the first time he exercised extremely poor judgment.

~~~
postfuturist
1\. Does being a cretin or a jerk or whatever mean it is OK to be imprisoned
for non-crimes?

2\. He wasn't the one who started the comparisons with Aaron Swartz, from
weev's tweet: "CNN is also sitting around calling me a meanie. I'm a bad
troll, and no Aaron Swartz, the outraged masses cry!" Then he goes on to
continue differentiate himself from Aaron, he never created or invited a
positive comparison.

3\. The article said he was sending messages to another person who was
tweeting on his behalf. Why would he lose his right to free speech just
because he has been convicted of a crime? Why wouldn't he be able to tweet (by
proxy)?

EDIT s/charged/convicted/

~~~
toki5
>Why would he lose his right to free speech just because he has been convicted
of a crime?

Inmates have restricted free speech. See here for some info om that:
[http://civilrights.findlaw.com/other-constitutional-
rights/r...](http://civilrights.findlaw.com/other-constitutional-
rights/rights-of-inmates.html)

~~~
white_devil
> Inmates have restricted free speech.

In other words, they don't have free speech?

~~~
rhizome
We all have restricted free speech. Some more than others.

------
joeyh
Here's a blog via snail mail service for the incarcerated.
<http://betweenthebars.org/> It's been running for 3 years.

Incidentially, one of the the people who runs it was a good friend of Aaron
Swartz. <http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/aaron-swartz>

------
dboat
I can only wonder whether he is accomplishing anything with this. Not judging,
I really have no idea.

He seems a little immature and kind of obnoxious, even if his goals appear to
be laudable. Maybe that's what it takes to get the attention the CFAA needs in
order to be reformed.

~~~
kens
Based on reports¹², weev is super-malevolent, helping drive blogger Kathy
Sierra off the internet, being president of a group I won't even name here,
saying "I hack, I ruin, I make piles of money. I make people afraid for their
lives", stealing people's social security numbers, and so forth. If you think
his goals are laudable, please read a bit more about his goals.

¹
[http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?_...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all)
²
[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/06/meet-o...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/06/meet-
one-of-the-hackers-who-exposed-the-ipad-security-leak/57969/)

------
Fuxy
I understand the need to monitor communication in prisons I mean you never
know how a drug dealer will give commands to his gang but seriously this guy
is not a drug dealer.

He should be allowed to communicate with the outside world unless the prison
has something to hide. (See that logic works backwards as well)

We are so used to the government telling us our communication should be
monitored unless we have something to hide but how about we apply that to
them.

------
altero
Why US government has so much self-restraint? 1% of Americans are already in
jail, it could be easily increased to 10% or even 20%.

------
rwc
What on earth did he expect would happen, and why on earth would anybody be
outraged or otherwise incensed by this?

Does anyone go to prison with the expectation that they maintain their right
to tweet?

~~~
corin_
If what is said in the article is correct, I don't see what was wrong with
"him tweeting". He sent messages via a prison-approved method to someone
outside who tweeted on his behalf.

Do prisoners automatically retain the right to access online services? No. But
why should they be denied the right to ask people in the outside world to use
these services (which are completely legal - it's not like he was asking them
to do anything dodgy) on his behalf?

Just because the title makes it sound like he sneakily found a way around the
system, this really isn't a big deal, he didn't break any rules, he didn't
even find any loopholes, he just did what seems to be perfectly allowed.
(Unless the article is neglecting to mention why it would not be allowed.)

Weev is a massive tool, but (if his lawyer's speculation is correct) why do
you feel that asking someone to post a tweet on your account warrants solitary
confinement? What makes it worse than writing a letter to a newspaper, writing
a book and having it published while in jail, or just speaking to someone and
asking them to pass a message onto friends/family - all of which happen
without outcry.

~~~
mpyne
If it's prison-approved then it's true that stuff ending up on Twitter (which
is how I'd phrase it rather than 'weev posting to Twitter') should not land
him in solitary.

But that is weev's theory for why he landed in solitary; there may be
alternative reasons (e.g. joking about killing himself, disruptive behavior
with other inmates, etc.)

~~~
corin_
Sure, it's possible he's in solitary for killing 20 prison guards, but this
article and these comments are on the theory that it's for tweeting, and the
person I replied to suggested that this alone warranted solitary confinement.

------
maeon3
The government wants to suppress hackers from distributing identity theft
information out and about so that ATM harvesting (an exploding business)
continues to be out-of-control.

But the problem is, the government is doing it exactly backwards. We need to
be punishing AT&T for the fact that Weev gained access. Not punishing the
person who got in.

It's cultiavating a culture of "It's OK to have no security". And as such,
criminals are stealing your identity from everywhere all over the internet
because the government wants to spy on the citizens.

If we have tons of weev's going around illustrating (proving to the world)
that AT&T can be hacked by teenagers, then AT&T would fix their problems.

This whole situation is so disgusting. The people who are perpetuating the
problems on the internet are the ones destroying the few capable hackers who
are trying to point at the REAL problem. We need the government to pay Weev a
million dollars every time he steals a batch of Identity information, and send
the bill to AT&T. Eventually AT&T would be bulletproof.

It makes me very sad, kind of like when you see a criminal stealing some booze
shoot a mother and a baby because they were witnesses and in the way. You just
cry and move on. The problem of identity theft will continue to explode
because the criminal is still lose, and the only solution was incarcerated.

~~~
jforman
> It's cultiavating a culture of "It's OK to have no security"

This is how the rest of our culture works. If you leave your door unlocked and
somebody robs your house, we charge that person with robbery and put them in
jail. We might shake our head at your naivete, but you won't get in trouble
for having lax security.

If the tech community wants this standard to change when dealing with
intellectual property, we need to articulate _why_ and get people on board,
because it's certainly not the default in either our current culture or our
current laws.

~~~
noonespecial
AT&T leaves the door open with _your_ stuff inside. Its a little different.
They should have _some_ responsibility to protect all that personal goodness
they seem oh so willing to demand of you.

~~~
cstejerean
If someone steals my laptop from your apartment, the person stealing is still
guilty of a crime. Depending on our arrangement you may also be liable for the
loss of my laptop, but that doesn't excuse the thief's action.

~~~
msandford
What if you leave a laptop sitting in the middle of the street with no
identifying information on it and no password required to login. I would argue
that picking that laptop up and keeping it isn't theft but rather simply
FINDING it.

In this case AT&T put the laptop in a brown paper bag (in the middle of the
street) and then were shocked, SHOCKED that someone would open it up to see
what's inside.

EDIT: Security through obscurity is no security at all.

~~~
rayiner
It is actually theft to take a laptop in a brown paper bag in the middle of
the street unless there is an indiction the owner intended to abandon it.
Finders are supposed to make efforts to locate the owner or otherwise turn in
what was found.

~~~
adamnemecek
Which is kind of what weev did by reporting it.

~~~
tptacek
The words "kind of" are doing a lot of work in that sentence.

~~~
adamnemecek
In the sense that he made the owner aware of it.

------
ttrreeww
The end of freedom.

