I'm calling shenanigans, and at any rate if it's true it's certainly a corner case. an interrogation and confession? just like that? something hinky is going on with this story.
Yes, sure. Because if you haul 16 year olds in to a real life sized police station and start asking pointed questions after doing what they probably figured was a nice prank they're going to clam up and ask for their lawyer, instead of becoming blubbering children.
Please, you can bet that (a) it's true, (b) that it's not a corner case (c) that he really confessed and (d) that there is nothing hinky at all.
Grown ups tend to fall apart after an hour or two in a cell if they've never been there before, imagine the effect on a 16 year old kid.
I've been in jail for several hours on a charge of tax evasion (long story short: I drove a car with foreign plates in to the Netherlands which was not yet fit for road approval, it was insured and otherwise ok), it did not make me suicidal (though they did take my shoelaces out of my shoes) but I was ready to do murder by the time I got out.
It had the exact opposite effect on me than what it does on most people apparently, I was ready to be reasonable at the time of being arrested but by the time they let me out of the holding cell they had lost each and every bit of credibility and respect with me that they ever had.
It was clearly a load of bull, they knew, I knew it, so I wanted to file charges and before you could say 'wow' I was escorted back out on to the street with a 'don't do that again' warning.
They would not even let me back in to file those charges.
Now, what a longer time in a prison cell would do to me I could not tell you but anger at this injustice is the only thing that still stands out after all these years (2 decades).
This reminds me of the last time i was in Athens. I took a picture of the US embassy and spent 5 hours in a cell. The fact that I am a Greek American with American citizenship meant nothing. The government has a way of making reasonable people unreasonable...
When I was in New York, the police stopped me from taking a picture of the Federal Reserve Building. They than gave me an info brochure with on the front a picture from the same angle. Only in America my friend.
I will certainly take you up on that, when I eventually find myself over there.
I initially swore that I'd stop traveling due to the TSA, but then I realized that going through an opt-out would be a better statement than just staying home. But if I wasn't already here, I wouldn't come here either.
16-year old kid who rarely ventures outside his parent's basement gets lifted off his seat by cops who threaten him with a lifetime in prison and he confesses? Preposterous.
Are you sure you aren't reading between the lines a little bit? I think that given the context it's smart to be a little skeptical of stories like this.
This is not Fox News or Bild we're talking about here, and given the context it is smart to know how to separate facts from fiction regardless of whether or not those facts fit in to your preferred worldview.
The dry facts:
(1) some 16 year old kid was arrested
(2) he was arrested in relation to his role in the attacks o MasterCard and PayPal
(3) He's been interrogated
(4) he confessed to at least being involved
(5) he's part of a group (most likely Anon, but that's interpretation on my side)
(6) they seem to have other suspects
(7) they are aware of two classes of suspects, 'organizers' and 'mules' and are (for now I would assume) focusing the investigative effort on the organizers, which suggests the kid was part of those that organized the attack and not just someone that downloaded a script or bot tool.
(8) On Friday (tomorrow) he will be arraigned, presumably we'll learn more then as well as whether or not he will be held longer
My point is that the arrest was not exactly due to LOIC usage, because the kid apparently got tagged by virtue of being one of the IRC ops for a/the payback channel. IRC is much easier to investigate than LOIC packets. This is what I meant by it being a corner case.
So, the story as I've been able to understand it is that the law tagged him via his association with the IRC channel, then under questioning revealed that he used LOIC as well. This isn't the same thing as your average payback participant having their identity revealed merely by their participation. I simply don't believe (yet, I haven't closed the door on this) that this arrest signals any risk to Anonymous.
That might be the case in general, but in this case they are just copying from the 'the wire' who themselves are copying from the official press statement. Which, I might add, is quite void of any real information such as the exact level of involvement of this guy and his pc. So I guess one should just wait for any real information to surface from him or his lawyer.
Is there no Dutch equivalent to the Fifth Amendment? In the US at least, it doesn't take guts. Just remember the word "lawyer" and any interrogation stops right then and there.
Fact check: the Fifth Amendment only means you don't have to answer. It doesn't mean they can't keep asking. Continuing to plead the Fifth when you're a scrawny 16yo in the face of a police officer in an interrogation room is probably harder than you suspect.
It's easy to get that idea from watching cop shows, so I don't blame you for thinking so, but it's not actually true.
Once you invoke your Fifth Amendment rights, as simply as saying "I want to talk to a lawyer", interrogation must stop until your attorney is present. That means stop asking questions, period. Cops are typically pretty mindful of this— since after that, any questions they ask, and anything you say in response, is inadmissible, and in fact could go to poison whatever legitimate case they have outside your testimony.
You do still have to watch out; this doesn't apply to "offered statements" which aren't in response to direct interrogation ("You know, Jim, there's a lot of kids around here. It'd be a shame if one of them found that shotgun...") At that point they may be able to claim you voluntarily waived your right to remain silent and resume questioning.
(It's also worth noting that the Fifth Amendment only applies once you're under arrest. It's a protection from self-incrimination, after all.
What kid knows to, or even can afford to, lawyer up? It may seem obvious to older, more experienced people that you should get a lawyer, but this piece of knowledge typically has to be programmed in.
It's not unusual for suspects to confess to crimes. It's just you're much more likely to hear about cases where the suspect denies the charges so it seems much more common than it actually is.
