Chelsea. w0rmer. Kahuna. t0piary. Owen. Barrett Brown. Other Anons by the score. Even Julian (for at least a bit). Freed.
And now Jeremy. After eight long years.
A year ago this week Jeremy Hammond was arrested for his alleged involvement with Anonymous and though many have, we have not and will not forget his contributions nor will we forgive those prosecuting him. The circumstances surrounding Jeremy Hammond’s arrest are questionable at best and the circumstances now surrounding his trial are but salt on those wounds. The intent of those seeking the prosecution of our fellow Anons is clear, they wish to set a precedent and make examples out of our fallen brothers and sisters but they are paid to do so. This is an ideological battle they wish to fight and they will lose because, though you can arrest a few of us, you can not arrest an idea.
FreeAnons
Jeremy Hammond is free. The news was released on Twitter, which Jeremy is almost certainly legally precluded from accessing. Along with the rest of the internet, including the 17 posts about him on The Cryptosphere.
Jeremy Hammond is an anarchist activist of the old school, who was arrested for the hacks associated with AntiSec and tried under a judge who was married to one of the victims of that hack. Which, that’s just The System performing as it was created to. Facing up to 100 years in prison, he eventually pled to a single charge and received ten years, of which he served eight because of time served pre-trial.
A long, terrible era has just come to a close.
Back in his old Chicago stomping grounds but in a halfway house, Hammond almost certainly made McDonald’s his first pitstop, as is traditional for those leaving the American prison system. Even if you missed that part in Ocean’s 11.
Hammond was the heart and soul of AntiSec, a true online Robin Hood who robbed from the rich and literally gave to the poor, using the hacked credit cards to send donations to several organizations and pulling several pranks that included buying a friend of mine a horse. A black stallion, if I recall. He only found out when the breeder phoned to ask how he wanted it delivered. To his apartment in New York.
Friends, you will be shocked to learn he did not want it delivered.
He delivered a contentious and well-remembered DEFCON talk (aren’t they all, though?) in 2004, advocating for electronic civil disobedience. Pretty much Hammond’s standard operating procedure. DEFCON describes it as, “An introduction to the theory of hacktivism and the usage of hacking skills as a means of fighting for social justice by pressuring corporations and government to adopt progressive changes.“
Jeremy Hammond has been a pain in the ass of the establishment for quite some time. He was trapped by the feds in 2012 for allegedly breaching the servers of Stratfor, a capitalist “intelligence” corporation that has been a called a “Private CIA” He’s being charged for stealing a shitload of Stratfor emails and handing them over to WikiLeaks, who dutifully published them. But Hammond’s street cred goes back quite a bit, including the 2004 Republican National Convention. In this video Hammond, goes by the name “CrimethInc” and delivers an impassioned talk about Electronic Civil Disobedience.
submedia
Hammond, more than most incarcerated Anons, became a focal point of the #FreeAnons movement, who even published a children’s book in his honour. He is (or was, ten years ago) pretty much the Platonic ideal of the badass hippie hacktivist, as you can see. After his arrest he and the FBI informant Sabu who turned him in were briefly incarcerated in the same prison. When Hammond was brought in and walked down the halls, he got a standing ovation from the prisoners.
When he was put in charge of teaching the prisoners art, he had them make posters for Anonymous.
And if precedent is any guide, prison won’t have softened him any.
Even if it DID give him contact with the Covid-19 virus.
Some day I’ll tell you about the time Sabu introduced me to Anarchaos on Twitter. The handle belongs to someone else now, but it used to belong to Jeremy Hammond.
Well, that’s basically the whole story. I’d been seeing him around hacktivist circles on Twitter for a couple of days first, and was thinking “Damn, I wish I’d grabbed that Twitter handle.” So I told him I liked his Twitter handle, Sabu was all “Yeah, wanted to get you two together.” And as far as I can remember, that’s the only time we ever talked.
So yeah, some day I’ll tell you that story.
In the meantime, I have a bottle of bubbly that’s been waiting for a damn good excuse, and this? Friends, this is the best excuse imaginable.
raincoaster 