"[n]ot materially different from breaking into secure offices and stealing copies of private documents"
Jeremy Hammond caused the release of information collected by a private security firm, which Barron's referred to "The Shadow CIA" JS's purpose, by all accounts i have read, was to (i) call attention to the volume, and scope of data collected by a private company whose customers include foreign governments; and (ii) call attention to the additional risks arising from Stratfor's insecure storage of this data.
it's difficult to effectively "blow the whistle" without revealing this information. Sure he had no authorization to do so, but the moral claim that seems to have motivated his effort--whether you agree with it or not--was that a private company has no business collecting this type of data and selling it to foreign governments and worse they storing it while not adequately protecting it against unauthorized access.
The term "shadow CIA" seems to imply that they're a worse, shadier version of the CIA. In fact IMHO they're doing what the CIA should be doing (actually collecting intelligence rather than trying to actively influence foreign politics), they're doing a much better job of it than the CIA, and the information, rather than being a state secret, is available to anyone who's willing to pay their (fairly pricey but not unreasonable for the information you get) annual membership fee. I know these things because I was a subscriber, and my credit card was leaked as a part of this hack (hmm I guess I must be part of the shadowy cabal). Have any of the people who claim it's a shady organization actually read any of their reports? They read like I wish CNN articles would - 1 paragraph of "what happened" followed by dozens of paragraphs of historical context.
The fact that they had government clients is completely irrelevant. You know who else has government clients? The Starbucks next to the Capitol building. Unless they were exclusively providing information to governments (which they weren't), I don't see why it's an issue that governments found their intelligence valuable enough to pay for it.
Of course it is a problem that their data was stored insecurely, but like other commenters I don't think releasing/charging the credit card numbers was a particularly productive way to call attention to this fact.
The mob mentality that surfaces here whenever a so-called "hacktivist" actually has to do jail time for something they knew full well was a crime when they did it, is just astounding.
Just wanted to say that as a fellow subscriber who also had the royal inconvenience of having my email/password/CC leaked, you're spot-on. Spend enough time reading their analysis and even The Economist starts to feel like People Magazine.
And the format of: Summary / What Happened / Historical Background / Restated Summary should be made standard journalistic procedure.
I don't really buy that. If you think that the collection and insecure storage of confidential information is a problem, you don't "fix" the problem by releasing all of that confidential information to WikiLeaks. And you certainly don't make over a million dollars in fraudulent credit card transactions.
The moral justification is really just: (1) Stratfor does work for the powers that be; (2) the powers that be are bad; therefore (3) hacking Stratfor hurts bad people.
I know you're just clarifying it and not necessarily advocating it, but just want to state that it's a pretty lousy justification. For example:
(1) Mike Smith pays taxes to the powers that be, and therefore works 3-4 months out of the year for the powers that be; (2) The powers that be are bad; Therefore (3) murdering Mike hurts bad people.
Jeremy Hammond caused the release of information collected by a private security firm, which Barron's referred to "The Shadow CIA" JS's purpose, by all accounts i have read, was to (i) call attention to the volume, and scope of data collected by a private company whose customers include foreign governments; and (ii) call attention to the additional risks arising from Stratfor's insecure storage of this data.
it's difficult to effectively "blow the whistle" without revealing this information. Sure he had no authorization to do so, but the moral claim that seems to have motivated his effort--whether you agree with it or not--was that a private company has no business collecting this type of data and selling it to foreign governments and worse they storing it while not adequately protecting it against unauthorized access.