Aaron Swartz suicide sparks Anonymous to hack US Government Sites

Hackers working under the name of the Anonymous hacktivist collective hit a U.S. government website on Saturday, replacing its home page with a 1,340 word text detailing its frustrations with the way the American legal system works and a threat to release “secrets” gathered from U.S. government websites.

The website of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which establishes sentencing policies for the federal court system, was offline for much of Saturday as a result of the attack.  According to the message left on the site, the site and timing of the attack were not random.

The message read: “Two weeks ago today, a line was crossed, two weeks ago today, Aaron Swartz was killed. Killed because he faced an impossible choice.  Killed because he was forced into playing a game he could not win — a twisted and distorted perversion of justice — a game where the only winning move was not to play.” The message continued: “This website was chosen due to the symbolic nature of its purpose — the federal sentencing guidelines which enable prosecutors to cheat citizens of their constitutionally guaranteed right to a fair trial, by a jury of their peers — the federal sentencing guidelines which are in clear violation of the 8th amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishments”.

The statement by Anonymous went on to say that they had infiltrated numerous U.S. government websites and gathered material it judged would be embarrassing if released.  “We have enough fissile material for multiple warheads.  Today we are launching the first of these. Operation Last Resort has begun…”  While the message did not reveal the nature of the “fissile material” Anonymous posted a multi-part encrypted file (named for Judges on the US Supreme Court) on the site that was said to contain the information.   Anonymous went on to demand a number of reforms to the U.S. legal system in their message.

Background:  Aaron Swartz committed suicide on Jan. 11 in New York.  There is conjecture that Swartz’s suicide was precipitated by an upcoming trial for computer intrusion, wire fraud and data theft charges that carried a maximum penalty of 35 years in jail.  The Federal Government alleges that Swartz stole millions of scholarly articles and documents from the JSTOR database with the intention of publishing them online and making them available for free.

Swartz’s suicide sparked outrage among the hacktivist community.  While there is little evidence to support it, many in the hacktivist community blamed the prosecution and potential penalties he faced as directly contributing to his death.