Was Jeremy Hammond's Stratfor Hack an Act of Civil Disobedience?

Anonymous member Jeremy Hammond (aka Anarchaos) pleaded guilty this week to one count of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) for his role in the hacking of private intelligence firm Stratfor. Hammond then published a statement regarding his plea, explaining that he feels the theft of Stratfor emails and credit card data was morally justified.

"Now that I have pleaded guilty it is a relief to be able to say that I did work with Anonymous to hack Stratfor, among other websites," he wrote. "Those others included military and police equipment suppliers, private intelligence and information security firms, and law enforcement agencies. I did this because I believe people have a right to know what governments and corporations are doing behind closed doors. I did what I believe is right."

Hammond's last two defiant sentences are thought provoking. They should once again force Americans to consider whether Hammond and Anonymous's Stratfor hack, as well as other hacks and DDoS attacks, are acts of civil disobedience.

The beauty of CFAA is its surface level legitimacy. Politicians wrote the law to stop hackers from stealing money or doing shit for kicks, or "lulz," and have periodically updated it to make new forms of hacking illegal. Most people would grant its utility. But, its language also precludes any possibility of hacking as a civil disobedient act. It allows the government to completely avoid the question. Prosecutors can say with confidence that political or social motivations are irrelevant. Data was stolen, someone must pay for the crime. And who are we to deny them?

But consider for a moment the definition of civil disobedience—"the refusal to comply with certain laws considered unjust, as a peaceful form of political protest." As Americans, we typically think of civil disobedience—acts that, although illegal, are perceived as protest, or as having moral high ground—as being carried out by Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and Gandhi. Even Mohammed Ali's refusal to go to war in Vietnam would qualify as civil disobedience in the general American opinion. Perhaps as a result, the tactical and symbolic qualities of civil disobedience have been transmuted into something almost mythological.

Only these larger-than-life figures are allowed to be disobedient but still civil. Only these figures could exercise the tactic legitimately. The 60s countercutlure, on the other hand, wasn't so lucky. They got pursued by COINTELPRO instead, an FBI program that helped unravel the the potential for political and social revolution in those years.

The truth is that these people didn't start out as mythic figures. They were once anonymous. Once they decided to act and then succeeded, they were later absorbed by a country that likes to proudly claim as its own the liberties gained by such fighters, when that country's system denied those freedoms in the first place.

Who now talks of civil disobedience as an effective tactic in King, Parks and Ali's wake? It's almost as if its possibility disappeared over 50 years ago. Almost.

Like these other Americans, Jeremy Hammond also broke a law that he felt was unjust (the CFAA), in order to lift the veil on the closed-door activities of government and corporations.

Remember, Hammond isn't just a hacker, but a longtime activist, with interests ranging from economic justice to anti-fascism. He and his brother were, according to friends and family, raised by their father to be socially conscious and deeply affected by injustice, in whichever form it might take. Viewed through this prism, Hammond's Stratfor hack makes sense as an act of civil disobedience, especially when one considers that Hammond was never afraid of arrest for his activism.

So why are hackers like Hammond, or whistleblowers like Bradley Manning and WikiLeaks, denied the protective, almost saint-like aura of those who have historically engaged in non-violent civil disobedience? Could it be that the revolutionary power of the Gandhis, the MLKs and the Rosa Parks of the world are much easier to absorb into the status quo—their threat much easier to neutralize with political, social, and economic accommodation? Whereas the hacker and the whistleblower, by comparison, represent a much more powerful, anti-government check on power, one that cannot be so easily assimilated?

With traditional non-violent civil disobedience movements, one knew where to find the leader, because they were very public. Surveillance was therefore made easy. Not so with hackers and whistleblowers. They can be anywhere and anyone. They are, to evoke some cyberpunk imagery, digital ninjas.

So when Hammond faced 30 years in prison for pleading not guilty in the Stratfor hack (knocked down to a maximum of 10 years with immunity after the plea), are we to believe that the punishment actually fits the crime?

Is it that the CFAA was created not simply to stop cyber theft of bank accounts, but also as a bulwark against a form of non-violent civil disobedience that is much more dangerous than its past incarnations? If we think of it this way, we see Hammond positioned on the losing end of that stick—all because hacking and whistleblowing have the inherent power to tear corrupt government and industry wide open.

Power can hide behind that mask, just as Hammond once hid behind Anonymous's Guy Fawkes mask, convincing itself and the country that the Stratfor hack wasn't an act of civil disobedience. And, in doing so, the government never acknowledges that Stratfor spied on anarchists for Coca Cola, for example. Increasingly, it also ignores that whistleblowers and leakers like Bradley Manning have done anything but break the law. The narrative of secrets and morality is one-sided, and it's Hammond that's forced to pay.