Federal Grand Jury as its Bureau of Show Trials.
Now, they want to strike fear into journalists
that dare to question the motives of the US
government, in this time of rampant spying.
Spying on innocent people, by the gov.
Checkit: Wikileaks
WIKILEAKS
STATEMENT ON JEREMY HAMMOND
Tue
May 28 13:32:59 2013 EST
This
morning in Lower Manhattan federal district court, political activist and
alleged WikiLeaks source Jeremy Hammond accepted a non-cooperating guilty plea
to one count of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). According to
prosecution documents, Mr. Hammond was
entrapped by an FBI government informant, Hector Monsegur (Sabu).
Without
this plea, Mr. Hammond could have been sentenced to close to 40 years in prison for political activism.
With his plea Mr. Hammond still faces up to ten years in prison. His sentencing
will take place on the 6th of September 2013. Mr. Hammond had been imprisoned without trial since his arrest
on 5 March 2012 in Chicago.
Mr.
Hammond is accused of being a source, via WikiLeaks publications on
the
US intelligence contractor Stratfor, for hundreds of media organisations
including Rolling Stone and the
McClatchy group. McClatchy is the publisher of hundreds of newspapers in
the United States, including the LA Times and the Miami Herald.
WikiLeaks
publisher Julian Assange stated "The Obama administrations war
on
journalism must stop. Today the Obama administration imprisoned yet
another
political activist and yet another alleged journalistic source:
Jeremy
Hammond. The Obama administration's treatment of Jeremy Hammond is
a
disgrace. Combined with similar actions against Bradley Manning, John
Kiriakou, Thomas Drake, James
Risen,
WikiLeaks, the Associated Press and
FOX
news the intent of the Obama administration to undermine basic
political
and journalistic freedoms is clear."
Mr.
Hammond was indicted last year by a US federal grand jury. 99.97% of
people before a US federal
grand jury are indicted. Of
those, 99% are
subsequently convicted -- 97%
in response to pressures
to accept a plea
deal.
According to the constitution no-one may be indicted for a federal
felony
except by grand jury. Grand juries were originally designed to keep
a check on prosecutorial excess. However,
due to the secrecy of the grand
jury process, this system of
accountability has been inverted
and grand
juries
are now used to breach the separation of powers, giving the
executive
the power to coercively force people to testify or to issue
subpeonas
without judicial oversight.
In
the Hammond case, once again the US government has used the much
criticised CFAA, an act that was much
criticised in relation to the death
of
Aaron Swartz, who was also charged under the CFAA. This legislation was
written
in 1984, a year before Mr. Hammond was born, at a time when it was
principally
important general government computer systems that were
connected
to the Internet. Because the law failed
to keep up with the
democratisation of the
Internet,
now even alleged unauthorised access to
every day computer systems
are charged commensurate with breaches of
national security. Through amendments,
vagueness in wording and
prosecutorial
practice, in recent years the catch-all CFAA has permitted
prosecutors
to exploit the law by engaging in significant over-charging,
inflating one distinct
alleged political action into half a dozen charges
and stacking up the
sentencing as
a result.
Hammond's
one alleged political act of obtaining Stratfor documents was spun out into
five felonies, carrying a total maximum sentence of over three times that in
prison.
Similarly, Aaron Swartz's one alleged
political act was spun out
into four, and subsequently
into thirteen
felony counts.
