Weev has applied his trolling talents to shaking down the US government – or, in Weev-ese, “YOU LYING SUBHUMAN GARBAGE” – for restitution.
Weev, also known as Andrew Auernheimer, was recently released from prison, where he was serving a sentence of 41 months after being found guilty in 2013 of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA).
The restitution he’s after is 28,296 bitcoins, he wrote in a letter posted on Tuesday.
That’s equivalent to about £8.23 million, or $13.9 million, but he most definitely doesn’t want it in US dollars, he writes:
I do not accept United States dollars, as it is the preferred currency of criminal organizations such as the FBI, DOJ, ATF, and Federal Reserve and I do not assist criminal racketeering enterprises.
The open letter – or, really, the invoice – was addressed to members of the New Jersey District Court, where his case was tried, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), and the US Department of Justice (DOJ).
Weev describes his arrest as “kidnapping” and the letters’ addressees as “liars and seditionists” – charges that, he writes, are substantiated by the opinion of the appeals court that overturned his conviction.
His invoiced amount covers one bitcoin per hour – his “current market-determined hourly rate” (he doesn’t specify what he does for that rate).
The funds would cover the 1,179 days during which Weev was arrested, taken from his home, and incarcerated for what prosecutors said was the crime of writing a script to slurp email addresses of some 114,000 iPad users from AT&T’s publicly accessible website.
He says the bitcoins will go toward “a series of memorial groves for the greatest patriots of our generation,” whom he names as American truck bomber Timothy McVeigh; Andrew Stack (presumably the Andrew Joseph Stack III who committed suicide and killed an Internal Revenue Service worker by crashing his plane into an IRS field office); and Marvin Heemeyer, who modified a bulldozer with steel and concrete armor, took it on a rampage in 2004, destroyed city buildings, and then killed himself.
“The federal government has declared war on We the People,” Weev writes, calling himself “the latest casualty” of an “unjust and seditious war” being waged by the federal government:
I can assure you that violence was used against me, and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals has already verified that the case against me undermined the Constitution.
Some are saying that in Weev, the government created a martyr, using a murky law to prosecute somebody who did the e-equivalent of walk down a public street and write down street addresses.
It doesn’t matter if we like Weev. It doesn’t matter if we agree with his goal of using the money to build memorial groves to the likes of Timothy McVeigh. He’s got a right to be furious about his arrest and imprisonment for non-crimes.
But a rallying cry that lionizes those who murder innocent people certainly isn’t going to get the general public on his side.
But Weev will be Weev.
We can now just hope that minds with less tendency to shock and bait others can take up the cause of true, productive legislative reform, and leave the references to Timothy McVeigh et al. out of it.
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I am confused as to why Sophos would publish an article about a letter written by someone two bricks shy of a full load.
Because he has a right to be angry, and because his writings, however, outrageous and offensive, still illuminate the fact that the CFAA is a lousy law. Because prosecutorial abuse of bad laws should be addressed. He might not be the poster boy we would have chosen if we had our druthers, but that doesn’t mean he deserved a prison sentence for a non-crime.
You are correct, he does have a right to be angry, but Sophos seems to have overlooked a major rule on the internet – Don’t feed the Trolls.
“I do not assist criminal racketeering enterprises.” What does he think Bitcoins are used for? Buying girl scout cookies?
If he hacked into a database and stole private information then yes he should have gone to prison.
Yes, I’ve actually purchased girl scout cookies with bitcoin. Along with food, electronics, VPN’s, domains & precious metals. I did my Christmas shopping at Target with bitcoin. While everyone else had their credit cards stolen… I sat back and laughed. No worries here.
“While everyone else had their credit cards stolen”
And those people get their money refunded if the CC is stolen.
Who refunds your bitcoins when they get stolen or if your exchange *cough* MTGOX *cough* gets “hacked”? Will you be laughing when your bitcoins are stolen?
Simple, I don’t use exchanges. I only use them directly and use cold storage.
They often do stuff like this. They kidnap people, then let them go. But the government does not want to be responsible for the income that they robbed from anyone who they kidnap.
I side with Weeb. The government should be responsible for his lost income while he was in prison, a nice sum for pain and suffering while he was in prison, plus punitive damages for those who were responsible for falsely prosecuting him!
The man wouldn’t have made millions in those years, so no he doesn’t deserve it. Plus he knew he could get in trouble, so he should stop whining. Sure since his appeal won, give him maybe 50,000 dollars and be done with it; he looks like he doesn’t spend on hair, clothes or hygiene so he doesn’t need cash for them.
@Victor Kelly you are woefully misinformed. weev didn’t “hack” in to anything. he accessed a public domain site, noticed that it had next to no security and exposed people to identity theft and shared the information with online journalists. he should have been thanked. instead, apple & at&t, collectively with egg on their corporate faces, and likely fearful of the loss of filthy lucre the exposure of their criminal lack of security for their users’ information might cause, collaborated with the feds to lock the guy up. the prosecution/persecution mostly hinged on the “we don’t like this guy” or he’s a “jerk/troll” argument rather than any real wrong doing.
@Stace so…because he wouldn’t use the money on the stuff you would use it on means he should be compensated less for false imprisonment? if you assume the man would not have made millions in those years, but a guy who could identify security flaws in the public websites of major corporations in his sleep—you honestly think no one would have an interest in hiring him and paying him a heft salary–for his talent, skills and expertise? His is not a common skillset, but it is a highly sought after one.
last side note: you don’t think that if you’d been forced to spend 7 months in solitary confinement that you might be a little out of the habit of caring and about keeping up with appearances? Spend on your hair and clothes all you want. This guy will be rich three times over before you pay finish paying off your mortgage.