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and aspirations stuck in a limbo
of indeterminate duration as they
await a resolution of their case.
Their wait may be nearing a
conclusion. Last month, the defendants — known collectively
as the “PayPal 14” — attended
a closed-door hearing in federal
court in San Francisco in hopes
of negotiating a settlement that
could keep them out of prison.
Lawyers for both sides declined
to discuss the negotiations, but a
joint court filing called the meeting “productive.”
“We’re at a delicate point,”
one defense attorney said in
an interview.
Such a deal would mark the
final chapter in a case that has
been seen as one of the first major
salvos in the federal government’s
war on Anonymous, a loose collective of hackers who say they are
motivated by ideological beliefs,
not financial gain. It would also
bring to a close months of legal
uncertainty that the defendants
say has caused them both financial and emotional strain. One defendant in the case told The Huffington Post that she would “jump
off the Hoover Dam” if convicted.
While the PayPal case has largely faded from public view, the law
HUFFINGTON
06.30-07.07.13
[I] opened the door
and “got a pistol put
to my face,” he said.
under which the 14 defendants
were charged — the Computer
Fraud and Abuse Act — has come
under increased scrutiny. The
government used the same antihacking law to prosecute Internet
activist Aaron Swartz, charging
him with illegally downloading
millions of articles from a Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer archive. Facing the
prospect of a lengthy prison sentence, Swartz committed suicide,
provoking claims of prosecutorial
overreach and calls to reform the
law. Critics say it is overly broad
and excessively punitive, meting
out stiff prison terms for some
computer-related crimes they
deem relatively innocuous.
The PayPal arrests appeared to
have done little to deter Anonymous. Six months after the indictment was unsealed, in January
2012, Anonymous launched one
of its largest attacks, knocking
offline the Justice Department’s
website in protest of the U.S.
government’s arrest of leaders of