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just sitting there firing requests
with a piece of software from their
computers,” she said. “It doesn’t
feel all that criminal. It doesn’t
feel like you’re causing harm.”
But Mark Rasch, a former federal cybercrime prosecutor, said
the Anonymous attack on PayPal
should be considered a serious
crime. He compared it to chaining
a lock to the entrance of a store
to prevent customers from entering. “If you do something illegal,
the essence of civil disobedience
is you run the risk of arrest and
prosecution,” he said.
Still, Rasch said the 14 PayPal
defendants should be considered
individually. “You need to look
at the nature of their participation. Were they leaders or not?”
he said. “It may be appropriate
for some of these people to not be
prosecuted or be given probation.”
In interviews with The Huffington Post, defendants in the PayPal
case said they have spent the past
two years burdened by pre-trial
conditions that restricted their
Internet usage. Many also struggled to secure employment.
“When you’re applying for a
job and someone Googles you, you
have a lot of explaining to do when
you want to point out that you
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“I ran out of money fast
and have been living
on almost nothing
or from the generosity
of my family.”
were standing up for free speech
and a worthy cause and the government says you’re a cyber terrorist,” said Graham E. Archer, an
attorney who represents Ethan
Miles, one of the defendants.
Archer said being on pre-trial
release has been “extraordinarily
stressful” for Miles. Court records
note that he spent time at a mental health facility.
“You have a pre-trial services
officer who is in your life constantly,” Archer said. “It’s a form
of out-of-custody incarceration
for a lot of people.”
Covelli, who went by the online
aliases “Absolem” and “Toxic,”
said a brief stretch in which he
was barred from using the Internet was “like a muzzle.” A courtappointed officer routinely inspects his computer to ensure he
is complying with pre-trial conditions that bar him from Internet