The key to the whole story is buried for some reason on the second page: "Prosecutors disputed this and maintained that chat logs recovered from Gonzalez’s computer described illegal carding activity that Gonzalez conducted and showed that Watt at least had broad knowledge of what Gonzalez was doing, if not the details. As Gonzalez and his gang hacked target after target, he sent Watt links to news stories describing the breaches, though he didn’t acknowledge in the correspondence that he was behind the attacks.<p>Watt’s attorney told Wired in 2010 that his client accepted 'responsibility for aiding people that he knew would commit wrongdoing. However, he is very disturbed by the government’s aggressive attempt to make him into more than what he is.'"<p>The article spends a page and a half making you think that he's just some innocent guy who wrote a program for a friend who ended up using it maliciously, when in reality he admitted that he helped Gonzales who he knew was going to use it to commit crimes.<p>This is open and shut aiding and abetting a felony. And not some vague made-up felony. A felony that actually deserves to be a felony. Without taking any affirmative measures when he found out to turn his friend in, and without cooperating with police when he was charged with helping in the scheme. Is it the mark of an innocent person to you that when he found out his software had been used to commit a crime, even then he didn't help the police? The judge did absolutely the right thing in not giving him probation in order to send a signal.
The government really tries to cripple you following any sort of felony. Isn't going to prison and not doing the things you normally do, for any extended amount of time, enough punishment as it is? Isn't the whole thing supposed to be about rehabilitation for tendencies that hurt society and the fostering of tendencies that would help it? I'm not saying prisons, or the whole system, are rigged to perpetuate more crime, but it feels like you'd have to do some sort of illegal activity to stay afloat after losing everything then constantly getting held under water after release so as not being able to make a rent payment.
Strangely, the article really glossed over his past and made it seem like he was just an everyday programmer.<p>He is the same person who goes by the name of 'the unix terrorist' and was pretty active in the hacking world: <a href="http://www.phrack.com/issues.html?issue=65&id=2" rel="nofollow">http://www.phrack.com/issues.html?issue=65&id=2</a>
If this guy worked for Morgan Stanley then why isn't he coding Bitcoin/Litecoin/PPPcoin trading engines? Screw wallstreet, work for the hacker wallstreet
Regardless of his level of guilt, the aim of the prosecutors/government was not to punish, nor to rehabilitate - they wanted to <i>break</i> him. This is not 'justice'.<p>And, sadly (in my opinion), it appears they succeeded.
Sorry but I have little sympathy for this guy. He knew or should have known that he screwed many people's lives (clearing up the mess thanks to your stolen CCs is a nightmare) and cost hundreds of millions.<p>He should've been happy making $130k a year in 2007