Anonymous Hacked US Federal Site in Commemoration of Aaron Swartz's Death

Aaron Swartz, the young programmer and co-author of the RSS 1.0, was accused of stealing numerous documents which belonged to the MIT and Jstor, and chose to take his own life under pressure. After this, the Anonymous collective cracked the university’s official site, and now decided to hack the U.S. Sentencing Commission portal.


According to an official statement from the well-known hacktivist outfit Anonymous, the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s official portal had been hacked into. In result of the hack, Anonymous obtained a number of secret documents, which are currently under the pressure of being made public.

According to the indictment against Swartz, the young genius has stolen an impressive number of documents which belonged to the MIT and Jstor and was going to make them public on various file-sharing services. More than a month ago, Aaron hanged himself in his apartment. In the meantime, Aaron’s family claims that his death isn’t just a personal tragedy, but rather the product of a criminal justice system “rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach”. His relatives are sure that decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office and at MIT definitely contributed to his death.

The hacktivists agree to the decision, saying that the U.S. Attorney’s office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, which carried potentially more than 30 years of jail time, in order to punish an alleged crime with no victims. At the same time, unlike JSOTR, MIT refused to stand up for the programmer, as well as its own community’s most cherished principles. The hacking group has left a message on the commission’s site, saying that “a line was crossed”.