Ride the Lightning
Cybersecurity and Future of Law Practice Blog
by Sharon D. Nelson Esq., President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.
Law Firm in Marine Massacre Case Suffers Data Breach
February 9, 2012
I can't understand why Segeant Frank Wuterich, who admitted to the 2005 Haditha killings of 24 Iraqi citizens with several other Marines, got off recently with a "negligent dereliction of duty" finding and no prison time. Really?
But where I despair, Anonymous hacks in revenge. So it went after the law firm that defended Wuterich, Puckett and Faraj (the site, at the time of writing, appears to be down, but a Facebook presence is still active), with the zeal of vigilantes. Their site was hijacked and it was reported that 3 GB of private e-mail belonging to the law firm was obtained. The same report said that lawyer Puckett was joking about the recent horrific display of Marines urinating on dead bodies in Afghanistan. As you might expect, there were other embarassing revelations.
But you know what? In the same way that I can't abide the expressionless "we expected collateral damage" rationalizations sometimes uttered by the military and politicians, I can't abide the same attitude by Anonymous. They not only willy-nilly posted information about the Marine murders, but also unrelated and upsetting information from sexual assault victims. In addition, they posted information from a former law firm partner who represented Guantanamo detainees, a cause with which one might expect Anonymous to be sympathetic. Gawker, in its story about the hack, seemed to share my view.
Some days, it's pretty hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys.
Thanks to Jason Foltin for calling this story to my attention.
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