Eric J. Rosol was charged by the U.S. attorney’s office in Wichita, Kanas for his participation in #OpWisconsin. Officials said Rosol, 37, of Black Creek, Wis., participated in an Anonymous-organized shutdown of Koch websites on Feb. 27 and 28 in 2011. See here for more details. Rosol was charged under the CFAA. He faces one count of conspiracy to damage a protected computer and one count of damaging a protected computer. Each charge carries a maximum prison sentence of five years and a $250,000 fine. FreeAnons condemns his charges as excessive, and urges our supporters to donate to his defense fund, which can be found here:
“The penalty scheme for Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) violations is harsh and disproportionate to the magnitude of offenses. Even first-time offenses for accessing a “protected” computer “without authorization” can be punishable by up to five years in prison each (ten years for repeat offenses) plus huge fines. That fact, coupled with sentencing guidelines that encourage prosecutors to take advantage of the tough sanctions, can give rise to overreaching prosecutions.
As a result, many defendants are pressured to strike a deal with prosecutors and plead guilty to a felony in order to avoid the prospect of lengthy prison sentences, and large legal expenses.
The CFAA carries incredibly harsh penalties for conduct that would be considered a minor crime, or no crime at all, in the physical world. The laws meant for real criminals, should not also engulf activists, security researchers, innovators, and entrepreneurs.”
#OpWisconsin sought redress for the Koch brothers backing the state’s union cutbacks, during the height of pro-union protests in Wisconsin’s state capital in 2011. This was a politically- motivated action, a short-lived protest which brought attention to these cutbacks. OccupyAmerica succinctly summarizes the overreach exemplified in these charges:
“Let’s get real here for a minute. First, anyone who has ever maintained a website has gone through at least one distributed denial of service attack for something. They are a pain in the neck, they always seem to happen at inconvenient times, but they are also fairly easy to terminate, assuming a decent firewall is in place and server logs kept. In this case, the targeted sites were back up and running quite rapidly once network administrators blocked suspect IP addresses.
No data was taken; no firewalls breached. No one got access to anything that wasn’t already public, and it was not the act of a single person, but a group of people.
With that perspective, consider that Mr. Rosol is facing years in federal prison, if convicted, for hitting a toilet paper marketing website a few too many times with page load requests.”
The court documents may be viewed on our resource page.
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