Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer, hacker in AT&T iPad case, on Occupy Wall Street

[Video Link]

In the video above: Noted troll Andrew Escher Auernheimer, aka weev of Goatse Security, on his federal case and why Occupy Wall Street matters to him: "I've had a strong decade of infuriating rich people," he says, "I am the 99%."

Among other things, weev speaks about his friend Ari Douglas. He also shares why he believes federal prosecutors want to put him in jail for exposing sloppy data security at AT&T.

Reporting security vulnerabilities is in the public interest, weev and his supporters maintain. In going after him, their argument goes, US attorneys are attempting to set a precedent that will be legally hazardous for any security researchers who reveal information that could embarrass or harm the market value of large companies.

It's a wide-ranging rant. "We have no right to eat cheese anymore!," he intones. But this time, it would appear that weev is not in it solely for the lulz. Check it out.

Background on his case at CNET, Wired, Fast Company.

(via @OccupyWallStNYC)

• [msbpodcast]

  He is absolutely right in his argument, his sources, even in his statistics.

  There was a tipping point and we’ve passed it.

  Now, when will the bloodshed begin?

  I can’t tell you, but it will. mark my words. The bloodshed will happen. 

  The first shot will undoubtedly be fired by some poor schmuck cop and all kinds of hell will befall him, all caught on video buy cell phones so it can’t be denied, and then every living and suffering person will get all caught up in the tide and 400 families will get entirely dispossed.

  We are living in interesting times.

• [JenniferS]

  Haha, yeah, weev isn’t always trolling. Sometimes he just gets mad and rants like this.

• [TruthAboutWeev]

  Shut up weev.

  You’re not rich? Doesn’t that contradict your claims when you whored yourself out to the media so you could make the frontpage?

  Weev deserves to be in jail because his claim of he was exposing a security hole is no different than breaking into a bank, jumping over the counter, grabbing the money and going to the bank manager on the way out to say “hey I didn’t mean to commit a crime but I just exposed lack of training on your tellers about not using dye packs and not telling me to remove my hat, sunglasses and gloves when I walked in”

  If you are tired of not having freedom, stop committing crimes.

  • [Jason Slack]

    No, it’s like Weev walked by a bank that had left its door open at night,  informed the media, and instead of any incompetent employees getting in trouble they jail Weev for ten fucking years.

    • [Jackie Singh]

      Nevermind.

      • [querent]

        “If he hadn’t been such a douche about it, none of this would be an issue.”

        You think if he’d been nicer, he wouldn’t have been indicted?

  • [Andrew Auernheimer]

    Except the data on the AT&T webserver was not “hacked”. It was published openly, on a webserver. It was the equivalent of them publishing it in a book, and then crying when someone pointed it out that they had put peoples data in a damn book.

    AT&T deserves to be punished for their repeated privacy-related negligence and repeated treasonous disregard of American civil liberties.

  • [strangefriend]

    You’re not Paul Fishman, the US attorney prosecuting weev, are you?

• [Dmitry Petrovich]

  Focus son… FO-CUS

• [William George]

  Yeah, I’m pretty sure OWS can find a better spokesman.

• [Mark_Frauenfelder]

  Hurray for being on the free-choice side of the raw cheese camp, Weev!

  • [Andrew Auernheimer]

    Proper young camembert and basashi alone are worth fighting for.

• [jimh]

  The bloodshed WILL begin when they come for my cheese.

• [CharredBarn]

  Anyone seen this guy’s bizarre Christian sermons on youtube? Antisemitism, religious zealotry, intrusion into the privacy of complete strangers… a jerk sure can buy a lot of forgiveness from the über-left hipster crowd if he’s got notorious hacker chops and the right look. 

  • [Cowicide]

    a jerk sure can buy a lot of forgiveness from the über-left hipster crowd if he’s got notorious hacker chops and the right look.

    He’s not only got the right look, he’s got the über-left hipness to cheese issues on top of his über-hackeur chops.  Because of this, I forgive Weev and it’s a whole lot of forgiveness because he’s got the look.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=LwhVqDGyr4M#t=154s

    • [CharredBarn]

      ““Trolling is basically Internet eugenics,” he said, his voice pitching up like a jet engine on the runway. “I want everyone off the Internet. Bloggers are filth. They need to be destroyed. Blogging gives the illusion of participation to a bunch of retards. . . . We need to put these people in the oven!”

      I listened for a few more minutes as Weev held forth on the Federal Reserve and about Jews…”

      You think if the guy who said this stuff looked different — let’s say he had a shaved head and an iron cross on his neck, or looked and carried himself like, oh I don’t know, Rick Santorum — he’d be getting the same tender treatment here? 

      http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?pagewanted=all

  • [Andrew Auernheimer]

    I love Jewish people. Shema yisrael, adonai eloheynu, adonai echad. I am of Jewish ethnic origins. I have loved Jewish women. A gigantic number of my friends are Jews. Jews bailed me out of jail. I have a deep appreciation for the Jewish people. Criticism of Zionism and Jewish influence over US policies does not equate to anti-Semitism. Try again!

    I love Christ. If you have a problem with this part of my identity, you are free to close your browser tab on whatever particular thing I’ve said that offends you. I make no apologies for my religion and worldview.

    I have never invaded anyone’s privacy.

    • [Cowicide]

      Andrew, I’m disappointed you didn’t make your screen name:  TheTruthAboutTheTruthAboutWeev

    • [CharredBarn]

      True, and you could have closed your browser on the bloggers you hate. Instead (if the NYT is to believed — a big “if,” I’ll grant ) of calling for their extermination in ovens. Two can play that “if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out” game.

      My point was simply this: if “bloggers should be gassed and cremated” was a quote attributed to almost anyone other than a notorious hacker, that person would not be getting high-fives here for his commitment to freedom of cheese.

      What I know about you is largely gathered through the media, and it may be an inaccurate characterization. To the extent that my remarks are unwarranted, mea culpa. 

• [Cowicide]

  Now if I can get the fascist moderator to stop censoring the truth about weev

  Calling the moderator a fascist.  That’ll halp.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Personal ax-grinding is not welcome here. Maybe it’s a jilted lover.

• [chronocide]

  The truth about weev is that he is only telling the truth when he is laughing.  

• [Cowicide]

  I listened for a few more minutes as Weev held forth on the Federal Reserve and about Jews…

  So, what did he say about Jews in particular?

  Anyway, featuring someone/something in a post doesn’t mean boing boing is endorsing that person and/or every aspect of that person.

  Xeni showed a video of Gaddafi playing with his kids, but I doubt this shows an über-left hipster forgiveness of Gaddafi in any way.

  • [CharredBarn]

    You’re being disingenuous. A link to a video of a homophobic or anti-semitic congressman in which he said something amusing would never appear here without a clear introductory pronouncement that he is vile, if it appeared at all. 

• [dunkyboy]

  Quite entertaining – I like a good rant as much as the next person. Question though: why do so many americans confuse socialism with communism? Are the two somehow rolled together in political education at school?

  • [HahTse]

    McCarthy

  • [cleek]

    Americans don’t confuse the two so much as Americans truly don’t know what either of them mean, and just use the words as epithets which mean something like “anti-American, godless, anti-freedom, blahblahblah”

  • [Felton / Moderator]

    I grew up knowing the difference, but then my father was a communist.

  • [Jim Moskowitz]

    “why do so many americans confuse socialism with communism?”
    Perhaps you should look at the English-language wikipedia article on Socialism. One relevant sentence reads “The Marxist conception of socialism is that of a specific historical phase that will displace capitalism and precede communism.”

• [kirkg]

  “I’m tired of not having freedom.  I’m tired of, you know, 400 people, a few wealthy families, controlling all the wealth and all the social power in this country.”

  Then he takes a loooooong suck on that cancer stick.  After all, it’d been out of his mouth for a good three or four minutes. 

  Regardless of what ‘controlling all the wealth’ might mean, certainly ‘controlling all the social media’ is nonsense on stilts.  Mr. Weev, you are communicating on a fracken huge social media site, decidedly not controlled by them 400.  Never in human history has ‘social media’ existed as it does today, and it’s exploding ever upward.  OWS looks to me like people with so much freedom, so much control of their lives, that they can go sit in the rain for a week.  People without control of their lives can’t do that, ’cause they’re, like, being controlled.  You dig, Weevster?  No, I suppose not.

• [Hanns Gee]

  Jeez, everytime Weev starts diatribing, I don’t want to continue. NEVAR FORGET! 

• [Daniel]

  I wonder what percentage of BoingBoing readers only come here to complain about the liberal bias.