Hacker Lawyer Jay Leiderman Is Dead at 50 (gizmodo.com) 79
Jay Leiderman, a California defense attorney known for his whistleblower advocacy and defense of political dissidents and hackers, was confirmed dead in Ventura County on Thursday. He was 50 years old. From a report: Dubbed the "Hacktivist's Advocate" by The Atlantic in 2012, Leiderman gained national attention for his pro-bono work for clients accused of crashing corporate and government websites, including members of the group Anonymous. They were rarely good cases.
Leiderman's hacking clients had a nagging habit of openly admitting to the things they were accused of doing. One spent a decade fleeing authorities in several countries, giving interviews, all the while on the lam. (The client was just captured in June.) Still, their causes struck a chord with the Queens-born attorney, who'd long held to a rebellious legal philosophy. After a city in California passed a law criminalizing homelessness, the same client knocked one of its websites offline for half an hour. Where the FBI saw a felony computer crime worth up to 15 years in prison, Leiderman saw a peaceful protest against an unjust law -- a protest, he noted, that caused no perceptible harm.
Leiderman's hacking clients had a nagging habit of openly admitting to the things they were accused of doing. One spent a decade fleeing authorities in several countries, giving interviews, all the while on the lam. (The client was just captured in June.) Still, their causes struck a chord with the Queens-born attorney, who'd long held to a rebellious legal philosophy. After a city in California passed a law criminalizing homelessness, the same client knocked one of its websites offline for half an hour. Where the FBI saw a felony computer crime worth up to 15 years in prison, Leiderman saw a peaceful protest against an unjust law -- a protest, he noted, that caused no perceptible harm.
Apparent heart attack (Score:1)
Uh huh...
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Re: Apparent heart attack (Score:2)
What if he did himself in to reduce own carbon footprint?
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LKM observed:
This is also a guy who had an incredibly stressful job, and was probably getting attacked from all sides all the time. A friend of mine, in his 50s, also died of a heart attack just a few months ago. This is an incredibly common way to die for people in their 50s, particularly if they have high-stress jobs, and/or risk factors like weight issues, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, or if they're smokers.
In the USA, the average age of death from heart attack is 35 for males. We're just not very good at outliving our peak reproductive years, because evolution doesn't give a damn about individual survival.
See: Mayflies ...
Dead at 50? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Rebel, you ignorant slut!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Learn your history.
Re:Was the guy vaxxed? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are those zebras I hear outside or horses?
Coward, the odds are STRONGLY in favor of COVID-19 being the source of pericarditis or myocarditis vs. receiving the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.
https://www.health.harvard.edu... [harvard.edu]
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volum... [cdc.gov]
You'd be more likey to win Pick 4 than getting myocarditis from the vaccine. Feeling lucky?
Thanks for the anti-vax BS rhetoric, though.
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Re: Was the guy vaxxed? (Score:2)
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They are not skeptics though, they are deniers.
Indeed, a skeptic questions the information they agree with more than the information they don't agree with... A denier never questions any information they agree with regardless of poor sources or inaccuracy and will never accept information they don't agree with.
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You present a shooting gallery of targets, which suggests opposition to it at a deeper level than for just your original position of danger for heart issues.
Don't worry. Both sides do it. People are literally trained to do it [wikipedia.org].
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Given that the government, most every large corporation, and 90% of the political establishment is pro-vaccination, be glad that skeptics exist.
They'd also agree that the sky is blue, water is wet, and that intravenous Lysol is a bad idea...why don't you stick it to The Man by giving that a try? Or are you a chicken conformist?
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Why would that be a hypothetical scenario? This has happened multiple times in the past, and the systems we have in place to detect vaccine safety issues have proven to be extremely effective. Hells, the blood clot issue shows that even incredibly rare side-effects are detected reliably.
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f you are not 80 or older or obese, you are not at risk of the covid virus
That's GREAT news! I'll be sure to tell my 37-year-old neighbo... ...oh, wait, I can't.
He died.
From COVID.
In other words, you're a fucking idiot spreading lies and getting people killed. I hope you're proud of yourself.
Re: Was the guy vaxxed? (Score:1)
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> Coward, the odds are STRONGLY in favor of COVID-19 being the source of pericarditis
The people who are sucking it up and getting broad-antigenic natural immunity aren't the cowards in this situation.
They're the ones ending the pandemic.
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ending the pandemic? (Score:3)
People who become contagious with a virus are enabling the virus to propagate and mutate.
People who prevent themselves from becoming contagious through vaccination and isolation are subtracting from the ability of the virus to propagate and mutate.
vaccinations do limit the spread of Delta (Score:2)
I think you are the one spreading anti-vaccination misinformation. There are correlations between low vaccination rates and increased Delta spread. Consider this statement from Yale Medicine [yalemedicine.org]:
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So what?
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Lawyers are seldom worth killing.
He wasn't killed because of his own actions.
Nor was he killed because of what he knew, like Epstein was.
He was killed to send a message to others.
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Unlikely. This draws attention to his work and likely does more harm that good to his enemies. People sometimes die unexpectedly. 50 is not uncommon for a heart attack and even the first one can kill a person.
In addition, any covert hit comes with a really bad risk of discovery and that rarely makes it worthwhile.
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Unlikely. This draws attention to his work and likely does more harm that good to his enemies. People sometimes die unexpectedly. 50 is not uncommon for a heart attack and even the first one can kill a person.
This is a very valid point. For all we know, the dude ate steak every night, popped Pez like a 4 year old, and had a coke habit.
In addition, any covert hit comes with a really bad risk of discovery and that rarely makes it worthwhile.
Never seems to stop the Russians.
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Unlikely. This draws attention to his work and likely does more harm that good to his enemies. People sometimes die unexpectedly. 50 is not uncommon for a heart attack and even the first one can kill a person.
This is a very valid point. For all we know, the dude ate steak every night, popped Pez like a 4 year old, and had a coke habit.
Thanks. Or maybe he just got unlucky.
In addition, any covert hit comes with a really bad risk of discovery and that rarely makes it worthwhile.
Never seems to stop the Russians.
Yes. But they are already seen as the evil empire by the west. Imagine what would happen if it became known the US does assassinations domestically.
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" Only the good die young " --B. Joel
/ he will be missed
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Hmm, "an apparent heart attack". I would say he was enough of a thorn in the side of the establishment, he was inhumed.
Did he ever represent someone who hacked the Clinton Foundation?
(possibly my most blatant troll ever)
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Sadly, Poe's Law [wikipedia.org] came into play for me reading your statement until I got to the parenthetical portion.
Link included in case some newbie has no clue...
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That's the line I was expecting, but near as I can tell he hadn't been much of a thorn yet. Ergo the proper conspiracy theory is that he was finally onto something, so...
But how quickly they forgot Michael Hastings. He was a much bigger thorn and I think he was onto many things.
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Sure people die of heart attacks all the time, some much younger than 50...
Generally such people live an unhealthy lifestyle, or have a family history of heart problems etc. No idea if those conditions apply here.
If you wanted to kill someone in the current climate, you could make it look like a severe covid infection rather than a heart attack.
Re:Suspects (Score:5, Insightful)
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In addition, and not wanting to downplay the good work he's done, I doubt anyone in "the establishment" even knew he existed
I don't want to fuel any conspiracy theories, but of course they do. "The establishment" maintains documentation on way more boring people.
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False accusations and conspiracy theories do more harm to society as a whole. At least have a reason to be suspicious before raising the red flag. Occam's razor is useful for more than just deductions - it's useful to keep people from wasting so much time wondering what if.
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You make it sound like that severely limits the number of people affected by this problem, but it really doesn't. For example, obesity is a major risk factor for heart attacks. 40% of Americans over the age of 20 are obese.
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Give the US "food" industry another one or two decades, and we're back to an average life expectancy of 50 again.
They're basically the reason for the majority of our health problem as it is. Pretty much cardiovascular diseases, and everything related to obesity. That's also the vast majority of all expenses and pill sold.
And I've got table 1 to prove it: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
"Acellular" means "heavily processed", by the way. Like pure flour and sugar.
What the author did not know yet, is that if
Puts on tinfoil hat... (Score:2)
...no one thinking he's just hired permanently by the NSA "never to be seen in public again" ?
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He wasn't doing the hacking... he was defending people accused of hacking, after they got caught.
Hard to see this as anything but a sad single entry from the list of 655K Americans who die of heart disease every year.
Politicisation of the legal system. Downvote. (Score:3, Insightful)
This article unwittingly politicizes the legal system.
The lawyer's personal beliefs aren't supposed to be associated to the legal system.
Given such an association,
going after lawyers becomes fair game.
Re:Politicisation of the legal system. Downvote. (Score:5, Informative)
There's no rule saying that an attorney can't share personal beliefs or interests with the client, nor one saying that they can't choose to take a client if it is in the interest of their political or personal beliefs.
The rule only says that an attorney can't let their personal beliefs prevent them from providing competent and enthusiastic representation for their client. If you think your client is great that's fine, but if you think your client is a shitbag you STILL have to provide good representation. Moreover if you think the opposition are shitbags then that's fine, they're the adversary -- your job is to oppose them, which you still have to do even if you hold that adversary in high regard.
The law doesn't expect attorneys to be robots, just that they have to put their personal feelings aside if they conflict with the client's interests.
There's also no rule against seeking out clients that you agree with. It's considered bad practice to, for personal reasons, consistently *reject* clients that offer to pay your customary rates, and in the case of appointed defense attorneys it's sometimes not even an option if there isn't a clear conflict of interest or scheduling, but you're free to promote yourself to the people you particularly want to represent.
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I guess somebody should have told Giuliani.
Last I checked, he's suspended from practice by NY's Bar association, so...