Haefer asserts innocence
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Alleged UNLV ‘Anonymous’ member will plead ‘not guilty’ to hacking charges
The UNLV student arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) last month said she will not plead guilty and will continue to attend the university.
Mercedes Renee Haefer, 20, was one of 14 people arrested for allegedly attacking the website of internet commerce giant PayPal after the company suspended WikiLeaks’ account with the site.
All 14 are suspected members of “Anonymous,” an Internet-based group closely linked to popular imageboard 4chan, that has been targeted by various law enforcement services for allegedly hacking into several websites.
Despite her arrest, Haefer maintains her innocence.
“To be honest, I haven’t really done anything illegal and I haven’t really done anything wrong,” Haefer said.
According to Haefer, the actions of Anonymous do not constitute “hacking” in the traditional sense.
“Basically, hacking is a really bad word because … the word ‘hacking’ implies infiltration — that people broke into PayPal, stole information, stole money. That’s not what happened,” she said.
Haefer said that what allegedly happened to the PayPal servers was a “distributed file services hack.” She said that what would happen in this type of hacking is that the computer being attacked is bombarded with enough data that the server can no longer process information until the data stream stops.
“What happened wasn’t that Anonymous broke into PayPal, stole information and crashed their site,” she said. “It was like they sent information constantly for days with thousands of angry people until PayPal’s servers just stopped.”
Haefer could not comment on the case, as it is pending. She also could not confirm whether or not she was a member of Anonymous.
However, she said that she has not been found guilty of anything yet.
“I was indicted, [but] everything is still alleged,” Haefer said. “I am still registered and involved with UNLV.”
Because of the pending court case, Haefer has limits on her computer use.
“My release terms stated by the judge are I’m not allowed to touch a computer except for work and then as soon as school starts I’m allowed to use the computers here on campus, but until then I can’t,” she said.
Professor Daniel Stout, director of the Hank Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies — where Haefer is a pre-major — said that there would be no resistance to her continuing her education.
“If she’s a student in good standing and not on academic probation, she can register in journalism classes,” Stout said. “There will be no action taken by the faculty to prevent that.”
Stout added that she will be treated the same as the rest of the student body taking classes in the journalism school.
“We’re going to be treating it as any normal situation,” he said. “She’s free to pursue her education through the proper and necessary channels.”
Haefer, however, believes that there will be tension on her first day back.
“I wouldn’t expect [the faculty] to be pleased,” she said. “I mean, one of their students made the news for an indictment of a federal case. Just don’t throw me under the bus.”
She also said she wants the student body to keep an open mind.
“I’ve had people in support of [what happened] and I’ve had people asking what it’s about because more often than not they just have a vague idea or a vague misconception from the news,” Haefer said, adding that they should look more into what Anonymous does.
“They hear about WikiLeaks, but they don’t hear about the other things Anonymous does,” Haefer said. “Whether or not I’m a member is neither here nor there, but from an observer’s point of view, Anonymous is involved in way more than WikiLeaks.”
She claimed that Anonymous was one of the groups involved with helping Egypt get its Internet back after a government shutdown amid widespread civil protests, among other actions.
“[People] should probably look more into it than what the media tells them,” she said. “What I’m being accused of, and the full story and Anonymous is so much bigger than what you can fit into four columns.”
Contact Sean Jaramillo at chief@unlvrebelyell.com.
Look you commited a crime and no matter how big of a crime that is, you still committed a crime.
For that you need to be punished and to me I am shocked and sadden how a person like you can still attend UNLV and how UNLV cannot commit to its honor code for students attending this college.
Shame on you haefer for thinking that you are innocent and shame on UNLV for letting you attend this college.
Adrian – and how many hundreds of dollars have paypal, mastercard, visa et al cost Wikileaks in stolen donations money?
If I donated $100 to Wikileaks and paypal is refusing to hand it over, I regard myself as having been robbed by paypal completely illegitimately. But of course that doesn’t matter to the authorities, because they don’t like Wikileaks.
This age of “The law will punish you only if you’re not on the right ‘side’” is absolutely rotten and the sooner it is brought to an end, the better. I notice no one is going after The Jester for attacking Wikileaks itself.
Double standards anyone? All humans are to be treated equally before the law, etc etc etc?
LULZ.
Adrian, maby you are a little silly.
She, as of all other DDoS protesters, has not boarded over any door. By sending enough packets to drain the line, its more of equivalent to a group of people blocking the entrance of an organization. Even better, they have kind of chained themselves to the organizations fence.
Some hard facts fo you all:
1. these organizations were ALSO subject to our laws. That is, laws that prevent financial institutes from just blocking bank accounts (liquidity is defined as primary human need, already for defense reasons) without verdict. There where these same financial institutes can rely on special laws that would rapidly enable them to close accounts, given sufficient reason. Wikileaks wasn’t even to be called a terrorist group, according to senate’s own CRS (6 dec 2010). There was no verdict whatsoever. Do you want banks to close your accounts, evading constitutional rights worldwide?
2. most of our own politicians have been politically active in such way that somewhere, somehow they participated in such (physical) blockades; for mostly less reason.
3. The people launched the attack themselves, from their own IP’s. To me that’s the same as having the guts to risk your face for public trial. The argument hiding out is definitely bull. This is new age protesting. With hard reasons.
4, What politically moved protest did NOT cost? Somewhere, somehow these protests always prevented trucks, consumers or otherwise from getting through as they normally would. So they all cost; compared to the costs of the masses resulting from corporates evading our (approved) laws, this is just a bull argument.
5. Lots of brats around that do know for sure that law is actually providing her with all means to perform such protests.
6. These are not all arguments though I’ll put one more: these denial of service laws are so young, that according to our western customs we simply still need to escort them into adulthood through jurisprudence. These laws are therefore not too established yet. We do that with all our laws in this manner, did you notice? I’ll just guess her contributing to that. And such in this age as a journalism student. Great start!
So you go girl !-)
Greetings.
Silly girl. DDOS participation is illegal, just because it’s not hacking doesn’t let you off the hook.
DDOS is equivalent of going up to walmart and boarding over their doors. It cost paypal and hundreds of other business income, but then I wouldn’t expect a brat who thinks she is above the law to think of these things.
i think by “distributed file services hack”, you may have meant to say “distributed denial of service attack”?
lawl
Haefer should not face jail time for a DDoS attack on PayPal. It’s not like she broke in and stole people’s account numbers or other sensitive/banking information. It’s preposterous that the Federal time for DDoS is up to 10 years and a hefty 6 figure fine. I completely understand why a journalism student would support Wikileaks–the amount of source material in that publication is endless for opinion columns, news reports, and the like. What these DDoS “attackers” did was a simple form of 21st century protest. The laws need to reflect this, as we Americans have the right to protest. This act was merely the web equivalent to a sit-in at a business.