Bonum Certa Men Certa

The Eric Lundgren Case and Similar High-Profile Plea 'Bargains' (Aaron Swartz and Marcus Hutchins)

Overview



Microsoft's Declaration of War on Recyclers



The Legal Aftermath



Pending review and research




Innocence Is Irrelevant
Reference: Innocence Is Irrelevant



Summary: Unjust and at times fatal plea 'bargain' tricks are being leveraged against people who fight 'the system'; Eric Lundgren has come to realise he's one of these people

The other day we saw Eric Lundgren replying to Marcus Hutchins; it wasn't long after Hutchins had said:

Me: "Now my case is over the stress should subside and i can fina..." My Lawyer: "Just a friendly reminder that you need to pack up your entire apartment, say bye to all your friends, then move across the fucking sea. Sometime this week would be good."


Hutchins will be walking around for the rest of his (long to go!) life with a "felony" crest/emblem/badge/mark/stamp/livery. It's a stain. It'll never go away. It's hard to find employment as in some cases it is not legal to hire people with a conviction/criminal record/felony. He's on the record as admitting guilt only after he had been blackmailed into it with the plea 'bargain' trick/machinations. We mentioned this many times in our daily links over the past couple of years.

“I was watching a documentary called "The Internet's Own Boy - The Story Of Aaron Swartz" - I wish he was still with us... I was glued to the documentary in hopes of gaining some insight that might help my plight. Then the narrator says, "And then he hung himself" and I just sat there dumbfounded...”
      --
Lundgren and Hutchins have that problem in common now. "Before I went to prison," Lundgren told me the other day, "I was watching a documentary called "The Internet's Own Boy - The Story Of Aaron Swartz" - I wish he was still with us..."

"I think I mentioned the similarity to you already," I told him, as "legal bills burdened his family, so he 'saved' them" (by killing himself).

"It was crazy," Lundgren continued, "he got hit with the exact same level of Federal Charges that I was facing and I was so eager to hear how he was going to get out of it! I was glued to the documentary in hopes of gaining some insight that might help my plight. Then the narrator says, "And then he hung himself" and I just sat there dumbfounded..."

And "they do this to other people," I interrupted him to say. "Chelsea Manning is the latest..." (they impose massive daily fines on her and her family for merely refusing to testify against Julian Assange even though she rightly sticks to her Constitutional rights).

"Assange [may] still have some savings," I said, "so I think he can cope with legal bills..."

And "then comes the plea "bargain"," I said. And "the US did this to a Brit too [...] he was released 1-2 weeks ago ("MalwareTech") [...] he has felony now [but] they gave him a "bargain" [of] time served (2 years) [...] after he helped stop the damage caused by Microsoft/NSA back doors (WannaCry)" (this is based on our latest informal conversation).

Here's a report about it, "Marcus Hutchins, malware researcher and ‘WannaCry hero,’ sentenced to supervised release" (NSA and Microsoft officials -- not Hutchins -- should have been sentenced to prison, at the very least for their WannaCry culpability; it's them who made the back doors that caused hospitals to be shut down; their actions actually killed a lot of people).

"How dare this young British man 'interfere' with WannaCry, which was mostly developed by the NSA? Stay out, little fella'! Adults only here!"The above article (from one and a half weeks ago) was written by a former Microsoft UK staffer/intern who had blocked me in Twitter. So it's not likely he'll explain the back doors nature of it all (or Windows). The state wants to 'bury' it all and 'make an example'...

How dare this young British man 'interfere' with WannaCry, which was mostly developed by the NSA? Stay out, little fella'! Adults only here!

WannaCry is an exploit, a back door(ing) facility; it was leaked from the NSA and Microsoft knew about it as it's telling the NSA about zero-days without even fixing them. WannaCry is an SMB-level exploit. It killed lots of people, shut down hospitals worldwide, and caused billions of dollars in financial damage. And guess who was threatened with life in prison for it... the man who stopped it!

“No good deed shall go unpunished, especially if it hurts profit. This world be damned, we'll pollute it if there's a coin to be made outta this.”
      --Anonymous
In the case of Lundgren, who got arrested and was threatened with life behind bars? Not the people responsible for deadly pollution but the person who combats this pollution. As someone put it in response to our article yesterday (Microsoft employees have already 'infiltrated' these comments): "No good deed shall go unpunished, especially if it hurts profit. This world be damned, we'll pollute it if there's a coin to be made outta this."

The following old (but still viral) meme comes to mind as a rather appropriate and apt analogy:

Facebook vs WikiLeaks



There's lots more coming in the series, so stay tuned. The exact structure (outline) hasn't been determined yet. We're thinking along the lines of: 1) Silencing Media (how Microsoft gagged publishers). 2) Court Mischief (how Microsoft possibly 'bought' the outcome). 3) Legal and Financial Ramifications (the dangers of this precedent). Expect photos and legal documents (copies of them).

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

At Microsoft, "Firing People is a "Cheat Code" to Pump the Stock Short-term But They Are Literally Destroying the Company's Soul Long-term."
They frame layoffs as a "success story"
Google News Poisons Its Own Index With More Slopfarms (Including "filmogaz")
Naming and shaming lazy slobs who rip off other people using LLMs can work, eventually
Naming Culprits in Switzerland
Switzerland is highly secretive about white-collar crime
Sanitised Plagiarism as "AI" (How Oligarchy Plots to Use Slop to Hide or Distract From Its Abuses, or Cause People Not to Trust Anything They See/Read Online)
This isn't innovation but repression
Recent Layoffs at Red Hat (2026 the Year of Ultimate Bluewashing)
I found it amusing that Red Hat's CEO has just chosen to wear all blue, as if to make a point
Team Campinos Talks About SAP Days Before EPO Industrial Actions and a Day Before the "Alicante Mafia" Series (About Team Campinos Doing Cocaine)
EPO staff that isn't morally feeble will insist on objecting to illegal instructions
Stack(ed) Rankings and Ongoing Layoffs at Red Hat and IBM (Failure to Keep Staff Acquired by IBM)
IBM is mismanaged and its sole aim is to game the stock market (by faking a lot of things)
 
Great Reset at IBM, the Company That Pulps Red Hat
In 2026 many workers are RTO'ed, PIP'ed, and at Red Hat many have effectively 'left the company' and now start afresh as "IBM" staff
The "Alicante Mafia" - Part II - Breakout of Discontent This Winter in Europe's Second-Largest Organisation
So far we've caused a lot of panic and stress inside Team Campinos
The "Alicante Mafia" - Part I - An Introduction to the Mafia Governing the EPO
Are some people 'evacuating' themselves to save face?
J.H.M. Ray Dassen & Debian, Red Hat, GNOME unexplained deaths
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 16/01/2026: "Porting My Main Website Over to Gemini" and Seeed Studio DevBoard
Links for the day
IBM Stacked and Ranked Badly, Maladministration Dooms the Company
Now they stack people up for PIPs and layoffs ("RAs")
Links 16/01/2026: UK Royal Family's "Legal Team Accused of Dishonesty, Fraud and Misconduct", OSI Still Controlled by Microsoft (the OSI's Spokesperson is on Microsoft's Payroll, Not Interim Executive Director, Deborah Bryant)
Links for the day
Writing About Corruption
Fraud is everywhere
The B in IBM is Brown-nosing and Buzzwords (or Both)
International Buzzwords Machines
IBM's 'Scientific-Sounding' Tech-Porn Won't Help IBM Survive (or Be Bailed Out)
Who's next in the pipeline?
IBM Was Never the Good Guy
its original products were used for large-scale surveillance, not scientific endeavours
The Bluewashing is Making Red Hat Extinct (They All Become "IBM", Little by Little)
IBM does not care what's legal
Slopfarms Push Fake News About Microsoft Shutdown, 30,000+ Microsoft Layoffs Last Year Spun as Only "15,000"
The Web is seriously ill
Countries Take Action Against Social Control Media and 'Smart' 'Phones', Not Slop (Plagiarised Information Synthesis Systems or P.I.S.S.)
None of this is unprecedented except the scale and speed of sharing
Sites That Expose Corruption Under Attack, Journalism Not Tolerated Anymore (the Super-Rich Abuse Their Wealth and Political Power)
Sometimes, albeit not always, the harder people try to hide something, the more effective and important it is for the general public
Links 16/01/2026: Social Control Media Curbs in Australia Underway, MElon Still Profiting by Sexualising Kids 'as a Service'
Links for the day
More People Nowadays Say "GNU/Linux"
We still see many distros and even journalists that say "GNU/Linux"
LLM Slop on the Web is Waning, But Linuxiac Has Become a Slopfarm
I gave Linuxiac a chance to deny this or explain this; Linuxiac did not
More Signs of Financial Troubles at Microsoft, Europe Puts Microsoft Under Investigation
The end of the library is part of the cuts
Pedophilia-Enabling Microsoft Co-founder Cuts Staff
Compensating by sleeping with young girls does not make one younger
Microsoft Shuts Down Campus Library, Resorts to Storytelling About "AI" to Spin the Seriousness of It
Microsoft is in pain
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Back to Advertising the Talks of Richard Stallman
A pleasant surprise
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, January 15, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, January 15, 2026
Gemini Links 16/01/2026: House Flood and Pragmatic Retrocomputing Dogfooding
Links for the day
Links 15/01/2026: Starlink Weaponised for Regime Change (by Man Who Boasted About Annexing South American Countries for Tesla's Mining), Corruption in Switzerland Uncovered by JuristGate
Links for the day
Linuxiac May Have Reverted Back to LLM Slop (Updated Same Day)
Is he back off the wagon?
GAFAM and IBM Layoffs Outline
a lot of the layoffs happen in secrecy and involve convincing people to resign, retire, relocate etc.
Links 15/01/2026: Internet Blackouts, Jackboots Society in US
Links for the day
Coming Soon: Impact With EPO Cocainegate
Will Campinos survive 2026?
The Last 'Dilberts' or Some of the Last Salvaged (Comic Strips Which Disappeared Shortly After They Had Been Published)
Around the time the creator of Dilbert went silent he published some strips mocking TikTok and usage of it
The Creator of Git Probably Doesn't Know How to Install and Deploy Git
Nobody disputes this: Mr. Torvalds created Git
Slop is a Liability
Slopfarms too will become extinct because people aren't interested in them
GAFAM is a National and International Threat to Everybody
GAFAM is just a tentacle in service of imperialism
EPO People Power - Part XXXVI - In Conclusion and Taking Things Up Another Notch
They often say that the law won't deter or stop criminals because it's hard to enforce laws against people who reject the law
Running Techrights is Fun, Rewarding, and Gratifying
In Geminispace we are already quite dominant
Red Hat is Connected to the Military, Its Chief Comes From Military Family (From Both Sides)
The founder of Red Hat's parent company literally saluted Hitler himself (yes, a Nazi salute)
Don't Cry for Gaslighting Media in a Country Which Loathes the Press
my wife and I received threats for merely writing about Americans
Red Hat (IBM) is Driving Away Remaining Fedora Users
I've not used Fedora since Moonshine
Robert X. Cringely Has Already Explained IBM's Bullying Culture (Towards Its Own Staff)
IBM is a fairly nasty company
Proton Mail compromise, Hannah Natanson (Washington Post) police raid & Debian
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, January 14, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, January 14, 2026
Gemini Links 15/01/2026: "Ode to elinks", envs.net Pubnix and Downtime at geminiprotocol.net
Links for the day
Still Condoning Child Labour and Exploiting Unpaid Children Developers as PR Props (to Raise Monopoly Money)
These people lack morals. So they project.
"Security, AI or Quantum" on "the IBM Titanic"
Who's RMS?
Hours Ago The Register MS Published Microsoft Windows SPAM "Sponsored by Intel." The Fake 'Article' Says "AI" 34 Times.
The Register MS isn't a serious online newspaper
EPO People Power - Part XXXV - Where Else Will Corruption and Substance Abuse be Tolerated?
We need to raise standards
Status and Capital
People who do a lot are too busy to boast about it and wear fancy garments
IBM Paying the Price for Treating Workers Badly and Discarding Real Talent (Because It's "Expensive")
IBM is dead man walking
Turbulence Ahead
I last rebooted my laptop in 2023
Google News Rewards Plagiarism With LLMs (About Linux, Too)
Google is in the slop business now
Links 14/01/2026: Failing Economy and Conquest Abroad as a Distraction From Domestic Woes
Links for the day
Gemini Links 14/01/2026: The Ephemerality of Our Digital Lives and "Summer of Upgrades"
Links for the day
Projection Tactics - Part III: Silencing Inconvenient Voices Online
If X gets banned in the UK, it'll be hard to see what the spouse says in public
Outsourcing on Microsoft's Agenda, Offshoring Also
"In some cases, India hiring is poised to replace certain roles previously based in the U.S."
Links 13/01/2026: 'Dilbert' creator Scott Adams Passes Away With Cancer, Ban on X/Twitter Considered for CSAM Profiteering
Links for the day
The Goal is Software Freedom for All
Anything to do with "Linux Foundation" is timewasting
Reminder That Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Is Not Free, And It's Because of IBM
software freedom just 'gets in the way'
Under IBM, in Order to Game the Stock Market, Red Hat Resorted to Boosting the Biggest Ponzi Scheme in Human History
This is what IBM turned Red Hat into
Revision handed Microsoft the keys to the distortion of the past/history
This isn't the first time The Register MS rewrites computing history in Microsoft's favour, as we pointed out several times in past years
What Will Happen to GAFAM After the US Defaults Rather Than Bails Out the Market?
Or tries to topple every government that doesn't play by its rules?
EPO People Power - Part XXXIV - Bad Optics for the European Union (for Failing to Act and Tolerating Cocaine Use in Europe's Second-Largest Institution)
There are principles in laws which tie awareness with complicity
EPO's Central Staff Committee is Now Redacting (Self-Censoring) Due to Threats From the EPO "Mafia"
"On the agenda: salary adjustment procedure for 2025 (as of January 2026)"
"AI" (Slop) 'Demand' Isn't Growing, It's Fake, It's a Pyramid Scheme
They try to resort to 'creative' accounting (fraudulent schemes like circular financing)
Difficult Times at IBM and Microsoft Ahead of Mass Layoffs (Probably Before This Month's Results Unless Postponed to 'Prove' Rumours 'Wrong')
IBM and Microsoft used to be tech giants. Nowadays they mostly pretend by pumping up their stock and buying back their own shares.
Canonical: Make Ubuntu Bloated (Debian With Snaps), Then Sell the 'Debloated' Version for a Fee
If people want a light distro, then they ought not pay Canonical but instead choose a light (by design) GNU/Linux distro
People Don't Want "Just Enough", They'll Look for Quality
That's why slopfarms will go away or become inactive
Gemini Links 14/01/2026: 3D and Tiny Traffic Lights Pack
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, January 13, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, January 13, 2026
Slop Waning Whilst Originals Perish
Slop is way past its "prime"
XBox's 'Major Nelson' Loses His Job Again, This Time in a Microsoft Mono Pusher
Microsoft hasn't much of a future in gaming. XBox's business is in rapid decline and people who push Mono to game developers are the same