Image: Twitter
The hacktivist community looked on while activist Rachael Perrotta chugged a 40 oz faster than Shm00p, the current leader of the Anonymous trolling group Rustle League. It was part of a fundraising stunt—a drinking contest held before an exclusive audience of hackers on Tinychat—for imprisoned 31-year-old hacker Higinio Ochoa, aka "w0rmer," his wife, and their newborn baby. Just twenty people were invited to watch, but the event's impact was felt across the hacker-space.
The winner got to control the other’s twitter account for 30 minutes, so Perrotta took the opportunity to tweet apologies to all those offended by Shm00p’s online buffoonery, along with other messages sure to enrage the notorious troll.
Many onlookers described it as a merry time for a community prone to infighting and “drama,” even though Perrotta admitted to losing 800 twitter followers by the next morning. In an email, she told me “it's all worth it for w0rmer and family. Twitter is not serious business - supporting political prisoners is.”
w0rmer was caught by police last April when his wife (then girlfriend) sent him risque photos of her breasts and derriere. He was sentenced to 27 months in prison in August for hacking into computers belonging to the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Alabama Department of Public Safety, Houston County, Alabama and the West Virginia Chiefs of Police Association while acting as part of the Occupy Wall Street social media support team and the hacktivist group known as cabincr3w. His wife Kylie Gardner gave birth to their son Brody last month.
According to his federally appointed public defender, Jose I. Gonzalez-falla, w0rmer has been transferred to multiple facilities in 5 different states to date—Alabama, Pennsylvania, Georgia, West Virginia and now Ohio—because “they don’t know what to do with him, they don’t know what they are dealing with, they’re afraid of him, and they see him as a security risk.”
In a phone interview, he shared a story of how the base commander at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama refused to let w0rmer in the facility, perhaps because he “was concerned he would hack into his computer.” Gonzalez-falla also confirmed w0rmer was not given his medication for epilepsy while he was in a local Alabamian facility.
Gardner has had limited opportunities to travel to visit her husband given the impending pregnancy—she went for their April 7th wedding anniversary and was denied a visit except through a prison monitor—so she’s been relying on the prison’s email system known as corrlinks to send her husband pictures of their son. Corrlinks costs money, however, and to say she is stressed and exhausted is an understatement. This was why then, that Perrotta, upon reading Gardner’s frazzled tweets about caring for her newborn alone, decided to do something to help.
“I noticed that #freewormer wasn't getting the same type of attention as other fundraising attempts [in the activist community]” said Perrotta. She’d been egging Shm00p online for a while and seeing interest in the hacking community over their drinking contest, decided to use the contest as a fundraising stunt for Gardner. “She’s a young basically single, mother trying to make it and I am glad to be able to support her like this,” said Perrotta.
“When you are in prison there are a lot of costs which are much more expensive than on the outside, like using corrlinks to contact his wife and child, buying simple things like toothpaste, stamps and paper or a long underwear shirt,” said Perrotta, who watched her friends deal with the prison system while serving as a press laison for Occupy Chicago and a member of the defense committee to free the NATO 5. “I know what a huge difference commissary money makes” she added.
The community raised $1,700 yesterday (their original target was $500), and the money will go towards w0rmer’s $14,000 restitution bill as well as commissary expenses, diapers for Brody, and whatever else the w0rmer family needs.
It wasn’t quite 40 oz to freedom, but it was the best they could do for now.