Martin Gottesfeld
Martin Gottesfeld is a computer engineer from Somerville, Massachusetts. He was sentenced to jail time as a hacktivist over a case involving a minor.
The Justina Pelletier Case
At the age of 14, Justina Pelletier was taken into custody by the state of Massachusetts when it determined that her parents interfered with her treatment over what Boston Children's Hospital physicians believed was a psychiatric disorder.1) After seeing Dr. Mark Korson about painful digestive issues, her parents too her to Boston Children's Hospital to see what more might be done. That hospital's physicians changed Justina's diagnosis from the Korson's opinion of mitochondrial disease to being “in her head”. 2)
Linda Pelletier, Justina's mother, says that her daughter sent her a message saying that she was being tortured in state custody.3)
A Boston Globe investigation published in 2013 found that Boston Children's Hospital had “been involved in at least five cases where a disputed medical diagnosis led to parents either losing custody or being threatened with that extreme measure.”4)
Gottesfeld took action without knowledge of the Pelletier family, attacking the computer systems of the hospital during a major fundraising period.5) He was sentenced to 121 months in prison and over $400,000 in fines under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), a Reagan-era law that was used against Aaron Swartz.