Hacking Team, the recently hacked Milan-based outfit that peddled surveillance software to violent, oppressive governments around the world like Bahrain and the United States, naturally has a lot of critics. Their newly exposed emails reveal some very creepy conversations about one critic in particular.

Christopher Soghoian, vocal privacy advocate and “Principal Technologist” at the ACLU, is a recurring antagonist in Hacking Team’s leaked emails, mostly for calling them out on their practice of arming brutal regimes against their citizenry. While trawling through the Hacking Team email dump, Soghoian found this unsettling message regarding comments he’d been making about the company:

The Intercept provided this translation:

I’m very tempted to respond, but we would only unleash hell. I think it’s self evident what a inbecile Soghoian is. If I could gather up enough Bitcoin I would use a service from the DarkNet and eliminate him. An asshole of this caliber doesn’t deserve to continue to consume oxygen.

A very funny joke.

Contact the author at biddle@gawker.com.
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