Dudes. This is not at all helpful. Website defacements just create more of an excuse for a crackdown. If you're going to risk your life and freedom hacking things; make it worth your goddam time. Hack the prison industrial complex and get the evidence that shows that crimes are being created so that prisoners can be kept at a profit. Expose the email trails of corrupt judges who put away kids for kickbacks. Dox the modern plantation owners who order up prisoners to work at slave wages.
Putting a press release on a website where it doesn't belong has been done; it's old news. We know you can hack a drupal site owned by the .gov, we get it. Don't blow your wad on something obvious, get documentation that would make Woodward and Bernstein cream their pants over how many pageviews it'd get and publish that.
Hack the FBI and find out who was talking about killing protestors at Occupy Houston; hack Corrections Corporation of America and find out what they talk about during their board meetings; get their financials and spill them to the foreign press. Any or all of those would change things, possibly for the better. But this, this is a waste of your time and ours.
You're assuming your alternatives are within their intellect or capability (whether in terms of ability to pull it off or ability to get information that does not exist / never happened). I don't think they are. So a question: is this action better than no action at all, which is the reasonable alternative for these people? I reckon you're right that this is a waste of time.
Let's say this Anon's action inspires other Anons within the federal government to take in a USB key and torrent a few GB of internal emails. Then it's a huge win. Any Anons with sysadmin skills will now join the federal government (they're always hiring), turn off logging, bundle up a tar, cover their tracks, and put it on the web. Nothing will take down a .gov faster than shining some sunlight on their Pentagon Papers. If caught, each Anon can invoke federal whistleblower statutes and dare the courts to jail them and spawn one hundred more Anons. Some will no doubt be jailed, but the power to administer computers is now the power to hold unjust institutions accountable. This is information war.
Ask Bradley Manning how that whistleblowing thing works out. I think it's important to realise doing things like that, whether ultimately for the good or the bad, comes at a huge personal risk.
To be fair Bradley Manning was prosecuted because he bonded (they had very long chats) with the guy who was supposed to relay that information. If you read the chat transcripts you can tell that Manning was very troubled at the time and wanted someone to talk to. IMHO this does not necessarily apply to someone who works at the DOJ and uses an anonymous channel to submit confidential documents to e.g. Cryptome
"Manning and WikiLeaks were credited as catalysts for the Arab Spring that began in December 2010, when waves of protesters rose up against rulers across the Middle East and North Africa after the leaked cables exposed government corruption" [1]
Manning and WikiLeaks may have been credited by some as catalysts for the Arab Spring, but they were not.
Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation was the catalyst for the Arab Spring. It's not as if Tunisians needed anyone to tell them how corrupt their government was. Once Tunisia looked like it might fall, revolutionaries in other countries started planning their own protests.
Amnesty International are one of the organisations that credit Wikileaks as being a catalyst for the Arab Spring.
"One example highlighted by Shetty was Tunisia, where WikiLeaks revelations about Ben Ali's corrupt regime combined with rapidly-spreading news of the self-immolation of a disillusioned young man, Mohamed Bouazizi, to spark major protests." [1]
Absofuckinglutely this. These 'hacks' annoy IT directors and allow self-described Deliverators to congratulate themselves amongst their script-kiddie nmap brethren in some private IRC. Then there's the more altruistic 'hacking' which uncovers truths obfuscated by those who've wronged in the interests of greed and cronyism.
This prank is immature, ineffective and honestly a waste of taxpayer money - additional personnel will be hired and major unnecessary purchases will be made of consulting services and software and equipment which we'll likely have to foot the bill for.
You're doing nothing to protect our civil liberties or expose the misdeeds of the corrupt and complacent. Try again.
The video does mention some documents leaked that are password-locked and encrypted, and that they will start seeding some redacted information from it to media outlets. So we'll probably see soon if any of it is real.
Exposing emails, hacking the FBI? This is not at all helpful.
Murdering politicians, assassinating police officers and judges, freeing the wrongly imprisoned by force. A willingness to die fighting. Any or all of those would change things, possibly for the better. But this, this is a waste of your time and ours.
So, here's a free piece of advice: Put away the Guy Fawkes mask, turn down the RATM and read a book. You live in a real democracy. Not a perfect one, those don't exist, a real one. That makes you more free than most people alive today and all the dead ones. All of them. Your frustration shouldn't primarily sourced in the brokenness of the system, but in how the vast majority of your co-citizens disagree with you that it's broken - or, at least, fundamentally disagrees with what the solution is.
Your mission as a citizen in a democracy is to convince your fellow citizens that this is wrong and that it should be fixed. The second you pick up a weapon, you lose. Game over.
I know several officers who belong on either side of the integrity fence. Losing the bad ones violently will only turn the good ones against whatever good you're hoping to accomplish.
This is absolutely the worst thing they could do. There are plenty of politicians, police officers and judges who are doing everything they can to free those wrongly imprisoned. Besides that, not everyone who works inside the "machine" is evil; most are just doing their jobs to whatever capacity they can and I assure you, they don't sleep well when their work is used for injustice.
Violence is the worst option. Ask India. They got independence peacefully after violent rebellion failed.
At the time India gained independence, the British Empire was in shambles, and was financially derelict after World War 2. A strong argument can be made that it was the implicit threat of violence which the UK would be totally unable to handle at the time is what ultimately led to Indian independence.
The situation is not a particularly effective argument that non violent solutions are always preferable, or even possible.
hernmannj314, this comment could be read as encouraging the ("helpful") deaths of a variety of civic officials. Even if there were an appropriate forum for such loathsome sentiments, hn is certainly not it.
It could also be read as a dramatic exaggeration of the parent's claim that one class of crime was better than another and that we should be willing to commit crimes of civil disobedience based on pragmatism and not be tethered by morality or legality. I tried to point out the absurdity of that claim by extending it as far as I could, by arguing that we should murder government employees so long as it "might" make the world a better place.
I thought it was clear by copying the words of the parent in my post what I was doing.
> Even if there were an appropriate forum for such loathsome sentiments, hn is certainly not it.
This behavior is the inevitable result of lynch mobs throughout history though. Rile up the people enough and stuff like this is a byproduct. Even in the American Revolution the people started off by torturing unpopular British officials by tar-and-feathering them. One can't have their cake and eat it too.
You're right, I wasn't very clear. My point is that HN has been kind of a rallying point for some of the more intellectual opposition to anything and everything regarding how Swartz's case was handled (at least, once he killed himself).
But all of the people calling for heads to figuratively roll need to be really careful about the effect of their rallying cries. Like "having one more drink" while carrying your car keys, decisions and actions made now can spiral out of anyone's control and lead to even more anguish down the road.
Mob rule is very much a package deal, you don't just get to keep the good parts and disclaim all the rest.
> Murdering politicians, assassinating police officers and judges...
Regimes that start by abandoning the rule of law tend to have problems adopting it back later on. It's so much more convenient not to worry about following rules.
Defacing a website from behind who knows how many layers of anonymizing proxies isn't being black and sitting at the front of a segregated bus, either.
By that token so is voiding your ballot, but if that were the only form of expression available to you, you might be happy to be able to make even that small squeak. Voiding your ballot (and in the same way, defacing a website) sends a message to your peers and the authorities that you are dissatisfied and that alone can be solidifying. That is one of the purposes of any protest, be it disassociating yourself from an injustice or creating graffiti to propagandize for your cause. It creates, at minimum, an opportunity for a group acknowledgement of that dissatisfaction. However imperfect the expression, it can still contribute to positive change. (I would also, for example, say self-immolation is a terrible waste, but it's damn hard to dismiss. In the same way, Aaron Swartz's death says something timeless, whether he intended it or not, and however regrettable or frustrating or futile or "selfish"...)
Is the sentiment of disapproval here due to one wrong being used against others (which I echo) or fear ("excuse for a crackdown")?
Yes, sadly, most cases of whistle-blowing in the government sector end up in retaliation and prosecution of whistle-blowers themselves and little to no change in the relevant agencies.
Wikileaks had a great potential. It's like a startup set out to disrupt the market of public/government relations. But it was washed away into near-irrelevance. And not only because the forces they stood up against are immensely powerful, but also because most people, really, don't care.
Nonetheless, I'm glad whistle-blowers exist and have guts to speak up. The case of Wikileaks and others did reveal how deeply corrupt are those in power and how grand their appetites are.
Agreed. It gives them a new boogyman. A terrorist that cannot be named or specified by race, ethnicity, or any other factor. It opens the door to anyone they deem a threat being detained in relation with "anonymous". The very thing that made them will kill them. When the boogyman is nobody, it incriminates everybody.
The contents are various and we won't ruin the speculation by revealing them. Suffice it to say, everyone has secrets, and some things are not meant to be public. At a regular interval commencing today, we will choose one media outlet and supply them with heavily redacted partial contents of the file.
Should we be forced to reveal the trigger-key to this warhead, we understand that there will be collateral damage.
It is our hope that this warhead need never be detonated.
Summary: the file contains "various secret contents", the file has one encryption key to reveal all data, they intend to release previews of the data, they may not release the encryption key (although chances of this seem unlikely).
The encrypted data is almost certainly larger than the unencrypted data, my guess is the unencrypted data is closer to 600MB to 900MB (In the ballpark of the size of a standard 700MB data CD).
Initially I thought the 9 files may contain data about each of the SC Justices, or perhaps information intended for each of them. However, I think their names on files were simply chosen for effect.
There's something strange about those file sizes. If they were a split set, wouldn't they all be the same size except for one?
The only explanation I can think of is the data was `tar`d, then `split`, then compressed (to make the varying sizes), then encrypted, which seems more than a little insane.
The files are Base64 encoded, which means they are considerably larger than their equivalent binary.
Yeah it seems strange to me too, it's possible the server I was downloading from had incomplete files... it seems like Kennedy.Warhead1, Roberts.Warhead1, and Sotomayor.Warhead1 should be 150 MB... those are the file sizes reported by the server though.
Only tangentially on topic (but more interesting that the actual content of the video I think), but I suspect no warhead reentry shield would actually be shaped as pointy as that.
Although you would think a more aerodynamic shape would reduce the drag and therefore heat of reentry, the reality is not quite so simple. In fact, the opposite is actually true. As you make the reentry shield blunter (increasing the drag coefficient as you do so) the heat load the shield needs to take actually drops. The reason for this apparently is that blunt reentry bodies form a sort of cushion of air around themselves that separates the shockwave caused by reentry from the reentry vehicle itself, insulating it.
I suppose sharp pointy warheads are more theatrical though.
It's important to note that the purpose of a heat shield on a warhead is significantly different from that of a manned vehicle or scientific probe. For the latter, the goal is to safely and efficiently transfer as much kinetic energy as possible (subject to acceleration limits) to the atmosphere so that parachutes will survive being deployed. For a warhead, (disregarding burrowing nukes), they don't care how much kinetic energy is expended since they don't want the warhead touching down. In fact, they would prefer to minimize the amount of time that reentry takes, and so want to minimize the amount of kinetic energy lost to heating the atmosphere. For burrowing nukes, they want the nukes traveling as fast as possible, as long as the impact won't break the nuke, which is somewhere in between the airburst and manned vehicle design cases.
Somewhat off topic, but this has been bothering me for a while now:
about the role of aaron swartz in all this... initially I read he was facing "up to 35 years" in prison. After his death people started speaking of "up to 50 years". In relation to the USSC hack I have started seeing 50+ years pop up.
I feel like these exaggerations do not do anyone any good. The actual facts are horrible enough - bloating them up like that does not support his cause, rather, imo might undermine it, as it reduces the credibility of anyone arguing his case.
35 years was the maximum under the laws he was originally charged with. 50 years was the maximum after the supplemental indictment that added additional charges. Under the sentencing guidelines a judge shouldn't, but still could have sentenced him to the maximum.
If the goal is to change the law and the argument is that the penalties are absurd, the fact that the penalties are absurd is very relevant and not an exaggeration.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't the sentencing guidelines based on the maximum penalty? In other words, the absurdity of 50 years in theory is what creates the absurdity of seven or ten years in practice. If the maximum penalty was one year or less then the guidelines would have discounted that to something entirely rational for cases like Aaron Swartz, but it wasn't, causing the disproportionality.
Buying a $1 lottery ticket would be a whole lot more rational if the rare case resulting in $200M caused the average case to result in $35M.
As far as I understand them, the sentencing guidelines group related charges into a single charge. E.g. the "computer fraud" and "wire fraud" charges that are for some reason separate under CFAA would count as just one conviction under FSG. So even if we was convicted for 1 or 5 charges relating to the same underlying accusation you should still get the same recommended sentence.
Since I'm not a lawyer I don't want to try to analyze further but there's also provisions about whether to make multiple sentences concurrent or sequential (which can also add time).
You don't have to take my word about the maximum sentence though: Jennifer Granick was very critical of the U.S. Attorney's handling of the case and her estimate of the FSG recommendation (based on trumped-up loss calculations) was 1-2 years in prison.
There is a reason to add charges though: It can make the jury more likely to convict by helping along their sense of "splitting the difference", makes the court of public opinion turn that much more against you, etc.
>As far as I understand them, the sentencing guidelines group related charges into a single charge.
Even so, I believe the maximum penalty under the CFAA is still 20 years on its own. The fact that there are multiple possible charges with such disproportionate penalties for a single underlying action just underscores the need for systematic reform.
>There is a reason to add charges though: It can make the jury more likely to convict by helping along their sense of "splitting the difference", makes the court of public opinion turn that much more against you, etc.
In other words there isn't a legitimate reason to add charges but there are a number of cynical and illegitimate reasons.
[Shakes his head in disgust.] Hackers, it's time for me to hack the discussion. You and your first world problems have NO IDEA how to fight for freedom. This is the wimpy way to protest whatever it is you are protesting. Unlike most people who post here, I have actually lived under a dictatorial regime that ruled a territory that later had a peaceful transition to democracy and legally protected civil rights. Anonymous or whatever the name of the latest Western hacktivist group is going about things all wrong.
If you really want to learn about effective popular action to bring about more freedom, point your Web browser to the Albert Einstein Institute publications
and choose your language for titles like From Dictatorship to Democracy and The Role of Power in Nonviolent Struggle and others. Note that the main author of these publications has consulted with freedom movements all over the world and has had notable success in the Philippines, Thailand, Burma, and other countries, and is credited with much of the mobilization of the two-year-old Arab Spring movement.
Going after the United States Sentencing Commission website is beyond stupid. The federal sentencing guidelines were a helpful reform. Before they were adopted, on the example of Minnesota's sentencing guidelines, federal sentences were just about wholly indeterminate, making each judge could make up his or her own law of sentencing at trial. The Minnesota reform, which was the example for the federal reform, set up guidelines based on a "severity score" of the offense--so that for the first time legislative statutes from many different decades were compared as to the actual social harm resulting from each offense, based on community standards as of the time of the reform--and on a "criminal history score" of the offender, so that prison time was reserved only for the most dangerous repeat offenders. (Minnesota imprisons fewer convicted criminals than most states of the United States, being much like Scandinavia in this regard. Minnesota spends more dollars per prisoner but fewer dollars per taxpayer on its prison system than almost any other state.)
I know actual freedom fighters, that is publishers of opposition magazines and organizers of nonviolent protests, from Taiwan. Some of them experienced hard prison time while in the struggle for freedom, with family break up and ill health and the other consequences of imprisonment. But today they can look at a much freer country in their homeland than they grew up in. The biggest problem with website-defacing movements is their cowardice (no one in Anonymous seems courageous enough to go to prison) and lack of perspective (they complain about first world problems that they mischaracterize as important problems for the common people). It's time for the discussion on Hacker News to grow up and make more room for the real freedom fighters.
>The biggest problem with website-defacing movements is their cowardice (no one in Anonymous seems courageous enough to go to prison) and lack of perspective (they complain about first world problems that they mischaracterize as important problems for the common people).
I think you're missing the point, here. I like what's going on in the majority of your post -- there is a lot we can learn from other successful reform movements, but the problem here isn't "cowardice". Quite the contrary, if you can find a way to disseminate your message without being harmed or incarcerated, more power to you.
The problem is that skiddie stuff like website defacements make the movement look stupid and the activists look like common criminals. It doesn't convert anyone to your side when you hack a website like the USSC. Okay, maybe a handful of teenagers are impressed, but the majority of the country is taken aback. And the important point: anyone who is impressed by this was already on our side.
If you're reading this and disagreeing, imagine for a second that the USSC had been defaced not by Anonymous but by, say, eco-terrorists a la Edward Abbey. Sure, a card-carrying member of PETA might be happy to see such a thing, but you and I aren't likely to be converted to the cause.
One of the most important things in any sort of public debate -- even though it might seem unfair -- is the way the debate is framed. Actions like this help the government frame the debate as "order v. chaos", which is exactly the way it works best for them. If you want to win the hearts and minds of the people, focus more on exposing injustice and corruption, and less on banging that drum.
In principle I agree with what you say. In practice however I am skeptical. In my calm and rational mind, I could not possible see how defacing of a government website could affect anyone or bring more supporters to Anonymous. On that same state of mind, i would also not see how commercials could ever work, or how scandals/negative news could sometimes increase support for a political party.
Thus, my mind tells me (based on previous knowledge) that hacks like this could very well increase support for Anonymous. Maybe that is because they get noticed (branding), and thus the number of supporters increase. Maybe people in their busy lives rationalize that if someone managed to break a government website like USSC, then those people means business and are serious enough to stop and get listen to. If then newspapers make a big deal out it, people will rationalize further and consider it to be important.
I too hope however that they do publish their data about injustice and corruption. Maybe the drum beating is important to first create some hype about it, but in the end, it's the data that interests me. But I do see how the actions of defacing the site could be valuable for bringing justice and change, just by the act of creating noise.
We aren't very rational, when it comes down to it, because rational people have trouble making decisions. Political issues are hard to visualize or experiment with - they seem to be distant from daily life - so most people, in a "natural" state, will lack strong opinions on any given issue.
Thus, "coaching" comes into play - people rely on things they've been told to guide them, whether or not it was correct information. Most of these political tactics act as a way to both inform people and influence them. This can be "good" when the tactic is something that adds a healthy structure and process to governance - for example, the concepts of civil liberties had to be both invented and then propagandized in order for people to comprehend their value and demand their existence. People living in tyranny weren't necessarily _happy_, but they didn't know of a better option, and couldn't hope to convince others around them.
Of course, it's a "bad" practice in that when speaking of single issues, the same influencing tactics tend to form an unbalanced opinion, by removing some concerns and inflating others into bogeymen. But it's by far the cheapest way to build support for an issue, so it remains the way things are done.
In any case, concrete action is usually the very last step, and almost an afterthought, in the long cycle of debate typical to political processes.
He's probably referring to situations where a person loses their ability to access their intuition in making decisions, even very simple ones like what to eat for lunch.
The result is gridlock in the brain. The patient cannot, literally, decide if next Wednesday at 3pm is an okay time to have their next appointment with a therapist.
The takeaway is that conscious "rationality" alone in humans is clearly insufficient for them to make most decisions. Instead, they act, for the most part, on intuition and feelings, guided (we hope) by rational feedback to the correct for the deficiencies in those two "dominant" modes of thinking and decision making.
You make it sound as though the goal should be to go to prison, or to become a martyr for your cause. I suppose you think suicide bombers are effective freedom fighters as well?
I'm reminded of an old quote, which I think is attributed to General Patton: The goal is not to die for your country, the goal is to make the other guy die for his country.
IOW, you're not out there intentionally trying to sacrifice yourself and take yourself out of the game. That would be silly.
Look, I'm not saying that what Anonymous did was right in any objective sense, but it is what they did, and it's real easy for us to play "monday morning quarterback" and sit here and criticize. At least they did something, which is more than most of us can claim. And, yes, members (or purported member) of Anonymous have gone to jail for their activities.
Thanks for the aeinstein.org link. One thing: "no one in Anonymous seems courageous enough to go prison" - What use is it to go to prison? Maybe you will get some article produced about you generation some attention, but it really doesn't seem helpful. Courageous, I agree, but is it rational? Recently I read about a small protest in mainland China about an instance of media censorship. A bunch of people singed there names on some document complaining about it, and Chinese man who was speaking to some journalists got thrown into a van and taken away. It would not surprise me if some of those people who signed their names will end up getting attacked, so anonymity is beneficial here.
This was not a protest in rural China where corrupt local communist party officials are going to come and disappear you.
This was an attack on a US Federal Government website. Whoever defaced the site might get prosecuted for their endeavor, but the only purpose for anonymity here is for the instigators to avoid official reprisal and prosecution (.e.g to get away with it).
Nobody in the US is going to persecute you because you think academic articles should be free (they'll largely just ignore you).
"Nobody in the US is going to persecute you because you think academic articles should be free (they'll largely just ignore you)."
What good is the belief without the ability ("freedom") to act on it? Aaron acted on it, which was arguably a more effective form of protest, and he paid a high price too, even if one doesn't attribute the suicide to his persecution (ehem, sorry, "prosecution")...
"Whoever defaced the site might get prosecuted for their endeavor, but the only purpose for anonymity here is for the instigators to avoid official reprisal and prosecution (.e.g to get away with it)."
If I am reading your correctly, it sounds like you're saying the person defacing the site should volunteer his or herself for jail (albeit as an act of protest). That hardly makes sense in the best of scenarios let alone in the context of the CFAA. No sit-in protester wants to be pepper-sprayed and hauled downtown, nor would I hold it against them. Suggestion boxes are anonymous for a reason too. (Mind you, one doesn't see many of those these days; almost as if noone wants to know when something's wrong.)
Well, i was responding to the notion that there is nobility in this particular use of the shield of anonymity.
I just happen to disagree that this is a noble use of anonymity.
And, yeah, if you're going to break the law in an act of intentional protest, yeah, i hope they have the strength of conviction to own up to what it is that they're doing. Otherwise it is sort of a cowardly act of opportunity.
The thing that distinguishes aaron swartz's case is that every one thinks it is insane that he was being threatened with jail time, and it isn't reasonable for him, or anyone else (save for the prosecutors) to consider 35 years in prison a proportional response for his circumstances and actions.
Attacking government websites solely for the purpose of defacing them, out of protest or not, is moving out of the grey area that aaron swartz was operating in (this information is supposed to be public anyway, and he had a means to scrape them), into intentional vandalism (even if you think they are a legit cause).
Anonymity in such a circumstance, again, is just a shield for people who are breaking the law. I'm not saying anonymity is a bad thing, or that we shouldn't have it, but imo, this is more an abuse of anonymity than a use.
P.S. Aaron Swartz is a lamentable and reprehensible aberration, but it is an aberration. Larry Lessig certainly agrees with Swartz's objectives (just not the means). Nobody is leading a crusade against Lessig, or trying to murder, injure or incarcerate him for what he believes, or the actions he takes to further his aims. That's persecution. Abortion providers are persecuted. Information activists are not persecuted.
"just a shield for people who are breaking the law."
I would (naturally) call someone who disagrees with me, and acts on it, "abusive" too (or opportunistic, for example) even if he or she thought they were acting morally; moral arguements are hollow when the morality is what's being argued over. I'm not exactly disagreeing with you, just trying to say that moral judgement might be moot (except to one's self of course).
That said, we do seem to disagree on the definition of persecution. I do think people who believe in free access to knowledge, and who act on those moral principals, including pursuing transparency and accountability, are "persecuted"... Case(s) in point: Bradley Manning, Assange, and every other whistle-blower in history. I've said it elsewhere too, but to repeat myself: it does not feel like a safe time to develop network software, and even simple things that geeks do can easily be considered threatening or criminal. No, we're not talking holocaust or even abortionist-level persecution, but geeks still get treated differently. Ex: the very real possibility of 35 years for a nonviolent, technically simple, and arguably moral, scripted download indicates how discriminating IT laws are. As others have noted, murderers get less in most states. (15 to 25 years, typically, before time off for good behavior.) It didn't happen to me personally, but it's still pretty close to home and I guess I'm just not as convinced it's an aberration.
I suspect that I'm not making myself clear enough.
I don't disagree with you that computer crimes are prosecuted in a crazy way and that it's unclear that the legal community has a technical proficiency adequate to make the sorts of fine grained judgements necessary to identify "good guys" from "bad guys" (and all of the myriad shades of grey) so they tend just to throw the book at people. This is less a persecution than it is a lack of understanding imo.
Regardless of all of that, what I am saying is that the sort of crime that Aaron Swartz was accused of is not the same sort of crime that defacing a government website is.
As a consequence the nature of the protest that Aaron Swartz engaged in versus whoever has hit this particular site are materially different.
So when people say that Aaron Swartz was persecuted, I am sympathetic, but I genuinely think that things got crazy out of hand and under other circumstances would not have (which is why MIT's role in this is one worth identifying and engaging with).
On the other hand, if someone were to say that going after the guys who hit the ussc.gov site is persecution? That's not persecution. That's going after someone who's trying to commit a crime and actual inconvenience (however negligible it is) to others.
"This is less a persecution than it is a lack of understanding imo."
The same could be said of the sentiment that AIDs is "God's way of punishing homosexuals"... The people "throwing the book" at geeks are coming from the same place, as you have said (lack of understanding), IMHO as the Westboro Baptist's who I would consider "persecutive" of homosexuals.
"I am saying is that the sort of crime that Aaron Swartz was accused of is not the same sort of crime that defacing a government website is."
"if someone were to say that going after the guys who hit the ussc.gov site is persecution? That's not persecution."
I felt that way a few years ago watching the start of the hactivism stuff, and I would have said it was pretty cut-and-dry vandalism then. Today I find it harder to view this as strictly vandalism in light of the larger developing context, only the most recent of which is Aaron Swartz killing himself (to name, sadly, even only the latest suicide); Aaron's case in particular stands out to me as walking the line between vandalism, copyright infringement, and information/civil rights activism, blurring the distinction (to me at least). The lack of understanding, as you put it, touches all these categories and when I compare the mandatory minimums in the CFAA to the lack of interest in banking and financial crimes, for example, it feels a lot like persecution, even if it's also (in part) vandalism.
I'm not trying to be argumentative, just following my train of thought all the way to the station...
"Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.
I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law."
Referring to the Russian revolutionary period of 1905-1917, it becomes clear that provocation inspires hardline response on both sides. Each time one side does something aggressive to the other side, it is used as justification for the next, even more aggressive, counteraction. It is a pendulum that does not naturally dampen except without some kind of definite change.
So I expect see another Operation Sundevil beginning to play out, as the DoJ sees itself under attack and gains whatever authorizations to go after Anon hackers. This will doubtlessly inspire some level of strikeback, and etc etc etc.
Personally, I don't believe Anon's style of DDoS/hacktivism really resonates with the non-tech public. Anarchism is not a dance that most people like to dance to. I would suggest that uncovering clear evidence of corruption and crime, then bringing it to light via the New York Times/Guardian/etc (i.e., respected news sources) would have a much more profound impact on the general public. You have to understand the system to effect change on it. You have to understand the nature of the broad crowd and, yes, pander to what they will be energized by.
Phrased this way: No one "outside" cares about the GPL allowing rights to muck about with your computer code, it's all lawyer eggheadery. But if you frame that in a "repair" sense, it is obvious, of course you should be able to hire someone to fix your software. It's all about framing it to make it relevant to the audience. So it goes with political movements.
Many would argue that in Russia tsars secret police did not not go nearly far enough. Except for those actually killed people they treated revolutionaries trying to overthrow the regime very mildly. There is really no reason why people like Lenin, Stalin and most of the bolsheviks should have survived. In Putin's russia they would all be rotting in prison LONG ago, with big chunk being dead from accidents.
> Going after the United States Sentencing Commission website is beyond stupid. The federal sentencing guidelines were a helpful reform.
This is somewhat true. Sentencing guidelines spell out suggested sentences within, and almost always far under, the maximum sentences allowed by law (although judges are free to ignore them and impose statutory maximum sentences). A more appropriate target for them would have been the place where the maximum sentences are specified, since those are the big problem. The site also happens to belong to the body responsible for setting those maximums: http://uscode.house.gov (the criminal code is title 18 - http://uscode.house.gov/download/title_18.shtml ).
This is not a suggestion that anyone undertake any illegal activity - it is just an observation that it would have been a better target. I'm certain that an actual suggestion of that nature would yield significant prison time under these very sentencing laws.
Activists scratching their own itches aren't misguided. They are shipping.
Neither is anonymity cowardice. The DOJ won't treat those they catch as pranksters or respect their convictions of conscience. And other interests may not care how problems are solved. just that they are.
Face and big money are at stake. And all sides are serious adults
"Fail fast" is not really helpful when you have decades of experience to bring to the table. Humanity already has the knowledge we need to operate an effective popular action. No A/B testing necessary.
> You and your first world problems have NO IDEA how to fight for freedom.
Why do you think "Freedom" is what they care about? They have decided what rules the rest of us are to live by, better just to get out of the way before the doxx you or take other vengeful retribution on you...
TO start: I am not saying what they did is right, but I am saying you do not have a right to call it "Cowardice".
>The biggest problem with website-defacing movements is their cowardice (no one in Anonymous seems courageous enough to go to prison)
There is no right or wrong way to fight for freedom. IT is a fight a fight is a war. There are very few rules in war.
Many actual freedom fighters have died in places like Bhutan, Burma, etc. This does not make them superior fighters, this diminishes the power to the cause (because they perish and are hard to replace), prolongs the struggle.
I am sure you have seen more than most people and work hard and I am not saying you didn't do this or accusing you of anything because I do not know you enough, but your short essay needs to be more tactile in certain locations specially in this context.
You call upon Hacker News to grow up but must of your statements in your piece are childish:
>I know actual freedom fighters, that is publishers of opposition magazines and organizers of nonviolent protests, from Taiwan
>If you really want to learn about effective popular action to bring about more freedom, point your Web browser to the Albert Einstein Institute publications
>You and your first world problems have NO IDEA how to fight for freedom
>The biggest problem with website-defacing movements is their cowardice
WHY? Because staying in prison is not a tough guy thing. Doesn't make you smarter or an "Actual freedom fighter". It inhibits you to fight. I am focusing on the concept of a fight as you realize, a struggle, a battle...
You cannot know when it will manifest, when it will ignite and when it will finish. There are stages of undetermined amounts. Not to mention collateral damage. So if you think there is a "fight" here from the beginning, which, by your essay you seem to think so, please analyze what a fight is. A fight, battle or whatever you may label it, does not go through an essay out of some institute. It has strategical value and may come in handy at some point, but it is not a doctrine and going by it will actually put you at an disadvantage. So I suggest before calling people coward and claiming you know "Actual Freedom" fighters and starting your comment with a childish statement that literally translates to "you don't know what you are doing, I am the real deal", I suggest you read on Sun Tzu, The Prince, On guerrilla warfare. If you think there is a fight for freedom going on because what they do may serve a purpose that depends on the length, importance and tactical situation in the fight. Yes these are strategy books and maybe you will claim you are a peaceful activist and don't need these which is fine, but, make no mistake if there is a fight - there will only be one winner.
>There is no right or wrong way to fight for freedom.
There are two wrong ways to fight for freedom (or any noble cause): (1). to fight unjustly and (2). to fight ineffectively. Starting a fight is not without a cost to a side that loses the fight, that cost may be in lives, money or emotional energy. To fight ineffectively for a noble cause is to fight unjustly since you hurt your chances of winning, to fight unjustly but effectively for a noble cause turns a noble cause into an unjust cause.
>IT is a fight a fight is a war.
Not all fights are wars, nor are all wars fights (for examples wars have been fought to pump up nationalism or to test a doctrine with neither side actually engaging in real fighting. If you read 'The Prince' much of the wars between the cities of Italy are not fights).
>There are very few rules in war.
The appeal to a war mentality you are making is an appeal to as you say "few rules". This is both untrue in that most wars are fought within a large number of rules and limited in scope, most wars are not absolute wars, and absolute wars tend to consume the original causes for the war. Absolute wars are wars for the sake of war rather than wars for the sake of principal. To advocate a war mentality for the purpose of arguing that few rules apply is completely self-defeating since such a war destroys the original purpose you are attempting to achieve.
>make no mistake if there is a fight - there will only be one winner.
This is certainly not true, you can have all losers, all winners or any combination thereof. Who wins in a absolute nuclear war? Maybe invertebrates, maybe not.
Do not take this post as defense of the earlier poster.
> You and your first world problems have NO IDEA how to fight for freedom.
Flaunting your experience living in a totalitarian regime to scold those first world kids might not be as convincing, than, say, if you just skipped that part.
Someone else can always trump that "well, my family members were tortured" so "don't tell me about your experience".
> If you really want to learn about effective popular action to bring about more freedom, point your Web browser to the Albert Einstein Institute publications
Those are good resources and it is good to point them out. However the situation and the initial conditions in each country are different. What works in Burma might not work in US.
> ... before they were adopted, on the example of Minnesota's sentencing guidelines, federal sentences were just about wholly indeterminate,
Ok so how do you explain what happened and how downloads of scientific articles can result in threatening someone with 35+ years in prison. Isn't this exactly the area to attack, just because it was random before now it is predictably horrible. I would take the randomness again. At least then someone can point to the judge and say, this judge is out of control, they are responsible, they are ruining lives and wasting tax dollars.
Now they have a list of minimum requirements and they can all point their finger too everyone dismisses the accusations with "But I am just a part of the system".
The goal is not necessarily to remove the sentencing guidelines but to make them sane. You assume it the goal is to remove them.
> I know actual freedom fighters, that is publishers of opposition magazines and organizers of nonviolent protests, from Taiwan.
Again, Taiwan is not US. By comparing the two you are also implicitly lowering the standard and expectation for US. The assumption being "US is just like Burma and Taiwan, what works there should be applied here". I think first we should examine that assumption. Pretty scary. Here is a country that managed to convince most of the its population and those from other countries that it is qualitatively superior. Founded on unbiased justice, representative democracy, everyone has a right to happiness. There is freedom to prosper. And now we are left comparing it to Burma. That is interesting.
Absolute comparisons are good to conduct (when possible). We are still better than North Korea or Eritrea. So we are looking good there. But there is also a relative comparison -- between the image a country projects of itself (via propaganda, or what most people expect from it) and its reality. There is also comparison between the countries at roughly the same level of development (comparing Burma to Taiwan) but then also comparing US with say Norway.
In this case the most important is comparing US to the image most expect from US. Here the situation is not pretty.
Also, I don't necessarily agree with attacking websites, but I don't necessarily disagree it. If it reveals corruption, good, make those servers burn. We don't know what it will reveal, so I can't say if this is effective or desirable.
You watched that video and found it be credible? You are the fodder for their tomfoolery. Now I have nothing against pranks, but there is a legitimate cause here. Scientific papers from public funding should be freely available. Superhero gibberish, while entertaining, will not help.
I didn't find it credible but I believe it inspiring (for many).
> Superhero gibberish, while entertaining, will not help.
Superman, Batman, etc... No country loves them some super hero stuff better than Americans. I don't think anyone including the authors this this video to be a documentary, it is a piece of propaganda, a call to action. Do they expect the govt. to realistically accept their conditions and conduct an overnight reform of DOJ? I am guessing not.
In terms of effectiveness, compared to other Anonymous campaigns, I feel pretty safe in saying the visibility of this campaign is going to be very high.
Huh? Have you seen how the various .gov sites are being run? Their security is generally pretty pathetic. Most of their security comes from the fact that they will hit you like a ton of bricks if they catch you.
Here's the introduction from "Anonymous Operation Last Resort 101"
*1. Welcome to #OpLastResort-TwitterStorm!
You have been selected to assist this important Operation because we're pretty sure you know how to cut and paste. #OpLastResort is a long-term Op devoted to honoring the memory of Aaron Swartz and continuing his important work. Anonymous has prepared content that they would like shared with the world, and it's up to us to make sure it goes everywhere. Other Operatives will be spreading the news to major MSM outlets, YouTube, Facebook, and other websites while you participate in the push to bypass the bias and get the word out directly to the people via Twitter."
The narration seems to be in the style of v for vendetta, quite amusing to see such a portentous message on a hacked site. They've also made entire site editable.
I should see that movie, just so I'll get all the references these hacktivists keep making to it.
Also a lot of War Games quotes and clips in this one, for some reason (?)
It plays like an intro for a videogame (warheads??). It's all so over the top. Is it too much to ask that people hijacking a website show some subtlety in their craft?
I don't want any reforms that come from blackmail and extortion. Any good that they would do would be wiped out once the really powerful extortionists show up.
By all means, though, let's see what's in those files.
I don't think they actually expect (or fully want, for that matter) their demands to be met before they release the decryption keys. They want to be seen as confident enough to present a deal, but their ultimate power trip fantasy is to see powerful people forced to resign from office, and then for the reforms to happen after the destruction has happened.
Also, would it have killed them to provide sha-3, or at least sha-1 or md5 sums? People are speculating here (and presumably elsewhere) that some of the uploads were corrupted.
It's been a couple of hours since the hack. How does a major gov website not have a plan to act on this quicker? I wonder if they even have an alert letting them know something happened.
Given the small time window for an attack to be viable I have to wonder why a more concise and succinct message wasn't used. It does make me wonder if the bark is bigger than the bite.
You can't actually execute `rm -rf /` on most modern systems anyway. There's a flag to force it, but you'd have to be pretty determined to nuke your system.
Huh, sure enough, I stand corrected. Must have entirely forgot that I added that option while rushing to play around while things were being removed. Thanks!
Essentially it's a form of terrorism. They are saying do things our way or we burn your house down. They don't believe in democracy and so what's left? A world where the best people at malicious hacking rule? The same skills they used to do this can shut down power plants, bring down air planes, and wreck general mayhem. They are saying the people in power are corrupt. Some how we have to trust they will never become corrupt.
Before I posted my original comment. I had a moment of fear. What if I pass them off and they decide to ruin my life. Maybe as an exercise size for one of their noobs.
Putting a press release on a website where it doesn't belong has been done; it's old news. We know you can hack a drupal site owned by the .gov, we get it. Don't blow your wad on something obvious, get documentation that would make Woodward and Bernstein cream their pants over how many pageviews it'd get and publish that.
Hack the FBI and find out who was talking about killing protestors at Occupy Houston; hack Corrections Corporation of America and find out what they talk about during their board meetings; get their financials and spill them to the foreign press. Any or all of those would change things, possibly for the better. But this, this is a waste of your time and ours.