Anonymous Helps Turn In Hacker Who Targeted Charity 234
netbuzz writes "A hacker who defaced and disabled the website of a New Zealand film company known for helping poor children could find himself in legal hot water in his home country of Spain after his attack spurred a Facebook/Twitter posse that included members of Anonymous, who the hacker may have been trying to impress. 'Apparently, one of the (Anonymous) rules is you don't hack charity sites, you don't hack sites of people trying to help kids,' says the owner of the damaged site. 'This guy was trying to impress them, to try and get into their group and boasting about what he'd done — but they turned on him, they chased him.'"
Not Anonymous? (Score:4, Insightful)
Facebook/Twitter doesn't sound like Anonymous, it sounds like scriptkiddies and armchair activists who just want to look like the coolest kid in middle school.
Re:Not Anonymous? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Seizures (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember when anyone at all could join Anonymous, claim its name for themselves, and could probably find some others in the group interested in pursuing their idea for an attack, even if it wasn't sanctioned by the group as a whole?
Oh wait, that's how it still is.
Re:I want to hate Anonymous (Score:4, Insightful)
Blindly disobeying the law is even worse. Most laws are pretty good. Vigilantism might feel good, but when adopted at a wide scale, it's terrible.
Disobeying the law just because you're a mental teenager wanting to "fight the man" is stupid and harmful.
Re:I want to hate Anonymous (Score:5, Insightful)
About the only thing you can do is disobey the unjust laws and do the right thing secretly or move to someplace more free.
Re:Seizures (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no one philosophy either morally or politically, just a couple of common interests. Join the swarm and leave.
Welcome to the future, a future where nations by common interests and some level of shared morality than national borders.
Re:I want to hate Anonymous (Score:5, Insightful)
If you name the worst crimes, the worst tragedies to occur in human history, the Killing Fields, the genocide in Rwanda, the holocaust, etc. were all committed by people simply "following the law", soldiers just "following orders". If you name the biggest heroes in the world, chances are they were breaking the law.
But, its your life, you have to live with your own decisions. I for one will do what is moral, even if its not legal. I'm not going to break the law simply to, but I'm not going to blindly follow some law just because its the "law". When the current events today have become the textbooks of tomorrow and my children or grandchildren look at the tyranny that exists and asked if I opposed it, I can look at them in the eye and give an honest answer and not be ashamed.
Re:I want to hate Anonymous (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this is very smart.
At a time when all social institutions are failing us, when all leaders - religious, political and business - are failing us, when the very rule of law has been perverted to turn all but a very few into slaves, one needs to give a "higher law" some serious thought. It needn't be a religious thing, as many philosophers and our very experience has shown, but if we're going to avert the inexorable march of dystopia, it's something to be considered.
The "rules of society" have been thoroughly turned on their head, and it's time to look very closely at oneself and decide what's right. The slogans of what's coming can be seen very clearly in advertising every few minutes on television. Unless they're recognized and carefully examined, and their wrongness discerned, we'll just end up going along with them.
One thing about anonymous: they make people talk about what's right and wrong outside of the usual framework of the corporate hegemony that passes for "the rules of society" in 2012. Laws are for more than just making things orderly so sheep can be slaughtered with minimum fuss.
In that regard, I'm glad anonymous exists. In a real way, they're kids, muddling through the confusing mess of what we are told is "right and wrong". They're figuring it out for themselves rather than just accepting the "work hard, don't rock the boat and pay the man" morals of today.
What's important about anonymous is not what they do, what they decide, but what we do - what we decide. They're sort of an unintentional crucible - a lab for how society forms and how it fails. There is a lesson there for those that care to see it.
unfortunately (Score:4, Insightful)
Not every individual has a Sterling moral code. plenty do, but sone believe they do, and in fact have a "morality" far more screwed up than the law. Therefore, the law is far better than individial judgments of morality, because the thugs in power have a lot more to be accountable for rhan a random thug on the street. Plus the law gets considered, refined, corrected. The "morality" of some random Joe comes from what exactly? You trust him more than a governmental system continually refined and corrected?
So its a nice fable, the righteous vigilante, it makes for great Clint Eastwood movies or Batman movie. But its a fantasy. In reality, its more often about a deranged fool doing a lot worse than any cop force and judiciary.
Re:"Anonymous"? Talks to the cops? (Score:3, Insightful)
Vigilantes != cops.
Vigilantes ==Freelance Police [wikipedia.org]
Re:"Anonymous"? Talks to the cops? (Score:5, Insightful)
who is a firefighter? anyone who fights fire, or anyone wearing the uniform?
Re:I want to hate Anonymous (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit. You immediately jump to the worst incidents in history, and point at them as though they're representative examples. They're not.
Insisting that you'll just follow your own code instead of the law works great as long as you have the "right" morals. Funny thing about that, everyone seems to think their morals are the right ones.
Maybe I think it's immoral for my daughter to have a kid out of wedlock, so I kill her and her boyfriend as an honor killing. After all, it's my morality, and how dare your laws condemn it? Maybe I think abortions are immoral, so I won't let my employees have them, and how dare the law say otherwise? Maybe I think it's moral to drive drunk so long as I'm super-duper careful. How dare you take away my right to drive? Maybe I think it's moral to lynch murderers, and whoops, turns out that guy was innocent. How dare you make me follow your "due process"? Maybe I see no problems with dumping toxic waste in your water supply. How dare you fine me for it?
You're a child. Anyone with the slightest idea how the world works would realize that if you tell people to ignore any law they don't like, you get chaos. Sure, if you ever find yourself working as a Nazi death camp guard, disobey those orders. But such disobedience is warranted as the exception, not the rule.
Re:Not Anonymous? (Score:5, Insightful)
In much the same way a bunch of people at a bus stop are a group or loose affiliation... all going in the same direction... yeah.
Re:I want to hate Anonymous (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:unfortunately (Score:4, Insightful)
You look, and you listen. Are you telling me you can't tell the difference between Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin or Franco from Gandhi, Mandela or Lincoln? Start with the words. Then observe the actions. A despot is easy to spot. When Mandela became President, he invited one of the men who guarded him in prison as a VIP guest. He spoke to his nation reborn and said that we must forgive, that until these men are forgiven, none of us is free. That is how you tell bloody brutes from men of faith and dignity. If the men who run your nation are not among the great men of purpose and humanity, then you must stand up and face them. If the media is owned by despots then speak in the streets like King. If your words are wise, and deep, and resonate in the human heart, you will be heard. You don't fight for fighting's sake. You fight to preserve that which is good and just. If in your struggle you break bad laws, then you pay the consequence gladly. Gandhi was arrested, and beaten many times. It didn't stop him, it didn't even slow him down.
Re:I want to hate Anonymous (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe I think it's moral to drive drunk so long as I'm super-duper careful. How dare you take away my right to drive?
At this point, I stopped reading. Actually, I should have stopped reading at the above example. I think you misunderstand what morality is and how you can impose it onto other parties. Your morals are a fine thing to live by and maybe even to break a law or two that goes against what you believe to be morally right, when it infringes on other peoples liberties then you are going to be in the wrong regardless of your morals. Pick better examples next time, yeah?
Re:"Anonymous"? Talks to the cops? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I want to hate Anonymous (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I want to hate Anonymous (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone with the slightest idea how the world works would realize that if you tell people to ignore any law they don't like, you get chaos.
Stop polarizing, things are only so black and white at the margins.
He didn't advocate ignoring laws you don't like, he was talking about following his moral compass and you don't get chaos by advocating people follow their moral compass. You do get conflict and the need to compromise if people do that but how is that different from what happens anyway?
Re:I want to hate Anonymous (Score:5, Insightful)
Form an organization. Raise money. Hire a lobbyist. Donate money to candidates who agree with you and run ads against candidates who disagree with you.
Lose horribly to well-funded PACs with hidden deep-pocket donors who can afford to run extensive and expensive media saturation campaigns telling the voters how their candidates are "more conservative" than your candidates. As though being "more conservative" or "more liberal" was all that was required to represent the voters' best intererests.
21st Century America, post Citizens United. One Dollar, One Vote. Ayn Rand would be so proud.
Re:I want to hate Anonymous (Score:4, Insightful)
It's worth pointing out that there's a step in between "I'll just go along with it" and "Shoot the tyrants": It's the step of quiet non-compliance and organizing, which the revolutionaries also took before the first shots were fired. The reason there were British troops in Boston is that the British government had no belief that their laws were going to be followed, and by the time they were trying to seriously punish the Bostonians the revolutionaries had about 1/3 of the population on their side. The reason the colonists won at Concord (after losing badly at Lexington) was because they had carefully organized a communications network which meant that word of the British movements was moving much much faster than the army.
Re:"Anonymous"? Talks to the cops? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are a Firefighter, you still are when out of uniform. If you are not, you are still not, even if you saved someone. It's really not that difficult. This doesn't diminish what you did. If I draw a plan of a building and someone uses it, I am still not an Architect. If I correctly diagnose my daughter has an illness, I am still not a Medical Doctor. And so on.
Re:I want to hate Anonymous (Score:4, Insightful)
In a democracy, your power is determined by your ability to convince other people.
In our democracy, the ability to convice other people is determined by access to the propaganda system.