Anonymous Warhead Targets US Sentencing Commission 252
theodp writes "Late Friday, Violet Blue reports, the U.S. Sentencing Commission website was hacked and government files distributed by Anonymous in 'Operation Last Resort.' The U.S. Sentencing Commission sets guidelines for sentencing in United States Federal courts, and on the defaced ussc.gov website Anonymous cited the recent suicide of Aaron Swartz as 'a line that has been crossed.' Calling the launch of its new campaign a "warhead," Anonymous vowed, 'This time there will be change, or there will be chaos.'"
Adds reader emil: "Anonymous has not specified exactly what files they have obtained. The various files were named after Supreme Court judges. At a regular interval commencing today, Anonymous will choose one media outlet and supply them with heavily redacted partial contents."
at the most they can shed light.. (Score:4, Interesting)
..to who actually makes the law as it is practiced in united states.
you'd think that the sentencing guidelines would be written to the law, but no??
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"heavily redacted partial content"? What is the point then. They go to the effort of doing this, naming their operation something quite aggressive ("warhead") and then pussyfoot around with the results? Are they hoping that they will be ignored or the response will be weaker?
Re:at the most they can shed light.. (Score:5, Informative)
What I understood is that the redacted versions will be sent out piecemeal to news outlets, while the full reveal will happen later "if demands are not met."
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Re:at the most they can shed light.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed. The typical tactic is 'play for time, until the sniper gets into position.'
Remember, the people they are playing against do not believe in any rules: they cheat, and will never stop; there is no reasoning with them, and every ploy is singularly meant to further their own ends. Or do we have some true believes in the crowd, who think that politicians & friends, against every shred of evidence, will not cheat given the opportunity?
Remember, this is a government which was not afraid to set up its own version of concentration camps (the Japanese war camps), and is not afraid at all to experiment on its own people (the Syphilis and radiation experiments). It is also a government which employs the best of orators and spin-doctors to achieve its own ends. In short, if we judge it by its own laws, it's a maverick government; essentially a loose cannon.
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Plus I figure that all the government have to do is declare Anonymous a terrorist group, and lo and behold, end of discussion. I really hope they release info to completely derail the political career of the attorneys involved.
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While I'm, no big fan of the US government, do bear in mind that there's a huge difference between "concentration camps" as Japanese detainment: with rare exceptions the victims survived. Moreover, most detainees were treated reasonably (but not very) well, so long as they kept the rules. I don't think the comparison is helpful. These were two very different things.
Re:at the most they can shed light.. (Score:5, Insightful)
We, the government, have decided to detain all Slashdot users with a uid greater than 500,000; please report to the nearest camp.
The treatment they received is besides the point; the point being they were American citizens, whose only crime was to be of children or grandchildren of Japanese inmigrants.
Yes, they were not exterminated but it was a racist action, and in that way, the two are comparable.
Now, think how much worse the treatment could have gotten if the war was lost or if it looked that way to the powers that be...
Re:at the most they can shed light.. (Score:4, Funny)
I disagree with this. All with UID > 5000.
To the game-grid.
End of line_
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What you should go look up is how many other Asians during that time were bullied because people assumed they were Japanese. That was all the citizens. Sadly, the gov't probably treated the Japan
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Hitler engaged in a decades long persecution of Jews, and the purpose of the concentration camps was to provide a "final solution" by exterminating them. Over 7 million were killed.
Roosevelt allowed the internment of Japanese Americans after the US was sneak-attacked by their home country without provocation. He and his military commanders felt that Japanese Americans with easy access to the cost might assist the Japanese government with an invasion, so they moved them away from the coast. The
I'm not den
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Many at regular concentration camps were political prisoners, homosexuals and so on.
I was taught about this from a teacher in my high school who was sent to German concentration camp for taking part in a s
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Again, not defending the US government. I am just saying that I don't think the Japanese internment was comparable to the Nazi "final solution", and that you water down the horror of the holocaust when you act as though it was.
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Remember, the people they are playing against do not believe in any rules: they cheat, and will never stop; there is no reasoning with them, and every ploy is singularly meant to further their own ends. Or do we have some true believes in the crowd, who think that politicians & friends, against every shred of evidence, will not cheat given the opportunity?
Well, they did say they don't want to be involved in any sort of negotiation. The demands are basically that the US suddenly undoes over a century of case law, re-legislates the entire criminal justice system at a time when Congress can't even agree on what time it is, and they want a return to partiality and common law. It's not going to happen. It's great that they're asking for it. It's great that they're leaving the time table for it open, but they might as well just release those files, and let everyon
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
The Anon morons think that are fighting some noble battle against...who knows what...but all they really are is a bunch of stupid little cunts who like to stick their nose into other people's business
I am not fanboys of the anon, but I got to say that at least they are doing something
Mr. Aaron Swartz's death, although he has committed suicide, was inevitably linked to the way the US government's handling of the hacking community.
As a former hacker --- although for old farts like me the term "hacking" is a little bit different from the script kiddies thingy that anon are doing nowadays --- I too personally mourn the death of Mr. Aaron Swartz
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Laws are made by both the Federal Government and the States. The guidelines are in place so the punishment for a crime in one state is similar to the same crime in another state.
like for smoking a joint?
point was that it might shed light on _who_ decides - and based on what reasoning - if the guideline says that smoking a joint is three years in the joint, 20 dollar fine or nothing.
Re:at the most they can shed light.. (Score:5, Informative)
States? States have nothing to do with this. Believe it or not, states are not some all powerful entity bravely feuding with the federal government over peculiar institutions.
The US Sentencing Commission was intended to standardize federal prison sentences, so that persons who committed similar federal crimes ended serving similar sentences, regardless of which district judge or parole board they appeared before.
Stith, Kate and Koh, Steve Y., "The Politics of Sentencing Reform: The Legislative History of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines" (1993). Faculty Scholarship Series. Paper 1273. [yale.edu]
it's fair in that it's consistent, but it's unfair in that it may not be wise. Like most Bureacracies, it's a triumph of mediocrity over the capriciousness of individual persons.
Let's kowtow! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let's kowtow! (Score:5, Insightful)
How about doing it because it's the right thing to do?
Re:Let's kowtow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let's kowtow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Corrupt politicians in a democracy have no power at all. They are salesmen selling laws to the highest bidding lobbyists who in turn act as agents for the richest and greediest. Take laws that make small business more and more difficult every day, seriously what benefit would a politician get out of it but check out the lobbyists and the corporate franchises skulking in the background, what benefit do franchisors gain, they shut out small business competitors, either pay franchisors a huge percentage or get purposefully shut out by the complexity of the law.
Corporations lobbying for the ramping up and expanding of criminal penalties, so they can turn for profit private prisons into slave labour camps.
Yet those idiot Libertarians still do no get it, economic freedom is not and never will be civil freedom, in fact what you have right now is economic freedoms slowly but surely crushing civil freedoms out of existence. The minority psychopaths at the top of corporations want the economic freedom at the top to own everyone at the bottom, they want the economic freedom to deny you your civil freedom.
Yet you like many others rant about the power of politicians, when in reality the politicians are being systematically disempowered into being nothing but empty puppets and it is those corporations and corporate executives with the power who are running the show, whilst blaming everything upon the politicians they own.
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How about doing it because it's the right thing to do?
Doing WHAT?
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Follow the thread, RTFA and you shall see.
Re:Let's kowtow! (Score:4, Insightful)
yeah, did that. It's still not clear what the blackmailers want, exactly and therefore not clear whether it is "right." Is is "right" to comply with blackmailers in principle? I would say not, and I would say that such stunts have zero likelihood of getting sentencing guidelines made less strict for computer crime. If anything, it will make the people on the commission even more determined to deal with "these people" in a draconian manner.
Seriously, isn't it written somewhere, "Never try to threaten the guy who's holding the big guns?" It's tactically a bad move.
Re:Let's kowtow! (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't say I thought this was the right approach nor that I thought it would work, I just said I approve of the objective. We should revise the guidelines and reign in prosecutors in general. Not because anon demands it, but because it is the right thing for our society.
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That's the other side of the coin. Faced with someone from the entitled class who actually deserves prosecution, they do nothing at all. Surely fraud that crashes the world economy has to warrant more prosecutorial attention than making some unauthorized copies.
Re:Let's kowtow! (Score:5, Informative)
Watch the video or read the text ... It is very easy to comprehend. Enact reforms that "respectable" people suggest. Anonymous does not expect nor wish to be part of the negotiations,
Re:Let's kowtow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, isn't it written somewhere, "Never try to threaten the guy who's holding the big guns?" It's tactically a bad move.
Indeed, they are shooting at a hippopotamus with a .22, at best they are just pissing it off. The intellectually curious are trapped in open ground between them and in grave danger of being trampled or shot.
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Why wouldn't sentencing guidelines be public in the first place?
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Seriously, isn't it written somewhere, "Never try to threaten the guy who's holding the big guns?" It's tactically a bad move.
Actually no. Off the top of my head I can think of several examples and anyone even modestly well versed in history (I'm not) could likely come up with dozens more.
13 colonies | Great Britain
Mexico | Spain
India | Great Britain
East Germany | USSR
Nothing every changes for the better by taking a defeatist attitude.
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Nothing every changes for the better by taking a defeatist attitude.
^^This!^^
If enough people start to come out of their slumber, change can actually happen. We have too many complacent and ignorant Americans currently. They need to get shown what is happening and how it impacts them at every turn. If they get angry enough, change will be forced.
It's incredible that there were no marches on DC for Fraud in 2008, and an outrage that OWS was infiltrated by the Government while being slandered and libeled into nonexistence by the Government controlled media (Fox/NBC/ABC/CNN
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It's only fair that they get the same treatment. After all what options did Aaron have?
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How about doing it because it's the right thing to do?
Is it? Swartz broke the law, knowingly and willingly. The government didn't kill him. He killed himself. He was all set to have his day in court to fight the charges and bring about awareness to the issues. Instead, like the little coward he was, he killed himself.
I feel bad for his family, but no one is responsible for his death but himself. I look at a coward like Swartz and I feel revulsion at his cowardice. I look at someone like Mandela (tho I disagree with his politics) and I see an extremely brave ma
Re:Let's kowtow! (Score:5, Insightful)
A speeder knowingly breaks the law as well, but I don't think multiple felony counts is the right answer. The suicide is irrelevant to that. Perhaps it put him over the edge, perhaps it didn't. Either way the prosecutor vastly overreached.
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OK, you were 6 MPH over the limit so we'll charge you with 2 counts of homicide and speeding. Care to plead down to 6 months and a felony?
Re:Let's kowtow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. I fail, utterly and completely, to understand how the GP poster and his ilk don't get that. That even if Swartz committed a crime, it wasn't a 50 years in jail type of crime. It was a pay a fine type of crime. One point made in the video was that the 8th amendment bars cruel and unusual punishment. The amended indictment had a 50 year penalty on it. If other crimes were similarly charged, you'd be looking at 20 years for rolling through a stop sign. Death for shoplifting. That, as was Swartz' potential time, is not just cruel ...it's assinine.
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He was offered a plea deal that would have seen him sentenced to six months in prison. He was told that the maximums could add up to 50 years but it is up to his lawyer to tell him what he realistically could have been sentenced to. The 50 year sentence would occur if each count got the max and were run consecutively. That rarely happens as it is against standard sentencing guidelines. I think it is ironic that Anonymous is hacking the site the would gave caused Swartz to get a shorter sentence.
Re:Let's kowtow! (Score:4, Informative)
Except that's not how plea deals work. You don't sign off on the agreement and then get 6 mos. It's not that kind of contract. The judge can ignore the prosecutor's suggestion totally. Note the use of the word "blithey" in the following explanation.
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/01/towards-learning-losing-aaron-swartz-part-2 [stanford.edu]
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I'm surprised to hear that JSTOR no longer has a copy of any of the works he downloaded. I could have sworn he just copied them.
I'm really glad you're not in charge. I don't want to live in the hellhole you advocate.
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Nobody questions that what he did is illegal. What everybody is saying that you fail to understand is that you should not get threatened with 50 years of jail time for something that is pretty much a misdemeanor.
Re:Let's kowtow! (Score:4, Informative)
He didn't steal anyones work, at best he deprived publishers of profit, which is debatable since not many people who don't already have free access to journals actually want to read those articles.
The journal publishing industry is a huge racket. Editors, assistant editors, peer reviewers, etc are all unpaid volunteer positions. Authors are unpaid and in many cases have to pay money to submit an article (some flat fee, some per page, some extra for color). The guys who get paid are the guys who take your LaTeX submission document and change the style file to the 'journal format' style from the 'journal draft' style and put in the page numbers, doi info, etc. That guy and the executives who run the publishing house. In return for essentially 95% volunteer work to get an article to print they charge exorbitant fees to libraries and universities to get the journals (and some like Elsevier wont even offer you a subscription to the 1 journal you want unless you buy the package that includes 19 others that you don't want).
On top of that, the vast majority of published research out there is paid for by public funds, that you as a taxpayer are helping pay for. If the public pays for it, the public should have access to it. You shouldnt have to pay for the research and then pay to see the results. Sure, there is a real cost associated with printing and distributing publications and with storage and bandwidth for articles available online. The price charges is not inline with those costs though.
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Laws set in place by people whom they do not apply to, do not, IMHO, hold any validity.
Argue otherwise, and I shall show you the error of your ways.
Re:Let's kowtow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Charges fitting what was actually alleged and punishment fitting the crime are the right things to do.
Re:Let's kowtow! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, felony charges for what amounted to a simple trespass are nothing like appropriate.
Re:Let's kowtow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let's kowtow! (Score:5, Insightful)
Not quite, a better metaphor would be that he was invited into a house to take pictures of *anything* he wanted.
They then called the cops because he took pictures of everything.
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Note: I'm not saying that what Aaron did was wrong or right, just saying that your analogy really isn't apt and need
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Sorry but you missed the main issue in what he did. After being denied net access because he was downloading too much he physically entered a server room and installed hardware on someone else's network to download the files we was unable to get over the network. If you want to use your household analogy he was invited in to have some food. He was then told to leave as he had consumed too much. He later broke in the back door and took the food anyway.
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It's not sounding like you're a part of the solution, either.
The less people are part of the problem, the closer we are to a solution, so I'll take that.
So long "Hacker". Thy meaning is forever tarnished (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not gonna go into whether or not this "warhead" business is a good idea. It's probably not, since it wouldn't be what Aaron Swartz himself would. He would have made a lot of noise and brought public attention had he been able to cope, but defacements were beneath him. Also, it's likely just dirt courtesy of WikiLeaks.
But whatever hope anyone had about restoring that term to what it was just went up in a flame of digital smoke.
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But whatever hope anyone had about restoring [the term "Hacker"] to what it was just went up in a flame of digital smoke.
The White House [slashdot.org], among others [slashdot.org], seems to already be aware that "Hacker" has more than one definition. The fight to protect the TMRC sense of "hacker" is over. We won.
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crackers vs. hackers nitpicking on words was lost before word hackers was applied to it's current use.
because crackers are things you eat with tea.
So I've been curious when the fuck did hacker not include "crackers"? 1975? because up from 1980 it sure didn't in any written word.
just face it, cracks only refers to sw someone has already altered.
but here's the point: hacker includes people who do hacking - even if the hacking is of the black hat kind. just live with it.
Re:So long "Hacker". Thy meaning is forever tarnis (Score:4, Funny)
only white hackers can be called "crackers"
that is our word, we can call each other "cracka", and "Cracka please" but only white hackers can use that word otherwise you are racist and prejudiced against white hackers
go join the nackers if you don't want to be around the crackers :P
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Really Anonymous? (Score:4, Interesting)
Methinks this is more hoax than serious threat. I checked Google's cache [googleusercontent.com] of the vandalized USSC site and found the instruction to create the "Warhead" file near the bottom of the page:
$ cat Scalia* Kennedy* Thomas* Ginsburg* Breyer* Roberts* Alito* Sotomayor* Kagan* > Warhead-US-DOJ-LEA-2013.aes256 && rm -rf /
Nice media strategy (Score:5, Funny)
Anonymous will choose one media outlet and supply them with heavily redacted partial contents.
Well, that's one way to get the word out -- but word to the wise, going upstairs and showing your mom doesn't count as a "media outlet."
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Anonymous will choose one media outlet and supply them with heavily redacted partial contents.
Well, that's one way to get the word out -- but word to the wise, going upstairs and showing your mom doesn't count as a "media outlet."
I'm curious; what if you as a writer for El Reg were to receive some of these documents - what would you do with them?
Honestly, as a non-American, I haven't even looked into what it is they're taking although I expect the only impact will be for some of them to have their asses handed to them by the DoJ eventually.
I'm more curious on your thoughts on receiving something like this or the infamous Wikileaks materiel.
Cheers
Awfully Pretentious (Score:2)
The video was pretty good quality, and I agree with the message. But *please*.
Just publish the files (Score:5, Insightful)
Here we go again. Stop posturing and just publish the documents. As appealing as fighting for justice and equality, this grand standing and attempt to use "secret" information to extract concession is at best juvenile, at worst a power game. Neither of which serves to advance justice and equality.
If there is information pertinent to illegal or unethical government action. Just publish it and let the public judge for themselves. Otherwise, how is the blackmail strategy of Anonymous different from that of our governments.
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Publishing means to put content into the public. It can only be public if people are aware that it exists. So some posturing is a necessary part of gaining media coverage, otherwise hardly anyone will bother even looking for the published material, let alone read it.
Re:Just publish the files (Score:4, Insightful)
It's psychology directed at news outlets. Just releasing a big chunk of files containing some incriminating data might get a few people riled up for a while, but it's relatively uninteresting to the general public. Tease news outlets with hyperbolae and a stream of disparate partial data, and you can drum up enough interest in the general public that larger news outlets actually want to cover the juicier bits.
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Otherwise, how is the blackmail strategy of Anonymous different from that of our governments.
Do you know why our government uses threats, horsetrading, grandstanding, and blackmail? Because they work.
Personally, I use different tools to work for what I believe in. But if I see a guy using tools I don't like to achieve good, and he's competing with a guy who is using those same tools to achieve evil, I cheer for the guy who is working to achieve good. If the only difference between Anonymous and our governme
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this grand standing and attempt to use "secret" information to extract concession is at best juvenile, at worst a power game. Neither of which serves to advance justice and equality.
The problem is that the other side in this conflict is equally juvenile and power-gamey, namely the government. The whole "War on Whatever We Dislike This Decade" is so pubescent, it makes sane people sick to watch. The executive's approach of making life hell for people they have an axe to grind with, instead of following justice is straight from the school yard.
If they didn't have tanks, we'd be laughing at them.
What if the Government Overreacts? (Score:2)
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Typical Anonymous (Score:5, Insightful)
This is typical of Anonymous's "hacktivism". The problems with federal prosecutor over reach has been a problem for decades, but Anonymous didn't care at all about it until it impacted one of their own. And even now they're focussed purely on retaliating over someone who can't be helped rather than trying to get publicity for the thousands of other (mostly poor and minority) people out there right now being victimized just the same way.
And to top it all off, the organization they decide to attack is the USSC, one of the few parts of the government that actually been an ally on this issue (for example, by criticizing the way drug sentencing is biased against minorities).
Re:Typical Anonymous (Score:5, Insightful)
The problems with federal prosecutor over reach has been a problem for decades,
So can you think of a better time than now to start fixing it? If you really believe this is a problem, don't attack your allies. Be thankful for their support, even though you saw the problem before they did.
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The problems with federal prosecutor over reach has been a problem for decades,
Having dealt with prosecutors on many different levels over the years, I can assure you that this is by no means limited to the federal level.
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Is that typical of Anonymous, or of humans in general? Few people care about something until either someone convinces them or it affects them.
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Yes, but their "activism" doesn't extend beyond anyone they don't have a direct personal connection too. Look at their video: Schwartz, Assange, Manning. Of all the cases of people being tyrannized by the law enforcement system in this country (many far worse then Aaron Schwartz), we're supposedly believe those are the three that cross the line? Or just the only three Anonymous actually cares about?
And what exactly is the goal of this effort? Name one specific reform Anonymous wants to see implemented t
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they? who they? I think you're misunderstanding "anonymous".
do your own anonymous vid of the wounded knee massacre if you want.
that's how it works. just replace "anonymous" with "guy on the street" in your post and you might get the point.
Why do this? (Score:2)
It's the result of fury.
Toxic government (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone will argue whether this is a good idea, whether we should "work within the system", whether this is something that Aaron would have done, "ballot box, soapbox, ammo box", and so on. The arguments are patently obvious, and not particularly new or innovative. We've heard it all before, here and elsewhere.
The federal government has always been toxic to the citizenry, and it seems like in recent years the level of malevolence and spite from the people in charge have reached critical levels. Like a pot of superheated water, a nucleating agent will make the whole thing flash to steam.
Efforts to fix the problem from within have failed. The system is flexible enough that it will change to prevent any attempts to fix it. People have been trying for years, to no avail. (People have voted for smaller government, less war, and human rights for decades - how has that worked out?)
Most of what we depend on for civilization does not come from the federal government. The protections of law, community services, even many entitlements are run at the state level. We could do away with the federal government almost entirely and everyday life would continue uninterrupted.
(Would anyone notice if suddenly we no longer had a war on drugs, no searches at airports, no wars fought on foreign soil, no foreign military bases? Could we just dispense with all military and discretionary spending, leaving social security, medicare, and VA benefits intact? Who would attack us if we didn't have a military? How much would productivity increase if instead of paying to keep people in prison [wikipedia.org], we freed people to become taxpayers?)
People are losing faith in the government. At some point, government is no longer an asset to the people, but a tumor which must be attacked and destroyed.
If you dislike the tactics Anonymous are using, then by all means show us your alternative.
Otherwise, outright hostility towards the federal government will increase and people will eventually realize that having no federal government is better than what we have now.
At that point it will all come tumbling down - very quickly.
All it takes is a spark, a nucleating incident, or a viral video.
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(People have voted for smaller government, less war, and human rights for decades - how has that worked out?)
Since 1980 people have pretty much consistently voted for more government benefits, bigger government programs and whatever else the government says it needs to increase payments to people. We have gotten ourselves into a financial mess with a president promoting lower taxes and a Congress that spends as much as possible to keep the gravy train going.
Would anyone notice if suddenly we no longer had a war on drugs, no searches at airports, no wars fought on foreign soil, no foreign military bases?
Sure you would. No more searches at airports would mean the instant revocation of insurance coverage for airlines - remember, they proved they can't handle t
Re:Toxic government (Score:5, Insightful)
Since 1980 people have pretty much consistently voted for more government benefits, bigger government programs and whatever else the government says it needs to increase payments to people.
Yeah, instead of vodint Democrat (who support big goverenment) they should have voted Republican (who support big government). Or was it the other way around?
Sure you would. No more searches at airports would mean the instant revocation of insurance coverage for airlines - remember, they proved they can't handle the security screening.
Haha. You know, or airlines would do what is required, not the unnecessary crap which goes on now. I doubt any actuary believes a pair of tweasers or miniture swiss army knife could be used to hijack a plane. Even the UK (we grew the shoe-bomber, if you didn't know) has given up on the shoeless shuffle. Seriously, the TSA is nuts and out of hand.
North Korea is just waiting for the US to give up on the South so they can walk in and take over
So you have NK which has been an impoverished shit hole for the last 50 years and SK which has been prosperous and high tech. SK has a quite advanced and prosperous armaments industry. It wouldn't be a quick fight, but I don't expect SK would fall easily to NK. Also, if NK did use nukes, the rest of the world would probably pile in. The NK leadership may be nuts but not nuts enough to loose what power they have.
You also ignored the large point about the massive, expensive and unjust war on drugs.
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North Korea is just waiting for the US to give up on the South so they can walk in and take over.
Wanted to chime in on this NK/SK comment, which is--the US has 28,500 soldiers in Korea. South Korea has 640,000 active personel, and 2,900,000 in reserve. South Korea also has plenty of other allies besides the US, should the US ever decide to go into isolationist mode.
Don't fool yourself into thinking the US presence has anything to do with the stability of the Korean peninsula. I would say the impact of the United States Forces Korea is negligible, and in fact, may be contributing to hostilities rather
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Since 1980 people have pretty much consistently voted for more government benefits, bigger government programs and whatever else the government says it needs to increase payments to people. We have gotten ourselves into a financial mess with a president promoting lower taxes and a Congress that spends as much as possible to keep the gravy train going.
What a surprise. Politicians all for making more things political, the government being pro big-government. Who'd have thought?
The primary purpose of any administration is self-perpetuation. The government is no different. Their primary purpose is to pile up more stuff into their "mine" pile. After all, who would put themselves out of their job? These people are just humans, too. And not necessarily the best kind (because the good ones won't survive internal party politics).
Today we are trying to follow a "You broke it, you own it" philosophy and it is taking time - because the countries are far less stable than either Germany or Japan were at the end of WWII where we had to follow a similar course.
Nonsense. Stability has nothing t
Yeah, right (Score:3, Funny)
obligatory XKCD (Score:3)
http://xkcd.com/932/ [xkcd.com]
just wait (Score:2)
Slashdot irritates me (Score:2)
If "anonymous" (or whoever calls itself like that right now) calls something "warheads" could we please distance our self at least in the title of the story by using apostrophs?
There are several things which i hate about anonymous:
a) Lack of proper hacker culture, These guys are deep within the blackhat zone. You dont use security breaches or DDOS to blackmail somebody. The only allowed thing which comes close to blackmail which may be allowed is "responsible disclosure" = we have documents or knowledge, w
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You apparently don't get it at all, AC.
The "warhead" is the encrypted file that the defaced page served to distribute.
They took down the server not to cause a disruption as much as to advertise and draw awareness to their cause.
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That is not necessarily true, it would depend on what directory the command was issued in on what server. That is, unless the 'command line' was just a metaphor for what is in the 'warhead'.
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Well if we're going to do proof by random assertion, I say they contain video proof that the Supreme court are all the hybrid love children of the Roswell aliens and Joe McCarthy.
Just as much proof as you have but mine is at least amusing.
Question (Score:3, Insightful)
At least somebody is standing up for our rights. Let's face it - most people just want to stuff their face with junk food and watch American Idol. They don't like to question authority because doing that makes them feel uncomfortable. Most people are sheep.
Yes, hear hear! They are liberating us. But there was something odd from the summary:
At a regular interval commencing today, we will choose one media outlet and supply them with heavily redacted partial contents of the file.
Ah, so the "information wants to be free" right up until it's you who has access to the information. We have been liberated from being manipulated "sheep" of the US government and are now part of a flock shepherded by anonymous individuals? And ... uh ... that has gained us what exactly? Out of the frying pan into the fire? If I can't trust the US Government and I can name their members, how can I trust Anonymous whom
Re:Question (Score:4, Insightful)
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Oh?
Seems to me that you can say almost anything with some selective redacting/editting - not hard at all to remove the parts that paint your enemies in a good light.
Re:Think you're missing the point a little bit... (Score:4, Interesting)
This is only the case if 1) You edit with such intent and change the meaning of the document and 2) Refuse to provide the complete document at a later date. I see no reason that Anonymous would follow either of these practices in this case, and furthermore they have a distinct history of doing the opposite. For instance, several documents from the Arab world that were released initially with redacted names in order to protect a number of opposition voices during various movements, but were revealed in their entirety later.
If someone intends to distort credibility (especially of whistleblowers, as we've seen constantly in these past few years) its easy to say "You're redacting too much, you're not redacting enough, you're releasing too much, you're not releasing enough etc...". You can't make anyone happy, but especially when fighting against a massive foe with a huge disinformation and propaganda complex that is bent on swaying public, you have to make some strategic decisions. The biggest clarion call the US government issued to try Wikileaks in the court of public opinion (aside from calling Assange a rapist, of course) was to claim that because of the leaks, individuals with protected identities would die; the story of agents being revealed and being compromised/killed was a constant hypothetical in the media - despite the fact that proper investigation proved that not a single leaked document led to any vulnerability of the sort! However, it was part of the disinformation campaign to convince the public that whistleblowers and even those who presented leaks like Wikileaks and journalists were responsible for security breaches leading to compromise/death of Americans, repeated frequently enough, that convinced many to overlook the real content of the leaks and instead just have a "gut feeling" that somehow they were against national security - just as planned. Thus, at least an initial, smartly redacted release can provide a factual counterpoint to the propaganda and show that these releases were done "crossing the t's, dotting the i's".
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If all political groups are allowed to use illegal methods of pursing their self interest then Anonymous is not going to be the only group doing this and many groups that take opposing positions against Anonymous will be doing illegal activities to try and stop the political agenda of Anonymous.
That is why vigilantism isn't necessarily a good tactic. Any side can apply those tactics and it hurts the people who aren't willing to be criminals due to their job or having too much to lose.
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No, what happened to him was that he was persecuted by the feds beyond any measure of proportionality between his crime and the possible sentence. When fascists destroy people, should we blame the victims or the jackbooted thugs? I vote we blame the MFing thugs.
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blackmailing the u.s. government is such a brilliant idea.. nothing could possibly go wrong.
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The funniest part is that you think the US government, armed with tanks, gunship helis, fighter jets, drones, and pretty soon power-armored supersoldiers, gives a shit about your cute little pea-shooters. That stuff is an annoyance on par with a persistent horsefly to them.
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So anybody can adopt the non-de-plume "Anonymous" and tar themselves and any other "Anonymous" pretender with the same brush. Doesn't this in effect make "Anonymous" synonymous with the worst behavior any "Anonymous" adopts? And therefore "Anonymous" is ultimately doomed to total failure by being "Anonymous". What a pointless wank!
The worst bit about this is that their "good name" could easily be sullied by their enemies. I mean, I can see the logic in wanting to protest anonymously, but actually attacking anything using the name "anonymous" was always going to end in disaster as there's obviously no accountability (which they probably think is a virtue), and therefore a very very large chance* the name will be subverted.
* By very very large, I actually mean absolute certainty.
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It's actually very hard to trace people. It looks easy in the movies but if they take the right precautions it's very hard to do.