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Re: Paypal.com appears to be unavailable

#91

Post by nmcfarl »

citricsquid wrote: post #86
alnayyir wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to preface this by saying that I'm not actually a huge fan of WikiLeaks or of Anon, but... Try to keep things in perspective. We're facing a substantial progression towards a hybridization of the scenarios outlined in 1984 and Brave New World, and you're worried about the disruption of commerce? Are your priorities really that warped? There's always collateral damage, whether it's merchants or your civil ri…

I'm sorry, but do you honestly think this is anymore than a bunch of angry teenagers who will be bored in a week? Look back on every other instance of "Anon" "protesting" and work out what has changed. Please do show what they've actually done beyond cause minor temporary disruption, it just so happens that this time the minor disruption has real world repercussions and is hurting businesses. The people who are respo…

Which if it's enough businesses loose money might be a lot of people.

I'm completely opposed to these actions, but I've got to say that causing financial losses is a fairly effective protest.

Re: Paypal.com appears to be unavailable

#92

Post by naz »

aj700 wrote: post #87
naz wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't sound like you are in favour of the principle of WikiLeaks.

It should continue to exist, in case someone does have something worthwhile to release. But in this case it was hardly worth it. Except for the secret sites, that WAS irresponsible. The acceptable principle of the site does not exempt its operators from the law of developed countries, and will obviously subject them to the lawlessness of undeveloped ones. Now they're threatening to take down twitter (who don't need a…

What law has WikiLeaks broken?

Re: Paypal.com appears to be unavailable

#93

Post by aj700 »

naz wrote: post #92
aj700 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should continue to exist, in case someone does have something worthwhile to release. But in this case it was hardly worth it. Except for the secret sites, that WAS irresponsible. The acceptable principle of the site does not exempt its operators from the law of developed countries, and will obviously subject them to the lawlessness of undeveloped ones. Now they're threatening to take down twitter (who don't need a…

What law has WikiLeaks broken?

As an organisation, afaik, none. But the individuals involved could have: To issue a warrant, they must have grounds to do so - as I said, I very much doubt that the charges against Assange are simply "made up". If they are, he'll be found innocent. The reason most people don't put a principle above the idea that it is foolish to piss off The White House is because they don't have the balls to take the consequences. He seems quite happy to. Good for him. Rather him than me.

Re: Paypal.com appears to be unavailable

#94

Post by jokermatt999 »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #73
pigbucket wrote: post #31

If you dominate a market, a serious ethical duty devolves upon you to do right by your customers, but Paypal, Visa, and MC, on which donation-supported non-profit orgs like Wikileaks almost entirely depend, have utterly failed to fulfill that duty; in fact they didn't even try. Their actions, arbitrary or spineless, have almost completely choked off funding for Wikileaks. I never imagined ending up saying this, but I…

>If you dominate a market, a serious ethical duty devolves upon you to do right by your customers, but Paypal, Visa, and MC, on which donation-supported non-profit orgs like Wikileaks almost entirely depend, have utterly failed to fulfill that duty; in fact they didn't even try. The majority of Paypal Visa and Mastercard customers rely to some extent on a stable international environment. Suggesting that these compan…

You seem to be implying Wikileaks ordered the DDoSing. Anon is a completely separate "organization" and completely unaffiliated with Wikileaks. They supported Wikileaks' views, and so decided to DDoS MC/Visa/Paypal, but Wikileaks had no part in ordering the attack from my understanding. This is an important distinction to make.

Re: Paypal.com appears to be unavailable

#95

Post by joebananas »

shin_lao wrote: post #24
Silhouette wrote: post #19

I suspect we are going to see two major changes over the next few weeks as a direct result of the "cyber-attacks" going on recently. 1. Financial services will re-evaluate the risks of this kind of attack vs. the cost of assigning more resources to guard against it. 2. Governments will finally start taking IT security seriously. The latter is the more interesting, because while banks are generally reasonably clued up…

Governments take IT security very seriously, I don't see where you've seen they don't. The problem is that you just can't secure a whole infrastructure overnight and that security is very hard.

> Governments take IT security very seriously, I don't see where you've seen they don't.

The very fact that this whole cablegate debacle even exists clearly demonstrates that parts of the US government do not.

Re: Paypal.com appears to be unavailable

#96

Post by euccastro »

singular wrote: post #68

I really don't think this kind of behaviour helps anything. Though we may disagree with the actions of these corporations, using thousands of ordinary people's computers to flood sites many people use for things that have nothing to do with Julian Assange, Wikileaks or anything whatsoever linked to the cable leaks is simply wrong. Being immoral in order to expose the immorality of others does nothing but muddy the wa…

For example?

Re: Paypal.com appears to be unavailable

#97

Post by singular »

euccastro wrote: post #96
singular wrote: post #68

I really don't think this kind of behaviour helps anything. Though we may disagree with the actions of these corporations, using thousands of ordinary people's computers to flood sites many people use for things that have nothing to do with Julian Assange, Wikileaks or anything whatsoever linked to the cable leaks is simply wrong. Being immoral in order to expose the immorality of others does nothing but muddy the wa…

For example?

running a mirror of wikileaks :)

Re: Paypal.com appears to be unavailable

#98

Post by Retric »

joebananas wrote: post #95
shin_lao wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments take IT security very seriously, I don't see where you've seen they don't. The problem is that you just can't secure a whole infrastructure overnight and that security is very hard.

> Governments take IT security very seriously, I don't see where you've seen they don't. The very fact that this whole cablegate debacle even exists clearly demonstrates that parts of the US government do not.

I take death seriously, that does not mean I get to live forever.

Re: Paypal.com appears to be unavailable

#99

Post by joebananas »

Retric wrote: post #98
joebananas wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Governments take IT security very seriously, I don't see where you've seen they don't. The very fact that this whole cablegate debacle even exists clearly demonstrates that parts of the US government do not.

I take death seriously, that does not mean I get to live forever.

You don't give some random army grunt access to your on/off switch.

Re: Paypal.com appears to be unavailable

#100

Post by ergo98 »

nikster wrote: post #51
geedee77 wrote: post #14

To be perfectly honest, the actions of the 'anonymous' are pretty disgusting and it's bullying. A company provides a useful service to the majority of the on-line world and, just because they do something to protect themselves and their identity (there's a lot of people who dislike wikileaks) then this 'collective' decide to disrupt the whole company. Bullying was pathetic in high school and is so much worse in the '…

You know, I am really glad that you're not at all concerned about the invisible hand which seems to synchronize actions across governments, Visa, MC, PayPal, Amazon, and other major businesses. All in the name of shutting down free speech. Wikileaks has not been charged with any crime anywhere in the world, let alone been found guilty. So why is it the US government is after them like the villain in a bad James Bond…

Wikileaks has not been charged with any crime anywhere in the world, let alone been found guilty.

At a very minimum wikileaks is distributing copyrighted information without authorization. Technically they can be taken completely down via the DMCA.

Ultimately of course PayPal, Amazon, Mastercard and others don't want to do business with Wikileaks, or anon, or any similar "fuzzy" business. The business doesn't have to be illegal, they can just be a liability business and that's what they are -- only a lot of people spouting a lot of hot air are going to patronize your service because you cater to them, yet a lot of people will leave you because of it.

Nonetheless, the kids will get bored. GUARANTEED the governments of the world are going to introduce anti-DOS legislation that mandates an immediate cutoff of nodes that participate in DOS (and further a cutoff of networks that don't manage DOS attacks originating in their network). That is absolutely inevitable, and honestly is a very good thing.

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