Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How the FBI raided Anonymous

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 168 posts

Re: How the FBI raided Anonymous

#121

Post by Jach »

burgerbrain wrote: post #92
mquander wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The grandparent post wasn't asking what would happen if you woke up at 3 AM and shot a policeman mistakenly. He was asking whether it would be legal to rig a booby trap to do it! Those are extremely different situations, to say the least! You're arguing with a straw man.

As I interpreted it , the grandparent post foolishly tried to express his more general question by coming up with a silly hypothetical^ device. The purpose of the device was to injure a police officer as a result of the home-owner not being aware of what was going on. I've taken the hypothetical device out of the question by pointing out that there are real-life situations where no-knock raids have causes unnecessary…

Yes, my hypothetical wasn't taken so well. I may set up a simple audio alarm with an analog circuit if I ever feel like it, but of course a rigged gun is stupid. (I'd end up making it disabled via remote control too but then I'd worry about it not actually being disabled as I'm opening the door, even if it makes a disabled noise...)

I should have stuck with the Microwave example below, that's cooler anyway.

Re: How the FBI raided Anonymous

#122

Post by nanonymous »

sliverstorm wrote: post #103

TWO %REAL% GUNS POINTED AT ME I love this part. It's obvious that, for the first time in the lives of these Anons, sh%t actually got real. (I don't mind any downvotes you see fit to give me, I have always found it laughable when Anons expect to break the law and suffer no consequences. Whether or not it is a good law has no bearing, that's not how civil disobedience works.)

I find it laughable that the cops felt the need to use real guns against a "Low Orbit Ion Cannon". Guns against unarmed kids (criminal or not) - that's not how jurisdiction should work.

Re: How the FBI raided Anonymous

#123

Post by sukuriant »

sesqu wrote: post #116
sliverstorm wrote: post #103

TWO %REAL% GUNS POINTED AT ME I love this part. It's obvious that, for the first time in the lives of these Anons, sh%t actually got real. (I don't mind any downvotes you see fit to give me, I have always found it laughable when Anons expect to break the law and suffer no consequences. Whether or not it is a good law has no bearing, that's not how civil disobedience works.)

I'm not a fan. These are guns we are talking about, not paperwork. Paperwork is the shit that's real, guns are just there to make you feel helpless. And also to kill you.

But the kids would have laughed at paperwork until it was all over, and then possibly still laugh at it. With the guns, they just experienced the severity of their action that a whole armed FBI-team had to come in to deal with the situation.

Re: How the FBI raided Anonymous

#124

Post by sukuriant »

dspeyer wrote: post #99
tptacek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely absurd logic. DDoS attacks can and do cause measurable hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage. You had to have known that. You just choose to overlook the potential damage here because you support the cause.

Damage? What are you talking about? The routers don't literally catch fire. It disrupts services while the attack is active. A sit in is the correct metaphor.

Damage doesn't have to be physical.

Re: How the FBI raided Anonymous

#125

Post by sesqu »

sukuriant wrote: post #123
sesqu wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a fan. These are guns we are talking about, not paperwork. Paperwork is the shit that's real, guns are just there to make you feel helpless. And also to kill you.

But the kids would have laughed at paperwork until it was all over, and then possibly still laugh at it. With the guns, they just experienced the severity of their action that a whole armed FBI-team had to come in to deal with the situation.

Yeah, I don't agree with that.

If it's a paper in the mail that says "we know it's you", I'd be pretty scared.

If it's a policeman at the door saying "come in for questioning", I'd be shitting my pants.

If it's three policemen saying "we've come to take all your PCs", I'd be confused and seriously contemplating future involvement with the group.

If it's a bunch of thugs breaking the door, grabbing my pcs, iphone, xboxes, lady gaga cd's and threatening to kill me if I object, I'd start looking into getting more involved with political activism.

At least, that's how I think I would react, before dealing with the paperwork.

Re: How the FBI raided Anonymous

#126

Post by sesqu »

AndrewMoffat wrote: post #115
sliverstorm wrote: post #103

TWO %REAL% GUNS POINTED AT ME I love this part. It's obvious that, for the first time in the lives of these Anons, sh%t actually got real. (I don't mind any downvotes you see fit to give me, I have always found it laughable when Anons expect to break the law and suffer no consequences. Whether or not it is a good law has no bearing, that's not how civil disobedience works.)

I thought it was funny that he needed to emphasize or even say "real." You either have a gun pointed at you or you don't. Does the FBI sometimes burst in with water pistols?

Tazers might be called fake guns.

Re: How the FBI raided Anonymous

#127

Post by sesqu »

sukuriant wrote: post #124
dspeyer wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damage? What are you talking about? The routers don't literally catch fire. It disrupts services while the attack is active. A sit in is the correct metaphor.

Damage doesn't have to be physical.

True. But if it isn't, it should be considered emotional harm or sabotage, not straight-up damage.

Re: How the FBI raided Anonymous

#128

Post by roel_v »

sesqu wrote: post #125
sukuriant wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the kids would have laughed at paperwork until it was all over, and then possibly still laugh at it. With the guns, they just experienced the severity of their action that a whole armed FBI-team had to come in to deal with the situation.

Yeah, I don't agree with that. If it's a paper in the mail that says "we know it's you", I'd be pretty scared. If it's a policeman at the door saying "come in for questioning", I'd be shitting my pants. If it's three policemen saying "we've come to take all your PCs", I'd be confused and seriously contemplating future involvement with the group. If it's a bunch of thugs breaking the door, grabbing my pcs, iphone, xbo…

Entering with an armed team is SOP, mostly to protect policemen. These are just guys doing a job, in the vast majority of cases a good and just job, who want to go home to their wives and children in the evening. Some (most) raids could theoretically be done by just knocking on the door; but sometimes some crazy man will start shooting back, or running away, or try to destroy evidence. Rush-entry raids with flashbangs etc. are designed to cause maximum confusion so that the people in the house are disoriented for a short time, hopefully long enough to be cuffed.

Anyway like I said sometimes these could be done by one guy with a briefcase, but how are you going to decide when to raid and when to knock on the door? And who is going to decide? When somebody makes a wrong call and a policeman gets killed, there's going to be a ruckus (police union, other policemen feeling unsafe causing worse performance, etc.) So the safe thing to do is to err on the side of caution. Sucks for those being raided when it wasn't really necessary, and even worse for those being raided in error, but as always it's a trade off.

That's how it came to be. IMO perfectly reasonable. One can disagree with specific cases, I do too; but try to put yourself in the shoes of someone designing or managing a law enforcement organization or system. If you have a solution that mitigates the problems yet addresses all the points and many more I brought up above, many many people would love to hear about it.

Re: How the FBI raided Anonymous

#130

Post by roel_v »

steveklabnik wrote: post #104
gojomo wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting innocent bystanders involved is literally the point. Indeed, and in a civilized society, there are rules against hijacking others' dollars and interfering with others' lawful commerce, no matter how just you believe your cause to be. Thus, what you call 'literally the point' is also the 'mens rea' for a criminal prosecution.

That's what makes it so impactful: its important enough that the consequences are irrelevant. It seems that you place a much higher importance on following the law than I do; I don't disagree with what you're saying, but you seemingly imply that that's a bad thing. Generally, following the law is good, but I hold no illusions that there's any connection between legality and morality.

"Generally, following the law is good, but I hold no illusions that there's any connection between legality and morality."

Not to nitpick but I hope you meant for this to be hyperbole. In general, the law (at least part of it, the parts that aren't purely for practical reasons such as 'everybody should drive on the right side of the road') purports to embody whatever is thought of as 'the moral common ground' of the society it is operating in. In the margin, the implementation can be debated (an epistemological problem of ethics), but prohibitions on and punishment of e.g. murder, rape and theft have a large and explicit moral component.

Post reply on HN