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

Anonymous & Lulz Security Statement to the FBI

pastebin.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 251 posts

Re: Anonymous & Lulz Security Statement to the FBI

#91

Post by webXL »

flocial wrote: post #29

The Lulzsec crew and Wiki Leaks strikes a nerve like modern day Robin Hoods. It makes you wonder if those of us in wealthy democracies are actually experiencing a peculiarly 21st century form of passive aggressive oppression where we may be "free" but monitored and essentially feel helpless and the fact that these unknown hackers are able to duck and evade the same forces that can hunt and kill terrorists with disreg…

Why "Robin Hoods"? Why not Minutemen? I don't know the complete story of Robin Hood, but I always feel a tinge of class warfare from people who invoke his name.

This has nothing to do with class. It has to do with unwarranted and unprovoked aggression by political elites. I don't condone what these hackers did, but there's little to disagree with in that letter. Our behemoth government and its fascist relationship with big business spits in the face of our founding principles: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Something will need to change, or (pardon the cliché) we're gonna end up like Greece.

Re: Anonymous & Lulz Security Statement to the FBI

#92

Post by djb_hackernews »

flocial wrote: post #29

The Lulzsec crew and Wiki Leaks strikes a nerve like modern day Robin Hoods. It makes you wonder if those of us in wealthy democracies are actually experiencing a peculiarly 21st century form of passive aggressive oppression where we may be "free" but monitored and essentially feel helpless and the fact that these unknown hackers are able to duck and evade the same forces that can hunt and kill terrorists with disreg…

Kind of unfair to lump Lulzsec and Wikileaks together.

Re: Anonymous & Lulz Security Statement to the FBI

#93

Post by roc »

nathanb wrote: post #71

"it's entirely unacceptable to break into websites and commit unlawful acts" This is quite the hypocritical statement coming from the FBI. As far as I can tell, the only difference between Anonymous, Lulzsec, and the FBI is that the FBI act by executive fiat. I don't support Internet vigilanteism, but I also don't support the concept of the FBI as an untouchable force who are no longer held accountable by the public…

> "At this point, I'm not sure which one I find more scary."

There will always be scofflaws and pranksters. Indeed for our way of life to be assured, they must be able to exist.

The ever-growing reach of the military-espionage-industrial complex is the only real threat.

Re: Anonymous & Lulz Security Statement to the FBI

#94

Post by burgerbrain »

gdcbyers wrote: post #89
burgerbrain wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Sheriff of Nottingham surely thought Robin Hood was a hoodlum too.

Except we aren't the sheriff in this scenario. We are the people Robin Hood is trying to help. And I say petty thuggery and vandalism aren't helping.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

Among other things.

Re: Anonymous & Lulz Security Statement to the FBI

#95

Post by scythe »

rauljara wrote: post #83

I think there is room for illegal activities in the name of a free and open society. If this is truly the author's goal, however, they need to stop associating with LulzSec. There was nothing noble about 9/10's of the crap lulzsec did, and the somewhat decent stuff they did was undercut by the whole "for the lulz" philosophy. If you really are fighting for freedom, you need to be better than DDS'ing game servers, bec…

>If this is truly the author's goal, however, they need to stop associating with LulzSec.

In principle, I agree. The 'internet privacy' movement would be better served if the people who supported it differentiated themselves from the people who are just fucking around. I think a lot of them realize this.

The question "why don't they" has its answer in the dark catacombs of the human psyche. LulzSec and Anonymous draw a lot of their support, i.e. membership, from teenagers who want to feel like the antihero of one of today's popular bildungsroman-turned-polemic, y'know, V for Vendetta, or The Matrix, Avatar, etc. Being somewhat evil is cool, and Anonymous needs to look cool for people to want to be part of it. I'm sure the aforementioned Black Panthers lived on this for a while as well.

Some people did try to break the moral section of the movement away from the lunatic fringe; it was called Enturbulation and later WhyWeProtest, and they went after Scientology and later ACTA. Ultimately, though, WhyWeProtest slowly became irrelevant, because without a steady stream of angry people and plenty of press coverage their membership was decimated by the attrition of boredom and disillusionment. It's still around at http://whyweprotest.net/ but unlike Anonymous you've never heard of them.

I support the EFF and Wikileaks much more readily than I support Anonymous, but at the same time I figure no social change movement has succeeded without a lunatic fringe -- there were plenty of violent people fighting for India's independence, the breakup of the Soviet Union started with a coup, there were multiple violent civil rights activists in the '60s, etc.

Re: Anonymous & Lulz Security Statement to the FBI

#97

Post by lhnz »

Shenglong wrote: post #90

This is absolutely ridiculous. I don't agree with a lot of the things that various government organizations are allegedly doing either. However, I also understand that I probably don't have all the facts. I also know that even if I had all the facts, I would probably not commit much time to analyzing all of them, in order to make a sound decision on the best course of action. Why don't other people realize this? We l…

Is this necessarily to do with giving information to the uneducated public?

Most of the public will not do anything with this information, but I will tell you who will respond: their shareholders and more dangerously their competitors.

That is where you should apply pressure.

Re: Anonymous & Lulz Security Statement to the FBI

#98

Post by ddw »

nathanb wrote: post #71

"it's entirely unacceptable to break into websites and commit unlawful acts" This is quite the hypocritical statement coming from the FBI. As far as I can tell, the only difference between Anonymous, Lulzsec, and the FBI is that the FBI act by executive fiat. I don't support Internet vigilanteism, but I also don't support the concept of the FBI as an untouchable force who are no longer held accountable by the public…

Even if Lulzsec gets some of your data, they aren't going to create a huge database of it.

The FBI on the other hand...

Re: Anonymous & Lulz Security Statement to the FBI

#99

Post by enjalot »

Shenglong wrote: post #90

This is absolutely ridiculous. I don't agree with a lot of the things that various government organizations are allegedly doing either. However, I also understand that I probably don't have all the facts. I also know that even if I had all the facts, I would probably not commit much time to analyzing all of them, in order to make a sound decision on the best course of action. Why don't other people realize this? We l…

You forgot to mention that we should leave voting to the politicians :P

Re: Anonymous & Lulz Security Statement to the FBI

#100

Post by burgerbrain »

webXL wrote: post #91
flocial wrote: post #29

The Lulzsec crew and Wiki Leaks strikes a nerve like modern day Robin Hoods. It makes you wonder if those of us in wealthy democracies are actually experiencing a peculiarly 21st century form of passive aggressive oppression where we may be "free" but monitored and essentially feel helpless and the fact that these unknown hackers are able to duck and evade the same forces that can hunt and kill terrorists with disreg…

Why "Robin Hoods"? Why not Minutemen? I don't know the complete story of Robin Hood, but I always feel a tinge of class warfare from people who invoke his name. This has nothing to do with class. It has to do with unwarranted and unprovoked aggression by political elites. I don't condone what these hackers did, but there's little to disagree with in that letter. Our behemoth government and its fascist relationship wi…

Robin Hood is less about class, and more about power.

(Of course in it's setting, class was defined by power)

Post reply on HN