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Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

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41–50 of 156 posts

Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

#43

Am I the only one who doesn't find this all that positive? I already think scientology is bad/evil/dangerous, and I think that illegally getting access to their secrets might make the opposition (us) look worse in the public eye. Everybody has dirty secrets, both sides, and it's a bit low to go after the other side's private emails. It'd be much easier to fight/debate against their public image, which is easy enough,…

> and it's a bit low to go after the other side's private emails.

I think that calling them "private" is a bit misleading here. As far as I can see, they all seem to be about Scientology business / logistics. That by itself obviously does not excuse leaking them, but (again, as far as I can see) the emails do not contain much personal information.

> It'd be much easier to fight/debate against their public image, which is easy enough, without having to resort to intrusive attacks.

I would probably agree with you if this was about any other organisation, but the CoS has a long, long history of suppressing information about them by any means, both legally and illegally. People who leave the church are routinely harassed and threatened to prevent them from talking about it. Judging from the past, they also do a lot of dirty business that, in my opinion, needs be be widely known.

Considering this, I think this might be a good thing. At the very least, I find it hard to blame the person leaking this.

> We have the warrant system in the states for a reason, and if this were to happen in court the evidence would just get tossed right out.

Even though US law probably doesn't apply here, you're almost certainly right about the legality of this. But, honestly, I'm not sure why we should care, we're not the part of the Austrian judicial system. I'm still somewhat ambivalent about the ethical status of this, but I think we should not conflate legality and morality here.

Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

#44

This should be brought to public attention but the public don't want to have to download 2.8 gb of data and filter through it. Someone has to do that first and make it easily digestible, highlighting the worst or most 'dangerous' emails.

Journalists should do that. But I have the feeling they are happy with youtube videos nowadays.

Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

#45
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Au contraire. Journalists are highly motivated to plough through the data for the scoop. ("Data scoop" is certainly an interesting development in our 21st century, btw!) I'm happy to let a highly motivated person do the ploughing, and give me the highlights, especially about a subject as marginally interesting as Scientology.

Not to mention there’s the language barrier…

Maybe someone will parse the emails and have a detector that will find the ones written in English.

Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

#47

Am I the only one who doesn't find this all that positive? I already think scientology is bad/evil/dangerous, and I think that illegally getting access to their secrets might make the opposition (us) look worse in the public eye. Everybody has dirty secrets, both sides, and it's a bit low to go after the other side's private emails. It'd be much easier to fight/debate against their public image, which is easy enough,…

Right with you. This is illegal, plain and simple. Acts like this should not be celebrated. No matter if it's against the 'bad' guys.

This is illegal, plain and simple.

Who cares? The question is whether it's wrong.

Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

#48
post #46

It troubles me a tiny bit to see comments on HN like (paraphrased) "Members of [group that has different religious beliefs than me] are evil." I am not defending religion or Scientology.

I would day almost every religion has dirty secrets, because with power over people comes evil actions. Scientology in particular has a bad reputation of engaging in particularly dubious activity though, as even a cursory inspection of their history will reveal.

Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

#49
post #36
post #11

Some of the emails can apparently be read at [1], [2] - via [3] [1] http://pic.pwny.biz/x/ed_at_scientology.co.at/ [2] http://pic.pwny.biz/x/buchladen_at_scientology.co.at/ [3] http://blog.esowatch.com/?p=8247 (in German, of course)

> (in German, of course) That's what I would have assumed, but many of them are actually written in (mostly hilariously bad) English for some reason. They also seem to be using quite a lot of jargon, which seems to consist entirely of English words or phrases.

> They also seem to be using quite a lot of jargon

First time reading CoS material? Anything in particular? LRH was an american so it is not surprising that the domain specific jargon is english...

Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

#50
post #40
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order to get access to your server they need to circumvent the anonymity that tor provides. Hopefully if you go through the trouble to publish via hidden descriptors you know not to include your name/SSN/gps/cell-number in your apache headers;) This is completely tangential, but can you point me to the Tor investigations? The interaction of tor/law-enforcement is something I am extremely interested in.

> In order to get access to your server they need to circumvent the anonymity that tor provides. Not necessarily, the CP sites were hacked using PHP vulnerabilities or something similar, not to mention your hosting provider could just get interested in your network activity for whatever reason. > This is completely tangential, but can you point me to the Tor investigations? Nothing I have bookmarked, sorry.

Thanks for checking. Sadly the bookmarks always go missing...
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