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Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

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Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

#71

Post by deno »

nnnnni wrote: post #68
dfc wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

"domain specific jargon" ಠ_ಠ

Loaded language is a very powerful cult tactic.

E.g. Jehovah’s witnesses call their religion “the Truth” in their everyday conversations. Any kind of critical thought is equivalent then to “rejecting the Truth,” which automatically substitutes critical thinking with an emotional response.

http://www.garloff.de/kurt/sekten/mind1.html

Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

#72

Post by lobster_johnson »

grandalf wrote: post #64

If you think Scientology is "weirder" than mainstream religions, it's b/c you are buying into the propaganda sponsored by its competitors.

The issue people have with Scientology is not that it's "weird". It's that they are an organization created expressly as a kind of pyramid scheme designed to funnel money from its clueless members to its corrupt leaders, and that they will go great (and highly immoral) lengths to safeguard the structure of the organization.

All the weirdness -- the bogus science, the alien mythology, the extreme secrecy and protectiveness, the level hierarchy, etc. -- is merely a side effect of that goal. The mythology, for example, is the carrot, and the secrecy is the stick; they need the mythology because they need to feed some new knowledge (even if bogus) at each level, and they need the secrecy to make that knowledge desirable in the first place, both to members and to non-members.

Sure, all religions are "weird". But most religious organizations -- generally speaking -- genuinely have their members' best interests at heart. Scientology has no such concerns.

Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

#73

Post by StavrosK »

Spooky23 wrote: post #70
StavrosK wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Cult" just means "a religion I don't like".

Usually people distinguish a cult from a mainstream religion based on the level of control that the movement exerts over its members.

Don't mainstream religions exert a lot of control over some of their members too? I'm not very comfortable with fundamentalists of any religion...

I'm not defending Scientology, but the line between "cult" and "religion" seems a bit blurry.

Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

#74

Post by cantankerous »

StavrosK wrote: post #69
ma2rten wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scientology is not regarded a religion everywhere. In Germany it is considered a cult instead and it is even on a government watchlist. As students we were warned about it in school. EDIT: I was just looking at Scientology's (English) Wikipedia page and came across this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scientology_warning_leafle... . I though it would illustrate my point. Those are three government-issued leaflets w…

"Cult" just means "a religion I don't like".

I'm not going to break down the semantics, but I'd say there's a bit of a gap between, say, The Methodist Church and the Branch Davidians or the Peoples Temple.

Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

#75

Post by Produce »

MultiRRomero wrote: post #20

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,…

Slight assumption but I bet you're for having a police force, justice system and prisons. Consider that the police use oppression to fight oppression. The justice system uses professional liars to decide on people's life paths. Prisons are essentially cages for human beings. You likely already support fighting fire with fire.

Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

#76

Post by Produce »

dfc wrote: post #14
javajosh wrote: post #10

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.

Au contraire? Respectfully, in my opinion sitting back and hoping someone else has the motivation to be inquisitive/curious is counter to the spirit of HN. Furthermore as others have pointed out (as well as myself in another thread) CoS has deep pockets and I imagine that serves as a decent motivation for big media to not publish the incident.

This isn't HN, it's Reddit with a different theme. Didn't you get the memo?

Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

#77

Post by lordlicorice »

dfc wrote: post #26
tjoff wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because uploading it to a free file hosting service can easily be done via a compromised machine and/or tor (don't know how well uploading large files over tor works though) - maybe even a library/public computer, making it quite hard to trace (though when using a public computer you need to take other precautions, like avoiding surveillance cameras). Also since nothing is made public instantly you have time to erase…

And when the hosting service receives the inevitable take down notice from CoS? CoS lawyers brought down anon.penet.fi I am sure they can convince depositfiles that they do not want to go to court.

There's nothing stopping people from uploading the files to bittorrent. It's only the hackers' anonymity that matters.

Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

#78

Post by uptown »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #72
grandalf wrote: post #64

If you think Scientology is "weirder" than mainstream religions, it's b/c you are buying into the propaganda sponsored by its competitors.

The issue people have with Scientology is not that it's "weird". It's that they are an organization created expressly as a kind of pyramid scheme designed to funnel money from its clueless members to its corrupt leaders, and that they will go great (and highly immoral) lengths to safeguard the structure of the organization. All the weirdness -- the bogus science, the alien mythology, the extreme secrecy and protectiv…

"But most religiour organization -- generally speaking -- genuinely have their members' best interests at heart."

I think that's highly dependent on whether you believe what's being preached. There's countless examples of mainstream religions exploiting their power for financial and organizational gain at the expense of individual followers. From a financial standpoint, just take a look at the Vatican City as an example of how much money has been funneled from their followers.

Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

#79

Post by jlgreco »

tptacek wrote: post #53
NathanKP wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh, well then, to hell with the rule of law.

What is legal and what is ethical do not have as much overlap as you appear to think.

Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

#80

Post by far-I »

deno wrote: post #16
dfc wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What hurdles/risks are present in bittorrent that are not incurred when uploading to a free file hosting service? I do not think bittorrent and/or free file services provide any serious level of anonymity against a group with pockets as deep as the CoS. Let's not forget these are the people that brought down anon.penet.fi... N.B.: I also updated my post to include using a tor hidden service. I thought I had included…

Just use Tor bundle and that’s it. The only way you can shoot yourself in foot is if you use flash uploader and that bypasses Tor (fortunately plugins are disabled in Tor bundle AFAIK). Seeding via Tor? You need to configure Torrent client to use Tor, make sure it doesn’t leak anything (DNS lookups, publishing to DHT or tracker, some stuff on the protocol level was a problem as well). There’s nothing that comes worki…

what about Anomos? Is that safe enough?
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