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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

#81

Post by Supermighty »

pud wrote: 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.

Fear and mistrust of Scientology has nothing to do with their beliefs. They are a secretive organization that seeks to protect itself at the expense of everyone else. They are the perpetrators of the largest infiltration of the US government [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Snow_White]. And while their actions today may be legal they are nonetheless still dangerous.

Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

#82

Post by planetguy »

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,…

I think you're right to be concerned. I think that in general it's not right to illegally access and distribute the secrets of "the other side", even if you're totally convinced of your own moral superiority to them. I don't think it's right for Democrats to hack into Republicans' emails, nor vice versa, and I don't think it's even okay when it's a group that most people find detestable (e.g. the British National Party, who got their emails hacked recently).

On the other hand, in this particular case I'm inclined to say "Fuck it, they're Scientology". But I'm aware that I'm on pretty darn thin ice, ethically speaking.

Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

#83

Post by StavrosK »

cantankerous wrote: post #74
StavrosK wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

I'm not familiar with either, but is it a bit like the difference between early adopters and the casual users?

Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

#84

Post by saraid216 »

deno wrote: post #71
nnnnni wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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

He meant that "domain specific jargon" is a redundant term. Jargon, by definition, is domain specific.

Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

#85

Post by far-I »

icebraining wrote: post #47
evertonfuller wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

or "Does it serve a greater goal"? Does it enlighten the masses or does it just bring more useless information like a lot of leaks.

Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

#86

Post by mhd »

munchor wrote: post #34

http://pic.pwny.biz.nyud.net/x/buchladen_at_scientology.co.a... This is one strange email...

Strange? Someone's got a couple hundred of Euros in credit at the CoS bookstore, but should already own his full set of encyclopedias, considering that he's a Level 60 Warlock. So they're asking if he can donate that for some "charity" event about their popular "psychiatry is eeeevil" line of thought.

Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

#87

Post by zzzeek »

lmkg wrote: post #65
pud wrote: 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.

Objections to Scientology are not (for the most part) based on their religious beliefs, but their practices and behaviors. They have a history of being aggressively litigious, similar to patent trolls[1], and have used frivolous lawsuits to harass critics into giving up the fight. There are also some indications that they're emotionally abusive to their members, and encourage them to cut off all contact to non-Scient…

> There are also some indications that they're emotionally abusive to their members, and encourage them to cut off all contact to non-Scientologist friends and family. These allegations are difficult to substantiate, in part because the Church is so aggressive about quelling criticism.

curious, why aren't the testimonials of ex-members adequate substantiation ? While it was extremely difficult to get access to information critical to Scientology prior to the late 1990s, there is a tremendous amount of critical information and ex-member testimonials available today.

http://www.xenu.net/, http://www.freedomofmind.com/Info/infoDet.php?id=230, are good places to start.

Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

#88

Post by Karunamon »

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…

Another thing is that you shouldn't really do BT over Tor. The network is not set up for it and you consume a great deal of resources.

Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

#89

Post by saraid216 »

StavrosK wrote: post #73
Spooky23 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most categories in sociology are blurry, because human beings are blurry things. This may help:

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

Re: Anonymous Austria leaks 2.8 GB Scientology Emails

#90

Post by sakopov »

It's illegal to distribute confidential information of another group. This isn't about democrats or republicans. We're not talking about a group of people here. We're talking about a religion. If a religion has "secrets" which cannot be shared among believers and non-believers than it's not a religion - it's a sect.
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