121–130 of 156 posts
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What is legal and what is ethical do not have as much overlap as you appear to think.
The ethical approach is subversion of the law less often than the internet appears to think.
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Gay Marriage is also illegal in many places, but that doesn't make it wrong.
Oh. I see. We have unjust laws, therefore, everyone should be entitled to use coercion to enforce their personal morals and ethics. Good plan. What could possibly go wrong with it? After all, everyone capable of coercing us of anything must share our morals and ethics.
Its unfortunate that they were not distributed via bittorrent and/or a tor hidden service. The files are large enough that downloading them with the "free download" option is a terribly long wait. I do not understand how this has so many upvotes after being up for such a short time. Have that many people actually downloaded the files already? Does anyone have any guesses about the string at the end of the announcemen…
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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 is a free book online by an ex member called A Piece of Blue Sky. Once I started reading I couldn't stop.. it a very compelling story and it covers a lot of history in the broader sense (not limited to this specific member's experience). Definitely worth the read if this is something you are interested in: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/atack/
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.
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.
http://www.forum.exscn.net/showwiki.php?title=Gerry+Armstron...
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…
That argument kinda breaks down when you take a look at one of the oldest and largest existing religions: Catholicism. Should anyone be surprised that powerful Catholic countries in Europe are totally against Scientology? It's not so much that Scientology is significantly worse (even if it is), it's because they don't like competition.
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, whic…
That doesn't make them not-private. My email is private no matter what the subject is.
More to the point - you seem to be saying that it's okay to read someone's email, and then just release the parts that don't contain much personal information. That is clearly shady.
Maybe you can make the case that the CoS is so evil that the normal rules for what you should/shouldn't do with someone's email account don't apply here. But you certainly can't pretend that this is anything other than leaking private information.