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ExxonMobil's Alleged Hack-for-Hire Campaign Targeting Climate Activists

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Re: ExxonMobil's Alleged Hack-for-Hire Campaign Targeting Climate Activists

#21

Post by ZeroGravitas »

immibis wrote: post #9
NegativeLatency wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they knew about impacts of climate change in the 70s https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-... Reminds me of how I see executives manage to “fail upward”, where it’s just so clear the people pulling the strings don’t give a darn about workers or the population at large.

[flagged]

Well that's an interesting hypothetical but what they actually did was more like reducing GDP by a trillion and murder a billion people.

You appear to be justifying the deaths due to it making financial sense overall, when it didn't. A small group profited at the expense of everyone else, even if you ignore the deaths.

Re: ExxonMobil's Alleged Hack-for-Hire Campaign Targeting Climate Activists

#22

Post by sofixa »

immibis wrote: post #9
NegativeLatency wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they knew about impacts of climate change in the 70s https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-... Reminds me of how I see executives manage to “fail upward”, where it’s just so clear the people pulling the strings don’t give a darn about workers or the population at large.

[flagged]

> You or I would do the same.

Just because you lack morals you shouldn't assume everyone else does too.

Re: ExxonMobil's Alleged Hack-for-Hire Campaign Targeting Climate Activists

#23

Post by ben_w »

immibis wrote: post #9
NegativeLatency wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they knew about impacts of climate change in the 70s https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-... Reminds me of how I see executives manage to “fail upward”, where it’s just so clear the people pulling the strings don’t give a darn about workers or the population at large.

[flagged]

With that dichotomy, I'd set the dollars on fire — unless someone convinced me that doing so would kill even more people.

Money is a tool for organising labour and resources, I don't see it as a goal in itself, only a means to other ends.

Re: ExxonMobil's Alleged Hack-for-Hire Campaign Targeting Climate Activists

#24

Post by austin-cheney »

j_maffe wrote: post #5

Can we change to the more reliable source, on which this article is based? https://citizenlab.ca/2020/06/dark-basin-uncovering-a-massiv...

This citizenlab article is so much better. The article at the top reads like a conspiracy theory tabloid that loosely says one thing while simultaneously suggesting something else.

Re: ExxonMobil's Alleged Hack-for-Hire Campaign Targeting Climate Activists

#25

Post by holmesworcester »

tmpz22 wrote: post #15
holmesworcester wrote: post #10

My organization Fight for the Future was targeted by the same hacking-for-hire operation while working on net neutrality protections. It was really interesting because at the time the conclusion of our security consultants was that the attack was just random commercially-motivated prospecting. Then the Citizen Lab Dark Basin report came out years later and it was clear they were after our internal comms, so they coul…

Any reason you can’t dump an air gapped archive and put it on a physical device in a deposit box? Best of both worlds should you truly need to access it. Or are depositions also a concern? Funny enough I just did a business law presentation on Comcast Corp v FCC (2010). Thanks for doing what you could for Net Neutrality

It was a pleasure! We lost nominally in the end (except in California and outside the US) but we built enough awareness to give the ISPs a fear that blatant violations would rock the boat and lead to worse outcomes for them, like more state laws or tougher agency rules when Democrats regained power. I do regret not pushing harder for federal legislation though!

On airgapped email archives, yes, the subpoena threat model is real too. That also happened to us because of some other dirty tricks by ISPs in the same campaign! Fake FCC submissions opposing net neutrality were being created with blatantly stolen user data; like, not people being tricked into singing a petition but just straight up identity theft. We documented all of this and pitched some state AGs on looking into it. New York did, which was awesome, but they ended up subpoenaing everyone including us! We were psyched about this overall of course since it was our idea, and they did end up finding out who did it which was awesome (Broadband for America, the umbrella lobbying group for the telcos) but it was a huge amount of work to comply with the subpoena. The retention limits reduced that burden. Another reason to have them!

I would also say that, if you do create an airgapped archive and store it in an appropriately paranoid way, you are likely to never ever bother to dig it out of storage before the SSD melts into uselessness. You'll miss the ocassional old email but not enough to go digging for it.

Re: ExxonMobil's Alleged Hack-for-Hire Campaign Targeting Climate Activists

#27

Post by vegetablepotpie »

jl6 wrote: post #19

If proven, this should be harshly punishable under existing aiding and abetting laws. On the underlying matter of oil companies being responsible for climate change… the law and the morality is far less clear. We are essentially all complicit.

> We are essentially all complicit.

With statements like these it’s important to take into account proportionality and scale.

Whereas a member of the public may have been aware of climate change after James Hanson’s congressional testimony in 1988, ExxonMobil had its own climate research division in the ‘70s and knew about the dangers of climate change at-least ten years prior [1]. They sat on these findings and in the ‘90s actively engaged in PR and misinformation campaigns to delay action on climate change. They have been incredibly successful at this and the US has no policies to limit fossil gas extraction or burning.

[1] https://drilled.media/podcasts/drilled

Re: ExxonMobil's Alleged Hack-for-Hire Campaign Targeting Climate Activists

#28

Post by triceratops »

immibis wrote: post #9
NegativeLatency wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they knew about impacts of climate change in the 70s https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-... Reminds me of how I see executives manage to “fail upward”, where it’s just so clear the people pulling the strings don’t give a darn about workers or the population at large.

[flagged]

I would not do the same. But realistically, if I were Exxon's CEO in that situation, I'd rapidly be replaced with someone who would make that choice.

Re: ExxonMobil's Alleged Hack-for-Hire Campaign Targeting Climate Activists

#29

Post by triceratops »

goatlover wrote: post #18
immibis wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Only if you're a sociopath. But I also don't buy the framing that oil companies are murdering people when they're providing the energy society needs. Fossil fuels have largely powered the modern world. That doesn't excuse covering up the science and the need to transition either. But there's tradeoffs and nuance to all this. Was solar and battery technology good enough in the 70s and 80s to start transitioning then?…

> That doesn't excuse covering up the science and the need to transition either

That's what we're calling sociopathic behavior. Not drilling oil and gas.

Re: ExxonMobil's Alleged Hack-for-Hire Campaign Targeting Climate Activists

#30

Post by jl6 »

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #27
jl6 wrote: post #19

If proven, this should be harshly punishable under existing aiding and abetting laws. On the underlying matter of oil companies being responsible for climate change… the law and the morality is far less clear. We are essentially all complicit.

> We are essentially all complicit. With statements like these it’s important to take into account proportionality and scale. Whereas a member of the public may have been aware of climate change after James Hanson’s congressional testimony in 1988, ExxonMobil had its own climate research division in the ‘70s and knew about the dangers of climate change at-least ten years prior [1]. They sat on these findings and in t…

I am aware, and that behavior is despicable, but I still don’t believe that this puts all the responsibility for climate change on oil companies generally or Exxon specifically.

The public at large have known for centuries that burning fossil fuels creates locally systemically significant pollution, and we do it anyway. We have known for decades now that it creates globally systemically significant pollution, and still we burn it anyway.

A few thousand greedy, profiteering, unscrupulous oil bosses would not have gotten away with doing it had there not been a few billion consumers paying them to do it. At some point, the blame must also be treated as systemic.

What happens in the scenario where Exxon is found guilty and given the corporate death penalty that some have asked for? Their assets would be confiscated and passed to some new owner. The government maybe? Whoever gets them, will they shut them down? No, they’ll keep those wells pumping, under some new brand name, because the demand for oil is systemic.

If Exxon is culpable for paying a hacker to commit a crime on their behalf, then the population at large are culpable of paying Exxon to pump oil on our behalf.

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