Tag: Hackers

Salon’s Anonymous Love-In

On By WinstonIn Global Issues, Media, Occupy Movement, Personal Responsibility, Pop Culture, Society, Uncategorized, ValuesLeave a comment

Salon.com ran an article entitled “Anonymous Big Year”. It is essentially a celebration of the self-styled hacker collective. But let’s try for some actual balanced coverage here.

Sure they made a big fuss about SOPA/PIPA and they help organize protests when it’s something like the horribly useless Occupy movement. On the other hand, they cost hundreds of millions of dollars and deny ordinary citizens access to services. They also endanger lives by releasing names and addresses of at risk targets.

When they took Sony’s Playstation Network of line for months, that company’s alleged “crime” was its refusal to release the tools to hack their new PS3 console. To punish them, they hacked Sony’s database and stole the personal information of millions of members. This forced Sony offline until the Japanese government was convinced the security issue was solved. It cost the company millions in lost revenue and millions more in legal costs.

In 2011, Anonymous posted the names and addresses of members of the Bay Area Rapid Transit Police Force. This was in response to what they viewed as the wrongful shooting of a homeless man. One officer (cleared of any wrongdoing) made a judgement call so every officer on that force, and their families were put at risk of reprisals.

This is the group that Andrew Leonards article lavished such praise on. It is they who he is so happy his son supports. So let’s take a moment to realize this. These people aren’t selfless heroes keeping the digital frontier save for you and I. They are no better, and in some cases worse than those they claim to be protecting us from.

I’m not saying every member of Anonymous is a villain, but that’s the chance you take. If you want to bask in the glory of the best, you will also be tarred with the same brush as the worst. That’s the chance you take when you hide, shouting from the darkness. If you lack the confidence to publicly stand up for what you believe in, maybe you need to look at how strong that belief is.

Anonymous rails against faceless, unaccountable corporations and governments, yet they are the epitome of faceless unaccountability. It’s a little disingenuous claiming the moral high ground when you’re in the same mud as those you are looking to vilify.

These are just some of the many reasons I was so annoyed by Salon’s Anonymous love-in.

Cheers, Winston

The Internet Isn’t The Last Haven Of Democracy.

On By WinstonIn Global Issues, Media, Pop Culture, Society, TechnologyLeave a comment

Courtesy of a raging bout of insomnia, I was browsing some back stories on Maclean’s.  That’s when this gem caught my eye.  On Aug 12th, Peter Nowak posted this article: “Governments Must Adapt To Internet, Not Other Way Around”.  According to Mr. Nowak, democracy “is the de facto model that almost every online operation works on”.

“The popular and good rise to the top… the bad and unpopular is ignored or voted down.” It seems he is equating popular with good.  Hardly a supportable position given the current popularity of reality tv and Jackass movies.  Rising to the top isn’t necessarily a sign of quality, only of popularity and people’s urge to part of the “In Crowd”.  The fact that something gets 80,000,000 hits doesn’t mean that it’s good, only that nobody wants to be the one that doesn’t know what everyone else is talking about.  Popular doesn’t equate to good, more often, only to easy.  Lolcats get more hits than ethical debates.  Contestants on reality shows garner more votes than elected officials.  Yeah, popular is a sure sign of quality.

His next little piece of genius involves praising the hacker collective known as Anonymous.  These self appointed judges/juries/executioners are defenders of openness and democracy according to this guy.  He indirectly praises them for their attack on Sony in retaliation for their lawsuit against the person who posted an illegal hack for the PS3.  Peter seems to believe that it was wrong of Sony to take legal steps to protect their intellectual property.  On the other hand, he is perfectly okay with Anonymous using illegal steps to punish them.  There are a couple of details he leaves out in his paean to digital frontier justice.  The takedown of Sony didn’t just affect “Sony”, it affected the employees, the gamers, the people whose jobs rely on those services being up and running.  It’s like Robin Hood burning peasant huts so they can’t afford to pay taxes to the sheriff.  It sounds good in theory, but the sheriff is still going to want his taxes.

Anonymous is also the group who took it upon themselves to post the home addresses of members of the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit police force.  This was in retaliation for BART shutting down cell towers to prevent protesters using them to organize.  Let’s deliberately endanger the live of the officers, their spouses and their children.  Way to pick your heroes Peter. If the persons responsible for that particular act are caught and convicted, they should be tossed into the deepest, darkest hole available and left there.  Pending further notice.

“The fundamental principles of the internet, therefore, are then same as democracy – each user is entitled to freedom and openness, so long as they don’t harm anyone else.”  Where he comes by these “fundamental principle” is never actually explained.  >he also doesn’t explain why Anonymous gets an exemption to the “don’t harm anyone else” part.  The fact is, the internet was created to share information.  Pure and simple.  Other people may have chosen to use it for their own purposes, but that doesn’t make it anything more or less than what it was designed to be.  Just because of bunch of spoiled children have decided that it’s easier to play “activist”as a way to act out when they don’t get their own way, doesn’t make them right.  When an allegedly serious journalist like Mr .Nowak buys into their fantasy, it just feeds into their bloated ego driven God complex.

His closing statement is the best illustration of his clearly delusional disconnect from the real world.  “Governments will inevitably have no choice but to acquiesce and adapt to what are ultimately basic human desires: to be open and free.  Otherwise, as advanced technologies make living in a virtual online world more realistic and palatable, people will inevitably abandon the real world and move into the ether permanently, leaving governments with no one to govern.”

If luck is with us, maybe Peter will be an early adopter of permanent virtualization.  Then any decent spam filter will keep his views in the junk folder where they belong.

Cheers, Winston

Hackers Endangering Lives

On By WinstonIn Global Issues, Society, TechnologyLeave a comment

The hacker group Anonymous has released a link to the names, addresses and passwords of 102 members of the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) police force.

In July, members of the BART police force shot dead a homeless man whom they claimed lunged at them with a knife. The incident caused public outrage and led to protests at some stations. Protesters were open about their plans to use mobile phones to organize protests and track and avoid BART officers. In response, the transit authority disabled cellular towers at key locations stopping mobile services. The legality of this is currently being debated along with civil liberties issues, etc. Since the the hacker group Anonymous has staged two retaliatory attacks on BART. The first time, they defaced and shut down their customer services portal. The second time, they published personal information of the BART police officers.

I’m not condoning the shooting. I wasn’t there, so can’t know what happened. Likewise, I don’t agree with denying access to mobile phone services. Deliberately endangering the lives of over one-hundred officers and their families, that’s just wrong.

I’ll say this as plainly as possible. Anonymous may claim to be acting for what they see as the common good, but they aren’t. They are hiding behind the anonymity of the Internet because they are cowards and bullies. They are too lazy and scared to stand up and publicly work for real change. Instead, they choose to hide in the dark and throw their virtual stones. Instead of dialogue, they seek to use force to get what they want. They want people to see them as cyber heroes, bravely standing up to tyranny on the virtual frontier. The truth is, they are what they claim to oppose. A faceless group with zero accountability, doing whatever they feel like. By putting innocent lives at risk, they have shown themselves no better than the very worst of those they have targeted in the past.

It’s past time for law enforcement to deal with this. By actively endangering peoples lives, disrupting government and corporate infrastructure and stealing and publishing sensitive information, Anonymous has set itself up as being beyond any law. It’s time to set that straight. It’s time to acknowledge them as a terrorist organization with all that that implies.

If any member of the BART police force or their families is harmed as a result of this information being published, ANY member of Anonymous who is apprehended should be held accountable and punished to the full extent of the law. Specifically, those anti-terrorism laws no one likes. Those should work nicely.

Cheers, Winston