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Falun Gong Hacks Chinese Satellite
maetenloch writes: "Last week Falun Gong hackers in China were able to briefly take over the Sinosat-1 satellite and broadcast a banner for several minutes on all channels of China Central Television. This was apparently repeated several time on different channels on Sunday but so far the Chinese government has imposed a news blackout on the incident. However thanks to the Internet and the millions of witnesses, word has leaked out. Surprisingly, security on satellites can be very weak - often transponders are left on when not active and will continue to rebroadcast whatever is beamed at them. It's believed that Falun Gong used a 3 meter dish antenna mounted on a vehicle to overpower the government's uplink signal. This is not the only time that satellite signals have been hacked - there was the famous 'Captain Midnight' incident in 1986 and it's believed that Iraq has been attacking Kurdish satellite tv channels for several years. Hackers have even (discreetly) made use of the U.S. Navy's FleetSatCom satellites."
Friends of Falun Gong
The Falun Gong take on the story is here:
Revealing Broadcasts Are Truly Serving the People-- From the Editors of FalunInfo.net: Falun Gong Practitioners Risk their Lives to Tell the Truth
If you would like to help out the cause, there is a page about it here:
Become a Friend- Alleviate the Suffering, End the Injustice
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Are the Falun terrorists for "hijacking" Chinese TV? Or are they rebels in a quest against the evil empire?
Insofar as they aren't practicing any actual form of terror, I'm going to vote "not terrorist."
To the best of my knowledge, they aren't...
I think, at worst, you could call them an insurgent organization. But in my book, no terror = no terrorism - and popping "falun gong is good" on the telly signal for a few seconds is not "terror" by any definition I've ever heard.
IMO, the definition of "Terrorist" is not "Using crime to make yourself heard", but "Using crime to create fear and TERROR." - A key part of the word TERRORist.
Terrorists use violence to make themselves heard, not generic crime.
Using crime to make yourself heard is either simply immature (generic vandalism), or is activism (The civil rights movement, a key part of which was civil disobedience.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
All the idjits who whine about "1984" in the US aren't paying attention to the country where there's a good chance of it really happening.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
Well, you have to admit this does have other possibilities. Perhaps Chuck Barris should be contacted to see if he'd like to host the Falun Gong Show...
(I wonder if I'm going to lose karma points for that one...)
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
The chinese openly admit to censorship, restrictions on individual rights, etc.
Here in the US, we are every bit as much a police state as china is, however we claim to be the freest place on earth. (richest sure, but the freedom is an illusion)
Here we curtail civil liberties in "defense of freedom". Here we have a working massive fingerprint database, and a credit database that says if you are a good person or not, which furthermore you cannot argue against.
Our government has huge monitoring systems which silently listen to communications all over the world combing for information.
We have a War department that is called "The Dept. of Defense" which has been waging nearly perpetual war for 50 years across the globe.
We have huge witchhunts for the enemy of the day "communists" "child molesters" "terrorists".
The scariest thing is that it all arises without rigid central control: we censor ourselves to further our careers.
The doublethink in the USA is getting pretty scary.