Slashdot Mirror
The Outing of Pranknet
An anonymous reader writes "The Smoking Gun recently published a story on their investigation and outing of Pranknet, an online cabal that aims to take pranks to the next level. Their legacy includes thousands of dollars of damage, and many harassed souls. Many of the pranks have clear criminal implications. Reading their report may send chills down your collective spines." From the linked article: "Coalescing in an online chat room, members of the group, known as Pranknet, use the telephone to carry out cruel and outrageous hoaxes, which they broadcast live around-the-clock on the Internet. Masquerading as hotel employees, emergency service workers, and representatives of fire alarm companies, 'Dex' and his cohorts have successfully prodded unwitting victims to destroy hotel rooms and lobbies, set off sprinkler systems, activate fire alarms, and damage assorted fast food restaurants. But while Pranknet's hoaxes have caused millions of dollars in damages, it is the group's efforts to degrade and frighten targets that makes it even more odious ..."
It's hilarious that the ones always calling for an end to "class warfare nonsense" are those that identify with the minority upper class.
Not true. I'm calling for the end to that class warfare nonsense, and I'm not upper class. Currently lower, probably.
Now that your generality has been disproved, it would be intellectually dishonest of you to EVER make that claim again. You agree, of course?
Kudos to TSG for breaking the story. But how is it that a small, independent online news outlet was able to figure out who was pulling pranks garnering national attention and a government with far greater resources was not?
I do think that this is his phone number and address.. Maybe someone should give him a call and explain how stupid he is. Suite 3 1980 Tuscarora St Windsor, ON (519) 419-2944
It's like saying, "There's no difference between jaywalking and blowing up train tracks. Both of them are disruptive to traffic. One just happens to be more extreme." Because some things are deemed allowable, and some things are deemed not, and so we have the law to decide what people can do and what people can't.
Well, yes. If the motivation was to disrupt traffic, then they are of the same morality. One is just a lot worse than the other. In this particular case, the law has decided that both are not allowable. Your point?
I didn't say it's not a huge difference. I repeatedly pointed out that one is more extreme than the other. However, both are morally questionable for precisely the same reasons.
In Borat's case, he exploited laws meant to protect journalism. Not everyone signed a release form allowing themselves to be in the movie. One person who hadn't decided to sue, and the court ruled that because he appeared for only a brief period (less than 30s, or something similar), no release form was necessary. This allowance wasn't so that people like Borat can legitimately do what they did - it was to allow journalists and documentary makers to do their tasks without much difficulty. Cohen exploited those laws. The fact that what he did was allowed by the law was merely legal maneuvering: It satisfied the letter of the law, but not the intent. It certainly wasn't because the law had decided that his scenario is OK.
Beetle B.
"But while Pranknet's hoaxes have caused millions of dollars in damages, it is the group's efforts to degrade and frighten targets that makes it even more odious..." ... because as we all know, what people think of you is far more important than millions of dollars worth of damage.
WTF? Are they pranking /. with this?
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Yes of course you have a choice with corporations many examples can be listed, don't take their patented medicines get sicker and die, don't buy from farms owned by corporations starve and die, don't buy their water get thirsty and die, don't buy their energy freeze and die, see choice. The corporations manipulated and took control of government to gain control of all available resources for the profit of individuals at the expense of other individuals.
Government is not some alien entity, the people are the government and the government is a bad as the people allow it to become. We are a human society. The difference between government and private is for some inane reason we allow elements of our society to be handed over to the private control of a handful of individuals, not for the benefit of society but so those individuals can exploit the rest of society for their own benefit. Do you even know what a privateer is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privateer and privatising segments of our human society really demonstrates how far we have yet to go in becoming a more evolved society.
All the works of humanity are the collective works of humanity, we are humans not lizards, the basis of human society is not exploiting and preying on all the other humans.
When it comes to paying taxes, here is a lesson for the government, people who violently oppose taxes, risk body and limb to reduce their tax burden will pretty much do anything to avoid paying taxes obviously including and especially fudging the books. Racial profiling is bad but there is nothing wrong with behavioural profiling, so all the teabaggers and town hall crashers, how many of them do you think cheats on their taxes, 25 percent, 50 percent or maybe even 100 percent. Those three letter agencies should get busy identifying and auditing those tax recalcitrant individuals and, perhaps we will all gain a little peace and quite.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
This.
Pranknet causes property damage, so TSG endangers the lives of Pranknet contributors, throws childish insults (would be living in her basement, if she had one!), and implies that one might be gay.
Fuck you, TSG.
This seems to be rather prevalent amongst the white supremacist groups as well.
"We're the master race!"
"Really? Have you looked in the mirror lately? You've shaved your head and molested your skin with tattoos and piercings. Obviously you believe that you and your unemployed beer belly are superior to everybody else by birth, so why fuck with it in the first place?"
A few facts --
With respect to how Bush launched an "illegal war," you can only argue this if you're willing to apply the same to Clinton.
Montenegro and Serbia, two sovereign countries attacked in the late 1990s, filed a lawsuit against their aggressors. They held, among other things, that their territorial rights were violated; that the aggression occurred outside of UN Article 51 or UN Security Council approval; that Montenegrin and Serbian citizens were killed; and they demanding that the International Court of Justice hear their claim.
They unquestionably had a case and deserved a hearing. First, the US couldn't say we were obligated under anti-genocide treaties since we were bending over backwards to not call it a genocide. Second, we didn't even bother trying for Security Council approval. (Russia was threatening a veto.) Third, neither of Serbia nor Montenegro had attacked NATO, and thus the self-defense provisions of the UN Charter couldn't be held to apply.
So far, this sounds like it ought be solved in court. Maybe they would win, maybe they wouldn't, but it's pretty clear-cut the case at least deserved a hearing. This is why it shocked me that in December 2004 the International Court of Justice in the Hague decided they had no jurisdiction to hear the complaint.
Their logic is convoluted and twisted. After all, the ICJ is the internationally-recognized final arbiter of international law. The Balkan campaign was clearly an international conflict subject to the United Nations Charter, United Nations Security Council Resolutions, the Geneva Conventions and the Laws of Armed Combat. For the ICJ to declare they have no jurisdiction over a war is for the ICJ to declare there is no body capable of hearing these difficult problems; and laws without courts are just words on a paper, devoid of significance or meaning, unable of rising even to the level of a recommendation.
The lesson to be drawn from this is... when it comes to war, there is no such thing as an 'illegal' war, because there is no agency capable of enforcing laws.
Call it an unjust war, sure. I might even agree with you. Call it a war of convenience and I'll definitely agree with you. Call it an illegal war, though, and I'm going to ask you to explain why Bush's war was illegal and needs to be prosecuted and why Clinton's war wasn't illegal and didn't need to be.
A "fairly small" terrorist incident? Three thousand dead, probably another thirty thousand people who have suddenly lost a father, a mother, a brother, a best friend, a son? Thirty thousand direct victims, literally billions of dollars in property damage done, and you consider this to be a “minor terrorist incident”? If that's a minor terrorist incident then the Bali bombings and the London bus bombings are so trivial that no one ought bother even remembering them.
I'm not going to respond to your other claims. Those are matters of politics, and you're entitled to your own opinion. But those two factual errors -- that the US war in Iraq is "illegal", and that the 9/11 attacks were a "minor" terrorist incident -- scream out for correction.