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Israel Says It Will Treat Online Credit Card Theft As It Would Terrorism
In the wake of the online theft of at least 6,000 credit card numbers belonging to Israelis, Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said that "Israel has active capabilities for striking at those who are trying to harm it, and no agency or hacker will be immune from retaliatory action." Also at Reuters, with a few more details about the believed thief, known as OxOmar: "After Israeli media ran what they said were interviews conducted with OxOmar over email, the Haaretz newspaper said a blogger had tracked the hacker down and determined he was a 19-year-old citizen of the United Arab Emirates studying and working in Mexico."
What are they going to do, kill him?
Just call every crime terrorism.
Sad really, as it 'normalizes' the true acts of terrorism. If everything is labeled terrorism, it becomes 'yet another crime' and is ignored.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The goal of terrorism is, you now, terror, not "Aw crap, this is going to be a hassle."
True terrorism is a criminal act that terrorizes beyond the actual incident. In my opinion, these things should also be added to that list:
High school mobbing.
Tail gating drivers.
The NY Yankees.
Clowns.
Read those lines carefully. The goals seems more than anything to hurt Israeli banks. That may or may not be for personal gain--one can presumably play the money market towards that end. The fact that lots of random people are hurt is an indirect consequence, not the objective goal.
"the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes." Now, if the above is an attempt to cause Israel harm through its banks or to change the banking system through political acts...but even then, there's no violence involved and while the suggested interpretation of resulting events from the leak are intimidating and coercive, the fact that they're actually releasing the credit card details make it more than just a threat. So, no, overall, I'd guess the term you're looking for is the term "asshole". Sure, terrorists might be assholes, but not all assholes are terrorists.
If anything, this sounds like a case of (a) if all you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail--and Israel sure likes it anti-terrorism hammer--and (b) just another example of political corruption where instead of punishing the banks for somehow fucking up so badly that the information was leaked online and calling for their heads (figuratively) they're more interested in calling for the heads (literally) of the people who exposed just how fucked up securing that data was--an act that is ultimately self-defeating if it were meant to protect those random people who are hurt as instead of using the opportunity for a very public, open expose on the issues with the banking system as a justification to fix those problems they've chosen to focused on attacking the messengers (evil bastards that they are) and leaving tons of other crooks to do the same thing in secret (although I guess Israel could always send its secret police into other countries to execute the crooks, but they can't advertise that as a deterrent, so that rather counters the whole idea that this is more a symbolic thing to draw attention to avoid future breaches).
In short, this is why calling everything terrorism is fucked up. It solves nothing, blurs the evil that terrorism is, and demonstrates how beholden governments are to their people: those (people and organizations) with money and not the average person.
PS - This doesn't mean I don't think the leakers shouldn't be punished both for the breach and the leak. But that doesn't justify any claim of terrorism nor the focus on the leakers seemingly over and above those that allowed the leak. Either Israeli banks are secure or they are not. If they're not--which seems to be demonstrated--and one's whole country is dependent upon them, I'd be more upset and focused on them failing in their duty than the countless evil or assholic people in the world who would exploit such businesses. I mean, there's an implied fraud given the reasonable expectations of what a bank is supposed to be, a firm that will securely hold your money; it's harder to be upset at the child/man/bastard who shows everyone the emperor wears no clothes.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
It's not the accounts that get stolen but the money. Just like a train robbery doesn't mean a theft of trains.
The average Israeli gets more USA federal tax dollars spent on them than the average USA citizen.
Can you support this? I went looking, and it seems that Israel receives about $3,000,000,000 in aid. With a population of about 7.8 million people, this works out to less than $400/person.
This page, the 2011 federal budget was about $3.5E12. If you focus on the social programs, retirement benefits and highway spending, then these account for about 68% of the federal budget. Dividing this total by a population of about 310 million people, I arrive at a total spending figure of about $7,700 per US citizen.
I've double-checked everything and can't see where I've made a mistake, other than in the arbitrary decision to exclude all defense, research and interest payments.