Slashdot Mirror
Anonymous Hacks UK Government Sites Over 'Draconian Surveillance'
Krystalo writes "The hacktivist group Anonymous today hacked multiple UK government websites over the country's 'draconian surveillance proposals' and 'derogation of civil rights.' At the time of writing, the following websites were taken down: homeoffice.gov.uk, number10.gov.uk, and justice.gov.uk. The group is not pleased with the UK government's plans to monitor Internet users."
Maybe their 2,000,000 cameras aren't helping as much as they thought they would?
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Hacktivisim at it finest. The more governments restrict freedom the more "terrorist" there will be.
"UK government has released a report today, announcing that as their crucial websites were taken down, they can no longer ignore the attackers, and have reversed the planned draconian surveillance."
More like in six months, there will be more arrests.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Really? Really? Tell us the way that is already proven to work.
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
Paying them to write laws in your favor like the large corporations do?
Kinda sad when the only people fighting for your rights are a bunch of script kiddies in their basements.
Some of the words, like "colour" "centre" and "organise" have been cannily vandalized.
It's quite a clevre plan.
Can we just $_ =~ s/Anonymous/someone/i please?
It would be far less confusing to those who don't realize it's just your average every-day folk behind these stunts. It's really just the common man turned vigilante... Either this, or label all vigilante acts with unknown perpetrators as the work of Anonymous -- Because that's what it's come to.
Here, I'll demonstrate:
Today, someone hacked multiple UK government websites over the country's 'draconian surveillance proposals' and 'derogation of civil rights.' At the time of writing, the following websites were taken down: homeoffice.gov.uk, number10.gov.uk, and justice.gov.uk. Someone is not pleased with the UK government's plans to monitor Internet users.
Obligatory XLCD
http://xkcd.com/932/
I say they discover a new land, live on this land for a few years whilst drawing monetary support from Britain, and then get all in a huff about tea time.
That will show em who is boss!
... but they should be locked up until they figure out how to press for change by democratic means.
This is a relatively small group of people, few of whom are UK citizens, that are using force to impose their ideology. They assume that their radical perspectives are supported by the majority, but are unwilling to test that by legally participating in the legislative process.
In other words, these are a bunch of hot heads that want to ram their ideas down everyone else's throats. In that sense they aren't terribly different from other religious or political ideologues.
(For what it's worth, I do support privacy. Yet I believe that the rule of law and democracy are far more important.)
From the first line of the article "Summary: Anonymous has launched a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) against multiple UK government websites."
Far less impressive than hacking the sites IMO. Then they could have left a message.
The defacing of Chinese government's websites were hacks. This is just a DDoS.
SOPA and PIPA were shut down through legitimate protests with ACTA not far behind. The problem is often getting enough people behind it to make that difference.
to do. Who cares about a website? Websites are superfluous. But hack their Blackberries and you will get their attention. Hack their family's accounts, and you will get their attention. The politicians of the world need to know that their very lives are at the mercy of geeks, and that the geeks are not pleased.
If geeks would work together, this kind of BS would nearly instantly stop because modern life would be impossible without the active or passive participation of geeks.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Attacking the UK government over the internet is a sure way to get them to give up on internet surveillance.
Hackitivism by itself can't change anything, but that never was its objective. It's a way to call attention to an issue that the population has the right to be informed about (this is important dammit!). Aware of the issue, it's up to the people to force the politicians to behave.
Without stunts like this, how else is a small group of citizens who know more about X (in this case X=Internet/computers) than most inform the other citizens (who know little about X, but know about other stuff) that the government is about to screw them? Unfortunately, unless you have extremely rich friends your options are few.
Which I believe is actually illegal in the UK right now - I think the hose pipe ban is already in effect this year
They probably already have 2) down pat if they're doing their jobs properly. Remember, all that happened here was a DDoS - there were no gaping holes found in the defences of the websites. Anonymous just happened to have more resources than the Government websites did and thus managed to make the sites unresponsive for a couple of hours.
But of course you already know this since you're the kind of discerning Slashdotter who reads linked articles and has at least a basic understanding of the topics on which they comment, right?
"The most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an existing codebase that is just good enough." -- Eric S. Raymond