Hackers Dump Millions of Records From Banks, Politicians

hypnosec writes "TeamGhostShell, a team linked with the infamous group Anonymous, is claiming that they have hacked some major U.S. institutions, including major banking institutions and accounts of politicians, and has posted those details online. The dumps, comprised of millions of accounts, have been let loose on the web by the hacking collective. The motivation behind the hack, the group claims, is to protest against banks, politicians and the hackers who have been captured by law enforcement agencies."

Comments

Great plan

[masternerdguy]

Yes let's ruin millions of innocent lives to protest the arrest of criminals!

Re:Great plan

[Anonymous Coward]

Look on the bright side--it's a step above their usual tactic of protesting censorship by DDOSing websites that say things they don't like.

Re:Great plan

[phantomfive]

I consider it a protest against bad security......

Re:Great plan

[jhoegl]

How do you know it is going to ruin lives when you havent even gone through it?
Perhaps it contains information that shows what we have been expecting all along, some of our senators are corrupt, they want to create laws to spy on everyone so that they can find people who know about them, and the same with corporations.
Wake up people, we live in a corporate run society, we are losing freedom in the false name of capitalism, we are losing our humanity to money.

Re:Great plan

[djnanite]

I consider it a protest against bad security......

And will you still be supporting their actions when you find your own personal bank details on that list?

Seriously - this just causes hassle for *everyone*, and is not a good way to drum up support for your ill-defined and unfocussed protest.

Re:Great plan

[Yvanhoe]

As someone exterior from the US, there is something I don't understand... What do people wait to file a class action to protest against bad security in banks ?

Re:Great plan

[Gordonjcp]

I really hope my bank details *are* on the list.

Perhaps then some random Nigerian general or doctor or prince or whatever will pay off my overdraft.

Re:Great plan

[Darkness404]

Exactly. The sort of nice thing about this is, its public. You can see, you KNOW if your account is breached, its really done in a non-malicious way. I'd much rather have my personal information leaked in a big leak like this than have some guy accessing my account and I have no knowledge about it.

Re:Great plan

[kiwimate]

How do you know it is going to ruin lives when you havent even gone through it?

Have you ever been through a car/motorcycle accident? I have - how can you understand it if you haven't? Of course, it doesn't take a personal experience to understand that a car running into you is going to hurt, probably break some bones, that kind of thing.

It's not that difficult. You don't have to go through having your identity stolen to be able to understand the impact.

Re:Great plan

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Right now, millions of live are being ruined because certain criminals aren't being arrested.

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"And will you still be supporting their actions when you find your own personal bank details on that list? "

Damned straight I would. That would give me direct evidence that my bank was not properly protecting my money, and give me very good motivation to start (or join) a lawsuit.

If the banks' security is shit, it's good to know about it. Better it be public than found by some criminal organization that will just steal it all and disappear.

Re:Great plan

[fustakrakich]

You're right... Only the state has the right to ruin millions of innocent lives.

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"What [why?] do people wait to file a class action to protest against bad security in banks ?"

They haven't. It is discussed a lot here on /., for example, and it was brought up in the Wall Street protests. We just haven't been listened to.

But in order to actually file a suit (something they are liable to pay attention to), one must show that there have been damages.

Re:Great plan

[vlm]

How do you know it is going to ruin lives when you havent even gone through it?

That is an excellent question. I'll have to download the data and grep for my info. Anyone connected to my paper checks, as recipient or store clerk or garbage man, already knows my name, address, bank name, and bank account number, and at least one recently written check number. Allegedly this is why Knuth stopped sending out personal checks in return for finding errors in his books. Given the thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people with access to this data who've done nothing to me and the only person I've ever heard even mention it is Knuth, I donno if its a serious concern.

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"Wake up people, we live in a corporate run society, we are losing freedom in the false name of capitalism, we are losing our humanity to money." [emphasis added]

At least you do say "false". But I would prefer that you leave "capitalism" out of it. The people that are doing aren't calling it "capitalism", and at least in that sense they are more correct than their detractors.

Capitalism has nothing to do with this. Greed, corruption, monopol, and cronyism are not part of capitalism. Not even close. In fact, real capitalism cannot exist in an atmosphere that is so rife with these things.

Re:Great plan

[bbelt16ag]

um, i am not sure about you but i dont got an account with millions of dollars, infact i am so poor i dont have any accounts at a bank. so these are the people who are stealing all the money, taking all the jobs, and defaulting our homes and loans. So no I don't feel sorry for them. They can rot in hell for all i care.

Re:Great plan

[flyneye]

I consider it a protest against bad grammar...

*The motivation behind the hack, the group claims, is to protest against banks, politicians and the hackers who have been captured by law enforcement agencies."*

Lets try: The motivation behind the hack, the group claims, is to protest against banks, politicians . Also protested, hackers who have been captured by law enforcement agencies obviously unfairly because they were helping Anonymous."
            Just send them to remedial English until they find their way out of the "clueless booth".

Re:Great plan

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds very much like the "no true communist state has ever existed" (i.e. No True Scotsman) line.

As long as human beings are involved, all the typical vices attributed to greed occur, and Capitalism is no different. The best you can say is that Capitalism when practiced by humans is an abject failure, due to the complete inability of its self-correcting factors ("invisible hand" via competition and intelligent actors) to have any effect.

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"They can rot in hell for all i care."

Um, I could be wrong, but I believe GP was being sarcastic, and that those are the very people to whom he was referring.

Re:Great plan

[Raenex]

Perhaps it contains information that shows what we have been expecting all along, some of our senators are corrupt, they want to create laws to spy on everyone so that they can find people who know about them, and the same with corporations.

I'm having trouble following your logic. Senators pass laws, they don't execute them. You're living in some fantasy world.

Re:Great plan

[TarPitt]

Because Americans believe government regulation is bad and markets are good.

So instead of having job-killing freedom-strangling government regulations requiring better security, Americans wait until after their personal information has been compromised and publicly posted, then use the tort system to obtain economic compensation for the resulting damages.

Or they will until the tort system is crippled for killing jobs and crippling free enterprise.

Re:Great plan

[phantomfive]

lol we need grammar nazis in the world, but do you realize your attempt has worse grammar than the original?

Re:Great plan

[phantomfive]

And will you still be supporting their actions when you find your own personal bank details on that list?

YES, I will, and I'll tell you why.

A public release like this lets me know, lets everyone know, there's a problem. I'd much rather have someone hack and release the details publicly than hack and steal all my money.

Re:Great plan

[Anonymous Coward]

I am WAAAAAY more careful on my bike than in my car. I always slow down when approaching left turners REGARDLESS if I have the right of way. In traffic, I never ride beside a car in case they decide to change lanes without looking. I avoid tailgaters like the plague because I know they can't stop as quickly as I can. I know that one inattentive car driver or one error on my part can leave me splattered all over the asphalt.

Re:Great plan

[Smallpond]

Dear Nigerian citizen. I am the son of the late US President Ronald Reagan. I have recently come into the possession of the sum of FIVE US DOLLARS which I need your help in hiding from the US Internal Revenue Service ...

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"It can be done without putting peoples money at jeopardy."

Really? And how would you do that, such that people really paid attention and it wasn't buried in a 1-inch news story on page 7?

I eagerly await learning about this brilliant plan.

Re:Great plan

[Nutria]

This is the critical point: American jurisprudence is designed to be reactive, not proactive.

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"This is the critical point: American jurisprudence is designed to be reactive, not proactive."

Yes, it certainly is. It inherited that (as did many other countries) from European Common Law. It's not like that's unique or even unusual.

Arguably, that's the way it should be, in a society that promotes freedom over government control.

Re:Great plan

[AliasMarlowe]

Dear Nigerian citizen. I am the son of the late US President Ronald Reagan. I have recently come into the possession of the sum of FIVE US DOLLARS which I need your help in hiding from the US Internal Revenue Service ...

Try for MINUS ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND American Dollars instead. Maybe you'll get lucky...

Re:Great plan

[arfonrg]

Because lawsuits costs money... It takes THOUSANDS of dollars to pursue a civil suit and most people can't afford it. On top of that, class action suits are usually brought about by a lawyer(s) who really could care less about justice and care more about taking a percentage of the gains so, they take a gamble.

It's not a fair system but, it's better than nothing and could be much worse.

LAWSUIT RULE 1: The only people who win are the lawyers.

Re:Great plan

[AliasMarlowe]

Capitalism has nothing to do with this. Greed, corruption, monopol, and cronyism are not part of capitalism. Not even close. In fact, real capitalism cannot exist in an atmosphere that is so rife with these things.

Ahem, greed is central to capitalism. On the other hand, corruption and cronyism are indicative of a failure of regulation rather than of the economic system (whether capitalist or not), and monopoly is potentially but not necessarily an evil.

Re:Great plan

[microbox]

That sounds very much like the "no true communist state has ever existed" (i.e. No True Scotsman) lin

It is possible to fallaciously point out a logical fallacy. Perhaps you were being factitious? Nay, more like you're just shooting from the hip.

Re:Great plan

[Nutria]

European or English Common Law?

Re:Great plan

[Sarten-X]

"No true communist state has ever existed" is not a No True Scotsman fallacy.

No True Scotsman is where the experimental grouping is based on the results of the experiment. As a more obvious example, consider giving all of the participants in a drug trial the same medication, then splitting them up afterward based on whether the drug worked or not. In the had-a-good-effect group, 100% of the trial patients had a good effect! Amazing!

The classification of political states, however, is a different issue. No true political anything has ever existed. Dictatorships aren't true dictatorships, because the dictators don't directly control absolutely everything for everyone. Communism isn't true communism, because the people making decisions have always been held in higher regard than the people making toilets. Capitalism isn't true capitalism, because there is always regulation and corruption getting in the way of an informed public. Monarchies aren't really monarchies, because there are always parallel power structures that don't fall into the nicely-defined hierarchy.

The fallacy here (for which I do not recall a proper name, and can't be bothered to look it up) is a confusion (intentional or not) between ideals and realistic implementations of systems. It's easy enough to say "in a Communist system, everyone is valued equally," but much more difficult to actually convince a nation of people to consider everyone perfectly equal. The ideal, however, does make for an interesting philosophical discussion, just as the real implementation makes for an interesting sociological discussion. With the insights from both, perhaps a political system can be devised that accomplishes the goals of the ideal system, while accommodating the pitfalls of the real implementation.

Re:Great plan

[Nerdfest]

Strange, in almost every motorcycle accident I've seen involving a car, the car *was* at fault. The 'left turn in front of an oncoming bike' is the classic one that kills motorcyclists.

Re:Great plan

[girlintraining]

As someone exterior from the US, there is something I don't understand... What do people wait to file a class action to protest against bad security in banks ?

Ignoring the grammar, it would be because the US Supreme Court deleted citizens' ability to join class action lawsuits because it cost corporations too much.

Re:Great plan

[Bill_the_Engineer]

I consider it criminal activity with a really flimsy cover story.

Re:Great plan

[VortexCortex]

"It can be done without putting peoples money at jeopardy."

Really? And how would you do that, such that people really paid attention and it wasn't buried in a 1-inch news story on page 7?

I eagerly await learning about this brilliant plan.

Simple, when they have requirements on password length or character sets, then they're not hashing or encrypting passwords. Then you sue them for negligence, inform the media that instead of the story, "Up next: What common product under your sink could be killing your babies?", they should run, "Up next: Find out why banks are sharing your account passwords with thousands of people.", before they have a word from their sponsor.

I only have the time/money to write nasty emails and talk to branch managers when I visit. Their answer is that people forget their passwords, and they need to see the password to tell them what it is, or help with customer service -- They shouldn't EVER need to do that either. Also: if there's a login form on a page that's not HTTPS -- It's vulnerable to SSL Strip among other MITM attacks. They won't hire a "security researcher" to help AND also listen to what they have to say because That's wilful negligence.

I'm aware that they could be applying character set rules before submitting the data to improve entropy, but there's no reason to limit the length to 6 to 12 characters.

Re:Great plan

[neonKow]

Am I misreading you or are you just engaging in hyperbole? As far as I know, there has been nothing that blocks citizens from joining class action lawsuits.

Re:Great plan

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you will find that is Germany. Third bite at the cherry and all that.

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"Simple, when they have requirements on password length or character sets, then they're not hashing or encrypting passwords. Then you sue them for negligence, inform the media that instead of the story, "Up next: What common product under your sink could be killing your babies?", they should run, "Up next: Find out why banks are sharing your account passwords with thousands of people.", before they have a word from their sponsor. "

I've tried it. Doesn't work.

My (then) bank had a huge security hole in their online banking. I contacted the bank several times, and even went to the main branch in person, to show people what the problem was. I talked to their own programmers. They all agreed "This is a huge problem and we need to deal with it right away."

Did they? No. And after multiple contacts over multiple months, I finally decided to go to the media with my story. Guess what? The news media wanted nothing to do with it.

No... sorry. You are assuming they are reasonable people. They aren't. This is the only way they'll pay attention.

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

And just to be clear: this wasn't even your typical, hackable, "security vulnerability". This flaw allowed ANYBODY who knew about it, with no programming skill whatever, to get name, account number, address, and telephone for anybody's bank account.

Re:Great plan

[neonKow]

Amazing. Not only have you completely ignored GP's point about sympathy that "it doesn't take a personal experience to understand that a car running into you is going to hurt" and turned it into some rant about who is at fault, you've also exposed your own prejudices and managed to be so oblivious to it that you are going to be smug about it.

I even vaguely agree that it's better to be at the mercy of benevolent hackers than at the mercy of lazy business practices that is hurting the common man, but your arguments are completely invalid.

I think the argument boils down to the fact that we are all harmed by not having our information protected, even if we don't know it is happening to us.

Re:Great plan

[neonKow]

My favorite piece of advice I've ever heard about riding: "Ride as though you are invisible and everyone else is drunk."

(Also applies when trying to drive a vehicle of any sort in the DC area.)

Re:Great plan

[neonKow]

That is precisely what they are doing. Why is this vote +5 Insightful? Everything about the TFA and TFS basically portray this as a hostage situation; innocents are harmed to protect fellow criminals.

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"European or English Common Law?"

Haha. Pardon me. English of course. Once in a while American obtuseness does rub off, even on me.

Re:Great plan

[sjames]

Because until damage is ACTUALLY done, banging your head against the wall is more likely to produce results than a courtroom.

Re:Great plan

[sjames]

Unless the banks slip something in on page 235 of 'the agreement' in micro-print that prohibits it.

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"Ahem, greed is central to capitalism."

It is nothing of the sort. As Adam Smith defined capitalism (although he didn't use that exact word; it was coined later as a general name for his concepts), greed has no part in it whatever.

Free-market capitalism (again, Adam Smith and what most people mean when they say "capitalism", since in fact he defined it), has to do with voluntary exchange of goods. It is possible for people in a truly free market to be greedy, but their business will suffer as a result. If people feel ripped off, they cease to do business. That's what voluntary means.

True, sustained greed cannot come about without government collusion. When there are controls and regulation, and people no longer have a choice. That is when monopoly, oligopoly, and corporate greed can breed.

And that's not capitalism.

Re:Great plan

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Americans believe government regulation is bad and markets are good.

So instead of having job-killing freedom-strangling government regulations requiring better security, Americans wait until after their personal information has been compromised and publicly posted, then use the tort system to obtain economic compensation for the resulting damages.

Or they will until the tort system is crippled for killing jobs and crippling free enterprise.

That's why Americans have a whole lot more market regulations when compared with some "socialist" european countries, the difference is that your regulations only preserve the absence of competition (wtf do you think patents are?).
Stop pretending the inexistent american liberalism is at fault because there is not much liberalism left in the world and it sure as hell is not in the US of A.

Re:Great plan

[sjames]

I thought capitalism was supposed to be that perfect system that harnessed that greed and turned it into prosperity for all? Looks like it's missed a bit.

Meanwhile, much of the corruption and cronyism gets permitted here in the name of the free market. The claims inevitably translate to "If we'll just quit enforcing the law, people will quit breaking it". Yeah, it doesn't make any sense to me either.

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"It's easy enough to say "in a Communist system, everyone is valued equally,"

Not so easy anymore, because after 100 years or so of theory, we've never seen anything even close to an actual Communist system. It has never once existed.

Agreed, it makes for interesting philosophical discussion, but that is as far as it will ever go. As Marx pointed out: Socialism is a necessary stepping-stone along the "evolutionary" way to Communism.

However, as history clearly shows, once a society adopts Socialism, with its strong central government, those in power have invariably (so far in history) been unwilling to give up that power, under any circumstances. Further yet, a Socialist government is vastly more easily corrupted than a roughly democratic form, in which the politicians are at least theoretically answerable to The People.

"With the insights from both, perhaps a political system can be devised that accomplishes the goals of the ideal system, while accommodating the pitfalls of the real implementation."

Not if society has to go through one in order to get to the other. Much like evolution via genetic mutation: you will never get from point A to point B, if the intermediate steps are always fatal.

Re:Great plan

[nedlohs]

What does who is at fault have to do with whether you can predict the likely results of something without ever experiencing that thing personally?

Re:Great plan

[sjames]

Where there is no oversight of the market, choice inevitably evaporates. We have banking regulation because the lack of it caused people to be wiped out in the great crash of '29. Things went OK for quite a while, then those regulations got rolled back and here we are with another crash.

Re:Great plan

[TubeSteak]

Capitalism has nothing to do with this. Greed, corruption, monopoly, and cronyism are not part of capitalism. Not even close.

[Citation Required]

In fact, real capitalism cannot exist in an atmosphere that is so rife with these things.

Everything that happened before America's trust busting era would suggest otherwise.
I'm also calling a No True Scotsman foul.

There's a huge gap between what you want capitalism to be and what it actually has been and currently is.
Heck, we haven't even had a purely capitalist economy in the USA for over a century, and the capitalists still manage to crater the economy every few decades.

Re:Great plan

[CrazyDuke]

From the looks of things, it's more retaliation than protesting. You don't protest murder by killing people. You don't protest rape by raping people (unless you are a fan of the US "penile" system). Face it, this is tit-for-tat.

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"Where there is no oversight of the market, choice inevitably evaporates."

No responsible parties are advocating "no oversight" of the market. You should read Adam Smith. Even he recognized, way back then, that a reasonable body of antitrust law would be necessary to keep people playing within a real capitalist system.

So there is no great revelation here. Anybody who is seriously talking about Adam Smith free-market capitalism has to accept that there must be SOME regulation. But responsible regulation is not willy-nilly, as it is today; it is limited to antitrust concerns.

"We have banking regulation because the lack of it caused people to be wiped out in the great crash of '29."

Absolute bollocks. Government intervention, in concert with Fed policy, CAUSED the crash of '29. The economists who were saying so were completely correct about what would happen (it WAS predicted)... government and other "interventionist" economists continued to say the economy was FINE... up to Irving Fischer's famous declaration that the economy had never been healthier, the very day before the big crash.

"Things went OK for quite a while, then those regulations got rolled back and here we are with another crash."

Once again, it wasn't lack of regulation that caused the crash. Wall Street had never been more heavily regulated! It was IRRESPONSIBLE regulation, not lack of regulation, that caused it.

If you want a real culprit, who without any doubt contributed greatly to the crash, you need look no further than Barney Frank.

But no... I am not prepared to debate that on Slashdot. There have been whole books written about it.

Re:Great plan

[psiclops]

so i'm guessing you'd be glad that it was released publicly, otherwise well - you wouldn't have known to call your bank.....

Re:Great plan

[grumling]

Surely those born with a small penis will be anxious to complain about that in court.

Ah yes, the case of "The size of the boat v. The Motion of the Ocean."

Re:Great plan

[psiclops]

i don't think anyone was claiming it's legal...

Re:Great plan

[SydShamino]

The SCOTUS ruled that clauses slipped into contracts prohibiting class action lawsuits are valid. In other words - there are some rights that you can't give away in a contract, but the right to join a class action lawsuit isn't one of those.

Now, some companies have already started changing their one-sided take-it-or-leave-for-our-competitors-oops-they-all-have-the-same-clause contracts to include a waiver of the right to participate in a class action lawsuit. The argument is that all companies will do this soon, as there's little reason not to, and that will thus block most citizens from joining class action lawsuits.

The problem here is that SCOTUS was wrong. The right to redress in court is one right that we shouldn't be able to sign away, and given how our court system is structured to so heavily favor the rich, class action rights should be considered a basic citizen right to redress.

Re:Great plan

[sjames]

I have read Smith, unlike the vast majority who like to cite him as the reason we mustn't regulate the market.

In addition to anti-trust, anti-fraud is required at a minimum. Even Libertarians agree that government has a legitimate role there.

Wall Street certainly was more regulated in the '80s and '90s than in the 2000's. Alas, the responsible regulations were rolled back leaving only the frivolous regulations that help raise the barrier to entry were left in place. I do agree that regulation must be sensibvl;e and responsible and that it really isn't these days. The answer though is to rationalize the regulations, not eliminate them

I would argue that entities must NEVER be permitted to get too big to fail or too big to punish.

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"[Citation Required]"

Smith, Adam. "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" (1776)

If you hunt around a bit, you can find a downloadable .pdf.

"Everything that happened before America's trust busting era would suggest otherwise."

Again, you need to read Smith. Even he recognized that antitrust laws would be necessary. He stated as much in plain English. In 1776. Free-market capitalism requires antitrust law.

"There's a huge gap between what you want capitalism to be and what it actually has been and currently is."

No, the gap occurs because you don't understand that what currently is, is not "capitalism". You are pointing to cancer and saying that's how the whole body works. That's not a valid viewpoint.

"Heck, we haven't even had a purely capitalist economy in the USA for over a century... "

We haven't ever had a "purely" capitalist economy, if you want to nitpick. But it started out as mostly capitalist.

"... and the capitalists still manage to crater the economy every few decades."

And that's where you are wrong. The people who have done that haven't been, and aren't, "capitalists".

Read Smith. Learn about what you are talking about.

Re:Great plan

[cavreader]

"found by some criminal organization" The group who stole and released the information can accurately be described as a "criminal organization". If you rah, rah the hackers and then look forward to filing lawsuits against the company that got hacked then you must also be in favor in catching the people who perpetrated this crime and dealing with them in the legal system.
 

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"In addition to anti-trust, anti-fraud is required at a minimum. Even Libertarians agree that government has a legitimate role there."

I had the wrong impression. It appears that we are actually on the same channel here.

Yes, of course, anti-fraud is also necessary. That is a legitimate role of government.

"Wall Street certainly was more regulated in the '80s and '90s than in the 2000's"

This is where I must differ, however. Wall Street was NEVER "more regulated" before 2008 (let's ignore afterward for now). The number of laws and regulations was FAR larger than in the 80s and 90s.

The difference, as I have already stated, is that those regulations were irresponsible. Glass-Steagall, for example, might have been overrated but it definitely had relevance and should not have been repealed. Frank introduced (and got passed) regulations that forced Freddie and Fannie to assume high-risk loans, which they almost certainly would not have done otherwise. Etc. The government was directly behind many of the policies that led up to the 2008 crash.

"The answer though is to rationalize the regulations, not eliminate them"

I agree. I would argue that the amount of regulation could be VASTLY reduced (leading to more free market), as long as the regulations that do exist are rational and responsible. Something that is pretty hard to say today. Although -- not trying to be a grammar Nazi here -- I think you meant "make rational", rather than "rationalize". At least in American English, "to rationalize" means "to mentally devise a fictitious justification". Our government already does far too much rationalizing.

"I would argue that entities must NEVER be permitted to get too big to fail or too big to punish."

I'm right with you there.

Re:Great plan

[ArsonSmith]

Capitalism is the system in which everyone can exchange things they value by a smaller amount for things they value at a higher amount. If you have a buck and a quarter and you value a dozen eggs more than that dollar twenty five then you can buy them at the store. Did you just rip off the grocer? Of course not, they valued the dozen eggs less than then the money you exchanged.

You could say that there is greed in capitalism but it is on both sides of the deal.

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"I thought capitalism was supposed to be that perfect system that harnessed that greed and turned it into prosperity for all? Looks like it's missed a bit."

No. Capitalism is about voluntary exchange of goods (with money being just one of those goods), in which both parties benefit.

As the other responder mentioned: you bought eggs voluntarily. Implicit in that interaction is that to you the cost of that $1.28 ("cost" being whatever it took for you to get it), is worth less than the dozen eggs. To the egg seller (who produces eggs in bulk so her cost is low), that $1.28 is worth more than the eggs. Everybody is happy.

And this is where many people fall down in their understanding. Nowhere in that exchange is there any room for "greed". Greed implies one party taking advantage of another, usually via some form of coercion. Coercion includes things like monopoly, in which the consumer has no choice, and government regulation, in which the consumer has no choice.

In a free capitalist market, greedy players go out of business, because word gets around and nobody wants to trade. End of story.

Re:Great plan

[sjames]

What you described is a 'market economy'. Capitalism is one example of such an economy.

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"Release a hack that shows ANY personal info should be a felony."

You are part of the problem.

Do you not realize, that it was lack of security on the part of the banks that allowed this to happen?

A lack that in many cases, was probably illegal?

By your logic, anybody who points out in public that your wallet is about to fall out of your pocket should be prosecuted.

Re:Great plan

[Ostracus]

Slashdotters didn't have a problem with it last time I said something about Anonymous. How many more times will it take before people realize Anonymous isn't THEIR friend.

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"If you rah, rah the hackers and then look forward to filing lawsuits against the company that got hacked then you must also be in favor in catching the people who perpetrated this crime and dealing with them in the legal system."

The "people who perpetrated this crime" were the banks that did not adequately protect their customer's information.

Other than that little difference, I agree with you.

Re:Great plan

[The_Revelation]

Yeah, we know its all a bit "you punched my arm, so I'm gonna punch your arm" which has this affect where it is polarizing government/banks against these hackers, and vice-versa.

But, if you think about it, are there many better methods of recourse? Stand around in the streets and the banks pay cops to beat and arrest people until they disperse. DDOS stunts are now considered malicious attacks under some creative 'damages' clauses, but is it really any different to protesters preventing most of the customers from entering a store? US laws are written by corporations and injected without consultation of the general population of not just their own, but other countries so they can pervert freedom and justice there as well. I mean, to be fair, I think the entire world is frightened right now by the colossal level of stupid emanating from that country, and with the exception of a massive economy collapse, I don't see any reason from them to stop.

So, I guess, for many there is the point of view that if you are caught, you are screwed regardless, so you may as well be as effective as you can. I mean, hell, they extradite you these days for hosting video links on your web page. If that isn't petty, I don't know what is.

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"I had the wrong impression."

"This though is one of the key indicators that free market capitalism will never work. You, and everyone else, is to stupid to be considered part of a well informed poplulace.

Good game."

I can honestly say that in all my years on Slashdot, this is the single most incoherent piece of shit I have yet read.

Well played.

Re:Great plan

[sjames]

We may be looking at a terminology problem. I would consider the repeal of Glass-Steagall to be a massive de-regulation, hence my comments on the 2000's being less regulated. There may have been more regulations numerically, but they had less reach and power.

Freddie and Fannie were pressed to assume more risky loans, but nobody made them give first time buyers big enough loans for a McMansion. They were expected to offer loans on starter homes to those borrowers in order to give them a chance to establish themselves. Meanwhile, nobody at all even pressured all of the other lenders to follow suit. They went there quite willingly (and pursued such loans with vigor giving way to outright fraud) mostly because they were allowed to do practically anything they wanted with various crazy derivatives. Apparently the theory there is that if you divide excrement finely enough, mix it with other finely divided excrement, and then recombine it all, you get a gourmet meal. Regulators didn't say a word about it.

Another part of it is that many of the existing regulations are never enforced against the anointed ones but create a barrier to entry for others. There's a reason they say the SEC couldn't find ice cream in a Dairy Queen. That is an example of a sort of de-facto deregulation (and of corruption).

I would very much like to see fewer but stronger regulations with real teeth to them enforced universally.

Re:Great plan

[sjames]

Government failing to interfere can just as easily create the sorts of monopolies that permit greed to thrive. I believe we agreed in another thread that anti-fraud and anti-trust actions from government are requirements for a functional market.

There are those who for some reason believe even those are unwarranted interference and that the market will somehow work it out.

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"There are those who for some reason believe even those are unwarranted interference and that the market will somehow work it out."

Yes, agreed, again maybe a minor matter of misunderstood context.

My issue is with the word "greed". It implies exploitation. Which is not a part of capitalist theory.

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

Pardon me; I was not paying enough attention to what I was writing.

It's a bit of chained concept, but: greed implies exploitation; exploitation implies coercion.

Granted they are only connotations. Implications. But still they imply concepts that are not really part of a capitalist market.

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"I would consider the repeal of Glass-Steagall to be a massive de-regulation, hence my comments on the 2000's being less regulated. There may have been more regulations numerically, but they had less reach and power."

Yes, agreed once again. Terminology. If you consider the volume and depth of regulation, banks and Wall Street were never more regulated before 2008. It was the quality of that regulation that was... well... "insufficient" doesn't really do it justice. I would lean more toward "criminal".

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"Oh ya then how did the hackers find it the security hole? bank did just say hay here,s our security hole. In fact they hacked it, that's against the law already because they did STEAL the passwords. And no i don't expect someone who tells you hay your wallet fell out to be prosecuted. That's just a plain stupid argument by a person who doesn't have a clue or doesn't want a clue. Ya just want to complain."

This doesn't even deserve an answer. But I'm going to give you one anyway. No thanks necessary!

So you are saying to me: you don't care that the banks have been criminally irresponsible with people's data? You don't CARE, that somebody ELSE -- a criminal somebody else -- could have found this data and just stolen everybody's money, instead of making it public?

Whose fucking side are you on?

I have personal experience with a bank that refused to close a GAPING, OUTRAGEOUS security hole that I pointed out to them, for over a year! After about 6 months of it, with no change, I decided to go to the press with my story. You know what happened? The press and TV wanted nothing to do with it. The bank was a major customer. They weren't about to publish anything negative about it.

So guess what avenue was left? Only one. In order to close this gaping hole, only one thing would suffice: going public with the data. THAT makes people stand up and listen.

THE BANKS are the criminals here, and the press are in bed with them. If you think differently, you are deluding yourself.

And the release of data is the only way they (and a lot of people, like you) will even pay attention.

So take your criticism and stuff it. I have been there. These people did the right thing.

Re:Great plan

[Doctor_Jest]

That's why Americans have a whole lot more market regulations when compared with some "socialist" european countries, the difference is that your regulations only preserve the absence of competition (wtf do you think patents are?).

What's really startling is that the regulations are not about socialism but corporatism and cronyism. Wouldn't it be a great time if the free market would be allowed to work? We need a shot at it, but considering the current political climate... that's not going to happen anytime soon.

Re:Great plan

[jhol13]

Of course greed is part of capitalism. The only reason a company exists is to get as much money as it can, regardless of ethical and moral things. If that is not greed, what the hell is?
Of course corruption is too. Why would it not be free market, i.e. "real capitalism", to be able to buy things, like a senator or two?
Monopol is the ultimate goal of almost every big company - then it can "rule the world".
Cronyism - are you going to tell me who I can employ? Or who can I persuade someone else to employ? You are taking my freedoms away.

You define "real capitalism" the way you want it to be, not the way investment bankers do. Sure I like yours better, but my opinion hardly matters.

Re:Great plan

[Anonymous Coward]

if Socialism is so bad, why are countries such as Norway, Sweden, Holland, Swetzerland in the top 5 lists of best countries to live in?
You sounded logical untill you started bashing Socialism. Sorry, but you are full of it and Northern European countries prove Socialism works quite well and is not as prone to corruption as you claim.

Re:Great plan

[Anonymous Coward]

Hate to say it, but the only option left is to anonymously present the details as spectacularly as possible to the world. Once the bank gets hammered by thieves exploiting the hold, they will finally be forced to address the issue. Its better for the bank to be publicly humiliated, or a hundred honest customers get (temporarily) financially hammered, than to have a professional criminal stealing from the bank as quietly as possible.

Re:Great plan

[Sarten-X]

Not so easy anymore, because after 100 years or so of theory, we've never seen anything even close to an actual Communist system. It has never once existed.

Exactly. No true (ideal) Communist system has ever existed, and I've yet to bean a political scientist who thinks a true Communist system can ever exist among humans.

Regardless, the lack of a true Communist society is due to real factors that have not yet been solved, rather than a shifting problem definition as in the No True Scotsman fallacy.

Not if society has to go through one in order to get to the other. Much like evolution via genetic mutation: you will never get from point A to point B, if the intermediate steps are always fatal.

This is not evolution, though. This is Creation, or at least an intelligent design. The progression (and the inherent socioeconomic imbalances in the progression) is one of those pitfalls, which may be possible to avoid in a future political system.

Re:Great plan

[Anonymous Coward]

We had 'free markets' in the 1800s. It only allowed unbridled corporate greed and massive amounts of worker exploitation and pollution.

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"Hate to say it, but the only option left is to anonymously present the details as spectacularly as possible to the world. Once the bank gets hammered by thieves exploiting the hold, they will finally be forced to address the issue. Its better for the bank to be publicly humiliated, or a hundred honest customers get (temporarily) financially hammered, than to have a professional criminal stealing from the bank as quietly as possible."

I agree. This is the point I have been trying to make.

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"This is not evolution, though. This is Creation, or at least an intelligent design. The progression (and the inherent socioeconomic imbalances in the progression) is one of those pitfalls, which may be possible to avoid in a future political system."

I don't disagree; however Marx presented Communism and Socialism in a more-or-less evolutionary context; it was necessary to go through the one to get to the other. But everybody has always gotten stuck at that step.

At times I have suspected that nobody was ever actually intended to get past that step, but that it was just a justification for the imposition of Socialism in the first place.

Re:Great plan

[ranpel]

Ah yes, the Design Your Own Nightmare and Make It a Reality Show. Good programming that. And stay tuned because up next is a blast from the past - We Could Tell You, But Then We'd Have to Kill You.

We reap what again?

Re:Great plan

[ryzvonusef]

You mean like Slashdot? :p

Re:Great plan

[guttentag]

As someone exterior from the US, there is something I don't understand... What do people wait to file a class action to protest against bad security in banks ?

Because we wouldn't get better security as a result, just a coupon for $5 off an adjustable rate mortgage.

Re:Great plan

[sjames]

I certainly agree with that.

Re:Great plan

[Doctor_Jest]

No, we had no free markets in the 1800's. That's a myth. A free market doesn't mean a market without rules. It means a market without manipulation. Read Adam Smith or F.A. Hayek. (And before the Kensyians jump in with their nonsense... Just give it a shot.)

It's enlightening...

Re:Great plan

[sjames]

Agreed, those are not PART of Capitalism or market economies in general, but all economies must somehow cope with them. I see from our conversations that you recognize the need to curb those things if a market is to function.

Currently the lexicon has been sufficiently corrupted that any systematic attempt to correct for those problems and facilitate functional markets gets labeled socialism or even communism.

Sorry for mistaking any of your comments for that.

Re:Great plan

[phantomfive]

That reminds me of the waiver I had to sign to go skydiving, wherein I signed away my right to sue, and in the event that I did sue and win, I (or my heirs) would promise to give all winnings to the company.

Re:Great plan

[ravenshrike]

Homogeneity of population combined with cultural values combined with the fact that they spend virtually nothing on defense thanks to the Pax Americana. Also known as the if anyone fucks with Europe we'll fuck them up policy. Or at least that was how things worked, until Obama threw the Ukrainians to the Russians

Re:Great plan

[ravenshrike]

If Fannie and Freddie had never started ass-kissing Countrywide at the behest of the government then CDS's never would have gotten popular within the mortgage market as a way to offset the bad debt. If they had never gotten popular, a certain set of GIGO computer models would never have been generated which predicted that CDS's were a way to print money for the banks. If those models had never been generated then the subprime loan terms would never have expanded into all sectors of the housing market. Thus there would have been no hyperinflation of the housing market after the dot-com crash, which means no housing crash 8 years later.

Also, Glass-Steagall wouldn't have stopped the problem. At best it would have delayed things a year or two.

Re:Great plan

[sjames]

Evidence suggests Freddie and Fannie kissed Countrywide's ass because of bribery and corruption at the top. They went for it because there was zero chance that it would actually be investigated and punished. More de-facto deregulation. The rest was because regulators gave the OK rather than insisting on fiscally responsible and honest behavior. The industry ignored clear and obviously correct warnings because it was just so darn profitable and they decided that it would be OK for them so long as they passed the hot potato on to others. Again, there was zero chance they would be busted for that, so they did it.

Now that it's all burned down, guess what? Not only have they been proven right about no prosecution, the few who didn't toss the potato in time got nice fat bailouts.

Put their asses in prison (not club fed, the prisons the 99% go to) and confiscate the proceeds of their criminal activities (use it to make the rest of us as whole as possible) and perhaps things will change.

Re:Great plan

[RabidReindeer]

No. Capitalism is about voluntary exchange of goods (with money being just one of those goods), in which both parties benefit.

In a free capitalist market, greedy players go out of business, because word gets around and nobody wants to trade. End of story.

Wrong and wrong.

CAPITALism is about groups of people coming together and pooling CAPITAL to accomplish jointly what they could not do severally. It is particulary well-suited to factory-based business because factories require a significant amount of up-front money to get started. That is, they're capital-intensive. Before factories probably the biggest such operations were trade-related, where corporations were formed to buy or lease ships, outfit and crew them.

COMMERCE is when people (or other entities) exchange goods and services. You can do COMMERCE without any capitalism whatsoever, and in fact, most business was done so up until the beginning of the industrial era.

Capitalism, by its very nature is undemocratic. You don't need massive amounts of capital to open a taco stand. Taco stands are pretty much a free market, subject to local government meddling. On the other hand, microchip fabrication facilities cannot be built without a significant amount of capital. To get that capital, you either need many people with small amounts of money or a smaller amount of people with deeper pockets. Because most new businesses fail, the people most likely to invest are the ones with the deep pockets, because they can afford to gamble and lose.

The more capital-intensive an operation is, the fewer players. Once established, however, the old business adage that "nothing succeeds like success" kicks in. The bigger you are, the more you can grow. You can put more pressure on suppliers, achieve economies of scale and do other things that smaller fish can only dream about. You are, in short, in a positive feedback loop, to use engineering terms.

At this point, the Invisible Hand gets broken fingers. The slower, less-capitalized competitors fall by the wayside. They can't get favorable terms, so they can't offer favorable prices. They get bought up by the bigger players or go out of business. Until finally, you have only a handful of major players - if not outright monopoly - and everyone else is reduced to also-rans, if not extinction.

Greedy companies abound - Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, all have reputations for rough dealing. But because they're big, they're "safe". It's not that you cannot fall from the top, but you have to work a lot harder to do so.

Re:Great plan

[SuricouRaven]

The media live by viewship and rateings. They want to run stories that people want to read. Given the choice between 'General YouNeverHeardOf authorises the use of mace-cannons on protestors in Elbonia' and 'LIBERAL-SUPPORTED LIGHTBULBS ARE KILLING YOUR BABY!!!!1!!!1!,' which do you think is going to make the most advertising money?

Re:Great plan

[SuricouRaven]

More precisely, No True Scotsman refers to setting a definition (Often retroactively) for membership a group aimed at reaching a desired conclusion. It's most common use is for a member of some faction to deny association with the groups less desireable members. For example:
[Animal rights snob] Us animal rights campaigners hold ourselves to the highest moral standards. How can someone be inhumane to their fellow men if they are willing to respect even the animals, in their position of such vulnerability?
[Counterargument] Are you aware that Hitler was a big campaigner for animal rights?
[Snob] Er... well, no true spporter of animal rights could support his genocidal policies, so he must have been just putting on an act for the people.

In the case of communism, supporters of the ideology use it to dismiss the many failed communist states as not practicing 'true' communism. Likewise, the more extreme supporters of unregulated markets (like the Objectivists) will dismiss any flaws in capitalist systems as a consequence of government regulation in some way and thus a symptom of not practicing 'true' capitalism. The fallacy is the same in all cases: Crafting a definition for the term that is not widely accepted, and crafted for the specific purpose of reaching the desired conclusion.

Re:Great plan

[SuricouRaven]

Panem et Television.

Re:Great plan

[jpapon]

Further yet, a Socialist government is vastly more easily corrupted than a roughly democratic form, in which the politicians are at least theoretically answerable to The People.

Why are the politicians any less "answerable to The People" in a Socialist Democracy? I don't see why Socialism and Democracy are competing ideals. They can very happily coexist. See: most of Europe.

Re:Great plan

[jpapon]

Homogeneity of population

What? How does a homogeneous population make any difference? Are you saying white people are better workers or less prone to corruption?

Also, have you ever been to England, France or Germany? The populations aren't even close to "homogeneous".

combined with cultural values

So all we have to do in order to have universal healthcare is to change our cultural values? Probably true.

they spend virtually nothing on defense thanks to the Pax Americana.

Or maybe they spend nothing on defense because they realize nobody wants to fight them. They also don't spend "nothing" on defense. Great Britain and France have quite substantial military budgets. They spend "nothing" in comparison to the USA, not because their budgets are small, but because the "Defense" budget of the USA is absolutely enormous.

Re:Great plan

[jpapon]

I love how you see Socialism as some great evil. What exactly about Socialism do you find so terrible?

Re:Great plan

[mindwhip]

Not quite... Slashdot is good at DDoSing sites with views that the readers DO like more than ones they don't like.

Re:Great plan

[nstlgc]

If kids from Anonymous have the info, you can be sure others were there before them. Anonymous are far from rocket scientists.

As such, it doesn't really matter whether they release this information or not. The information is compromised and should be considered unsafe.

Re:Great plan

[gsslay]

You are making the mistake of thinking that these "hackers" motivations are what they say they are. What's far more likely is they did what they did for the usual reason; a desire for peer recognition and status.

To achieve this you need to do something the demonstrates you have in abundance attributes admired by your peers; rebelliousness and intelligence. There's no point in doing this on the quiet, you have to make sure everyone knows you are rebellious and smart. Which takes us to your basic attention seeking stunt of publishing the hacked data.

Unfortunately there's nothing more likely to lose you peer recognition and status than by telling people you desire them. Hence the transparently false and dumb motivations to justify things.
 

Re:Great plan

[Sprouticus]

But like a Car accident, the impact can be minor or major. The GP was pointing out that we don't know the impact and to assume it will ruin lives is making very large assumptions. Just like someone died when they say they had a car accident.

Re:Great plan

[Hatta]

The free market itself is a myth.

Re:Great plan

[RobertLTux]

its a bank draft order written on a slip of paper that a buncha folks still use in the US because the US banking system is to busy trying to keep money to make GETTING money simple.

Re:Great plan

[interval1066]

A corporation is guaranteed to have its own interests trump yours.

A corporation is not in business for your interests. Your love-hate relations ship with business is whats kiling you chaps.

Re:Great plan

[N0Man74]

Sort of but it's probably not a good idea to download that data or you will be considered a criminal and end up in jail.

So really you have no way of checking if your data has been leaked without breaking the law.

I imagine that numerous helpful sites will pop up that will allow you to enter your name and account number, and they will tell you if it has been breached.

Of course, the answer will probably always be yes.

Re:Great plan

[ArsonSmith]

Capitalism is the base or free implementation of a 'market economy'

Re:Great plan

[nanoakron]

I think by 'gone through it', the OP means:

'it' - the documents that have been released, not financial ruin

'gone through' - to have read, not to have personally experienced

So +1 for your misreading, with +4 for leaping to conclusions.

Re:Great plan

[tomthegeek]

The internet disagrees

Re:Great plan

[cavebison]

Capitalism has nothing to do with this. Greed, corruption, monopol, and cronyism are not part of capitalism.

I think you might be mistaken there. Have a listen to Noam Chomsky on the innate contradiction between Capitalism and Democracy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3hAlPa4Up0&t=26m35s

Anyway, what we are living in is a Plutocracy, and has been really since before the idea of Capitalism began. Not to say it isn't a great idea, but it hasn't been adequately protected and the necessary improvements have not been made to protect Democracy from the nature of the human beings involved in it.

Re:Great plan

[sjames]

The base implementation is Anarchy.

Re:Great plan

[operagost]

So if your home address is leaked, you don't mind moving? And if your SSN is leaked, you don't mind having no credit forever-- because SSNs can't be changed?

Re:Great plan

[operagost]

Because there are absolutely no industry standards for security. Oh wait, yes there are.

Re:Great plan

[cavreader]

So if you leave your house and someone breaks a window and robs you the police should arrest you for the burglary? Nobody who offers customer data access via a public network can ever be 100% secure. Attempts to take legal action against those who have taken the customary precautions of requiring passwords and security certificates (like most banks) and implementing other security measures is the beginning of the end for online data access. If a company mistakenly publishes private information a case could be made for human negligence but suing someone who has taken all the basic precautions towards security does nothing but reward the bottom feeding lawyers.

Re:Great plan

[Krojack]

True however there is a LOT of information here. Most people won't spend the time to pick though it. They will just assume they are in the clear because their bank claims they are "certified and accredited". =)

Re:Great plan

[operagost]

if Socialism is so bad, why are countries such as Norway, Sweden, Holland, Swetzerland in the top 5 lists of best countries to live in?

... based on surveys taken by socialists.

Re:Great plan

[operagost]

Because for the power of the state to increase, the power of the people must decrease.

Re:Great plan

[operagost]

You are living in a fantasy world if you think banking regulations in 2008 were less lax than those in 1933. They are FAR more complex, mostly to leave lots of places for political cronyism to hide.

Re:Great plan

[operagost]

Guess who relaxed the regulations? Barney Frank. Guess who took the bribes from Countrywide? Chris Dodd. Guess whose names are on the law that supposedly fixes the problem? Dodd and Frank.

We're screwed.

Re:Great plan

[operagost]

Actually, it takes a lot of capital to start a taco stand because the big players have lobbied "progressive" government to install all kinds of regulations that are too oppressive for the small businessman to overcome.

Re:Great plan

[firewrought]

Release a hack that shows ANY personal info should be a felony.

It is a well-established principle of computer security that software firms will not fix security holes unless there is the imminent threat of public disclosure. As the saying goes, "sunlight is the best disinfectant", and it's going to work a whole last faster than the prosecutor's office will. (And face it--do you really think the Washington AG will prioritize the security of your machine over the political ramifications of chasing the 3rd largest employer in his state?)

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"So if you leave your house and someone breaks a window and robs you the police should arrest you for the burglary?"

I don't think that's a valid analogy. It's more like: I put my money in the bank, and the bank leaves it sitting on a table next to the door where anybody can grab it. Sure... actually grabbing it is bank robbery. But pointing out to the public whose money is being left out in the breeze is not.

I'd far rather have somebody do the latter than have to put up with the former.

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"I love how you see Socialism as some great evil. What exactly about Socialism do you find so terrible?"

You misunderstand me. I'm not trying to make Socialism out to be some great evil (though do I think it has some very serious problems).

But Socialism -- as practiced by the great post-WWII Socialist states -- was evil. Not necessarily because it was Socialism, per se, but because of the way it was practiced. Or distorted or abused, if you prefer to put it that way.

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

But part of the point I was making is that generally speaking, because of its structure, Socialism is easier to abuse than a generally Democratic form of government. The latter can be abused too of course, but it's harder and takes longer.

Re:Great plan

[sjames]

There are a lot more of them, but as you yourself pointed out, there are holes everywhere. Especially when you consider the regulations that aren't enforced against the big players.

Meanwhile, I never claimed that regulations are more lax now than in 1933.

Re:Great plan

[NotSanguine]

Free-market capitalism (again, Adam Smith and what most people mean when they say "capitalism", since in fact he defined it), has to do with voluntary exchange of goods. It is possible for people in a truly free market to be greedy, but their business will suffer as a result. If people feel ripped off, they cease to do business. That's what voluntary means. True, sustained greed cannot come about without government collusion. When there are controls and regulation, and people no longer have a choice. That is when monopoly, oligopoly, and corporate greed can breed. And that's not capitalism.

Blowing my mods on the thread for this one. Sustained greed is not dependent on anything except the drives and desires of the greedy. Since the greedy are generally willing to screw anyone, including their family and friends (c.f. Bernie Madoff), government regulation of markets is essential.

The greedy will press whatever advantages they can (the housing/mortgage/credit default swaps debacle is a prime example) to extract wealth regardless of their impact on others. Semi-adequate government regulation (e.g., The Glass-Steagall Act) of the financial sector prevented much of this for many years. The corruption of the greedy politicians by the greedy bankers got government regulation out of the way so the greedy could press additional advantages.

Lack of oversight/regulation have given us, among other disasters, one-sided contracts which don't allow the little guy to press their claims in court, unlimited campaign contributions, Mega-corporate control of the media and financial sectors, that same media fomenting fear to allow their lackeys in government to spend more and more money on "defense" and "security" thus further enriching the big corporations at the expense of the average person.

Yes, that's the "capitalism" you get without government regulation. Since you're posting on /., I'm guessing that you're not a seven (or eight) figure corporate executive or one of the high net-worth individuals. So why is it that you are espousing ideas that tend to limit your economic opportunities in favor of the already fabulously wealthy? Are you dumb? Have you been brainwashed by the media? Are you paid to do so? Do tell.

Re:Great plan

[mcgrew]

Who modded that guy down? Jesus H. Christ, "troll" doesn't mean "I disagree."

Actually it's "I'm too stupid to make a rational argument so I'll jsut mod him down."

That comment was insightful, and the two of you who modded it down are idiots. Waste some points on me, dipshits, so you won't make a worthwhile comment like the parent comment invisible.

Re:Great plan

[NotSanguine]

No responsible parties are advocating "no oversight" of the market. You should read Adam Smith. Even he recognized, way back then, that a reasonable body of antitrust law would be necessary to keep people playing within a real capitalist system.

IIRC, Alan Greenspan (a staunch advocate of deregulation) several times made the comment that laws against fraud were unnecessary as the market would correct these problems. Would you consider Mr. Greenspan a responsible party?

"We have banking regulation because the lack of it caused people to be wiped out in the great crash of '29."

Absolute bollocks. Government intervention, in concert with Fed policy, CAUSED the crash of '29. The economists who were saying so were completely correct about what would happen (it WAS predicted)... government and other "interventionist" economists continued to say the economy was FINE... up to Irving Fischer's famous declaration that the economy had never been healthier, the very day before the big crash.

Really? So highly leveraged securities trading had nothing do with it, huh? Geez! I want some of what you've been smoking!

"Things went OK for quite a while, then those regulations got rolled back and here we are with another crash."

Once again, it wasn't lack of regulation that caused the crash. Wall Street had never been more heavily regulated! It was IRRESPONSIBLE regulation, not lack of regulation, that caused it.

BZZZT. Wrong. Thanks for playing. The repeal of critical provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act was the biggest act of deregulation in the financial sector since the Act was implemented and is considered by many to be the primary catalyst for many of the excesses that caused the crash in 2008.

If you want a real culprit, who without any doubt contributed greatly to the crash, you need look no further than Barney Frank. But no... I am not prepared to debate that on Slashdot. There have been whole books written about it.

Barney Frank? Yeah, he was instrumental in making liar/no doc loans and corruption of the rating agencies de rigeur in the financial sector. You really have drunk the Kool-Aid, haven't you? Of course you're not prepared to debate this on /. or anywhere else for that matter. Mostly because your arguments are specious and can't stand any kind of critical review. I ask again, are you dumb? Are you paid to write this tripe? Or just brainwashed?

Re:Great plan

[Stan92057]

Its not there jobs they are not the law and judges and that's how they are acting.Stop making excuses for criminal actions.

Re:Great plan

[Stan92057]

I am not for Banks/Anyone getting away with breaking laws. BUT they need to answer to the LAW not a bunch of cowards acting as judge and jury. Hence my security board suggestion as a fix. They didn't do the right thing, they should have taken it to the law.They Didn't have to put others at risk, cowards do that.

Re:Great plan

[3dr]

How does your signing a waiver such as this, make your heirs party to some agreement (in the case of your death)?

Do you know if their co-opt clause has ever been tested?

Re:Great plan

[jpapon]

I'll agree that Socialism seems to be easier to abuse, because it is often co-opted by those who see it as a means to assuming absolute control.

On the other hand, why can't we merge Democracy and Socialism, and try to achieve something greater than either of the two alone? There's no need to deal in absolutes. I see no reason why we can't have a social safety net which cares, educates, and helps the poor succeed, while at the same time keeping power decentralized, out of the grips of a single entity.

The point is to level the playing field. The wealthy clearly have many advantages. Nobody can deny that is far easier to succeed if you come from a family of means.

If you want to look at it from a selfish point of view, the "haves" have a vested interest in keeping the "have-nots" happy, healthy, and looking forward to a future in which they can succeed and prosper. That's the only thing that has kept the American populace so content; that belief that they too can succeed if they try. We should promote that spirit, and help foster a society in which the base level of all people is kept reasonably high. A healthy, educated populace leads to greater productivity and prosperity for all.

There's no need, and it is generally a bad idea, to get rid of personal property and ownership. In fact, that's one of the core ideas of modern Socialism: by enabling people, and giving them partial ownership, we ensure they want the overall enterprise to succeed. It's not about giving welfare checks to lazy alcoholics as the right would have you believe. It's about promoting the general good, ensuring people have a viable path to prosperity, and a belief that when society - and business - succeed, that they too will be privy to the spoils.

Re:Great plan

[jpapon]

Because for the power of the state to increase, the power of the people must decrease.

That's a false dichotomy. The power of the state and the power of the people can be one and the same. Isn't that the whole idea behind Democracy?

Re:Great plan

[ArsonSmith]

Anarchy is not having a market economy, but an economy based purely on force.

Re:Great plan

[sjames]

According to theory, the balance of forces should lead to a market.

Re:Great plan

[phantomfive]

I don't think anyone has ever died at that location.

Re:Great plan

[Doctor_Jest]

So is "compassionate government", but let's not pick nits...

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"On the other hand, why can't we merge Democracy and Socialism, and try to achieve something greater than either of the two alone?"

I don't know of any reason that we could not do so. I'm just not convinced that it is a good idea.

The United States over the last 6-7 decades has moved quite a ways toward more Socialist policies, and when you chart our economy (and I have done so), it has been on a downward slide he entire time.

I would have to see strong evidence to counteract the evidence I already have, to be convinced that more of the same would do any good.

Re:Great plan

[Kazoo the Clown]

The problem is, the banks OWN the law. There's no point in expecting justice from THAT.

Re:Great plan

[jpapon]

The United States over the last 6-7 decades has moved quite a ways toward more Socialist policies, and when you chart our economy (and I have done so), it has been on a downward slide he entire time.

By what measure has the US economy been on a downward slide over the past 70 years?

The US dominated the world over the past 70 years. Unquestionably. We paid to rebuild Europe, built the most powerful military the world has ever seen, went to the moon, became the largest economy on the planet, created the microprocessor, the Internet, and countless other achievements. The 20th century was, almost unequivocally, the American century.

How can you possibly say that the US has been on a downward slide since the Great Depression? It is quite literally exactly the opposite of that.

Re:Great plan

[jpapon]

The only measure I can think of that would show the US declining over the past 70 years is relative to other countries such as Germany or China.

Lets set aside that it isn't a fair comparison since much of that growth is due to the fact that they started from nothing, while the US had the largest industrial base in the world 70 years ago.

You do realize that basically every other successful country in the world is MORE Socialist than the USA, right? So if the US is becoming less successful relative to the rest of the world, wouldn't the solution logically be more Socialism, rather than less?

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"By what measure has the US economy been on a downward slide over the past 70 years?"

By rampant inflation that has not been matched by a proportional increase in income.

The early data is from a book on historical economics. The data since is from our own government's Bureau of Labor Statistics.

According to the government's own figures, this is the first generation since the depression in which the youngsters will almost certainly be less well off in standard of living than their parents were. And the reasons are right there in that chart.

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"The only measure I can think of that would show the US declining over the past 70 years is relative to other countries such as Germany or China. "

Please see the link in my reply to the other poster.

Re:Great plan

[jpapon]

Again though, you don't see this occurring in Socialist countries, you see it occurring in the US. Why would the answer be less Socialism?

Isn't it likely that this rampant inflation is the result of the Fed, and a deregulated money supply? Blaming it on social programs seems kind of irrational.

Also, that figure is rather misleading. Population levels have exploded in that time period. It's only logical that prices will have gone up as well. After all, there are limited resources... increasing population is logically going to mean that prices will go up too, even with constant wages.

Re:Great plan

[Jane Q. Public]

"Again though, you don't see this occurring in Socialist countries, you see it occurring in the US. Why would the answer be less Socialism?"

I already answered this, but I will repeat: it has occurred (and increased) right along with the increase of Socialist policies within the United States government.

I am not claiming here that it is a cause-and-effect relationship, but I do say that the existing evidence does not indicate that more Socialism is a good thing.

By the way, though: you do, too, see it in Socialist countries. Sweden and Denmark used to be among the most productive nations, per capita, in the world. Since they have adopted a more Socialist economic model, the economies of Sweden, and particularly Denmark, have been slowly stagnating. Now Denmark's per-capita productivity is no better than average. That's not a good result, over just a few decades.

Re:Great plan

[Magius_AR]

And the leap from "governments not doing everything right 100% of the time" to "thus, governments do everything wrong 100% of the time" is why the rest of the world laugh at Americans as ignorant and prejudiced nincompoops.

Except that the number of people that believe governments do it wrong 100% of the time is about equivalent to the number of people that believe governments do it right 100% of the time. In reality, it's the 70/30 and 80/20 believers that are the vast majority of voters. It's your own bias that makes them seem like an anarchist or a socialist (pick your side).

A government agency could be doing something where its own interests trump yours. A corporation is guaranteed to have its own interests trump yours.

I must counter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor A corporation has far more of a motivation to "get things right" than does government, particularly when presidents come into play. Hell, most of their policy doesn't even take effect until they're out of office. That way the aftereffects ain't their problem.

I'd rather take the government, because experience shows that most of the time, they work for the public.

That's your opinion -- I believe the historical track record shows the opposite. And even when they are trying to work for the people, they're doing it way wrong, and in ways that persist for decades. Corporations attempting the same shenanigans would have gone bankrupt long ago. (such as the postal office pension pre-funding idea -- genius! not)

Re:Great plan

[Magius_AR]

If Socialism is so bad, why are countries such as Norway, Sweden, Holland, Swetzerland in the top 5 lists of best countries to live in?

I'm not sure you understand what socialism is if you think those countries are examples.
Norway is probably the closest with the government owning a fair chunk of the companies within it.
Sweden isn't a great example. They're almost entirely private, and they've been scaling back the welfare state ever since falling behind in GDP growth.
The Netherlands is going through austerity talks as we speak that are drastically altering the social handouts there as well.
Switzerland is the worst example. They're not much different from the US with their "force people to buy private insurance healthcare scheme", low taxes, high income disparity, and general free market love.

And why do you leave out the failures? France (more socialist than any of your examples) isn't exactly all smiles and unicorns.

Re:Great plan

[Magius_AR]

You do realize that basically every other successful country in the world is MORE Socialist than the USA, right? So if the US is becoming less successful relative to the rest of the world, wouldn't the solution logically be more Socialism, rather than less?

Except that every other country in the world has been scaling back (in some cases drastically) it's own social expenditures (see the austerity mess in socialist France for instance). Hell, just look at Greece as a poster child example. They had the second-lowest index of economic freedom and all kinds of social golden parachutes. And now they're bankrupt. Hardly pinnacles of success to aspire to.

Re:Great plan

[jpapon]

Some Socialist countries are bankrupt, but many aren't.

You cite France, but France is doing fine, and it certainly isn't bankrupt. It's also not scaling back it's social expenditures; it is increasing them. They just elected a Socialist president, and he just raised taxes, and is implementing policies of increased government spending.

Then there's countries like Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland...

Anyway, the US can hardly look at Europe and give them grief for being in debt... The US has the same debt to gdp ratio as Germany... without nearly as many social programs. For instance, Germany has universal healthcare and free higher education.

The US has put themselves in a situation where they are spending as much as Socialist countries, but without getting any of the benefits of social programs. Instead they get lots of bombs. Fantastic.

Re:Great plan

[robsku]

My issue is with the word "greed". It implies exploitation. Which is not a part of capitalist theory.

It's a part of reality though...

Re:Great plan

[arth1]

That's your opinion -- I believe the historical track record shows the opposite. And even when they are trying to work for the people, they're doing it way wrong, and in ways that persist for decades. Corporations attempting the same shenanigans would have gone bankrupt long ago. (such as the postal office pension pre-funding idea -- genius! not)

Sometimes they do, sometimes they get bought up, sometimes they survive it.

Who has done the most damage? The politicians who wanted pension for post office employees, or...

Lehmann Brothers
Standard Oil / Esso / Exxon
BP
General Public Utilities
GMC and Chrysler
Enron
Union Carbide
Various mining companies, railroad companies and banks.

Real people get hurt. A heck of a lot more by corporations than by the government.

Re:Great plan

[Magius_AR]

Real people get hurt. A heck of a lot more by corporations than by the government.

You seriously underplay the harm done by government, probably because you attribute it to other factors. For instance, take the state of healthcare in this country. That industry is heavily regulated (even moreso with Obamacare in play) and the government funnels a ludicrous amount of money into it (close to a trillion dollars a year on Medicare/Medicaid alone). And are you happy with your healthcare? Is anyone? I'd certainly call that "harm", especially considering all the good that trillion dollars could have done elsewhere (even if it was just in your pocket!). That's over $3000 a person, a year. Hell, most HDHPs have a maximum out-of-pocket expense of around $6000 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-deductible_health_plan). You'd be halfway there (for everybody) with just the money recouped from those wasteful programs.

Or how about wars? The wars our government has engaged in has done alot of damage, not only to our citizens, but also our economy.

Or how about the fiscal cliff? Or all the budget stalling? The lowering of our credit rating? You think that hasn't greatly impacted our lives? Or stalled the economic recovery? (in turn greatly impacting our lives...).

I'm sorry, but I definitely believe the government does way more damage than you give them credit for, even if that damage is as simple as taking money people need to live their lives and squandering it on poorly implemented ideas.

Re:Great plan

[Magius_AR]

Then there's countries like Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland...

Many/most of those countries are not socialist at all -- at best they spend a bit more on social programs (and pay for it with higher taxes). Almost none of them have state ownership of business. The vast majority are heavily engaged in the private sector, and let the private market handle their services. They're social market economies, same as the US, just with higher taxes and an extra program or two.

The US has the same debt to gdp ratio as Germany... without nearly as many social programs. For instance, Germany has universal healthcare and free higher education.

Yet we spend a similar amount of money as the Europeans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_programs_in_the_United_States#cite_note-Alber-2

"In 2002, total U.S. social welfare expenditure constitutes roughly 35% of GDP, with purely public expenditure constituting 21%, publicly supported but privately provided welfare services constituting 10% of GDP and purely private services constituting 4% of GDP. This compared to France and Sweden whose welfare spending ranges from 30% to 35% of GDP.["

We're #5 in net social expenditure (Chart I.11:): http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/fulltext/5kg2d2d4pbf0.pdf?expires=1346275390&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=0275BC0FEE97626156C26F9ECF2EDF34

We just happen to be pisspoor at implementing effective programs at the public level (another reason people toss so many barbs at the government). We spend the money and get no bang for our buck, no increase in effectiveness. Another interesting observation from Chart I.11 is that there's plenty of countries that spend more in private social expenditure than public that are doing quite well: Australia, Japan, Netherlands, Germany. That's right, Germany and the Netherlands share more similarities with the US than they do with the "socialist" European countries they're often paired with. They just do it way better than we do.

The US has put themselves in a situation where they are spending as much as Socialist countries, but without getting any of the benefits of social programs. Instead they get lots of bombs. Fantastic.

I can see you agree with me. The difference, however, is that the spending is not only going towards bombs (well at least not in lieu of social spending -- defense has it's ~20% piece too). It is going towards social spending, just very ineffectively. And this is exactly why Republicans call for reform (rather than "more programs"). If we can't even do these right, what would make you think we should tack on a few more before figure out what we're doing wrong? (especially considering our debt problem). We're spending about 5 times what we spend on defense on social programs, yet the only complaints from the Democrats are about "the bloated defense budget". I don't get it.

Re:Great plan

[jpapon]

I can see you agree with me. The difference, however, is that the spending is not only going towards bombs (well at least not in lieu of social spending -- defense has it's ~20% piece too).

We do agree. Social spending could be more effective, there's no question about that. I think it's kind of false to include Social Security in the budget, since Social Security "spending" is really just giving back what we've promised people, and shouldn't really count as government spending since the spending is left to the populace, the government is just distributing the money.

That doesn't really matter. There's no question that the government could be using its budget more effectively. We should without a doubt model our programs on those of other countries that have success with them. Countries like Germany, or the Netherlands. I'm sure you agree with that.

The problem is that isn't what the Tea Party is generally asking for. Rational, centrist Republicans want that, but unfortunately the party has been co-opted by religious radicals who feel that preventing abortion and family planning funding is more important than creating a successful society.

The solution isn't getting rid of government, or changing government so that it matches ones personal Christian ideology - it is creating a better, more effective government. There are many ways to change the US government so that it fosters a more successful, healthy society. Neither way comes from the far-side of ideologies. The US shouldn't become purely Socialist or Communist, just as it shouldn't become a pure free-market. Both sides of the spectrum have their problems, and the only way to solve those problems is by compromising, and accepting the best of both ideologies.

I'll accept that some Republicans have been very reasonable about compromising, and trying to create a more effective government. People like Marco Rubio and Chris Christie I find actually fairly reasonable. I may not agree with all of their policies, but I find them to be rational politicians. They acknowledge that there is a role for government, and that government can be an effective force for positive change.

Now as for the choice between Obama and Romney, I realize that Romney is actually very centrist. He has been forced to take some more radical positions by the base of his party, but overall, I don't think Romney wants to actually do much of what he has been forced to say. I definitely believe that he wants to create a more efficient, streamlined government.

The thing is, Obama is also a centrist. None of Obama's policies have been radical, or anything more than slightly left of center. The choice is between a man who has a history of taking advantage of government to create profits for himself in the private sector, or a man who has been trying to compromise and make government better.

It is an easy choice for me. Obama worked as a community organizer trying to make his community better, while Romney was using the system to make himself richer. I don't think either one is a bad person for their decisions, but it seems clear which I'd rather have as my head of state. I assume you would rather have the opposite, and I can completely respect that.

I understand that you believe Romney will use his experience making corporations turn a profit to reform government and make it more efficient. Keep in mind though that Romney is very pro-establishment.

Romney helped promote protests FOR the Vietnam war. Do you really think that someone like that is going to change government for the better? Doesn't it seem more likely that the most he would do is - at best - preserve the status quo, and - at worst - reinforce the establishment and crony capitalism?

Re:Great plan

[jpapon]

To be honest, I see Romney as a Nixon, and Obama as a JFK who hasn't been assassinated. I don't know who you would vote for in that hypothetical election of 1964, but for me, the choice is clear.

I see Romney as someone who is in bed with corporate interests, and who will use the presidency to support the interests of himself and those of his own class. Romney may be a great guy, but then again, he supported the Vietnam war and bullied a gay student as young man. Obama smoked pot, headed a newspaper, and was a community organizer. That's not really a choice to me.

Not to mention, Romney is a Mormon. I respect his right to worship as he pleases, but the Mormon church is all sorts of crazy. If an atheist were running for President, they would be absolutely grilled over their not believing in god. I don't see anybody asking Romney about how he believes god sent messages to Joseph Smith on a bunch of stones, or that Indians were descendents of lost Israelites who god punished by changing their skin color. How is a non-belief in god any more news-worthy than the canon of Mormon beliefs?

Not that I think Romney is going to let the book of Mormon determine his policy. It just irks me that an atheist could never be President, but a Mormon could.

Re:Great plan

[Magius_AR]

I think it's kind of false to include Social Security in the budget, since Social Security "spending" is really just giving back what we've promised people, and shouldn't really count as government spending since the spending is left to the populace, the government is just distributing the money.

But that's irrelevant. It's an expense in the budget because it's an outlay. It's mandatory spending we must pay year to year that is offset with incoming tax dollars. And those are tax dollars that could have easily better been spent in other places or even better invested by the individuals themselves had the government not taken them in the first place. It isn't just a simple matter of "X" dollars go in, 40 years later "X" dollars come out. I could have done alot of good with that money over that 40 years if I didn't have to pay OASI taxes. To me, that's lost wealth potential, so you better believe it's an expense.

We should without a doubt model our programs on those of other countries that have success with them. Countries like Germany, or the Netherlands. I'm sure you agree with that.

I don't like superlatives. I believe those countries are doing some things right, sure. I also believe circumstances over there are different than the US, and what works for them might not work for us (such as in regard to healthcare). Most importantly, I know Americans aren't going to be willing to pay a 40+% effective tax rate like many of the Europeans do. So it's better to say we should take all systems into account and figure out what's more effective and desired for us.

The problem is that isn't what the Tea Party is generally asking for. Rational, centrist Republicans want that, but unfortunately the party has been co-opted by religious radicals who feel that preventing abortion and family planning funding is more important than creating a successful society.

I agree, I miss the Tea Party prior to it being co-opted.

The solution isn't getting rid of government, or changing government so that it matches ones personal Christian ideology - it is creating a better, more effective government.

I agree here too. The problem is that I believe "a smaller central government" is a better, more effective government. It's a common theme among many of the successful countries as well. Just look at Canada, where each province has its own healthcare implementation.

Neither way comes from the far-side of ideologies. The US shouldn't become purely Socialist or Communist, just as it shouldn't become a pure free-market. Both sides of the spectrum have their problems, and the only way to solve those problems is by compromising, and accepting the best of both ideologies.

I entirely agree with you. However, the problem is this. Most libertarian/conservatives like me believe the country as a whole is more socialist than free market right now. We justify this by pointing out the 50+% of our taxes that go to social spending every year. The democrats on the other side think the country as a whole is more free market than socialist. They normally justify this by pointing to the wealth imbalance or the shitty implementation of the social programs. The problem is that both sides believe the other side should "compromise" and come "closer to the middle" when in reality they can't even agree on the starting point.

I'll accept that some Republicans have been very reasonable about compromising, and trying to create a more effective government. People like Marco Rubio and Chris Christie I find actually fairly reasonable. I may not agree with all of their policies, but I find them to be rational politicians.

Give it time. The insane racist ultra-religious bloc of baby boomers is slowly dying off. A new wave of republicans is on th

Security

[DevotedSkeptic]

Banks got billions in bailout but apparently put none of it into security. Like the bailouts the Banks and politicians win and the consumers lose.

Re:Security

[lightknight]

The power to print money, and give it to your friends, is the power to ensure you and your friends are always on top*.

* For all situations where this is applicable.

Re:Security

[Jane Q. Public]

" Like the bailouts the Banks and politicians win and the consumers lose."

I think most of us realized this 4 years ago.

Re:Security

[Sarten-X]

Because when you get a gift to help pay off a mountain of debt, surely the first thing to do is go buy a new door lock, rather than, say, paying off that debt.

Re:Security

[DarwinSurvivor]

They got way more than enough to pay off that debt, just look at the ridiculous bonuses all the exec's got at the end of that quarter!

Re:Security

[Sarten-X]

I look at the bonuses, and I don't see the problem as being so big.

Re:Security

[sjames]

However, once you're out from under the debt and making money hand over fist, you might want to have a look at that door lock. OH, and try to avoid pissing on the people who fronted you all that cash.

Re:Security

[DarwinSurvivor]

$160,000,000 is still enough to have put a VERY sizable dent in their security issues and any exec that runs a company into the ground (especially a company that is supposed to specialize in MONEY) should be receiving ANY kind of bonus, let alone one with 9 digits.

Something like this was bound to happen...

[dryriver]

The powers-that-be, which includes banks, corporations and lawmakers, have been driving all of us "ordinarylings" towards a future where we are increasingly under 24/7 surveillance, whether we like it or not. They have been building a "surveillance grid" that becomes more sophisticated every day, and that knows everything from what we are buying/consuming, to what we are reading, to where we surf on the net when we get up in the morning, to where we park our cars, or go for an evening walk. ---- In a sense it is almost fair that the people who have been encouraging & bankrolling & constantly expanding this surveillance grid get their own digital lives hacked, and thrown online for everyone to scrutinize. ----- If we weren't surveilled digitally, 24/7, and so cruelly, I would say that these hackers have done "a bad thing". ------- Things being what they are - we are watched every more closely by the surveillance grid - its hard, morally speaking, to blame these hackers for their unorthodox actions and tactics.

Re:Something like this was bound to happen...

[sgrover]

I'm all for exposing the rampant abuses of our privacy and collection of our personal information. BUT, this sort of thing only hurts the public. It does not hurt the people who commissioned the system to collect this data. All that is being exposed here is that some systems that happen to collect information have some security holes that need to be fixed. This fact in itself may be damaging, but only to those who use and/or maintain the system.

The fact that the system exists, and that it can tied with other similar systems to paint a very broad description of a person is the part that should be worrying to the public. Why do we need such a system? Why does it have to talk with other systems? Is the data it is collecting really secret? Or even ours to control? These are the questions I think need to be highlighted. Unfortunately these data dumps, while possibly altruistic in intent, do little to address the real questions. IMO.

Re:Something like this was bound to happen...

[fustakrakich]

BUT, this sort of thing only hurts the public.

Collateral damage! I'm not going to cry over the so called 'innocents' that support a system that's corrupt by design. The very basis of sanctions against a country is to make the lives of its citizens as miserable as possible so that they rebel against their government. To say we don't target civilians in warfare is hogwash. If a government can consider them to be legitimate targets, so can these guys. It's the old 'what goes around comes around', or 'chickens coming home to roost' thing.

Re:Something like this was bound to happen...

[Sarten-X]

MaskBook - The absolutely secure social network! body { background-color: #000; }

Re:Something like this was bound to happen...

[Sarten-X]

What reasonable alternative did the innocents have? Join a non-existent revolution?

The simple fact is that having the conveniences of modern life requires trusting your personal information to others. You can pick which bank you use, but they seldom allow customers to fully inspect their security practices. The innocents are unwilling participants who really have no choice in whether they support the corrupt system or an honest improvement, because they can't tell which option is supporting which system.

Re:Something like this was bound to happen...

[fustakrakich]

To paraphrase:
Those who are unwilling to sacrifice a little convenience for greater liberty deserve neither

Re:Something like this was bound to happen...

[Sarten-X]

I believe the original quote is:

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Or, to paraphrase, They who can give up the their pursuit of happiness in exchange for safety, deserve neither happiness nor safety. The philosophy behind the quote is simple: Absolute safety is not a desirable end in itself, because it invariably comes at the cost of letting people live their lives how they want. In context, that means that if the only route to decent security is to abandon one's ability to lead a modern live with the conveniences thereof, it is instead the security that must be abandoned as a matter of principle.

This is not to say that better security is always detrimental. Rather, if security and modern convenience can both be achieved without compromise, then by all means that is preferable. Again, though, the innocent people involved don't have the choice whether to have security or not. They don't ever get the information to make an informed choice, so they cannot be held responsible for making the wrong one. Every bank claims their security is top-notch, and few actually are.

Re:Something like this was bound to happen...

[fustakrakich]

I'm well aware of the original quote. I'm just responding to 'give me convenience, or give me death'. There are many little ways to resist that can snowball into something that would actually be very effective. If everybody didn't accept authority so passively, the situation would be entirely different. There are no innocents.

Cool, that'll show 'em

[kiwimate]

Score against banks - a bit of a headache, some minor bad P.R., a temporary drop in share price maybe. Don't worry, it'll come back up when the next scandal pushes this one off of people's memories.

Score against the people they're standing up for (the public) - millions of lives ruined as their credit goes to pot, countless hours and days of effort spent to try and recover, thousands of dollars of extra interest payments now their credit score has been dropped down, potential bankruptcies and divorces and split households from the stress...

What a bunch of jackasses. Maybe these people should think who they're really hurting once in a while.

Re:Cool, that'll show 'em

[Anonymous Coward]

Just had an idea: if enough peoples' credit scores are run into the ground by something like this, that means those people won't be able to go into debt even if they wanted to. It also means the banks wouldn't lend them money even if they wanted to. That means banks will end up unable to lend unless they go the subprime route (and they don't know this time who really is subprime with everybody in the ratings gutter). They'd have to fix their systems just to be able to do business. I kind of like that outcome. Too bad this has to happen for people to fix their stuff.

Re:Cool, that'll show 'em

[LMariachi]

How would this lower anyone’s credit rating? Unless they’ve been lying to creditors about their assets/income, in which case their credit rating ought to take a hit.

Re:Cool, that'll show 'em

[Jane Q. Public]

"Score against banks - a bit of a headache, some minor bad P.R., a temporary drop in share price maybe. Don't worry, it'll come back up when the next scandal pushes this one off of people's memories."

Not really. This publicly humiliates their "security" measures. In many cases, they are probably breaking Federal security laws. If I were among those affected, I would try to start or join a class action suit.

"Score against the people they're standing up for (the public) - millions of lives ruined as their credit goes to pot, countless hours and days of effort spent to try and recover, thousands of dollars of extra interest payments now their credit score has been dropped down, potential bankruptcies and divorces and split households from the stress..."

Again, not really. Would you honestly rather have had somebody discover all this in secret, and run off with all the money they could finagle out of it? And not be discovered for months or years later?

Or would you rather have it public, so that The People know about it and can take action against it?

No, you are quite wrong. This WAS the right thing to do.

Re:Cool, that'll show 'em

[phantomfive]

millions of lives ruined as their credit goes to pot, countless hours and days of effort spent to try and recover, thousands of dollars of extra interest payments now their credit score has been dropped down, potential bankruptcies and divorces and split households from the stress...

Why do you think any of that will happen? I think you're making stuff up.

Re:Cool, that'll show 'em

[vlm]

millions of lives ruined as their credit goes to pot

Yeah, how does that work? I've seen this quite a few times in the comments already, and I'm not arguing they're doing the right thing, I'm not arguing no one will be hurt or its not annoying, but I have no idea how your credit gets ruined because someone steals your docs.

I'm old enough to have gotten a couple car loans and mortgages and I've seen my reports, you can request a copy online although its a modestly annoying task.

They are unexpectedly interested in how long the account has been opened (I was surprised to learn that, my guess is its a legal proxy for knowing your age). They're extremely excited about your monthly payment record over the past couple years. They seem interested in default/fraud/NSF-bounce issues in the past couple years. They really like to tabulate your current balance and all kinds of ratios based on those balances as a fairly pointless snapshot. I'm just not seeing a section of the report "number of times account info released by anonymous", perhaps with a graph or something like that.

My wife got her CC stolen probably online, no big deal, bank was nice about it all, no cost to us, doesn't show up on any report that we've seen since. My mom got her info stolen and a truck purchased in her name and driven across the .mx border, again no problem.

So humor me with what an organic chemist would call a reaction mechanism. A droplet containing your bank account number is dropped into the fetid test tube that is the internet and the reaction begins with... I'm looking for a model of how this supposed "destruction" happens? I'm hearing this is financial ebola, but only experienced and heard of a sniffle in similar cases. I'm interested in how this destruction happens.

Re:Cool, that'll show 'em

[jesseck]

Just had an idea: if enough peoples' credit scores are run into the ground by something like this, that means those people won't be able to go into debt even if they wanted to. It also means the banks wouldn't lend them money even if they wanted to. That means banks will end up unable to lend unless they go the subprime route (and they don't know this time who really is subprime with everybody in the ratings gutter). They'd have to fix their systems just to be able to do business. I kind of like that outcome. Too bad this has to happen for people to fix their stuff.

That's about as good as my uncle's idea that if every Veteran were to apply for disability it would make war too costly... it isn't realistic. The rules would be changed to ensure the banks stay in business (including lowering credit score requirements or modifying the metrics), and in the end the consumers would still be hurt. There is big money to be made in banking (for both banks and politicians)- just like there is big money to be made in war.

Re:Cool, that'll show 'em

[Sarten-X]

The credit record is damaged like any other identity theft: Incrementally.

Looking at a few of the leaked details, I see full names, phone numbers, passwords, and answers to verification questions. With knowledge of your bank accounts, anyone can call the person directly claiming to be a representative from the bank, and ask a few security questions. Then they can use the answers to convince the bank to release more details, under the pretense of "verifying some old records". Attackers can build up enough facts and details to open a credit card or get a loan in your name, then run off with the money. Then that monthly payment record that's so exciting turns sour fast, and even if the creditor is helpful in clearing up the fraud, the theft is noted in your fraud history.

It's amazing how much information people will gladly give away to someone claiming to represent their bank who already knows a few details.

A lot of the damage depends on how willing the creditor is to take the loss. Not all banks are "nice about it all", and it's entirely at their discretion what history end up on your report.

Re:Cool, that'll show 'em

[poity]

lol, if we burn down buildings they'd have to build new ones with more fire resistance. BRILLIANT!

Re:Cool, that'll show 'em

[DarwinSurvivor]

Identity theft.

Re:Cool, that'll show 'em

[Xest]

"Score against the people they're standing up for (the public) - millions of lives ruined as their credit goes to pot, countless hours and days of effort spent to try and recover, thousands of dollars of extra interest payments now their credit score has been dropped down, potential bankruptcies and divorces and split households from the stress...

What a bunch of jackasses. Maybe these people should think who they're really hurting once in a while."

Hi, in the UK we have sane banking laws whereby if something like this were to happen to you and you were to get a bad credit score as a result and company giving said bad credit score did not work to reverse this reputation they had given you you could claim a fair amount of compensation.

I don't know what fucked up country you live in, but the fact that this can't actually happen in the UK is evidence enough that your theory that the hackers are responsible for ruining lives is completely ass-backwards and it is in fact inept governance, coupled with perhaps corporate lobbying against such laws by banks against consumer protection that is the fundamental fault.

I had my card details stolen from an online retailer once, and they were used to buy 300 euros of mobile phone credit in Italy within an hour of me taking cash from a cash machine in the UK. This is despite my bank blocking a £720 transaction for a high end monitor from a well known online retailer once, simply because they felt it was a dodgy looking transaction for some god unknown reason. I'm far more angry towards the retailer who obviously allowed my details to be leaked, and the bank for allowing an impossible transaction despite having the ability to jump on other transactions (that were actually legitimate) and inconvenience me when it suits than I am the people who took and sold my details, but despite this it caused my no inconvenience, the bank had to shoulder the interest payments, my credit score didn't suffer one ounce, there was no bankruptcy, there was no split household, and frankly, there was no real fucking stress.

Honestly, either lobby your government, or move to a country where you are actually protected as a consumer and not screwed over for a company's fuckup if it bothers you that much.

Re:Cool, that'll show 'em

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, in other words, you can't win playing a game where one of the players gets to change the rules at a whim, unless you are that player. This is because, the rules will inevitably be changed to some variation of "I win, you lose!" with some thin cover story to make it sound plausible.

Re:Cool, that'll show 'em

[FhnuZoag]

You realise that for a significant number of people, being unable to borrow money means that they literally would die, right?

Re:Cool, that'll show 'em

[DarwinSurvivor]

Call it what you will, but it WILL still ruin your credit rating.

Re:Cool, that'll show 'em

[sjames]

Depending on the form it takes, it may. It is important to call it what it is though lest we (once again) let the guilty parties off the hook. Without the banks stupidly handing money to people with no idea who they are and then reporting information that a 'reasonable man' would recognize as likely false on to credit agencies who in turn happily gossip the hearsay as if it were fact, it would have no effect at all on your credit rating.

Force the banks to take the hit themselves and they'll find a way to not be defrauded so regularly.

Did anyone look at these "dumps"?

[TheRealMindChild]

Seriously, has anyone actually looked at these so called "dumps"? Most of them are a single field from a table, with no relational data to associate the bits. I see email addresses with nothing else. I see [email] addresses with nothing else. I see First and Last names, but nothing else. Phone numbers... the same. Then there are loads of obvious blog style records that is used to populate their "news" and such sections (which are obviously on their front page anyway). Where is the damage?

Re:Did anyone look at these "dumps"?

[Anonymous Coward]

The dump is a load of crap. What they must have done for about 6 months is automatically grab whatever could be hit by some simple vuls and then issue a big swinging-dick advertisement. For example, the "MIT" one is MIT materials science department, the "CIA services" one is a community management company with the initials CIA. Half the pulls look like wordpress databases or some mail merge stuff. If they hadn't labeled the stuff so deceptively, nobody would care.

Re:Did anyone look at these "dumps"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, also a bangladeshi bank, a cypriot tourist office, and some random left-wing european party. Classic script kiddie crap really - don't announce what you're attacking. Find what's vulnerable and shout about it after the fact.

Re:Did anyone look at these "dumps"?

[mi_cuenta]

Mod Parent UP. I took a look at about 20 of the "Dumps", they are pieces of uncorrelated information, tables of web pages served dynamically, a few emails from visitors, a few uncorrelated phone numbers, etc. Nothing usable, and definitely nothing anyone worth the name "hacker" would be proud of.

Re:Did anyone look at these "dumps"?

[guttentag]

Seriously, has anyone actually looked at these so called "dumps"? Most of them are a single field from a table, with no relational data to associate the bits. I see email addresses with nothing else. I see [email] addresses with nothing else. I see First and Last names, but nothing else. Phone numbers... the same. Then there are loads of obvious blog style records that is used to populate their "news" and such sections (which are obviously on their front page anyway). Where is the damage?

Take a look at the navy.mi.th data (for the Royal Thai Navy). There's name, unhashed password, first name, last name, tel number, email address, etc. Picking a dumb password for your military site: amusing. Having your dumb password revealed to the world: priceless. If you're foolish enough to pick a password that's the same as your username, this breach probably didn't reveal anything new:
User/Password
anak/anak
amnuk/amnuk
amnuey/nuey
Anaek/joint
amporn_m/porn
anupat.k/topgun
anuwat.luk/banana
akitti/money
I'm starting to wonder if one of these guys was the database admin...

Re:Did anyone look at these "dumps"?

[rapiddescent]

The peoplemarketing database had plain text admin passwords and plain text passwords for all of their users. Scanning through the passwords, they have the usual mix of first names, nouns and "peoplemarketing" (i.e. the name of the site). It's a fashion recruitment database so it's interesting to see the difference in user behaviour compared against a tech audience. This particular organisation has not tweeted or published the hack (do they know?). I was close to picking up the phone (I am local to them) but I'd probably be end up getting arrested before lunchtime. This nearly happened last time when I informed XileClothing.co.uk that I had come across a hack of their user tables.

There is a common denominator: all of the dumps are from MySQL. I haven't scanned some of the sites to check versions and check for known vulns against the versions - but given the distriubution of sites it looks like they've used a script-kiddie attack with potentially a bit of cleverness if it is an unknown vuln.

also - check out some of the hashed passwords. yep, you guessed it: unsalted md5 in a few cases.

Re:Did anyone look at these "dumps"?

[dunnomattic]

My guess is we're seeing the fruits of the hash-verification bug from this past June in MySQL/MariaDB.

http://www.informationweek.com/security/storage/mysql-database-flaw-leaves-passwords-vul/240001921

nee

[trudyscousin]

The motivation behind the hack, the group claims, is to protest against banks, politicians and the hackers who have been captured by law enforcement agencies.

(emphasis mine)

Yeah, I'd be protesting against those stupid hackers too. I mean, they got caught? Horrors!

Is no one proofreading these submissions?

Re:nee

[neonKow]

Maybe they're protesting against the bankers and politicians who have been captured by LEA too.

Yeah, They Look Like Garbage ...

[eldavojohn]

Seriously, has anyone actually looked at these so called "dumps"? Most of them are a single field from a table, with no relational data to associate the bits. I see email addresses with nothing else. I see [email] addresses with nothing else. I see First and Last names, but nothing else. Phone numbers... the same. Then there are loads of obvious blog style records that is used to populate their "news" and such sections (which are obviously on their front page anyway). Where is the damage?

I've looked at over 20 so far and all have been absolutely worthless. Even the ones that didn't hash their passwords (BookData? what site is that, can't even find their landing page and all the logins look to be JP e-mail addresses) I can't find where I'm supposed to log in. Furthermore, some of these look like some automated testing software when I see rows like:

| NULL | NULL | 1031 | 1' and '7'='2 | false | !S!WCRTESTINPUT000003!E! | NULL |

| NULL | NULL | 1033 | 99999999 or 7=2 | false | !S!WCRTESTINPUT000003!E! | NULL |

| NULL | NULL | 1032 | 99999999 or 7=7 | false | !S!WCRTESTINPUT000003!E! | NULL |

Those two filled in columns are username and password by the way. So I'm going to say there's three possibilities:

1) these are completely fabricated tables mixed in with (like you noticed) front page public news items and HTML to make them look authentic.

2) these are legitimate but just plain crappy sites. How is it that they only get ~1200 user records from a site unless the site is so worthless that it only has 1200 users?

3) they have everything. They have sensitive stuff but what they've done is show the targets that they have been compromised by releasing only the sensitive data that won't hurt the small users. Since they are publishing the structure of the databases and the targeted entities know that if you have access to that structure, you have/had access to all of the many user information.

I can't believe Teenfad hashed their passwords but some of these other seemingly more sensitive sites didn't. Who the hell is storing plain text passwords in a database!? Well, I guess we have a list of worthless sites that do it now.

Data

[cffrost]

Working on it... See for yourself: http://par-anoia.net/midasbank/midas.rar It's 2MB, 21MB text.

No.

[Scorch_Mechanic]

TeamGhostShell, a team linked with the infamous group Anonymous

No.

This is the single most inflammatory and weaselly-worded sentence in the article, and it's the first frigging one.

Perhaps it's pedantic by this point, but I am tired of stupidity like this and I'm just irritable enough right now to attack some misinformation.
"Anonymous" is not a group. It's not a collective. It's not even an "it". Anonymous is synonymous with "the masses", with a specific connotation of anonymity and being on the internet. I'll grant that XxXTeamNameChosenByMiddleSchoolersXxX is a "member" of anonymous, but that's like saying that Barack Obama is a "member" of the human species, it doesn't mean anything useful.

Stop doing this.

Re:No.

[VortexCortex]

I disagree. While I completely understand what you're saying, I think that we should be associating every breach of law with Anonymous. In the short term it makes the name seem more powerful, and the police state can convince us it needs to limit more freedoms to catch members of Anonymous. Over the long term it points out the ridiculousness of hunting down anyone as a "terrorists" simply by labelling them "Anonymous".

Look, it's going to get worse before it gets better. I'd have rather had a better name to rally under when the time comes for that, but one makes do with whatever planet one's on, eh? The sooner it's made apparent to the common folk that "Anonymous" means "average citizen", the better.

Are you now or have you ever been a member of Anonymous?

Re:No.

[Robert Zenz]

...but that's like saying that Barack Obama is a "member" of the human species, it doesn't mean anything useful.

Stop doing this.

This is useful, for everyone else who's not a member of the human species. Like it or not, Anonymous is not what you specify, it is just a group of script kiddies for the most part. It is not a collective, it's a group with a pretty big herd of sheeps which are blindly following it. That is, if we're talking about the group. If we're talking about the concept, I agree.

Pro Under-The-Mattress Hackers?

[adosch]

As much as I'd like to claim same-shit-different-group on this one, what exactly are they protesting? Generally against banks because...you like to keep your money in the place place you stash your Playboy so mom doesn't find it?

Security is inconvenient

[erroneus]

... so let's not do that.

Security requires thoughtfulness, planning, good practices and a lot of things they just don't want to do. These are the consequences of bad security.

That there is dirty laundry or information which might be considered controversial or damaging is another matter.... also too bad for them. But if these targetted parties are learning anything at all, it is that tighter security is important so they don't get caught. They are not learing they shouldn't do things which might look bad if they are exposed.

The mods didn't get the memo

[girlintraining]

Apparently the slashmods missed the memo: "The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that consumers can be bound by an arbitration clause in a cellphone deal or other contract even when state law permits a class-action lawsuit for claims arising from the deal."

Along with a lot of other people, for some reason, despite there being almost a dozen slashdot articles on it. Must be because I'm a troll. You know, one of those fact trolls. Damn you facts! DAAAAAMMMMMNNN YYYOOOOOOUUUU!!!

Re:Protest against what?

[c0lo]

"The motivation behind the hack, the group claims, is to protest against banks, politicians and the hackers who have been captured by law enforcement agencies."

Banks, politicians, and hackers were captured by law enforcement agencies?

The best line would have been "who captured who?"

mod parent deliberately ignorant

[reiisi]

Sure, it's semi-random data from a bunch of semi-random databases.

There are e-mail addresses in there to be harvested. (I'd hesitate to say even that much, but I'm sure the spammers have already jumped all over those.)

There are passwords. Even though at least some are encoded, that still gives crackers something to run rainbow tables against.

I'd mention more, but I really don't want to give random wannabee social engineers too many clues. (Even dead simple ones.)

There are real security issues here, and pretty much every company on-line in the world had better be tightening up ship, asking users to change their passwords, and combing through that data to see what visible dangers there are.

Re:mod parent deliberately ignorant

[dunnomattic]

One of the seemingly non-sensitive tables dumped from a financial firm database was obviously populated from the website's contact form. However, one guy had sent his DOB and SSN in the body of the form submission. So this may be an outlier, but rather important if you're "that guy".

Oddities With Pastebin & Wordpress - WTF?

[Penurious Penguin]

While trying to link to the files (from TFA) on my independently hosted Wordpress-based website, I encountered a very peculiar situation where any attempt to include this link: http://pastebin.com/BuabHTvr -- resulted in a failed or deleted post. That link directs to the files mentioned in the story above. But any effort to include it in a post on Wordpress results in an error message.

I have created a video to document the experience here.

I'd really appreciate any insight as to WTF this is happening. And please pardon the quality in advance; I spent waaaay too much time trying to edit out the black-space, but either I don't get pitivi, or it sucks. Anyway, it must be watched in HD to see the text.

Re:Oddities With Pastebin & Wordpress - WTF?

[Penurious Penguin]

For any unlikely person who cares, I am slightly, but only slightly in error on the pastebin-vs-Wordpress thing. It seems it is not exclusively the URL mentioned above, but all pastebin URLs which cannot be posted. Also, the video has since been changed.

Re:Why are you trying to cover?

[Raenex]

Some lazy assumptions in your analysis

Unreal. He at least took the time to actually look at the data. What did you do? You gave us "lazy assumptions" (that's being generous) like this: "Condemn Intel for insinuating their under-baked IP into all the pipes."

Damages

[dutchwhizzman]

Well, if there weren't any damages, why would this be news?

Re:Downloading Help...

[Robert Zenz]

Looks like a script which downloads all the data from here: https://privatepaste.com/download/450c2e35de

Re:Crackers?

[rapiddescent]

no, it was driveby MySQL vulnerability. using your terrible analogy, it's the equivalent of visiting each organisation across the world looking for a well known safe manufacturer that has a vulnerability in their locking system.

of course invisible sky daddy's hand is invisible

[Thud457]

The free market itself is a myth.

I find your lack of faith in the invisible hand disturbing...


Sorry, I just couldn't let the image of Darth Adam Smith choking some scoffer with an invisible force hand alone...

Who's unreal?

[reiisi]

I took time to dig into the data, before I posted that rant.

Did you?

Like I said, when I make random test addresses I do not bother going to the effort that would have been required if those lists of addresses were fabricated. Maybe someone did go to the trouble, but the data did not look that way to someone who thinks about what the data should look like.

Pointing too much out would be helping wannabee script kiddies, so that's about as far as I'm gonna say here. (It's bad enough to confirm to the spammers who lurk here that there are probably live addresses in those lists.)

I also took time to dig into Intel's, Microsoft's, and now Apple's non-efforts at security.

And I refrain from being more specific about that for similar reasons, but it is precisely because of the no-brainer holes that the market leaders leave in their security that more than half of that load of data was harvested. And it is the market leader wannabees in the Linux communities, trying to "be like the big boys", that have produced similar holes in many of the Free/Open systems available..

Now, who's unreal here?

Re:Who's unreal?

[Raenex]

I took time to dig into the data, before I posted that rant.

Did you?

That's funny, because your post shows no evidence of it, while the post you replied to showed some example data. Who was being lazy again?

I also took time to dig into Intel's, Microsoft's, and now Apple's non-efforts at security.

Again, you show no evidence of it.

And I refrain from being more specific about that for similar reasons

Yeah, whatever. Security flaws are known in any system. A general swipe at a system is meaningless and lazy.

Now, who's unreal here?

You for being an arrogant hypocrite.

Re:Who's unreal?

[reiisi]

If you don't recognize the references I made in my posts, you have not looked at the data yourself.

Which makes your assertions of hypocrisy rather ironic.

Either that or you wouldn't recognize the data, which is a different kind of irony. (And it would be wiser to let you learn how to recognize such things for yourself, because you would likely be more responsible with knowledge you had to work for.)

But, if you really understand what you mean about security flaws being known in any system, why do you complain that anyone would mention the fact? That would rather suggest a cynical kind of hypocrisy on your part -- as if you were trying to shut people like me up so you would have more vulnerable systems to attack.

Re:Who's unreal?

[Raenex]

Yet more empty rhetoric by the lazy hypocrite.

Re:Who's unreal?

[reiisi]

You know, you seem to waste a lot of energy on misguided attempts at social engineering.

Re:Who's unreal?

[Raenex]

As in you think I need your "expertise"? You're delusional.

Re:OCD - can't leave this one as is!

[phantomfive]

No. You absolutely lost it when you put the square brackets in.