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Anonymous Hacks Westboro Baptist Church
elashish14 writes "The Westboro Baptist Church stated earlier this week that they would be picketing the funerals of the victims of Newtown Connecticut's tragic shooting in an effort to bring awareness to their hate messages. In response, the Anonymous hacker collective has hacked their website and posted the personal information of all of its members."
Happy to see Anonymous making themselves truly useful for the first time since Operation Chanology. I can think of nobody more deserving than a kick in the arse than the Westboro mob.
these scum do it because they get the attention they want. ignore them, please!
Westboro Baptist Church wins. Anonymous and Slashdot brings more attention to hate group
. . . if they're alive.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I think they are horrible but I am glad they won many of their lawsuits.
Even though most people, including me, disagree with their opinions that should still be able to picket and print whatever stuff they want.
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
Or a lesson in the fortitude to live up to the harsh strictures of freedom.
To let others be free is to chain yourself.
Just the opposite, I see it as a test for those who claim to be champions of the freedom of expression.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
No they are not. They are emboldened by our willingless to tolerate them becasue we love our country more then we hate them.
Good-bye
What about the rights of the victims' families who don't want to be subject to harassment at a funeral? You have the right to say what you want, but you don't have the right to force me to listen to you by screaming your message outside my house.
WBC's freedom of speech should not be infringed upon. They should not be thrown in jail for their speech, or fined. But "free speech" does not mean "forced listening."
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Westboro Baptist Church is an object lesson in why it's good to have some restrictions on speech, such as limiting it to a reasonable time and place.
I absolutely agree that Westboro Baptist Church's proposed action here is beyond poor taste in this situation -- it is deplorable and disgusting.
However, I also think that limiting speech "to a reasonable time and place" is a really problematic standard as well. Who decides what is "reasonable"?
I think the Bush administration that created "free speech zones" would have argued that they were limiting free speech to places that were "reasonable." The Bush administration did in fact make a similar argument that protestors with a different message and agenda would be disruptive to the purpose of the events that the administration was organizing.
Is the argument about funerals any different? Believe me, I wish the Westboro people wouldn't do this crap. But is there any way we can prohibit peaceful assemblies of people on public property who just happen to have a different message than some other neighboring event, without also condoning crap like "free speech zones"? Or, if we allow families or churches to dictate free speech in surrounding areas on particular occasions, who decides what occasions and what areas? Can corporations take advantage of such protections as well?
I'm not trying to be argumentative here. I'm really wondering if people have good answers about how we can draw a line without also making it a lot easier to trample on free speech rights in a lot of situations that might matter.
And yet if someone is harassing you, you can get a restraining order against them, can you not?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
You would destroy all of the freedoms so many have died for you to obtain -- if only because a group is using speech you deem unacceptable. Shame. Shame on you sir.
I think you are confusing the perspective of ACLU lawyers with the perspective of military veterans. As for the combat veterans I have known they seem perfectly fine with the notion that some speech will get you a kick in the ass or a punch in the face from your fellow citizen.
You seem to have made the error that freedom from government consequences somehow implies freedom from consequences from your fellow citizens.
The WBC should never be prosecuted by the government. But that doesn't mean that they get to act like a-holes. If they were picketing a kids funeral and the father or uncle went up and punched them in the nose and I was on the jury I would find them not guilty. If I was on a jury of the government trying to put them in jail for hate speech I would side with the WBC.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Im willing to bet all the hate comments in here towards them are from americans. Americans love to preach freedom and tollerance but they never want to tollerate things they dont like. The only time they preach tollerance is when someone isnt tollerating them, the only time they preach free speech is when they want to be heard.
If you dont like what that group has to say then dont pay attention to them. Its really that easy. But dont be a stupid american jerk when it comes to someone elses thoughts or opinions you dont like.
Do I agree with them? No. But I will never, I mean never tell them they shouldnt be able to print, say, picket or express their opinions. Nor will I ever approve of censoring them. They should be allowed to say what they want and think what they want. Nazis, whatever the black against white people group there is, KKK or whatever I wont agree with them but I always defend their right to say and think what they want to.
If you tolerate something that means you put up with something you dont like. If you dont tolerate that group then youre not tolerant, your just a closed minded moron. If youre a person who think this group is wrong and youre happy anon attacked them or made some kind of hate comment yourself then youre a bad american and the very people who give us all a bad name.
They are all the same families, and the list is legit. You have to remember its a family business, not a church per se. Not only are they all related, they are mostly lawyers. Old man Phelps finally got disbarred, but his offspring and in-laws are mainly lawyers too, and they file for the church now. Its a lawsuit mill, and its a family business. The ones that go out and protest are only the bait to get either adverse crowd reactions and/or official denials of permits so that the lawyers can file suits against cities and universities for either failing to protect their people from crowd harassment or for 'violating their civil rights' for not giving into their usually pretty unreasonable protest demands as to exact time and location. They especially love universities, as invariably there are students that throw stuff at them or spray them with water, colleges are usually for more prone to settle than some other entities, and its a freebie two-fer anyway as there are usually city or county law enforcement involved as well in 'failing' to protect them from that, so they get two entities to sue for damages instead of just one. The 'Church' makes up to several million dollars a year on the settlements to all the nuisance suits, and have hundreds going at any one time, more than 1000 concurrent ones at some points in the past. Its strictly a business model.
right
and we can't legalize gay marriage because then we have to legalize pedophilia and necrophilia
and we can't legalize marijuana because then we have to legalize meth and crack
the slippery slope is a form of fear based logical fallacy
i can tell the difference between homosexuality and necrophilia. i can tell the difference between marijuana and meth. and i can tell the difference between political speech and hate speech
the slippery slope is an idea that only works in a world where nobody can think and identify different topics. therefore, the slippery slope never works as a persuasive argument
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There were a lot of Christians on my Facebook feed - none of them extremists or anything, mind you - but they certainly felt the need to tell the world that the shootings were a direct result of removing God from the school system.
To me, that is intellectually the same as what the Westboro folks believe. Just without the picketing.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
More violence and killings is the answer???
I also wonder how many baptist churches preach against what this church is doing.
I would imagine quiet a lot of them. I am not affiliated with the Baptists, but my Church certainly condemns their tactics, as do all of the Christians that I know. I am surprised that the Baptist Convention has not attempted to sue them to stop using Baptist in their name. I am sure they have no more affiliation with the Baptist Convention than the "Franklin Mint" has with the Federal Government.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.