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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.
"What to Expect When You're Expecting Anonymous"
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
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
I also wonder how many baptist churches preach against what this church is doing. I mean if a muslim goes out a does something, and every other muslim leader does not immediately condemn the behavior, then all the christians go and condemn all the muslims. So is turnabout fair play?
I would hope that they find the peace of the almighty and work for peace and acceptance that one's faith is not diminished just because others disagree. We have twenty kids dead because we can't just be peaceful and accepting. Now they want to make it worse.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
You didn't mention that thay hacked their website in real time, during a live radio interview. Now, that's an achievement.
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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It's funny, I was just watching Shirley Phelps-Roper (daughter of WBC founder Fred Phelps and a spokesperson for the group) talk on YouTube. The way she speaks ranges from over-the-to self-righteous indignation to outright hysteria.
Somehow, she's exactly what I'd expect from an IRL internet troll.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
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
I've always held that anyone is free to speak their mind, even if I don't agree with what they're saying.
If Westboro Baptist Church was really planning to interfere with the tragedy that has happened at Newtown, they've sunk to a level so low that no reasonable Christian should want anything to do with them. Scum.
This is too far. I don't want to say any more to further dirty the pain the families and the trauma the survivors are going through.
I think you'll find that most reasonable Christians DON'T want anything to do with these clowns. A lot of people in my church are VERY conservative, and even they are appalled anytime one of the WBC crazies opens their mouth. Small sample size, yes. But I've found it to be true in other locations as well.
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
We The People petition: Legally recognize westboro baptist church as a hate group
This is how the supreme court interprets it, speech can be limited in this way.
Not everyone agrees on where the exact line between reasonable and unreasonable lies, but certainly there are times when most people agree it is unreasonable (in the middle of the night with a bull-horn in a residential neighborhood when everyone is sleeping counts as unreasonable; telling the victims' families that god hates them and their children are in hell during the funeral counts as unreasonable).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The one thing those haters from Westboro Baptist Church is after is notoriety - I mean, nobody with a sound mind would do what they are doing.
By hacking the websites of the Westboro Baptist Church, and by turning this event into a worldwide thing - face it, the news of the hacking of Westboro Baptist Church website has become a sensational news by itself, else /. wouldn't have carried it - what the Anonymous are doing, while still commendable, is to play it into the hands of those haters.
The best way to deal with haters is to ignore them.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
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.
Perhaps, but you personally also favor limitations on free speech.
For example, imagine if someone wanted to enter your house to give you a message and tell you how blind, and what a sheeple you are. Would you let them enter your house? What if they stood outside your residence at 3:00AM, with a bullhorn, and woke up everyone on the street with a message saying that all white people are evil and should be slaughtered?
Would you accept it as a test of your commitment to freedom?
It is possible for someone to both champion freedom of speech, and also believe that you shouldn't harass people at a funeral.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
After some further reading the dispute is a little more complex.
aparantly someone had earlier hacked the WBC, claiming to be anonymous, but it really wasn't.
Anonymous refuted, and even apologized, and tried to explain this to WBC. WBC, didn't want to back down, and kept talking smack to anonymous, and kept provoking anonymous.
Today WBC found out what happened when you kick a sleeping bear.
They were not silenced for the speech, and the WBC does not "win", and this has nothing to do with their ongoing campaign against everything for tollerating gays.
This his what happens when the sped kid keeps picking a fight with the biggest kid in class, and he finally runs out of patience.
Whatever they want? At what point does it cross over from them exercising their freedom of speech to infringing on others rights not to give a fuck, to feel safe, or not to be harassed? Even with freedoms, there are limits to how far those freedoms extend.
There have always been recognized limits to free speech. There are components of that here, especially as WBC doing this has been proven to be not political or religious speech, but simply a business model. They are lawsuit trolls. They go anywhere they can incite people, go to the nearest area to it that has an entity with deep pockets (like universities, etc), and attempt to 'protest' in the least practical and palatable manner, and then file suits against everyone involved. They had at one time roughly 1000 suits going in federal and state courts at any given time there for awhile, I am sure that hasn't changed any.
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.
After the Virginia Tech shootings the WBC threatened to protest the funerals. Some radio guy offered to let them have air time in exchange for not doing so.
As a friend of one of the people killed in those shootings I was very happy the family wouldn't go through this even if it resulted in a sick group like the WBC getting radio air time.
I think we would be serving the families of these new victims well by making some sort of similar compromise. I doubt anywhere near the number of people listened to that radio interview as would have seen the protests in the news, so I don't think it even helps the WBC cause at all.
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.
Free speech is not just speech you just like. It's any speech.
Wrong. The constitution only prevents government reprisals or discrimination against a speaker. Private citizens are under no such prohibition. Private citizens are free to punish speakers, that is what recent boycotts against Chick-fil-A were. All we can really say is that Anon is choosing to punish in an illegal manner.
Someone on Fark pointed out that the WBC aren't really haters, or even Christians, just a bunch of lawyers trying to make extortion money from the threat of (very carefully and legally) exercising their 1st Amendment rights:
http://www.fark.com/comments/7488418/81313473#c81313473
The appropriate response is actually to just organize counter-protests that block or drown out their feeble message, until hopefully they run out of money.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/04/AR2011030406330.html
But anytime someone actually blocks them illegally, they get to sue and collect some settlement and they get their payday.
I suppose the DDoS helps them bleed money as well, But probably not enough, esp. if they manage to catch and sue the perpetrators.
See here - http://kanewj.com/wbc/
They are con men.
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???
You do not have the right to say whatever you want. Hate speech or inciting violence are not protected. Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 1942.
"There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or "fighting" words those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality."
And that was the unanimous opinion of the Supreme Court. So no, people did not die for us to have the freedom to hurt each other with hate speech.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.