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Anonymous Warhead Targets US Sentencing Commission
theodp writes "Late Friday, Violet Blue reports, the U.S. Sentencing Commission website was hacked and government files distributed by Anonymous in 'Operation Last Resort.' The U.S. Sentencing Commission sets guidelines for sentencing in United States Federal courts, and on the defaced ussc.gov website Anonymous cited the recent suicide of Aaron Swartz as 'a line that has been crossed.' Calling the launch of its new campaign a "warhead," Anonymous vowed, 'This time there will be change, or there will be chaos.'"
Adds reader emil: "Anonymous has not specified exactly what files they have obtained. The various files were named after Supreme Court judges. At a regular interval commencing today, Anonymous will choose one media outlet and supply them with heavily redacted partial contents."
..to who actually makes the law as it is practiced in united states.
you'd think that the sentencing guidelines would be written to the law, but no??
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Idea: let's give in to what they want. Bow deeply and honestly, and maybe they might forgive us our sins. What could possibly go wrong? After all, these attacks would certainly cease.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I'm not gonna go into whether or not this "warhead" business is a good idea. It's probably not, since it wouldn't be what Aaron Swartz himself would. He would have made a lot of noise and brought public attention had he been able to cope, but defacements were beneath him. Also, it's likely just dirt courtesy of WikiLeaks.
But whatever hope anyone had about restoring that term to what it was just went up in a flame of digital smoke.
If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
Methinks this is more hoax than serious threat. I checked Google's cache of the vandalized USSC site and found the instruction to create the "Warhead" file near the bottom of the page:
$ cat Scalia* Kennedy* Thomas* Ginsburg* Breyer* Roberts* Alito* Sotomayor* Kagan* > Warhead-US-DOJ-LEA-2013.aes256 && rm -rf /
Anonymous will choose one media outlet and supply them with heavily redacted partial contents.
Well, that's one way to get the word out -- but word to the wise, going upstairs and showing your mom doesn't count as a "media outlet."
Breakfast served all day!
At least somebody is standing up for our rights. Let's face it - most people just want to stuff their face with junk food and watch American Idol. They don't like to question authority because doing that makes them feel uncomfortable. Most people are sheep.
Yes, hear hear! They are liberating us. But there was something odd from the summary:
At a regular interval commencing today, we will choose one media outlet and supply them with heavily redacted partial contents of the file.
Ah, so the "information wants to be free" right up until it's you who has access to the information. We have been liberated from being manipulated "sheep" of the US government and are now part of a flock shepherded by anonymous individuals? And ... uh ... that has gained us what exactly? Out of the frying pan into the fire? If I can't trust the US Government and I can name their members, how can I trust Anonymous whom I cannot name?
My work here is dung.
The "We immediately convened an emergency council blah blah blah" thing just reeks of pre-teen chat rooms or IRC channels (back in the day).
The video was pretty good quality, and I agree with the message. But *please*.
Here we go again. Stop posturing and just publish the documents. As appealing as fighting for justice and equality, this grand standing and attempt to use "secret" information to extract concession is at best juvenile, at worst a power game. Neither of which serves to advance justice and equality.
If there is information pertinent to illegal or unethical government action. Just publish it and let the public judge for themselves. Otherwise, how is the blackmail strategy of Anonymous different from that of our governments.
This is typical of Anonymous's "hacktivism". The problems with federal prosecutor over reach has been a problem for decades, but Anonymous didn't care at all about it until it impacted one of their own. And even now they're focussed purely on retaliating over someone who can't be helped rather than trying to get publicity for the thousands of other (mostly poor and minority) people out there right now being victimized just the same way.
And to top it all off, the organization they decide to attack is the USSC, one of the few parts of the government that actually been an ally on this issue (for example, by criticizing the way drug sentencing is biased against minorities).
Everyone will argue whether this is a good idea, whether we should "work within the system", whether this is something that Aaron would have done, "ballot box, soapbox, ammo box", and so on. The arguments are patently obvious, and not particularly new or innovative. We've heard it all before, here and elsewhere.
The federal government has always been toxic to the citizenry, and it seems like in recent years the level of malevolence and spite from the people in charge have reached critical levels. Like a pot of superheated water, a nucleating agent will make the whole thing flash to steam.
Efforts to fix the problem from within have failed. The system is flexible enough that it will change to prevent any attempts to fix it. People have been trying for years, to no avail. (People have voted for smaller government, less war, and human rights for decades - how has that worked out?)
Most of what we depend on for civilization does not come from the federal government. The protections of law, community services, even many entitlements are run at the state level. We could do away with the federal government almost entirely and everyday life would continue uninterrupted.
(Would anyone notice if suddenly we no longer had a war on drugs, no searches at airports, no wars fought on foreign soil, no foreign military bases? Could we just dispense with all military and discretionary spending, leaving social security, medicare, and VA benefits intact? Who would attack us if we didn't have a military? How much would productivity increase if instead of paying to keep people in prison, we freed people to become taxpayers?)
People are losing faith in the government. At some point, government is no longer an asset to the people, but a tumor which must be attacked and destroyed.
If you dislike the tactics Anonymous are using, then by all means show us your alternative.
Otherwise, outright hostility towards the federal government will increase and people will eventually realize that having no federal government is better than what we have now.
At that point it will all come tumbling down - very quickly.
All it takes is a spark, a nucleating incident, or a viral video.
You are faced with overwhelming public outcry about injustice. Daily press reveals ever more injustice, fanning flames. Whitehouse petition obligates response. Congressional investigations, laws proposed to rein you in. A martyr. What to do? "Hack" your own website and make threats against the Supremes so you can take the line "We do not negotiate with terrorists." Close book, no investigation needed. Brilliant!
Help stamp out iliturcy.
No, what happened to him was that he was persecuted by the feds beyond any measure of proportionality between his crime and the possible sentence. When fascists destroy people, should we blame the victims or the jackbooted thugs? I vote we blame the MFing thugs.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
only white hackers can be called "crackers"
that is our word, we can call each other "cracka", and "Cracka please" but only white hackers can use that word otherwise you are racist and prejudiced against white hackers
go join the nackers if you don't want to be around the crackers :P
http://xkcd.com/932/
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
This is only the case if 1) You edit with such intent and change the meaning of the document and 2) Refuse to provide the complete document at a later date. I see no reason that Anonymous would follow either of these practices in this case, and furthermore they have a distinct history of doing the opposite. For instance, several documents from the Arab world that were released initially with redacted names in order to protect a number of opposition voices during various movements, but were revealed in their entirety later.
If someone intends to distort credibility (especially of whistleblowers, as we've seen constantly in these past few years) its easy to say "You're redacting too much, you're not redacting enough, you're releasing too much, you're not releasing enough etc...". You can't make anyone happy, but especially when fighting against a massive foe with a huge disinformation and propaganda complex that is bent on swaying public, you have to make some strategic decisions. The biggest clarion call the US government issued to try Wikileaks in the court of public opinion (aside from calling Assange a rapist, of course) was to claim that because of the leaks, individuals with protected identities would die; the story of agents being revealed and being compromised/killed was a constant hypothetical in the media - despite the fact that proper investigation proved that not a single leaked document led to any vulnerability of the sort! However, it was part of the disinformation campaign to convince the public that whistleblowers and even those who presented leaks like Wikileaks and journalists were responsible for security breaches leading to compromise/death of Americans, repeated frequently enough, that convinced many to overlook the real content of the leaks and instead just have a "gut feeling" that somehow they were against national security - just as planned. Thus, at least an initial, smartly redacted release can provide a factual counterpoint to the propaganda and show that these releases were done "crossing the t's, dotting the i's".