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When Hacking Vigilantism Infringes On Free Speech (betanews.com)
An anonymous reader writes: I'm inclined to agree with the suggestion people make that the web is like the Wild West, but that's not to say we have reached the same conclusion for the same reasons. For me, the web — like the Wild West — is not a world filled with danger, but one occupied by vigilantes. As a proponent of free speech, I find this concerning. One of the most highly-lauded of vigilantes is the disparate group marching under the ragged banner of Anonymous.
One of its taglines is 'We Are Anonymous', a phrase that can be uttered by anyone, as there is no membership process — if you say you are part of Anonymous, you are part of Anonymous. The group is not, for the most part, organized. Individuals and factions can fight for or against whatever cause they want, just like real-world vigilante groups. But Anonymous is not alone. There are hacking collectives and other online crusaders who see fit to take the law into their own hands. This is might sound wonderful, but it's not necessarily a good thing. As New World Hackers demonstrate, attacks can target the wrong people and restrict free speech.
One of its taglines is 'We Are Anonymous', a phrase that can be uttered by anyone, as there is no membership process — if you say you are part of Anonymous, you are part of Anonymous. The group is not, for the most part, organized. Individuals and factions can fight for or against whatever cause they want, just like real-world vigilante groups. But Anonymous is not alone. There are hacking collectives and other online crusaders who see fit to take the law into their own hands. This is might sound wonderful, but it's not necessarily a good thing. As New World Hackers demonstrate, attacks can target the wrong people and restrict free speech.
You can say whatever you want as long I agree with it.
There are a lot of groups that have no membership process. Like Christianity, Anonymous has different groups, and each of those groups will have a membership process.
Now that you have identified the problem, which makes some sense, is there something we can do about it without sacrificing free speech?
(Note to detractors about using Christianity as an example, find a single thing that is common among Christians without counter example - I can think of only one: people are/were involved).
"I'm inclined to agree with the suggestion that people make that the web is like the Wild West, but that's not to say that we have reached the same conclusion for the same reasons. "
This does not parse.
when people disagree to an extreme and those in authority do nothing, you wind up with vigilantes. this is nothing new, it's simply "with a computer" which like with patents, doesn't make it novel.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
It's beautifully ironic that free speech is fine as long as you say what people want to hear. I don't like trump but he has every right to spew what he wants. You can't have a claim to free speech whilst simultaneously stifling someone else's.
Single thing in common amount Christians? Hmm being Christian? :p
I'm honestly not that worried about hacktivists. They might take a website offline for a couple of days and otherwise be annoying, but ultimately after they've made their stink they move on and things progress as normal.
What I worry about is SJW-sponsored censorship like we're seeing on Twitter and Facebook these days. Support Trump? Tell off-color jokes from time to time? Hope you're prepared to deal with the SJWs getting you banned from Twitter and Facebook. If you're lucky, they'll stop there. More likely, they'll doxx you and harass your boss until you get fired.
Hacktivists just annoy people briefly. It's the SJWs getting their brand of censorship baked into the terms of service of popular social media and blogging sites that have me worried. They're the ones who are really going to block freedom of speech by making it so that anyone who exercises their freedom of speech faces the possibility of being effectively blacklisted from ever working again. (See Trump being fired from his own reality TV show for telling the truth about immigration in the US. Now imagine that same thing used against someone without the resources to shrug it off.)
I am shocked, shocked that vigilantism has problems.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
but everyone else can.
Can you define this characteristic objectively? If not, then when someone says they possess the characteristic, you probably just have to take their word for it. And that's exactly how I think many public Christians are. They offer proof of their being Christian via Bible quotes, and it's well-accepted the Bible says many things which do not form a unified, coherent anything.
Personally I'd say naivety but that's coming from an agnostic so maybe not the best person to find a common quality amongst Christians.
Although I'm not a fan of everything they do, I respect their political activism. I follow the "YourAnonNews" twitter feed and I find many stories of interest that do not show up in the mainstream media. Just as in the normal population, there are bad people among them. One thing's for sure though; no matter whose side you're on, it always makes for good entertainment.
By using the term "SJW", you have outed yourself as someone who has had to deal with annoying, attention-seeking, dishonest, power-hungry, hypocritcal SJWs.
It is might sound confusions, but does try of connotations can vaguely the meaningness.
You can say whatever you want as long I don't strongly enough disagree with it. Justice is subjective. Etc.
Actually I think you are quite correct, the original statement does allow for the label of Christian to be attached by one's self. Another thought: Are you using 'agnostic' to mean a middle ground between atheist and theist, or using it in its proper "lack of knowledge" form to say that we cannot know? Noting that atheism is related to the belief and agnosticism is related to the ability to have knowledge specifically.
Vigilantes exist because the law (both legislative and executive) has failed or is even used as a shield for crime. The internet is faced with huge amounts of corruption. Network providers inject data, record data, throttle data. They sell out their customers at any opportunity, and the law doesn't just fail to do anything about it, it even encourages that kind of behavior. Copyright monopolies are extended indefinitely, even though copying is the natural activity in a digital world. The government snoops on everybody, in violation of the law that it is supposed to uphold. It'll be a long time before we don't need vigilantes anymore.
I use it as I believe in the original context as to state we have no proof either way thus cannot conclude fact or fiction. Must admit I am ignorant as to how the other definition came to be.
Mean girls came and took over Twitter and Reddit now I'm a sad boy :'( :'(
That is definitely the correct usage. Literally from the Greek:
a-1 + Gnostic.
(American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
First attested in 1870; coined by Thomas Huxley. Either from Ancient Greek (agnstos, "ignorant, not knowing") or from a- + Gnostic. Deriving (either way) from Ancient Greek - (a-, "not") + (gignsk, "I know"). (Wiktionary)
I suspect the idea of a middle ground came from the idea of it not being committing fully to disbelief or to belief.
Thank you for that. I suspect there is a need for a word to describe noncommittal ideals rather than to lump it in with agnosticism itself.
"All . . . will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect and to violate would be oppression." - Thomas Jefferson
Co-opting a bunch of compromised Microsoft Windows desktops to be used in a DDOS attacks is not hacking ..
Free speech is a mostly american thing. Pretty much everywhere else on the planet has enough laws regarding what you can say to make your head spin.
Once again we need to stop trying to force american laws and values upon the rest of the world, including the internet, which is world wide.
I am Coward! Anonymous is my first name.
Trump is a purveyor of vile and ignorant ideas, but the more he speaks, the dumber he looks, and the more people are turned off by him. Yes, some Americans are sucked in by this. But will a majority elect him? I doubt it, but if they do, American voters will learn the hard way not to cut off their nose to spite their face.
I don't condone the hacking but in a perverse way its leveling the playing field. Trump is filthy rich and gives him a much louder voice than any of us. This is what SCOTUS' regretable citizens united decision overlooked. That said despite the hacking his voice remains very loud. Countering his views with intelligent debate and giving voters a genuine alternative at the elections is a better approach.
As for Anonymous, anonymity it is essential in a Democracy: "The US Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized rights to speak anonymously derived from the First Amendment" because it is the only way for the weak to criticize the powerful without being bludgeoned by them. https://www.eff.org/issues/ano...
Look, we all understand the desire to do something good.
Particularly in the case of some perceived injustice - a rape victim is disregarded, for example.
The problem is firstly that we don't have a universal definition of good.
Missionaries bringing Christianity to the 'heathens' in Darkest Africa thought they were GENUINELY doing good - saving these people's souls, bringing them education, clothes, technology. The next time you start getting all righteous about doing something for someone else's best interest, understand that morally you are PRECISELY in the same position as that Missionary.
The second problem of course is one of information. PARTICULARLY in the age of the internet, we tend to judge in the first few seconds, and then everything else we hear either validates that gut-judgement, or is discarded as "biased".
That rape victim? What if she was, in fact, lying?
We have a process for punishing wrongdoers, it's called the Law. It's absolutely not perfect, an in many ways it's outright broken. But THAT is where we need to spend our energy and efforts: fix that, and everything improves.
-Styopa
... of course only meant to prevent the *government* from interfering and preventing free speech.
That was back in the days when saying something really stupid or wrong would get you mixed up in a duel or shunned by the entire community so that you had to leave that community pretty quick. Which, somewhat, has it's modern equivalent in those Hacking Vigilantes.
What does it mean to define something objectively?
Another model would be that for contested terms, different people will assign different boundaries to the terms, and so there will be disagreement as to who fits what model but each viewer rather than each subject chooses how to categorise things. Even though it leads to disagreements when the subjects are humans with their own views.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Hacktivists just annoy people briefly. It's the SJWs getting their brand of censorship baked into the terms of service of popular social media and blogging sites that have me worried. They're the ones who are really going to block freedom of speech by making it so that anyone who exercises their freedom of speech faces the possibility of being effectively blacklisted from ever working again. (See Trump being fired from his own reality TV show for telling the truth about immigration in the US. Now imagine that same thing used against someone without the resources to shrug it off.)
Spot on. Bit of a red flag in the summary:
As New World Hackers demonstrate, attacks can target the wrong people and restrict free speech.
I'd like to give this phrasing the benefit of the doubt, but after seeing countless anti-Gamergate types behave according to the mantra "No bad tactics--only bad targets," I really can't. You're part of the problem if you don't understand that Trump is as much the "wrong" person as the BBC, and those who act to silence him also "restrict free speech."
...think it means.
Free speech is not protected or even considered free speech if it's not the government trying to squelch you. You can't just say anything you want and then expect everyone to be okay with it. If someone hacked your website, they are not taking away your right to free speech. They hacked your website.
You only have a right to free speech when the government is involved. Your work, your family, hackers on the internet and anyone else can attempt to silence you, free speech does not exist in the civil arena. You can get sued just for saying someone is an asshole. Free speech?
The whole thing is stupid. Can we have a free speech class on Slashdot instead of this drivel?
That would be the subset of Christians called Catholics. Protestants, Baptists, etc don't really care what the Pope says.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Anonymous isn't really what people think it is. Yes, anyone can claim to be them, but they do occasionally have high level people deny actions taken by others. The biggest trick to anonymous is they let all the little guys take the fall while the upper echelon sites back and watches the show.
They instigate the masses.
Free Speech is a LEGAL CONCEPT. Unless the hacking is done by a government, there is no "violation of free speech".
..and in the end be wrong, than it is to stand for nothing at all -- and so it goes with these so-called 'vigilante' groups this guy is talking about.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
The politics have become the same. Old Anonymous was in defense of what is actually persecuted; new Anonymous defends what 99% of people agree with, which is liberal democracy + consumerism.
Self-referential.
Eastern Orthodox churches would beg to differ.
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Actually, there's something to this definition. Christianity (the major world religion) does have loose organisation at the national and international level, as a network of ecumenical organisations. Many countries have a national council of churches, most denominations have one (e.g. Anglican Communion, World Methodist Council, etc). A church is "Christian" if it is part of the network; that means it's in communion with other Christian churches. Someone is a Christian if they are part of that.
If you go by this definition, then pretty much every reasonably-sized denomination that you can name is "Christian". The one notable exception is the Southern Baptist Convention, which voluntarily withdrew from its last ecumenical communion (the Baptist World Alliance) in 2004. As of that date, the SBC is (in a technical sense) not part of Christianity.
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> what is meant when we say we are guaranteed to a right of free speech is limited to being *mostly* guaranteed that the government is not supposed to interfere with our right to free speech.
You accurately described th first amendment, but not th right of free speech. The FIRST AMENDMENT says that the government may not infringe the right of free speech. Note it says "THE right of free speech, not "A new right of free speech", just as you said "our right of free speech" must not be interfered with. This is because the right of free speech was recognized at least 40 years before the first amendment was written.
You say government is prohibited from infringing your right to free speech. Government can't be prohibited from taking back something if THEY GAVE IT TO YOU. Since government is prohibited from taking them, your rights must have come from somewhere else.
The first amendment protects the right of free speech, it did not create the right. (You'll notice the wording of the Constitution doesn't ever claim to create a right. Rather it enjoins the government from infringing the rights of the people.)
This makes perfect sense if you think about the definition of a "right". Is the right of free speech mean that you can say whatever the majority approves of? The essence of a right is you can do certain things regardless of what the majority thinks! That's that's the defining characteristic of a right, the fact that it exists and the majority can't vote it out of existence (though they could -infringe- your rights) . Hmm, if your neighbors can't legitimately vote your rights away, that must mean they didn't give them to you in the first place. If rights came from the government, or from the Convention, whoever gave you those rights would be could legitimately take them away at any time. The fact that no government document can legitimately eliminate rights means that they cannot have been created by a government document. Rather, certain rights must be part of the dignity of mankind; you are Barak Obama must have the same right to speak your mind based on being human beings.
Anonymous threatens free speech? How about massively popular social media platforms like Facebook that censor comments and images while offering very little recourse to the subjects of censorship? Facebook, Twitter and other such media have become so pervasive that the old "if you don't like it, don't use it" defense doesn't really apply anymore.
And how about the chilling effect of forcing people to use their real names if they're going to participate in discussions on-line? What happens to your job if your employer finds out your religion (or lack of it), sexuality, or political opinion differs significantly from theirs?
Let's not forget the police and letter agencies, either. We're now at a point where one's location, travel history, and other metadata, financial records and literally everything said or done, or even looked at on-line is subject to their examination with little or no oversight. Think that might prevent people from speaking freely? (I mean "speak" in the broadest possible sense of the word, by the way).
And how about the thuggish actions of various police forces during legal demonstrations over the last few years? Who can chance raising one's voice in public protest when the consequences might very well be employment-threatening injuries and perhaps a place on the No Fly List?
Claiming Anonymous is a significant threat to free speech in an age when these and other more serious threats exist is like complaining about a pea-shooter during a firefight.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Anyone who thinks that anonymous is a headless organisation is deluded. It had leaders who hide behind computer screens. Who are these "community organizers" really? More than likely covert government entities who are using bandwagonism to get dirty deeds done dead free. Think CIA, GCHQ, Mosad etc.
As "hacking vigilantism" or anything like that. There are things which are legal and things which are illegal. Hacking is illegal. Vigilantism is illegal. Those who engage in this kind of activities are criminals and must be prosecuted.
Christianity is made up of all the people believing there is something special about this 'Jesus Christ' guy. They do not have to be organized in any way (although many are, with priests & bishops & membership churces.) The SBC does not leave christianity by refusing to cooperate through ecumenical processes. They could only ever leave christianity by refusing Jesus/God.
tl:dr "only the system our masters control is allowed to make mistakes."
Oh, the irony.
The NSA are part of Anonymous...
If you pull together the known writings, even the writings outside the orthodox (small 'o') canon, you can derive a few lowest common denominator items.
For instance, belief in, and submission to the monotheistic Creator is one.
If you are an atheist or agnostic, you can count yourself out. Even if you subscribe to certain specific teachings of Christ. The teachings of non-violence come to mind.
There are a few others, which many people appear to easily subscribe to, but they fail at when they are tested.
For instance, ordering a Crusade is not a Christian act, even if the pope does it. If Christ himself didn't storm Jerusalem when he had the chance for a popular rising, or even allow his person to be defended from unjust arrest, how can *anyone* suggest that it is Christian to attack someone to take Jerusalem?
Being an actual Christian, as opposed to labeling yourself one, is pretty damned hard to qualify for. Being a member of say, Anonymous, is specifically open to everyone, no matter what you believe and no one can contradict you by definition.
How does this infringe on free speech?
There is an old History professor's joke about the Anarchist Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.
"They were great fighters, but suffered from a lack of organization."
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
Christianity is made up of all the people believing there is something special about this 'Jesus Christ' guy. They do not have to be organized in any way (although many are, with priests & bishops & membership churces.) The SBC does not leave christianity by refusing to cooperate through ecumenical processes. They could only ever leave christianity by refusing Jesus/God.
So Islamic people are Christians because they believe Jesus was a special dude?
Also, a lot of Catholics (and other Christians) do not live by Christian rules, but do call themselves Christian.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes