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When Hacking Vigilantism Infringes On Free Speech (betanews.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the collateral-damage dept.

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.

19 of 229 comments (clear)

  1. SJW by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You can say whatever you want as long I agree with it.

    1. Re:SJW by crow_t_robot · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I have never been effectively silenced by any SJW's. Are you a pussy or something?

    2. Re:SJW by dunkindave · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you stand on someone's private property (including their online property) and spout hatred toward them there is nothing in the law to keep them from kicking you out.

      Unfortunately in your example, invoking the use of verbally spouting hatred is a red hearing. If you are standing on THEIR PROPERTY, they can kick you out no matter what you are doing or saying, or not doing or saying.

      The issues do however get more complex if the property is intended to be publicly accessible, like a store or restaurant, and the reason for kicking the person out is their inclusion in a legally protected group (race, ethnicity, religion, gender, handicapped, etc), but what they are saying isn't in any of those categories (though people often try to spin it into such a claim, like saying they were denouncing police harassment of [pick some group] and their being ejected is because they are part of that group, not because they were being loud, annoying, harassing, blocking aisles, not buying anything, etc).

    3. Re: SJW by epyT-R · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Nope. People like trump have the money to speak freely IN SPITE of SJWs. Average people increasingly cannot without being fired from jobs, kicked out of college, or falsely accused of heinous crimes.

    4. Re: SJW by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Try saying things like supporting the Constitution, rule of law, personal responsibility, or quoting people like Virgil, Thomas Jefferson, or MLK in support of your arguments.

      I have done all of those things, I have never been silenced by a SJW, and I get modded up far more often than I get modded down. You may not agree with everything the SJWs say, but they have a right to say it. Stop whining.

    5. Re: SJW by Pseudonym · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Pretty much exactly this. While the Westboro Baptist Church is still in business, nobody is going to shut you (whoever "you" are) down.

      --
      sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
  2. cause and effect by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.
  3. Pathetic by liqu1d · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. I'm not worried about hacktivists by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    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.)

  5. Re:If you say your Christian, you are Christian... by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 4, Insightful

    (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).

    all divisions of Christianity believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  6. Vigilantees not the best justicae system? by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I am shocked, shocked that vigilantism has problems.

    --
    Your ad here. Ask me how!
    1. Re:Vigilantees not the best justicae system? by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > It gets funny when you realize that vigilantes are what appears when the government is not doing its job.

      It appears when government is not doing the job that at least some people want. This also includes government agents operating outside the law, the KKK, and corporations hiring private security to beat union protesters. Vigilantism occurs when the government is unwilling to follow someone's policy, whether that policy is law or not.

      It also includes most terrorists. The Taliban and ISIS themselves want Sharia law applied universally, and have killed many who refuse this religious law, despite the local government's clear rejection of murdering people for adultery or murdering women for speaking out for women's rights.

  7. Outed by Kunedog · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re: Outed by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1, Insightful

      words evolve, and SJW is a term defining those people in todays world

      Indeed words do evolve. SJW is now a synonym for "miscellaneous things I hate on the intenet"/"big evil boogeyman" and has further evolved so that anyone using it without irony has readily identified themselves as a very, very silly person.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    2. Re: Outed by tehcyder · · Score: 1, Insightful

      words evolve, and SJW is a term defining those people in todays world

      It only "defines" them in the eyes of the people who use the term.

      And that definition really amounts to no more than: it's someone whose views I don't like and who is more left wing than me and therefore I don't like their views because anyone left wing is wrong.

      It is as wide and useless a term as when revolutionary Maoists call anyone outside their particular claque "fascists" including Marxist-Leninists or Trotskyists.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
  8. Like in the wild west, the law is often worse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  9. It's almost like vigilantism is a bad thing? by argStyopa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
  10. Anonymous isnt by topham · · Score: 1, Insightful

    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.

  11. your words betray you by raymorris · · Score: 3, Insightful

    > 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.