SpawnPoint - Where Game Begins

The Government will just denie all these accusations.

I'm going to keep this short for now and expand on it tomorrow morning.

In short, Xem, not they won't. They've already made it abundantly clear that these files are legitimate. They will not deny anything, they will deal with it.

Also, I'm completely behind what Wikileaks is doing - I know that I'll catch a lot of you know what for that, and I already do, but I believe that if the government has nothing to hide, then they have nothing to worry about and, considering they're worrying, they have something to hide. I want to know what's going on in my government.

Julian quoted this, I'm not sure of the original sayer, but "The ends always justify the means." In that, no matter what political-storm ensues, the reforms will bring about a new era of more transparent, more responsible politics. (IMO)

I'm also standing with WikiLeaks.

It may be true that there are documents that might endanger some situations.
But every great change comes with a prize "unfortunate"

Normal citizens like you and me should know what our government is doing. We select those politicians to lead our country and in my eyes, we should have the rights to know what they are doing.
If this is the way to let the governments be more transparent, then let it be this way.

Besides, on this way the US and other countries might improve it's securities. I rather see WikiLeaks releasing some documents then to see some terrorist groups commiting actions to more vulnerable targets.

That's my say about WikiLeaks

I think the wiki leak guy should be prosecuted. "The ends justify the means" excuse is hypocritical to say the least. That is the excuse the government uses to "break the rules" that he is "leaking". It makes him no better than they are. Two wrongs don't make a right. ALL governments do the same kinds of things the leaks show ours doing. The news quoted the response of another country's diplomat as saying, "you should hear what we say about you." (meaning about the USA) That Assange schmuck is just an opportunistic attention hound trying for his 15 min of fame. He is not a hero, nor a crusader for the truth. He is a guy you can't trust to tell anything. I feel sorry for the people that look up to him. I am wondering how many of them look up to him simply because they like to see the USA "get what is coming to them" or if they would like to see their own country's dirty laundry done over the wire that makes them look bad.....

There's an interesting sub plot to the whole wikileaks thing.

Essentially a security firm got hacked by Anonymous, a day after their head boasted to the Finacial Times that he had infiltrated Anonymous and said "As 1337 as these guys are supposed to be they don't get it. I have pwned them!". Pwn reversal me thinks. It wasn't just embarrasing for the security company, what Anonymous found in the companies emails has landed them in hot water.

http://www.scmagazineus.com/hbgary-faces-congressional-probe/article/199098/
http://www.scmagazineus.com/three-security-companies-attempt-to-make-mockery-of-the-first-amendment/article/196252/

The allegation is that HBGary were planning a smear campaign and "possible illegal actions against citizens engaged in free speech."

yes we need people to speak out for what is right...we don't need cyber terrorists like anonymous though. isn't it funny that they want to stay anonymous but then post other's info? talk about hypocrisy. this is a case of the cure being as bad or worse than the disease.

"the ends justify the means" is what our government says when it does the things we don't like too. I think you are predjudiced against the government (yes they do bad things..no argument there). there shouldn't be any doubt that it is an apples to apples comparison of both parties being wrong. the government does some shady things and they are wrong AND anonymous does some shady things and they are wrong....I don't mean that their info is wrong, but their methods are for sure...and illegal or they wouldn't need to be "anonymous". never have 2 wrongs made a right...ever. If they can't figure out a way to do it legitimately, then they are as bad as what they are against. Using your logic, the terrorists that killed all those innocent people in the world trade centers were necessary too. your logic is flawed.

the problem anonymous has is the same problem the Islamic people have. there are rabid dogs in their midst that give the perception to the rest of us that all are suspect....especially since you can't tell them apart by sight. Honorable Islamic people in good standing look the same as rabid dog terrorist sometimes. Therein lies the problem. We can't tell the anonymous rabid dogs apart from the "good" ones either. saying anonymous is necessary given their cyber-terrorism....and there is no doubt that some of them have used cyber-terrorism, it is all over in the news...can be construed as support of their methods.

I wouldn't go as far as calling Anonymous cyber terrorists, to me they are more like a protest group that targets those they believe are acting unethically or interfereing with freedom of speech or expression. They are a diverse group and I don't think you can attribute a single motive for their actions, but that's how I see their most notable protests.

They didn't actually target the WBC, the WBC decided to use their name because they are attention whores who want publicity to spread their vile and repulsive opinions. Anonymous replied saying that they did not target them and actually support their right to say what they like, even if they disagree with what they say. But the WBC church kept on lying and eventually during an interview with someone from the WBC and Anonymous decided to goad Anonymous saying they couldn't hack their websites anyway. So they hacked their website while the interview was still going.

The handbag thing wasn't because Louis Vuitton was using child labour in third world countires, as far as I know they don't. It was because an artist was being sued by Louis Vuitton because of an image she had created of an emaciated african child holding an expensive handbag. Vuitton claimed it looked a bit like one of theirs and were suing her to stop her using that image. The image did not specify the manufacturer. So Anonymous were just highlighting the issue and defending the artists freedom of expression.

Yes what they do is illegal, but let's try to put what they do in context. They use distributed denial of service to take down a website, there have been several occasions when people have done something similar, that has the same effect, to our servers. They hack into websites, typically via a hacked email account, we've had people hack our servers using vulnerabilities in plugins we were running. My point is, I don't call what people have done to our servers cyber terrorism, we don't call the police or the FBI, we just try and stop them or wait until they get bored.

What I call cyber terrorism are things like the coordinated and concerted attack on Estonian goverment and infrastructure websites, or those against Georgia just before they got attacked by Russia or attempts to hack into government or military websites with malicious intent, like the worm that only targetted Iranian nuclear installations.

In an ideal world Anonymous wouldn't be necessary, but at the moment I wouldn't be aware of a lot of stuff I object to if it wasn't for them. As long as they continue to champion freedom of speech and expression and highlight important issues I'm ok with what they do.

That was rather my point, people committing similar crimes have targetted our servers and I'm one of the people that has to deal with that. It's not terrorism it's just annoying and something to be expected in our business. It's the equivalent of a minor public order offence to protest against something you think is wrong, it's like a cyber sit in, not cyber terrorism.

So how is it ok for a bank or financial transfer service to decide that I am not allowed to give money to an organisation that is entirely legal in my country and in the country that the bank and/or financial service provider operates in? I'm not happy with the Bank of America deciding who I'm allowed to send money to and I'm not happy with them conspiring to commit illegal acts or run smear campaigns against anyone who disagrees.

The public protest comparison was a comparison to a sit in at a store, which is a tactic that's been used a lot by the UKUncut movement, they disrupt trade and explain to people why they are doing what they do. So the Paypal website was down for an hour, they can say they do x amount of $s business an hour and that's how much it cost them, but most people will have just tried later. The main damage done was to their reputation because it highlighted that they decided who their customers are allowed to give money to.

Sorry if you feel let down by someone you respected, but it's not like we ever saw eye to eye on politics. I'm actually really angry about politics right now, we were told that we were "all in this together" yet I get a tax increase and big business and banks get a tax cut and a nice new tax exploit to use. So right now, anything that shows up big business or the government to be the greedy corrupt scum they are I'm ok with. Anonymous aren't killing anyone, no one is getting hurt, unlike the consequences of the reckless greed of the banking industry.

I didn't get the Somali pirate analogy.