Anonymous have apparently released 90,000 military email addresses, according to news sources everywhere. I am afraid I need help to understand this. Where are these addresses, and is each listed with its password so we can read actual emails? If not, what use is this? I am not technology savvy, so I may be missing something here.
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Evgeni: “Good question. I sympathise with Anonymous, so I have to ask myself the same. In both instances the law was broken.”
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Thanks. I think it’s important to know that when certain tactics that we’d usually deplore are used they are justifiable on grounds other than “Because I like A and I don’t like B”.
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Breaking the law is different to breaking a code of ethics. There’s a good rhetorical answer to the differences in breaking the law: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”
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Craig Murray has given only a partial answer to my question about the difference in ethics: “I think there is a fairly simple answer to the NOTW comparison which is the lack there of any plausible public interest defence.”
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I say it is only partial because whereas I would agree with him that the NotW’s scummy behaviour has served public titilation – later turned to revulsion – rather than public interest there isn’t any clear indication that Anonymous’ latest hack has served public interest, is there? In the meantime it only appears that they have allowed lots of email addresses to be hacked which could well be reckless.
Craig,
It’s pretty old now, but I’d still recommend Clifford Stoll’s ‘The Cuckoo’s Egg’.
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It’s Stoll’s quite detailed account of how he went (inadvertently) from working as an astronomer looking into a small time-keeping mistake on his university’s computing time-share system, to tracking crackers across several countries – whilst trying to get someone (anyone, at all, in fact) in authority to open their eyes and see how appalling security was across government, including the military (who often seemed to be the worst). For a long time the only response he got was fingers-in-ears, la-la-la.
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The account of how he finally got someone at (I think it was) Whitesands Missile Base to close a wide open security hole, which a cracker was using to reach his university, is very enlightening: two weeks later the same person idiotically and intentionally re-opened it – rather than simply issue a new password.
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Though it is old tech now (using printers to dump incoming communications than scanning the printouts for dodgy access) it is still a fascinating window on the glacial way big organizations (not just government departments) react to security failings and evolving technology.
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It’s a great read too. Come to think of it, style-wise his writing reminds me of yours, and vice versa, more than any one else I can think of – though it is a very long time since I read it.
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Less directly relevant, but still very good, is ‘The Newtonian Casino’. It documents the attempt of a bunch of students to take on the casinos and their security systems. There was a movie along these lines a few years back – except the movie, whether based on the book or not – I don’t know, was no where near as good.
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—-
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cracker:
someone who breaks into computer systems.
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hacker:
someone who creatively explores the limits and scope of computing systems, often creating brilliantly crafted (sometimes even beautiful) artifacts, usually software, in the process.
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The media have confused these two for so long that the term ‘hacker’ is now generally used to mean ‘cracker’. Real hackers really, *really* hate this.
Angrysoba, thanks. I think you’ll find that most people here support the rule of law – JUST law, that is.
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Oh how wonderful it would be to live in a world where countries like the UK and US only used their military force for just purposes, and secrecy was used for legitimate protection rather than to hide injustice and corruption.
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I do feel admiration for the likes of Anonymous, but I won’t help to distribute such material; who knows what the dangers may be? The most I would do is upload such stuff to Wikileaks or Cryptome, who have proven themselves to be responsible. If only such actions were unnecessary. Sensitive material is probably safer with Wikileaks or Cryptome than with large parts of the US military/industrial complex.
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Will our authorities ever learn? They persecute the likes of Gary McKinnon and Wikileaks; the first is harmless, and the second is responsible. They play similar games themselves, such as Stuxnet and the DDoS attacks against the Wikileaks servers. But their security is still crap, so now they have to deal with the likes of Anonymous.
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“Pwned. U mad, bro?”
Angrysoba, good answer to Evgueni; you have made the ethics very clear. Next time, rather than trying to start an argument, perhaps you could cut to the chase and comment upon the ethics directly.
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There is a public interest argument that applies to this sort of security breaking. It demonstrates that the security measures are weak, which is putting everyone at risk.
You mean there are still as many as 90,000 people in the British armed forces?
Dreoilin, thanks for that. I see now why Booz Allen became a target.
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Darrin, I see you’d already made the point I mentioned in my previous comment. Yes, I agree.
Clark: Won’t happen. Angry’s far more interested in “gotcha” tricks & games than the discussing of views.
“Clark: Won’t happen. Angry’s far more interested in “gotcha” tricks & games than the discussing of views.”
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Nice to see you raising the level, Glenn. 😀
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Anyway, I still think my point was right. Hacking is good if the hackers are Goodies while hacking is bad if the hackers are Baddies is just the type of Manichean worldview that leads to “we only torture bad people” justifications. And such thinking is pretty rife around here.
Actually, I don’t agree Angry – when it comes to hacking as with much else, it depends who’s doing it and why. Your slippery slope fallacy doesn’t hold – torture is always wrong, whoever’s doing it, and is not altered by one’s support for another type of lawbreaking. Stop trying to slime people around here, nobody who is supportive of this site and its host is saying otherwise.
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Is it wrong to kill? Most of the time. Is it wrong to murder? _Just_ about always. Is it wrong to blow things up? Depends. And so on. We can make good judgements on a case-by-case basis, your invitation to take a black and white approach to entire subjects notwithstanding.
@Angrysoba
Anonymous hasn’t done anything of any real note.
There have been no information bombshells of Wikileak proportions.
It has released e-mails and personal details of employees (vaguely threatening) while highlighting, at no cost, security flaws in the IT systems of companies affected.
The funny thing about ‘Anonymous’ is that absolutely anybody can use that flag and apply it to an action.
As for the ‘if hacking is wrong for NOW it’s wrong for anonymous’, it’s easy to agree with that.
Mitigating factors for some anonymous actions might include the deliberate targeting of state and corporate interests for the purpose of encouraging open government, ethical business practices and public accountability.
Isn’t that what Journalists were supposed to do?
“Actually, I don’t agree Angry – when it comes to hacking as with much else, it depends who’s doing it and why.”
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No it doesn’t depend on who is doing it. This is my point. “X is good if done by Y but X is bad if done by Z” is exactly what I object to.
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I don’t suppose there is any point in trying to go any further than that with you. You’re not going to get it.
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“Your slippery slope fallacy doesn’t hold”
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There is no “slippery slope fallacy” here.
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“torture is always wrong, whoever’s doing it,”
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I can see that you still don’t get it when you say “whoever’s doing it” given that I am arguing against the idea that X is right if Y does it and X is wrong if Z does it. Do you not see that I have been saying this from the beginning?
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“Stop trying to slime people around here, nobody who is supportive of this site and its host is saying otherwise.”
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More meaningless sentences.
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“Is it wrong to kill? Most of the time. Is it wrong to murder? _Just_ about always. Is it wrong to blow things up? Depends. And so on.”
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Irrelevant to the issues again Glenn.
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“We can make good judgements on a case-by-case basis, your invitation to take a black and white approach to entire subjects notwithstanding.”
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The ethics are actually almost as simple as can be. I agree that NotW did very bad things but the fact that it is the NotW or owned by Murdoch is NOT what makes it bad. This is a very simple point that you keep denying is true when you say “when it comes to hacking as with much else, it depends who’s doing it and why.”
Angry, stealing is bad. It’s also illegal. How do you compare the stealing of a loaf of bread and a packet of cheese by a homeless person, from Tesco, and the stealing done by Bernie Madoff? Do you put the homeless person and Bernie Madoff in the same place on your scale? I don’t, you see.
How timely 😉
Anonymous spaffs Monsanto employees’ details
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/13/anonymous_monsanto_hack/
El Reg is not great on security though, turn around times for the articles are quite short I guess- part of the point of dumping all the email addresses is low level harassment of employes who profit from the activities being protested about for example.
I guess just dumping some of the guts of the company on the internet is a quick way to bring unwelcome attention to them, potentially cause them to lose customer trust, contracts, money, drop the share price etc
You would need a lot of dedicated resource to comb through a whole companies files, emails, databases etc to find anything newsworthy which is I guess pat of the problem with releasing anything of value in a timely fashion.
(Sigh) Angrysoba is, I think, making a point about ethics (“I think” added to avoid further argument, (sigh)). Sorry if I got it wrong, Angrysoba. You are better at philosophy than me.
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Look, what about Booz Allen? If they’re going to do their bit for the military / industrial complex, they should damn well secure their servers. They were LUCKY it was only Anonymous that raided them. Someone truly malicious wouldn’t have told anyone. They’d have quietly cracked the passwords, and used that access to observe and even influence military personnel, gathering data and deeper penetration as they went. Like News International did to ordinary members of the public.
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Booz Allen didn’t raid voicemail or a company’s servers, but their NEGLIGENCE could have resulted in worse damage than either. Look at Anonymous’ “auditor’s report”. There was NO security in place.
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We can argue over words like “good”, “bad”, “right” and “wrong” ’til we’re blue in the face. Most people have a pretty good “feel” for morals, even though they’re poor at defining it in words – not everyone studies philosophy – so what?
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When it comes to real-world consequences, potentialities and moral judgments, the conclusions are obvious:
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News International did the worst, deliberately, so they’re scum.
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Booz Allen +could have+ had the worst effect, but negligently, not deliberately, so they’re complacent, dangerous idiots.
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Anonymous +could have+ precipitated some event, but if so, the blame would still mainly belong to Booz Allen, and most likely Anonymous’ actions will result in some improvement. So Anonymous are – what’s a good label? Firebrands? Discordians? Angrysoba, give me the word I need. But whatever, of these three incidents, only Anonymous have done anything good.
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So it’s not wrong to admire Anonymous, but it is still best not to propagate this particular “booty”. The improvement secured by Anonymous was in demonstrating that the data was not secured, not in distributing that data.
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Have I got that about right, Angrysoba?
From an El Reg interview with Anonymous:
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“It was quickly discovered that if you allow (or enforce) anonymous posting, getting people to follow any sort of rules is functionally impossible. It was here that Anonymous began.
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Anonymous is that part in all of us that wants to break the rules, defy social conventions, indulge a secret passion or get a rise out of someone. Anonymous is the expression of our desire for lulz.”
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I therefore declare that Angrysoba is Anonymous.
Ah, Angry – always wanting to bog things down with feigned bafflement, ever playing to the audience who has just tuned in.
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My first statement about the morality of (in this instance) hacking included the exact phrase, “… it depends who’s doing it and why.” But you make mischief, pluck out “it depends who’s doing it”, leave out “and why”, and attack your snippet, “It depends who’s doing it.” What a cad you are, sir, misrepresenting my point so blatantly, pretending that was my position.
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Angry: ” There is no “slippery slope fallacy” here. ”
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Sure there’s a slippery slope fallacy here, nearly as slippery as your good self. Your slippery slope was basically, ‘If you say hacking is OK when some people do it, then you’ll eventually say torture is OK depending on who does it.’ That is a classic example of a slippery slope fallacy. I can guarantee you will now start blowing smoke, claim bafflement, and pretend you have no idea what I’m talking about.
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You brought up torture in this context, you’ll recall, saying defence of this latest hacking (your strawman, incidentally), “is just the type of Manichean worldview” widespread around here that justifies the practice of torture “of only bad people”. Since you consider this to be the case, provide an example of someone around here defending the torture of “bad people”. Go on, it must have happened – surely you wouldn’t just make something like that up?
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In another of your trademark pretences at misunderstanding, you take my assertion that “torture is always wrong whoever’s doing it” as being – somehow – evidence of my failure to understand that certain acts are wrong no matter who is doing it. Either that, or you’re still failing to understand that some acts are always wrong, some are only wrong in certain conditions, some are right only in certain conditions. If so, you have a very black and white, unsophisticated and authoritarian comprehension, or you are making mischief as usual.
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Did you notice that neither myself nor anyone else asserted that what NOTW did was wrong solely because Murdoch owned it? Yet you feel this unmade point was worth countering. Uh huh. I hope you’ve got a sprinkler system with all these straw men around – it’s a hot, dry summer you know.
Dreiloin: “How do you compare the stealing of a loaf of bread and a packet of cheese by a homeless person, from Tesco, and the stealing done by Bernie Madoff?”
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There’s mitigation obviously. But it doesn’t follow that stealing is good if the homeless person does it and bad if Bernie Madoff does it. But the main point is about the circumstances not about the who.
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Nevermind.
Now I know how to make paragraphs 🙂 Sorry for double-post.
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[Mod: duplicate post now deleted.]
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It’s a bit ironic that people in UK have any concern for privacy at all. It’s like when Crook A (Murdoch) taps a phone people get very upset but when Crook B does it (all the time, with all communication and using private data as a commodity on the international Intelligence information stock exchange) then they don’t mind. And its not that the purpose of Crook B is nobler, no both just want to expand their market.
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Information in the digital age represents value, that value can be sold, traded and used in many ways. He who have control over the information infrastructure and can control who can access it and what information is allowed on the public grid is in Power. Now there is a massive effort by US/UK/EU/srael-politicians in charge to take full control over Internet and highest on the agenda is banning anonymity and cryptos that the government do’t have the keys for.
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If I were one of the scumbags in charge of this task I would create a hacker group called Anonymous and start hacking away. I would use targets creating as much media as possible. I would also use this hacker group to get at political enemies that haven’t yet understood that a global fascistic police state is heaven on earth. My purpose is to hack enough so that the stupid ignorant common man will still vote for me after anonymity has been banned completely on the Internet.
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This follows a (very) old blueprint for the power hungry – use black ops. Many wars has been started this way and still are. Just like the “terrorists” responsible for 9/11 and 7/7, what did they actually accomplish? They created a multi-billion-€ intelligence-industry that have grown so large that it no longer possible to control in any way.
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Conclusion: Anonymous is most likely an intel-op, just like WL.
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Qui Bono?
Glenn, I think Angrysoba’s point may be that the morality of an action is +completely+ independent of +who+ performs that action. So, for instance, even Rupert Murdoch himself could penetrate someone’s voicemail account for a justifiable or even an altruistic purpose.
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Angrysoba, have I understood your point?
Sunflower, you make a good point about the public’s lack of concern about privacy, but you’ve used it to extrapolate too far.
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(1) The actions of, say, Gary McKinnon don’t fit into your theory.
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(2) Breaching the “security” of Booz Allen, and Anonymous’ latest target, Monsanto, are unlikely to generate any public sympathy for an Internet clampdown; I’d say it’s likely to achieve the opposite, at least with a substantial proportion of voters. Monsanto in particular are quite unpopular.
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(3) To really be useful in justifying a clampdown, NI and Anonymous would have to have done something reasonably challenging. In the case of NI, and when Anonymous accessed Booz Allen’s server, there was basically no security measure to overcome. To make an analogy, if our government told us that, rather than locking our doors, every citizen was going to be tracked to prevent burglary, many people would object. Some would object on the grounds that tracking would be intrusive, others on the grounds that locking our doors would be much cheaper.
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But yes, excuses are used. For instance, fears over child pornography are being used and exaggerated, quite deliberately, to further the aims of the media corporations, and here’s some evidence:
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http://torrentfreak.com/the-copyright-lobby-absolutely-loves-child-pornography-110709/
“Angrysoba, have I understood your point?”
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Yes, thank you.
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I don’t expect Murdoch to ever do something like that but yes, a complete shit can do something good and the fact that we all think someone is a complete shit doesn’t mean that everything they do is shitty. The corolary of that is that just because we like someone and/or trust them or think of them as some kind of ally doesn’t mean that what they do is automatically good. In this case, I’m yet to fully understand what it is that Anonymous have done and whether it can be justified.
Angrysoba, my pleasure.
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Re Anonymous and Booz Allen: say that I (Anonymous) know that my office colleague (Booz Allen) doesn’t lock his filing cabinet. I know he’s risking the release of sensitive information. So one day, I take some sensitive information from his cabinet and pin it to the office noticeboard for all to see, along with an explanation of how I got it.
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(1) My action creates a risk that the information on the noticeboard may be misused, but it also warns those affected that the information is publicly available, prompting them to take their own precautions.
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(2) My action demonstrates that the information had been available for abuse for some time; a fact that those affected probably didn’t know before.
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(3) My action hopefully prompts my colleague to lock his filing cabinet in future.
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(4) My action shows up my colleague for the complacent idiot he is.
Further, if I do this repeatedly to many colleagues, I expose a +culture+ of complacency and possibly hubris.
I find it distressing that arguments like the one above arise so frequently here. They waste a lot of time, and they seem to be mainly misunderstandings. I fell into it myself, declaring Angrysoba “Anonymous” above.
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I think it’s partly mistrust and lack of mutual respect (which are the legacy of previous arguments), and partly lack of non-verbal clues in the communication, which is restricted to text. There’s also the issue of diverse communicational style.
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If we have such problems here, consider how much worse this issue must be, for instance in the realm of international diplomacy, where various parties don’t even share the same culture or primary language.
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I think we should all follow Evgueni’s advice (from a previous thread), to make a conscious effort to find the things upon which we agree at each stage of the conversation, thus building consensus as we go. We should deliberately assume good faith, and ask genuine (ie. not rhetorical) questions if contradiction seems to be present.
Angry,
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You say, “There’s mitigation obviously … But the main point is about the circumstances not about the who. Nevermind.”
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So you accept that the “why” is relevant? and that Glenn had never ruled out the “why” or concentrated on Murdoch as the “who”. So what’s your problem with Glenn’s statement that, “when it comes to hacking as with much else, it depends who’s doing it and why”?
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“But it doesn’t follow that stealing is good if the homeless person does it and bad if Bernie Madoff does it.”
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You know perfectly well that I didn’t say anything like that. I asked you about ‘scale’. You do have a habit of putting words in people’s mouths, and it’s very irritating. Grrrr.
Clarke,
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(1) Yes, not all hackers work for intelligence services. Doesn’t mean that intelligence services don’t employ hacking in information operations.
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(2) Google on hacking & legislation, look at what you find from the last year. When you have hacktivist groups challenging society and vital functions in society, you will get a reaction in legislation.
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(3) Erasing anonymity from the Internet is an important goal. Using hacker incidents is part of this. As you mention, child pornography is another. Especially EU has embraced that angle. Then you have the content industry in California, they share the police state dream, void of personal integrity, in order to make sure they get paid.
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Perception management is the keyword. What happens is not important, the impression of the public of what happened is the only thing that counts.
Clark, just so you know:
I often edit myself in the text box before posting, and I was doing that when you had obviously already posted your, “I find it distressing that …” comment. I wasn’t ignoring what you said. I didn’t know it was there.
Dreoilin, yes, I assumed that our “comments had crossed”.
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Sunflower, you’re falling for what may be perception management yourself, in calling security crackers “hackers”. A hacker may crack, but most crackers don’t hack! I aspire to being a hacker, but I’ve never attempted to crack anything but eggs, walnuts and jokes.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_%28term%29
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Yes, of course intelligence agencies employ security crackers. I’m not opposed to having intelligence agencies, and any decent one should employ cracking. This does not mean I condone or approve of the unethical behaviour that seems to be as rife in intelligence agencies as it is in the political and commercial domains; indeed, I condemn this.
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One way you can help counter the “lock down the Internet” authoritarians is to advocate Free(dom) Software. The public need to learn how insecure their proprietary operating systems are, and that such systems are not under the full control of the owner or the user of the machine. Feel free to contact me about this if you’re interested; you can find a contact for me via the link on my name. The insecurity of popular operating systems is a big lever that is used to “legitimise” control of the Internet, by spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt.
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I’m not sure that the situation is as one-sided as you portray. The Internet itself, The Onion Router (TOR) and Wikileaks were all set up by the US, with a strong military involvement. I think that some of the (less intelligent) instigators really believed that the US was the perfect advocate of freedom, and never expected that people would find fault with the US and use such tools to expose complicity and corruption. Other instigators strongly believed in freedom, and were quite happy that tools originating in the US would be used against US agencies and companies, ie. they were more committed to the US constitutional freedoms, and not blinded by patriotism.
Julian Assange called Facebook the “most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented.”
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“Here we have the world’s most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations, their communications with each other, their relatives, all sitting within the United States, all accessible to U.S. intelligence.”
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Assange says that these Web sites aren’t being run by the government. Instead, the intelligence community is able to “bring to bear legal and political pressure to them.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/02/julian-assange-facebook-is-spy-machine_n_856313.html
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I’d be amazed if he’s not right. It hands them everything on a platter. Facebook even wants your phone number now – for ‘security purposes’. So they can text you if you forget your password, or some such.
Dreoilin, yes, this is well documented about Facebook.
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http://blogs.forbes.com/kashmirhill/2011/07/12/how-facebook-secretly-aids-government-searches/
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Furthermore, their internal security is so lax that many employees could be acting as moles for, well, just about anyone:
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http://therumpus.net/2010/01/conversations-about-the-internet-5-anonymous-facebook-employee/?full=yes
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Alisher Usmanov, a convicted blackmailer, bought a $200 million stake in Facebook. He could find that useful.
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http://craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/05/convicted_black/
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And then there’s face recognition software scanning all your photo’s:
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun/14/facebook-facial-recognition-software
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jun/08/facebook-privacy-facial-recognition
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It just goes on and on…