
Anonymous & Lulz Security Statement to the FBI - p4bl0
http://pastebin.com/RA15ix7S
======
nathanb
"it's entirely unacceptable to break into websites and commit unlawful acts"

This is quite the hypocritical statement coming from the FBI. As far as I can
tell, the only difference between Anonymous, Lulzsec, and the FBI is that the
FBI act by executive fiat. I don't support Internet vigilanteism, but I also
don't support the concept of the FBI as an untouchable force who are no longer
held accountable by the public they are theoretically serving.

At this point, I'm not sure which one I find more scary.

~~~
roc
> _"At this point, I'm not sure which one I find more scary."_

There will always be scofflaws and pranksters. Indeed for our way of life to
be assured, they _must_ be able to exist.

The ever-growing reach of the military-espionage-industrial complex is the
only real threat.

~~~
jeremyarussell
I have to find myself agreeing with this, the fact that these individuals (FBI
members, govt agencies in general.) are funded beyond the means of normal
individuals and given resources that money can't buy. (well I'm sure enough of
it can.) Gives them an edge that many people can't fight against. They can do
whatever they want with impunity. Now I can't say that opening up a server and
releasing all it's users passwords is right, or fair, but there comes a time
in war where there must be casualties. In this war of Anon VS govt/corp,
Anonymous must use unfair tactics, if only to level out the playing field.

That all said, this all reeks of a cold civil war, maybe something will come
out of it, maybe nothing will. I'll just keep doing what I do, solving issues
of non-freedom the way I can, one person at a time. A lot could be done if
people just acted better towards each other. But I think right now that's too
much to ask of us(humans).

~~~
walru
The fact that we're even able to have these thoughtful discussions means that
at least we're evolving as a species.

For the sake of our survival, may we eventually get to a point where people
are judged more for how they treat others, rather than what they are able to
purchase.

~~~
cpeterso
Cory Doctorow's novel _Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom_ , "whuffie" is the
ephemeral, reputation-based currency. The book describes a post-scarcity
economy: All the necessities (and most of the luxuries) of life are free.
Whuffie has replaced money, providing a motivation for people to do useful and
creative things. A person's Whuffie is a general measurement of his or her
overall reputation and is gained (or lost) according to a person's favorable
(or unfavorable) actions.

<https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Whuffie>

~~~
zer0her0
That's the one book I haven't read by Cory, I wonder if one can modify
bitcoins into this(yea i had to bring up bitcoin, it's hacker news req right?)

------
flocial
The Lulzsec crew and Wiki Leaks strikes a nerve like modern day Robin Hoods.
It makes you wonder if those of us in wealthy democracies are actually
experiencing a peculiarly 21st century form of passive aggressive oppression
where we may be "free" but monitored and essentially feel helpless and the
fact that these unknown hackers are able to duck and evade the same forces
that can hunt and kill terrorists with disregard of sovereignty makes them
look like folk heroes. We'll see how this saga unfolds.

~~~
webXL
Why "Robin Hoods"? Why not Minutemen? I don't know the complete story of Robin
Hood, but I always feel a tinge of class warfare from people who invoke his
name.

This has nothing to do with class. It has to do with unwarranted and
unprovoked aggression by political elites. I don't condone what these hackers
did, but there's little to disagree with in that letter. Our behemoth
government and its fascist relationship with big business spits in the face of
our founding principles: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Something
will need to change, or (pardon the cliché) we're gonna end up like Greece.

~~~
burgerbrain
Robin Hood is less about class, and more about power.

(Of course in it's setting, class was defined by power)

~~~
lotharbot
More explicitly stated:

Robin Hood did not "rob from the rich and give to the poor". He attacked
oppressors and protected the oppressed (only rarely giving them money). While
the oppressors tended to be rich and the oppressed tended to be poor, there
were exceptions. IIRC, there is even a tale where Robin protects a wealthy
knight from peasants who are trying to rob him.

------
lhnz
If I had the nerve I would join them.

Bad-taste jokes and troublemaking.

Badly written manifestos.

But I think there are some in the groups who have their heart in the right
place and want to do the right thing. And, illegal or not, I've yet to see any
other form of western activism that is as disruptive as leaking/hacking.

~~~
wladimir
_I've yet to see any other form of western activism that is as disruptive as
leaking/hacking_

I think that nails it. These days, the internet is the backbone of our world.
There is no form of activism more effective than taking control of online
resources, or releasing information.

If a form of activism is socially acceptable it probably means it is not
effective anymore. Why go on the street to just get beaten up - and ignored by
the media - when hacking is so much more effective in garnering attention for
your cause?

~~~
pasbesoin
And these days, if you go on the streets, biometrics will have you pegged in
minutes.

EDIT: Downvoters: Just what do you think police are doing with all their
cameras, at recent protests? And now there is -- I'm not kidding -- an iPhone
device and app that connects to a privately created database of biometric
information. Pricing is, per the public radio interview I heard just the other
day, currently set at circa US$3000 / device. Pricy, but affordable.

FURTHER EDIT: <http://onpoint.wbur.org/2011/07/20/biometrics>

------
mike-cardwell
Their Twitter status from about half an hour ago is far more interesting:

<https://twitter.com/#!/LulzSec/status/94033541196824576>

"We're currently working with certain media outlets who have been granted
exclusive access to some of the News of the World emails we have."

~~~
DanielRibeiro
Reminded a bit of V for Vendetta's speech:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EORflS7uEIc>

And bit of John F. Kennedy:

 _Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution
inevitable_

~~~
slowpoke
_Reminded a bit of V for Vendetta's speech_

Well, guess where they got the masks from, amongst other things. Anonymous is
pretty much V incarnate. He's their idol and inspiration. He's everything they
aspire to be.

------
jxcole
Why does Anonymous focus so much on attacking the US government (and related
rich democratic countries) when it could instead be focused on fighting the
governments that are actually oppressive? Nothing the US has ever done, even
at it's most oppressive, could ever compare to what North Korea does to it's
own citizen's on a regular basis. I would probably be much more sympathetic
towards their cause if they focused most on attacking the organizations that
are the worst rather than attacking the organizations that will get them the
most attention. I read somewhere that an Anonymous hacker used to fight
oppressive governments in Africa. Why did he stop? Why does he all the sudden
need to deface PBS because they printed negative press coverage of their
favorite website, WikiLeaks?

Are they really doing this for the good of mankind or are they just trying to
get attention? Anonymous though they may be, they still seem to be just trying
to get on the 5:00 news.

~~~
mquander
Does it really come as a shock that people prefer to protest the powers that
are oppressing them and their friends, rather than the powers that are
oppressing someone else on the other side of the planet?

~~~
innes
No, the problem of misdirected anger is unsurprising.

And it's especially predictable with groups such as Anonymous who in their
writings come off as pompous, childish, self-centred, and self-aggrandizing.
Not the kind of traits that correlate with empathising with people on the
other side of the planet.

Their strategy (setting aside the more base stuff that is just bullying and
focussing on their attempts to appear principled and 'crusading') seems to be
to latch on to easy populist targets in order to win others approval. Their
politics are those of angry teenagers who've read enough Chomsky or Klein to
get all riled up.

~~~
dlikhten
This is all well and good, but in reality the phrase "fix your own house
before fixing someone else's" applies. If we can't have a good and fair
government by the definition of the people, then can we really expect to fix
other governments? Do we bring our own government in like we did with
Afghanistan and Iraq and royally fuck up a country (not to say that those
countries were in good shape in any way, nor to say we could fix them, they
are pretty much dictated by oil as there have few other natural resources they
can export)

I like to think if we had a good government that we can truly trust, then we
can trust it to step out and assist worldwide injustices: land aid to the
people fighting an oppressive government, enable communication between the
oppressed, prevent the oppressive government from buying weapons, etc.

~~~
innes
No. Human rights are the same for 'brown people' - their concerns are as
important as those of privileged westerners. Their plight is much worse than
that of young white hackers in the western world. Western hackers can by all
means massage their egos by playing the rebellious teenager, but to claim that
it's justifiably their top priority is not defensible.

------
madmaze
I certainly agree with their Goals and I see very similar flaws in many
governments. I am not sure their way is the best way to make governments
listen, but it certainly is one way that gets publicity. The issue with their
publicity is that news networks do not broadcast their message, they broadcast
their actions which in turn intimidates and scares the less tech-savvy portion
of society. This does not achieve their goals, but they make a statement. A
statement is better than no statement.

~~~
ddw
I'm racking my brain to think of a way to make a government "listen." Nope,
can't think of any.

~~~
smokinjoe
Vote intelligently.

~~~
trafficlight
Even if your state elects the smartest senator there has ever been, he still
becomes part of the massive lumbering machine. And the machine is only as
smart as it's dumbest person. The US Government has so much baggage now that
it's nigh impossible to make anything but superficial changes.

~~~
18pfsmt
I agree with you, and so does Lawrence Lessig[1]. If more people got behind
the cause he started called Fix Congress First[2], that might be a bit more
effective than the approach of 'anonymous'. Or, perhaps, the combination of
the two would be best.

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig#Constitutional_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig#Constitutional_Convention)
[2]<http://fixcongressfirst.org>

------
rauljara
I think there is room for illegal activities in the name of a free and open
society. If this is truly the author's goal, however, they need to stop
associating with LulzSec.

There was nothing noble about 9/10's of the crap lulzsec did, and the somewhat
decent stuff they did was undercut by the whole "for the lulz" philosophy. If
you really are fighting for freedom, you need to be better than DDS'ing game
servers, because if you aren't the people who you are opposed to will use that
shit against you. Like the FBI is doing now.

I won't shed a tear if the Lulzsec folk get put away. I will be quite upset if
Lulzsec turns the public against those who would do the modern day equivalent
of releasing the pentagon papers.

~~~
scythe
>If this is truly the author's goal, however, they need to stop associating
with LulzSec.

In principle, I agree. The 'internet privacy' movement would be better served
if the people who supported it differentiated themselves from the people who
are just fucking around. I think a lot of them realize this.

The question "why don't they" has its answer in the dark catacombs of the
human psyche. LulzSec and Anonymous draw a lot of their support, i.e.
membership, from teenagers who want to feel like the antihero of one of
today's popular bildungsroman-turned-polemic, y'know, _V for Vendetta_ , or
_The Matrix_ , _Avatar_ , etc. Being somewhat evil is cool, and Anonymous
needs to look cool for people to want to be part of it. I'm sure the
aforementioned Black Panthers lived on this for a while as well.

Some people _did_ try to break the moral section of the movement away from the
lunatic fringe; it was called Enturbulation and later WhyWeProtest, and they
went after Scientology and later ACTA. Ultimately, though, WhyWeProtest slowly
became irrelevant, because without a steady stream of angry people and plenty
of press coverage their membership was decimated by the attrition of boredom
and disillusionment. It's still around at <http://whyweprotest.net/> but
unlike Anonymous you've never heard of them.

I support the EFF and Wikileaks much more readily than I support Anonymous,
but at the same time I figure no social change movement has succeeded without
a lunatic fringe -- there were plenty of violent people fighting for India's
independence, the breakup of the Soviet Union started with a coup, there were
multiple violent civil rights activists in the '60s, etc.

~~~
khafra
I guess that's the anthropic answer to the "in principle I support them, but
there are better ways to do what they're doing" argument: There _are_ people
out there trying all the other ways, but the lulzsec way is the one that's
getting attention and results right now.

------
Shenglong
This is absolutely ridiculous.

I don't agree with a lot of the things that various government organizations
are allegedly doing either. However, I also understand that I probably don't
have all the facts. I also know that even if I had all the facts, I would
probably not commit much time to analyzing all of them, in order to make a
sound decision on the best course of action. Why don't other people realize
this?

We leave the economics to the economists, the physics to the physicists, and
the medicine to the doctors. There are people--incompetent or not--who spend
their entire lives dealing with government/country related issues. Yes, some
of them might be corrupt, but are we naive enough to believe that an entire
country is corrupt? Who are we to judge corruption, and what sources of
information do we really have?

At one point or another, this argument for civil liberties gets repetitive and
overblown. No one I know has ever felt like their freedoms were at stake, and
the few government mistakes that the media captures should _not_ be precedence
to act against them. I make mistakes, you make mistakes - everyone makes
mistakes. Hacking into their servers, getting people fired (and therefore
replacing them with less experienced people), and leaking sensitive
information so the uneducated public can get their opinions in, is -NOT- going
to solve anything. At all. Ever.

Edit: Edited out a preface - wasn't aware. Sorry.

~~~
Perceval
Please don't include passive grubbing for upvotes as a preface to your
comments. If you have something to say, even if it's controversial, have the
courage to say it plainly without projecting anxiety about karma (of all
things).

It's insulting by implication to the community here that expressing a contrary
but constructive and well-written opinion would get you "massively down
voted." For the most part, other readers can differentiate between
constructive comments they disagree with and spammers, griefers, trolls,
crapflooders, and trivial one-liners.

~~~
Shenglong
Wasn't the intention. Edited out.

------
nextparadigms
Anonymous and Lulzsec are more like 21st century revolutionaries, on a global
scale. Revolutionaries are _always_ seen as the enemy by the Government. So
it's no surprise that the US Government wants to declare war against them and
wants to catch them.

If they win, then the Government changes, and the whole society changes after
that. If they lose, they end up dead or in jail for whatever crimes the
Government said they committed (and if there isn't a crime they can use,
they'll make a new law for it like they tried with the SHIELD bill against
whistleblowers)

The hacktivists aren't doing any real damage to society, and in fact they may
actually end up helping it a lot, in the same way Wikileaks changed some
things for the better, and they were also hunted down by Governments.

The real damage they are doing is to the people in power, and those people
will fight to keep things the same and get away with their own crimes against
the people they should represent.

I think we'll experience major changes in the way our democracies work by the
end of this decade. For the fast times we live in, and real time information
and feedback, we can only give some feedback once every 4 years, and it's
usually just 2 choices: the one that has been in power, and another one.
Politicians need to become a lot more accountable, and our feedback should be
a lot more direct and often than once every 4 years through the voting of a
party or a president.

------
click170
I read "Lobby conglomerates who only follow their agenda to push the profits
higher" and instantly pictured an executive somewhere rolling his eyes as he
reads that.

I understand the feelings disgust with the current state of the system, and I
get how in leu of an _actual solution_ one would feel frustrated enough to act
out in the ways that they have, but I stand firm in my belief that there is a
better way of accomplishing the changes we/they want to see, even if nobody
has figured out what that is yet.

~~~
_delirium
As far as some of the more "vandalism / hax0rs having fun" type things like
redirecting the Sun's homepage I mostly agree, but the documents they've
acquired might cause actual damage to the people they oppose, depending on
what they contain. So that portion might be effective.

------
fleitz
The government is the potent omnipresent teacher. For good or ill it teaches
the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government
becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to
become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that the end
justifies the means -- to declare that the government may commit crimes --
would bring terrible retribution.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO>

------
ibejoeb
Who writes this stuff? It comes across as silly, hyperbolic, and even
melodramatic, and detracts from the actual content.

Lulz: consider this constructive criticism. Take it down a notch.

~~~
JonnieCache
It comes across to me as a deliberate, conscious and very effective attempt at
mythmaking.

~~~
ibejoeb
Sure, I don't doubt that it's deliberate. It's not the content of the message
that I'm criticizing. It's precisely that, at least to me, it's being
diminished by some of the silliness in the writing. "Hello thar," "Good Sir,"
really? That's how we speak?

"The Anonymous bitchslap rings through your ears like hacktivism movements of
the 90s."

This sentence hurts me.

~~~
JonnieCache
All the "good sir", "hello thar", monocle stuff dates back to the SA forums,
which is where 4chan originally grew out of amongst other places. It was
considered funny by some, but quickly grew out of control as people with no
working sense of humour took up meme-repetition as a substitute.

There was a time when you could get your account deleted for saying "good sir"
on SA, it was that prevalent and annoying.

A lot of the lulzsec schtick reads like classic SA banter, I wouldn't be
surprised if topiary used to post there. It could just be because of the
aforementioned SA-->4chan lineage.

------
DanielBMarkham
<rant>

Let's see, "Make impassioned speech then go break into the neighbor's house
and scatter his secret documents all over the lawn"

That makes a lot of sense now, doesn't it? Perhaps if you're seven. And drunk.

Aside from the validity of the charges, this manner of social justice never
ever works for the people who try it. Good grief, did we learn nothing from
Ghandi or MLK Jr.? There's a perfectly legitimate and effective way to
denounce injustice. I think either you understand the problems with what they
are doing from looking at history or you become so enamored with their cause
you allow yourself to become feeble-minded.

I hate the security state that we're living in. But I hate even more people
taking it on themselves to administer justice in this fashion. If you make me
pick, I'm going with broken security state over anarchists every time -- and
there are hundreds of millions of folks just like me. And the the thing I hate
worst? Somebody taking _my_ legitimate cause and crapping all over it by doing
things like this. It's an attack on freedom-loving people everywhere.

If the local prosecutor lets a murderer go free? I don't go burn the
prosecutor's house down. If the local sheriff is corrupt? I don't break into
his house and publish his papers in the newspaper. If the guy next door is
crooked and in cahoots with the mob? I don't get to break in his house and
hand out his property to the poor. In short, the minute I start deciding on my
own when to break the law and disrespect other people's property rights
because of a cause -- even a legitimate cause -- I become an enemy of
everybody. You don't get to wave your hands around angrily pointing out how
worthy your cause is and get a free pass. At least not from me.

</rant>

~~~
scythe
>In short, the minute I start deciding on my own when to break the law and
disrespect other people's property rights because of a cause -- even a
legitimate cause -- I become an enemy of everybody.

 _' [...] at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to
break laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and
obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws:
just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has
not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one
has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St.
Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."'_

Martin Luther King Jr, _Letter from a Birmingham Jail_ \--
[http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.h...](http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html)

If you want to argue that some of Anon's actions have been unethical, that's
fair, and many people -- including some anons -- will agree with you. However,
there are certainly times when breaking the law is justified in support of the
rights of the people.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
That's not what MLK is saying at all. You don't get to break _any_ law simply
because one of them is unjust. Instead, you have no moral obligation to abide
by immoral laws.

If I feel like the speed limit is unjust, I should go about my business
driving any speed I feel like. I do not, however, get to run over people while
I'm doing it. If I feel like the law that protects my crooked neighbor's
website is unjust, I have no obligation to support his privacy and private
property.

I do not feel this way. I feel like my neighbor the person, corporation, or
government entity uses their computer resources as an extension of their
brain. As such, I frown severely on _anybody_ taking that property from them,
whether through force of law or just trickery. To me you'd have a better case
to have insiders physically take individual items that demonstrate and protest
injustice and then publish them than this current tactic of scattering
thousands of innocent user's passwords all over the web. I'm almost at the
point where I consider the tactic of blanket attacks itself as being immoral.
Not there yet, though.

This is an excellent reference, though. MLK disagreed with those who thought
the system itself was unjust enough to declare war and make each other
enemies. (I remind you of the phrase on the linked site "...These governments
and corporations are our enemy....") During his life, he specifically and
clearly separated himself from folks like the Black Panthers, who took this
"enemy" position and look to me a lot like Anon's forefathers. MLK's Letter
from a Birmingham Jail is probably one of 2 or 3 standard-setters in this
arena. I encourage people to pursue this further.

I'm sorry I responded -- I know better. This is an emotional issue, and those
of you who share my passion for freedom no doubt are going to try to beat what
I've said to death. But I couldn't stand MLK's words being used in this
fashion. He was making the exact opposite point. The laws he broke were
unjust, not simply the ones that got in his way of creating social change.

EDIT: There is a simple unstated question that this thread brings out, though:
are you an enemy of my country? (EDIT: I ask this because of the specific
phraseology of the anon statement, the position of the Black Panthers, and
some of the other comments, not as a means to heighten the tension.) It sounds
like from reading many of the comments on the internet that some folks are --
or at least they'd like to think of themselves as such. They feel the system
is so corrupt that they have made it their enemy. If that's the case, then we
are enemies, and there's no more argument really needed. Kind of simplifies
things up rather nicely. If not, then we should talk about practical and
efficient ways to change things, because I share the view that things are off
the rails and need changing.

I believe that some systems are bad but people are mostly good. That means
that I respect those laws that deal with the privacy and dignity of the human
being, including (for most folks) keeping their passwords and personal lives
out of political battles. So email dumps and tactics like this are only going
to piss me off further. Not sure if that was the intent, but that's what's
they're doing.

~~~
ddw
> EDIT: There is a simple unstated question that this thread brings out,
> though: are you an enemy of my country?

Why are you putting this on some kind of George W. Bush paradigm? The
government and the country are not the same thing.

> They feel the system is so corrupt that they have made it their enemy.

I believe that the system is corrupt but that doesn't mean I've made it my
"enemy." This line of thinking leads to any criticism of the government as
being "unpatriotic." That's not a good road for the country to start going
down.

------
tRAS
"Your threats to arrest us are meaningless to us as you cannot arrest an
idea." Jeez, I got goosebumps reading that. Straight out from V for Vendetta.

------
peterwwillis
What are they gonna do when every govt/corporate website starts sanitizing its
webapps' input and patching its network services? All they'll be able to do is
DoS.

Wouldn't it be funny if the FBI & associated agencies actually worked to
increase the security of the nation's networks instead of acting surprised
every time they get penetrated?

~~~
scythe
>What are they gonna do when every govt/corporate website starts sanitizing
its webapps' input and patching its network services?

That's among their stated goals.

~~~
peterwwillis
I have a bridge to sell you.

------
feal
Can someone rehost this elsewhere like pastie.org or something? Pastebin is
blocked by websense. :/

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
Hello thar FBI and international law authorities,

We recently stumbled across the following article with amazement and a certain
amount of amusement:

[http://www.npr.org/2011/07/20/138555799/fbi-arrests-
alleged-...](http://www.npr.org/2011/07/20/138555799/fbi-arrests-alleged-
anonymous-hackers)

The statements made by deputy assistant FBI director Steve Chabinsky in this
article clearly seem to be directed at Anonymous and Lulz Security, and we are
happy to provide you with a response.

You state:

    
    
      "We want to send a message that chaos on the Internet is unacceptable, 
      [even if] hackers can be believed to have social causes, it's entirely 
      unacceptable to break into websites and commit unlawful acts."
    

Now let us be clear here, Mr. Chabinsky, while we understand that you and your
colleagues may find breaking into websites unacceptable, let us tell you what
WE find unacceptable:

* Governments lying to their citizens and inducing fear and terror to keep them in control by dismantling their freedom piece by piece.

* Corporations aiding and conspiring with said governments while taking advantage at the same time by collecting billions of funds for federal contracts we all know they can't fulfil.

* Lobby conglomerates who only follow their agenda to push the profits higher, while at the same time being deeply involved in governments around the world with the only goal to infiltrate and corrupt them enough so the status quo will never change.

These governments and corporations are our enemy. And we will continue to
fight them, with all methods we have at our disposal, and that certainly
includes breaking into their websites and exposing their lies.

We are not scared any more. Your threats to arrest us are meaningless to us as
you cannot arrest an idea. Any attempt to do so will make your citizens more
angry until they will roar in one gigantic choir. It is our mission to help
these people and there is nothing - absolutely nothing - you can possibly to
do make us stop.

    
    
      "The Internet has become so important to so many people that we have to 
      ensure that the World Wide Web does not become the Wild Wild West."
    

Let me ask you, good sir, when was the Internet not the Wild Wild West? Do you
really believe you were in control of it at any point? You were not.

That does not mean that everyone behaves like an outlaw. You see, most people
do not behave like bandits if they have no reason to. We become bandits on the
Internet because you have forced our hand. The Anonymous bitchslap rings
through your ears like hacktivism movements of the 90s. We're back - and we're
not going anywhere. Expect us.

~~~
feal
Thanks

------
pxlpshr
Reminds me of the hacker's manifesto, but a lot less eloquent.

~~~
kahawe
I find the idea of a bunch of 4chan, excuse me, "newfags" and "oldfags"
frakking around the internet "for the lulz" and/or "shits and giggles" a lot
more friendly and support-worthy than the same people rolling out a huge
Robin-Hood/"the abused Davids striking back against Goliath Corps" banner and
all in the name of "true justice" and "freedom".

I miss the "wild wild west" internet a lot but the last thing we need is yet
another entity pushing its interests onto the web.

Hack and deface and publish, by all means, for great lulz! You are a lot more
unique, random, loveable and (actually) useful that way.

~~~
badclient
Not to mention it is hard to make a personal fortune doing it. Many Robin
Hood-type figures around the world continue to rake in millions at the expense
of the poor people they claim to rep. And yet, as a member of Lulz or Anon,
the most you may gain is appreciation for your skill IF you put it on your
resume. It would also get you arrested, effectively striking out one of the
few ways to make a personal gain from this.

------
dwilson718
I'm sure most of the people here missed the fact that this is a wake-up call.
its meant to make people THINK long and hard about the real issues at hand.

I don't know about you, but I'm seeing a lot of critical thinking going on.
It's this reason I support these groups.

~~~
GHFigs
I see the exact opposite. I see a call to stop thinking and align yourself
with an ideology. e.g,

"Your threats to arrest us are meaningless to us as you cannot arrest an idea.
Any attempt to do so will make your citizens more angry until they will roar
in one gigantic choir."

See also: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_true_believer>

~~~
danssig
You have to do that in any case. Some prefer the ideology of "status quo at
all costs".

~~~
GHFigs
You have to do what in any case? Stop thinking for yourself? I disagree.

------
rheide
Fairly well phrased, although the arguments against 'corporations' and
'conglomerates' are fairly unsubstantial. (in the pastebin, that is, IRL is a
different matter)

------
joelmichael
A trite leftist screed ripped straight from the Bush years.

------
darksaga
I wonder if they'll ever understand the people they're trying to protect are
actually the victims in their actions.

They hack Sony. Sony loses millions. How do you think they're going to
recapture their loses? By passing the loss onto consumers. Increased prices
for TV's, games, anything Sony makes is going to increase in price to recoup
their loses.

Clearly they haven't thought this all the way through.

~~~
Vivtek
Oh come on. People said the same damn thing about every activist in history.

"Don't anger Sony because they'll only make prices higher for everybody!" Yes.
Their costs will be higher, so economically they'll either take less profit or
have higher prices. Then they will be at a disadvantage in the marketplace. At
some point the cold equations of economics will dictate that they either
change their ways or die.

~~~
darksaga
It has nothing to do with activist history - this how economics works. What
happened to the price of gas when there was a disaster in the gulf of Mexico?
Oh yeah, gas prices went up and up and up. Who really paid for the disaster?
BP or us the consumer?

It's not like one day their TV's are $300, and then overnight they're $1000.
All they have to do is edge the price up moderately over time to make back
their losses. But in the end, the result is the same. The loss and increased
cost is passed on to the consumer.

Also, when you're talking two or three dollar differences in prices compared
to other companies. Sony owns a large portion of the gaming industry. It's not
like there's 10 console makers. Choice is limited, so your point about "cold
equations of economics" unfortunately doesn't hold true in this case.

My point stands - when large corporations lose money, it's normal for
businesses to pass the loss of revenue onto consumers.

~~~
Vivtek
Well, and I say this in the nicest possible way, no shit. Yes. Of course they
do. What else can they do? Is the answer then never to worry an executive, or
should it be to speak to them in the only language that can ever reach a
corporation: make it less profitable for them to act like assholes?

The cost of assholery at the corporations is also passed on to the consumer -
and everybody else on the planet - it may simply not be in absolute dollars
and cents in purchase price. But we all end up paying.

Incidentally, gas prices have nothing to do with the disaster in the Gulf, and
everything to do with (1) what the market will bear, (2) increased consumption
in BRIC nations, and (3) profit-taking and commodity games. The oil companies,
including BP, have made more money in the past year than they ever have. So
they're not passing the price of disaster on; they're simply taking whatever
they can grab because they know _nobody is ever going to try to worry a
corporation_ for fear they might not hire somebody. Like they will anyway.

Gah. Probably too much grar here. I'm going to go lie down.

------
andrewcamel
I really do not understand why they cannot find someone to write for them who
understands English grammatical rules. All I can think of when I'm reading
that document are some troublemakers trying to justify malicious attacks. If
they could write a decent press release, it might actually convince people
that they are trying to do some some good in the world.

------
sidcool
How do we know this is for legit?

~~~
lhnz
Linked from Lulzsec's and AnonymousIRC's twitters which are held by respective
members of the groups.

~~~
cpeterso
How do we know Lulzsec's and AnonymousIRC's twitters are legit?

------
samkiller18
These kids have become the subject of their own joke. But it's funny watching
them and reading them on twitter though

------
tannerc
This is why we can't have nice things online.

