“There can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual, but permitted to a mob” - Ayn Rand
Or is that a vacuous snark?
But, I'm a socialist. Would also use the terms family, tribe, society, etc. instead of the purposefully biased "mob".
Likewise control of commons exists on an individual level as well -- if you are near a certain amount of water, you are generally free to own and control it. To the extent that you don't secure and maintain your property, your ownership is a vain deed.
Rearing and teaching of young is a really easy one, commonly given to individuals. Do you think all children should be taken out of individual households and placed in government-run child-rearing centers? That's what this one sounds like, and that is horrifically scary and ridiculous.
--Napoleon Bonaparte
Edit: Just to clarify, I agree if you mean mob as in an actual mob. However you're replying to a parent who's talking about government, so that led me to think you're implying government is some form of a mob.
A representative government with powers endowed to them by the people and working within the limits of a codified legal system is very different from a mob.
Although I'm intrigued by the whole drama unfolding, I don't know that we can say there's justice/liberty in what the mob does if when one person did the same thing we'd say otherwise.
It also makes me uncomfortable that I'm a bit nervous posting this point. This is not progress. This is not good. This is mob rule. We should be fighting this, not applauding it.
And surely they're not getting a pass on the actual legal repercussions. The FBI took dozens of doors over the earlier DDOS's - I'm sure that they are quite keen at rolling up this incident into what is likely a very well staffed task force.
- A group of people that decide to do something is not necessarily a mob.
- Anonymous is just a description for a set of people. The set of people most likely to participate in these raids. The entirety of Anonymous doesn't participate in each and every raid. Just the raids that they have the time, and motivation to do. If you can describe Anonymous as a mob, then you can also extrapolate that to the entire population of the planet. The entire planet of a group of people where sometimes some people decide to form a group and do things based on common interests.
Anonymous did what their target did. It was no more legal or illegal. If you want to punish them fine, but make sure you punish both criminals equally.
As we see in Egypt, fighting within the laws (which are just a list of rules made up by people in control) doesn't always give you the option to win.
Deleted comment
In one corner you have wikileaks, and anonymous challenging the state and a security firm, showing their cards against their will. In the other corner you have the government and a corporation trying to eliminate sources of criticism and dissent.
Wikileaks and Anonymous have won this round it seems, but when you have a battle on this scale that touches the very foundations of our government -- the very organism that determines what is legal and illegal, it seems that the normal rules just don't apply.
While it also may be 'restricting speech' (corporate personhood has come a long way...) that's a side effect, not the reasoning or purpose.
"After Anonymous imposed some very minimal cyber disruptions on Paypal, Master Card and Amazon, the DOJ flamboyantly vowed to arrest the culprits, and several individuals were just arrested as part of those attacks. But weeks earlier, a far more damaging and serious cyber-attack was launched at WikiLeaks, knocking them offline. Those attacks were sophisticated and dangerous. Whoever did that was quite likely part of either a government agency or a large private entity acting at its behest. Yet the DOJ has never announced any investigation into those attacks or vowed to apprehend the culprits, and it's impossible to imagine that ever happening.
Why? Because crimes carried out that serve the Government's agenda and target its opponents are permitted and even encouraged; cyber-attacks are "crimes" only when undertaken by those whom the Government dislikes, but are perfectly permissible when the Government itself or those with a sympathetic agenda unleash them. Whoever launched those cyber attacks at WikiLeaks (whether government or private actors) had no more legal right to do so than Anonymous, but only the latter will be prosecuted."
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/02/11...