Comment by electromagnetic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by electromagnetic | Hacker News Reader

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electromagnetic

I have to back you on this. This doesn't sit in any moral grey area. This is nothing but corruption. If people genuinely have no problem with the outing of millions of private correspondences, then they should be publicly offering their own correspondences up for inspection.

If you're against SOPA, you should be against tyranny like this. This is the tyranny of the minority, of anarchists who aren't doing this for moral value or just cause. This wasn't even done for retaliation or idiot bashing like hbgary. This was done for no reason but to cause harm and mayhem.

I believe in the transparency of government, which is why I can turn my eye when wikileaks was doing their thing. I can't turn my eye if someone's raiding my neighbours mailbox and I hope no one else here would either, but I think it's pretty scummy that people here are supporting this.

Sorry folks but if people here aren't outraged by this, then say hello to your new HN subreddit.

> If you're against SOPA, you should be against tyranny like this. This is the tyranny of the minority, of anarchists who aren't doing this for moral value or just cause. This wasn't even done for retaliation or idiot bashing like hbgary. This was done for no reason but to cause harm and mayhem.

In normal circumstances I would agree with what you say, any sane person would agree with you actually, but these are not normal circumstances, what with all the TSA crap, the Iraq war that was started based on a huge LIE by the US Government and happily backed by the British, and I could go on and on.

At some point, better sooner rather than later, we the citizens of democratic countries should realize that our Governments are not there to rule over us, they have no special privileges, they have been chosen by us just to be mere executors of statutes and laws. They're not there to (tacitly) rewrite the Constitution and take away our rights (see the Guantanamo debacle in the United States), if they start doing that we as citizens have every right in our power to take actions against our fellow citizens who don't respect the fundamental laws of our countries (what most of them call a Constitution).

Stratfor is a news company. Their only mission is to print accurate information for the consumption of the public. They give away many articles for free, and individuals can subscribe for about $20/month.

Stratfor is not Halliburton. It's sort of the opposite. While mainstream media propaganda spins bullshit about the Euro crisis, Stratfor gives straight-to-the-point, honest reporting and is only concerned with accuracy.

Basically Anon is trying to destroy one of the highest quality news sources available online. This isn't noble.

If they hacked FOX, the NYT, lobbyist emails, the MPAA, or even something like Facebook, I would probably congratulate them for helping humanity.

But not in this case.

Agreed, this is scummy anarchy just so they can watch the world burn.

I'm all for government transparency, however I believe the media has the right to privacy as they alone seem to do the work of keeping the government transparent. All the Anons are doing is fuelling fires that will allow the government more secrecy and ratting out the whistle blowers isn't going to help anybody.

If people would actually READ THE FUCKING ARTICLE instead of spouting off about governments hypocrisy to defend an attack against a news company.

Bravo forensic, you seem to be one of the few capable of looking at the evidence on this issue.

> these are not normal circumstances

How ridiculous. You can use that to justify absolutely any action that you deem fit. Who's to decide what's acceptable in these "not normal circumstances"?

"then they should be publicly offering their own correspondences up for inspection"

We already are, the government has made it fairly clear that they have the "right" to read anyone's emails they please due to their bullshit "war on terror", its about time we get the same chance to do it to them

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm under the impression that government employees' correspondence with a private company is confidential.

Is it? If it is, it shouldn't be. If the matter concerns clear and present threats to national security, then why is a private firm involved at all? If there is no clear and present threat, then why bother with secrecy?

We need to take back the concept of the government serving the people, they are our employees, we pay taxes that go towards their salaries, last time I checked, my boss has the ability to read emails I send from a company email address.

You're wrong. You can foia request any communication between government employees and anyone if it was done in their official role or on government equipment. There are some exceptions of course, but generally speaking correspondence is anything but confidential (at least in the USA)

It's really hard to generalize about this in the US, each state has their own laws, FOIA isn't applicable to state and local governments: http://www.nfoic.org/state-foi-laws

The allowable exemptions -- and penalties for non-compliance -- vary wildly from state to state.

Thanks for disabusing me of my misconception. However, I'm going to have to do more homework on this before I'm willing to concede that you're right.

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