Hacktivist deletes white supremacist websites live onstage during conference | Hacker News Reader

Hacktivist deletes white supremacist websites live onstage during conference

techcrunch.com

78 pointsryandrake68 comments

> “Imagine calling yourselves the ‘master race’ but forgetting to secure your own website — maybe try mastering to host WordPress before world domination,” Root wrote.

It's ironic that supremacists tend to be the worst examples of humanity.

I think most of them suffer from deeply rooted insecurity. Like, consider: you're BAD at stuff. You know, in your heart of hearts, that you're the bottom of the barrel.

You can accept that, or you can get swept up into an ideology that says "the subgroup I'm in is better than all the other subgroups", and then, WOW! You're automatically better than most other people without having to do anything!

Some folks are looking for anything to be proud of, and skin color's about it.

There was a TED Talk some years back from a guy who was part of it, talking about how he ended up in it and got out. He was a lost kid who didn’t know where his life was going, and someone took advantage of that and gave him a place to belong. It doesn’t sound much different than the playbook of most cults and even many religions.

https://www.ted.com/talks/christian_picciolini_my_descent_in...

It's also terrifying. Look at the average competence their group displays on a daily basis, and now consider how far they've been able to get just with this level of knowledge and curiosity. Far-rightists rule the world and are continuing to become ever more powerful. Now imagine what happens if among their masses appears an actually scarily intelligent figure. If they're already able to exert so much power, that intelligent figure would probably be able to make us all suffer for the rest of our lives.

Certain views on human "races" are incompatible with intelligence. A highly intelligent individual may instrumentalize useful idiots through emotional and conspiratorial agitation, but they wouldn't be honestly convinced by these narratives themself. Not these days, there is too much scientific evidence to the contrary. The far right mob is easy to rule, if you can free yourself of empathy, dignity and honor. The people in power are not true believers, they are psychopathic opportunists.

To us Europeans White supremacists are like AlQaeda/Isis supporters in the middle of US declaring a legal right to fund a party which supports nuking Wall Street and Silicon Valley because they are 'inferior infidels'.

Interrupting communications it's a serious crime in Europe too, with either high fines or straight prison time, but ethically I feel nothing for the webmaster. The same if someone deleted the social network profiles (and the whole infra) of narco armies in Mexico.

Honestly, to me the only thing that differentiates Western white supremacists and similar fascist-adjacent groups from Middle Eastern extreme fundamentalists is that the latter had enough power to exercise total control over entire nations, shaping them to their whims. But this is just an outcome of circumstance, if the far-rightists are allowed to reshape a country to their liking (which we are increasingly allowing to happen) the results wouldn't be so different.

I'm definitely curious why so many people simultaneously hold the viewpoints where the second group has it coming for them and rightfully deserve to be bulldozed out of existence, but the first should be treated with understanding and compassion.

The first years of Francoism Spain were just the Catholic Sharia but with the Bible. Even under Democracy women weren't allowed to open a bank account until 1978 (3 years after Franco's death).

Have you ever been curious about what the life could been under MAGA's with the Christianism raised with full powers? Read about the first years of that regime, from 1939 to 1953.

Replace Catholicism with Evangelism or any major American Christian branch and that's pretty much the same.

Oh, and the economic collapse. That would be a thing, too. When the scientists are fed with bullshit and flee away your whole economy collapses.

> Even under Democracy women weren't allowed to open a bank account until 1978 (3 years after Franco's death).

It wasn't many years earlier than that when the same thing was generally true in the US as well. My mother had a few horror stories about that.

That is one of many travesties that were part of the time that MAGA wants to roll the US back to.

Fantastic.

you go, girl!

Time for a good, throw the entire law library at them prosecution. You don’t get exemption from the law because people like your targets.

Maybe put a bounty for their prosecution and conviction.

Why? Lol

soooo good!

Isn’t this illegal and a wrong thing to do. Just because you don’t agree with ideology, you can’t just go ahead and destroy actual IP . I’d think if the sites are based in the US and the owners decided to take action, they could force this activist to be extradited and face punishment.

Illegal? Probably. Wrong or immoral? lol no

> Isn’t this illegal and a wrong thing to do. (?)

  The pseudonymous hacker [...] deleted the servers of WhiteDate, WhiteChild, and WhiteDeal in real time at the end of a talk at the annual Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, Germany. 

  As of this writing, WhiteDate, which Hoffmann described as a “Tinder for Nazis”; WhiteChild, a site that claimed to match white supremacists’ sperm and egg donors; and WhiteDeal, a sort-of Taskrabbit-esque labor marketplace for racists, are all offline.

  Root, Hoffmann, and Fuchs claim to have identified the real identity of the websites’ administrator as a woman from Germany.

There's likely a hacking crime of some nature here, but it's reasonably certain a German website administrator could face charges for running a Nazi aligned and themed website in Germany.

> I’d think if the sites are based in the US and the owners decided to take action, they could force this activist to be extradited and face punishment.

US based content owners have had mixed success forcing hackers to be extradited and face punishment in the US.

Many ransomware gangs are still operating, Anna's Archive is still up, ThePirateBay continues to defy Hollywood.

Sure, some hackers are caught and dragged through courts. Many are not. Enough to make your statement questionable.

I would not bet on a US jury being willing to convict for this, especially not one empaneled by a DC/NYC federal court. A mistrial would be far more likely. (Jury nullification has entered the chat.)

Then try in East Texas.

It's probably illegal. It's not wrong though. I'm not generally a fan of vigilante justice, but with the rise of fascism lately it's better to act sooner than later.

This isn't just an ideology, but a movement that kills people. I can't see how you can value "actual IP" more than human lives.

I saw the article title and somehow I predicted the top most voted response on Hacker News without even clicking on the comments - someone having sympathy for the poor poor white supremacist.

Illegal? Maybe. Wrong? Lol, no.

The site, and the extended media presence are full of hardcore racist statements not protected under the German constitution, not considered legal expressions of free speech here. If you have seen the talk, you'd know the site/owner has been investigated by the German inland intelligence agency (Verfassungsschutz), but due to incompetence they only got the wrong person fired... In fact, the "Q&A" intro to the deletion bit, references the executive's inaction.

Some information disclosure is also evidently in the public interest. For example the AfD representatives found are additional evidence for anti-constitutional sentiments within the AfD. This is highly relevant for a possible party prohibition process (which has an extremely high legal threshold).

After all, the website security was hilariously bad. (I suspect the members' IQ scores may have been largely self-diagnosed...) From what I've gathered the publicized data has been somewhat anonymized. The victims of this hack should be rather happy the original data got nuked.

Also good luck extraditing the activist. It's pretty clear the pink power ranger on stage is a borrowed body, and/or, I presume, the voice heard is AI or borrowed recording, as well. OpSec seems alright. But you know, these days, the president of the United States may personally order the NSA and navy seals to snatch the Martha Root off the streets to uphold the holy rule of law and freedom of speech/expression...

[flagged]

Hacker culture is all about unquestionably accepting every law and declining to fight one of the most objectively evil ideologies conceived because of a desire to kneel at the altar of intellectual property, don't you know?

There's no hacker in hackernews

Yes. And do so with haste, and maximum identification of the person behind the mask.

Justice follows the law, not the whims of hacktivism.

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