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You're assuming your alternatives are within their intellect or capability (whether in terms of ability to pull it off or ability to get information that does not exist / never happened). I don't think they are. So a question: is this action better than no action at all, which is the reasonable alternative for these people? I reckon you're right that this is a waste of time.

Often the people most critical of activists and actions are the ones not doing any activism themselves.

Let's say this Anon's action inspires other Anons within the federal government to take in a USB key and torrent a few GB of internal emails. Then it's a huge win. Any Anons with sysadmin skills will now join the federal government (they're always hiring), turn off logging, bundle up a tar, cover their tracks, and put it on the web. Nothing will take down a .gov faster than shining some sunlight on their Pentagon Papers. If caught, each Anon can invoke federal whistleblower statutes and dare the courts to jail them and spawn one hundred more Anons. Some will no doubt be jailed, but the power to administer computers is now the power to hold unjust institutions accountable. This is information war.

Ask Bradley Manning how that whistleblowing thing works out. I think it's important to realise doing things like that, whether ultimately for the good or the bad, comes at a huge personal risk.

To be fair Bradley Manning was prosecuted because he bonded (they had very long chats) with the guy who was supposed to relay that information. If you read the chat transcripts you can tell that Manning was very troubled at the time and wanted someone to talk to. IMHO this does not necessarily apply to someone who works at the DOJ and uses an anonymous channel to submit confidential documents to e.g. Cryptome

It worked out with the Arab Spring didn't it?

"Manning and WikiLeaks were credited as catalysts for the Arab Spring that began in December 2010, when waves of protesters rose up against rulers across the Middle East and North Africa after the leaked cables exposed government corruption" [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning

Manning and WikiLeaks may have been credited by some as catalysts for the Arab Spring, but they were not.

Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation was the catalyst for the Arab Spring. It's not as if Tunisians needed anyone to tell them how corrupt their government was. Once Tunisia looked like it might fall, revolutionaries in other countries started planning their own protests.

Have you got any references refuting this claim then. "but they were not" just isn't that convincing on it's own.

Amnesty International are one of the organisations that credit Wikileaks as being a catalyst for the Arab Spring.

"One example highlighted by Shetty was Tunisia, where WikiLeaks revelations about Ben Ali's corrupt regime combined with rapidly-spreading news of the self-immolation of a disillusioned young man, Mohamed Bouazizi, to spark major protests." [1]

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/13/amnesty-internat...

Preamble: I'm not saying anything one way or another about who or what was or wasn't causal to the Arab Spring movements.

That said, you really need to learn the difference between proximal and ultimate causes.

Absofuckinglutely this. These 'hacks' annoy IT directors and allow self-described Deliverators to congratulate themselves amongst their script-kiddie nmap brethren in some private IRC. Then there's the more altruistic 'hacking' which uncovers truths obfuscated by those who've wronged in the interests of greed and cronyism.

This prank is immature, ineffective and honestly a waste of taxpayer money - additional personnel will be hired and major unnecessary purchases will be made of consulting services and software and equipment which we'll likely have to foot the bill for.

You're doing nothing to protect our civil liberties or expose the misdeeds of the corrupt and complacent. Try again.

The video does mention some documents leaked that are password-locked and encrypted, and that they will start seeding some redacted information from it to media outlets. So we'll probably see soon if any of it is real.

Exposing emails, hacking the FBI? This is not at all helpful.

Murdering politicians, assassinating police officers and judges, freeing the wrongly imprisoned by force. A willingness to die fighting. Any or all of those would change things, possibly for the better. But this, this is a waste of your time and ours.

Can you say martial law?

I know several officers who belong on either side of the integrity fence. Losing the bad ones violently will only turn the good ones against whatever good you're hoping to accomplish.

This is absolutely the worst thing they could do. There are plenty of politicians, police officers and judges who are doing everything they can to free those wrongly imprisoned. Besides that, not everyone who works inside the "machine" is evil; most are just doing their jobs to whatever capacity they can and I assure you, they don't sleep well when their work is used for injustice.

Violence is the worst option. Ask India. They got independence peacefully after violent rebellion failed.

At the time India gained independence, the British Empire was in shambles, and was financially derelict after World War 2. A strong argument can be made that it was the implicit threat of violence which the UK would be totally unable to handle at the time is what ultimately led to Indian independence.

The situation is not a particularly effective argument that non violent solutions are always preferable, or even possible.

hernmannj314, this comment could be read as encouraging the ("helpful") deaths of a variety of civic officials. Even if there were an appropriate forum for such loathsome sentiments, hn is certainly not it.

> Even if there were an appropriate forum for such loathsome sentiments, hn is certainly not it.

This behavior is the inevitable result of lynch mobs throughout history though. Rile up the people enough and stuff like this is a byproduct. Even in the American Revolution the people started off by torturing unpopular British officials by tar-and-feathering them. One can't have their cake and eat it too.

What's your point? hn is still not the place for such behavior to be framed as "helpful".

You're right, I wasn't very clear. My point is that HN has been kind of a rallying point for some of the more intellectual opposition to anything and everything regarding how Swartz's case was handled (at least, once he killed himself).

But all of the people calling for heads to figuratively roll need to be really careful about the effect of their rallying cries. Like "having one more drink" while carrying your car keys, decisions and actions made now can spiral out of anyone's control and lead to even more anguish down the road.

Mob rule is very much a package deal, you don't just get to keep the good parts and disclaim all the rest.

It could also be read as a dramatic exaggeration of the parent's claim that one class of crime was better than another and that we should be willing to commit crimes of civil disobedience based on pragmatism and not be tethered by morality or legality. I tried to point out the absurdity of that claim by extending it as far as I could, by arguing that we should murder government employees so long as it "might" make the world a better place.

I thought it was clear by copying the words of the parent in my post what I was doing.

So, here's a free piece of advice: Put away the Guy Fawkes mask, turn down the RATM and read a book. You live in a real democracy. Not a perfect one, those don't exist, a real one. That makes you more free than most people alive today and all the dead ones. All of them. Your frustration shouldn't primarily sourced in the brokenness of the system, but in how the vast majority of your co-citizens disagree with you that it's broken - or, at least, fundamentally disagrees with what the solution is.

Your mission as a citizen in a democracy is to convince your fellow citizens that this is wrong and that it should be fixed. The second you pick up a weapon, you lose. Game over.

> Murdering politicians, assassinating police officers and judges...

Regimes that start by abandoning the rule of law tend to have problems adopting it back later on. It's so much more convenient not to worry about following rules.

Dudes. This is not at all helpful. Sitting at the front of the bus just creates more of an excuse for a crackdown.

Seriously? This again?

Anonymous is not Rosa Parks.

The analogy compares actions, not things.

Defacing a website from behind who knows how many layers of anonymizing proxies isn't being black and sitting at the front of a segregated bus, either.

Both are forms of civil disobediance. Neither need cause significant damage other than to sensibilities. The number of those layers is irrelevant.

This. I think hacktivism and subsequent whistle-blowing can do good, but this is pissing in the wind.

By that token so is voiding your ballot, but if that were the only form of expression available to you, you might be happy to be able to make even that small squeak. Voiding your ballot (and in the same way, defacing a website) sends a message to your peers and the authorities that you are dissatisfied and that alone can be solidifying. That is one of the purposes of any protest, be it disassociating yourself from an injustice or creating graffiti to propagandize for your cause. It creates, at minimum, an opportunity for a group acknowledgement of that dissatisfaction. However imperfect the expression, it can still contribute to positive change. (I would also, for example, say self-immolation is a terrible waste, but it's damn hard to dismiss. In the same way, Aaron Swartz's death says something timeless, whether he intended it or not, and however regrettable or frustrating or futile or "selfish"...)

Is the sentiment of disapproval here due to one wrong being used against others (which I echo) or fear ("excuse for a crackdown")?

Yes, sadly, most cases of whistle-blowing in the government sector end up in retaliation and prosecution of whistle-blowers themselves and little to no change in the relevant agencies.

Wikileaks had a great potential. It's like a startup set out to disrupt the market of public/government relations. But it was washed away into near-irrelevance. And not only because the forces they stood up against are immensely powerful, but also because most people, really, don't care.

Nonetheless, I'm glad whistle-blowers exist and have guts to speak up. The case of Wikileaks and others did reveal how deeply corrupt are those in power and how grand their appetites are.

The article I read simply stated that the FBI was made aware of someone plotting to kill protesters, not that they were planning to do it themselves.

Other than that, I get the point of your post.

Yes, that's why he said to find out "who was planning to kill the protesters".

And a waste of perfectly good security flaws. Save that hole in Apache for something good.

Agreed. It gives them a new boogyman. A terrorist that cannot be named or specified by race, ethnicity, or any other factor. It opens the door to anyone they deem a threat being detained in relation with "anonymous". The very thing that made them will kill them. When the boogyman is nobody, it incriminates everybody.