Anonymous takes control of North Korea’s Twitter and Flickr accounts
thenextweb.com
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The DPRK is a horribly repressed, poverty ridden hell-hole where the only way out is death. I have nothing but pity for their every day suffering. A small part of me wants things like this to tip the balance of a short-lived war that ends in an open and free Korea. Why wait another 10 years where nothing's changed except their childish tantrums and nuclear capability?
"A secret legal review on the use of America’s growing arsenal of cyberweapons has concluded that President Obama has the broad power to order a pre-emptive strike if the United States detects credible evidence of a major digital attack looming from abroad..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/04/us/broad-powers-seen-for-o...
I really think it's important to our online discourse to unpack the proper noun 'Anonymous'. "Anonymous" isn't akin to The Junta of NK, the Department of State's actions on behalf of the Secretary of State, the UK Foreign Office or whatever. It's ostensibly actions by actors outside the beauracratic system performing anarchic acts. That's a pretty huge umbrella to use to simplistically label the actors as 'Anonymous'.
So I'm curious about:
"Most of the time the people who Anonymous give the stick to deserve it"
Who are you thinking of?
I don't advocate vigilante justice in these instances, I just don't feel any pity for the victims. Though "justice" is too strong a word - perhaps "nuisance" is better.
What makes a state that is as repressed as you describe less deserving than e.g. a business faction (even a corrupt one)? Is it just because the business can't start an international incident in response?
I guess what I'm saying is that I wish Anon would put the stick away completely, and that the lack of ability for a target to fight back is not acceptable reason to hit them with said stick.
Look. "Anonymous" is a like force of nature. It is simply the current collection of idiots with an axe to grind attacking whatever seems cool and sensationalist. Some of them have skills, some of them don't. Most of the time, what they do is childish. What they don't have is an agenda that you could argue with.
Yelling at them whenever they're on the part of your lawn that you care about makes about as much sense as yelling at the rain for making the part of your lawn wet that might rot from it. (Wow, that sure makes a contender for todays price for most quickly tortured metaphor.)
The reason why "Anonymous does X"? "Because X is possible". Nothing more and nothing less.
I think it is perfectly reasonable to say that the risk/reward ratio here is quite a bit different than many of Anon's previous targets. As much as we deride North Korea's military ability, they still have the potential to inflict a great deal of harm to a large number of people. That risk hasn't really been present to this level in many of the things Anon has been involved in before as far as I know.
Agreed. It does make the sometimes a bit excessive complaining rather pointless, though.
I mean, sure, it's undeniably petty, and if it accomplishes anything then it'll be to inflame the DPRK's temper. Maybe that's the point; maybe highlighting the empty nature of their posturing with insults rather than listening to their threats with prudent concern is a way to bring them into line.
I don't really think that's the case, and I doubt the people who did this thought that either.
But this made me smile. It's irreverent, questionably legal and of dubious value. That's what Anonymous stands for, and I have to admit that I'm glad that they're there to pull pranks like this.
You realize that lower level people within NK will likely be punished, perhaps brutally because of the embarrassment? The people punished may not even have been responsible for the security lapse.
Thanks a bunch for raising my awareness that my head has a weakness to blunt trauma by hitting me in the skull with a hammer!
Additionally, it doesn't matter if self-protection is easy as in setting strong passwords or easy as in putting a helmet on my head or locking my door at night.
The ethical lapse is in the person breaking into the server, hitting me on the head with the hammer, or opening the door to my unlocked home.
Don't blame victims.
I'm not seeing how this comparison is apt.
People in power view it as an act of cyber terrorism.
I can't see how poking the DPRK will result in anything positive, especially given their volatile and often irrational behavior.
If they were honestly concerned with the security of Twitter, they should talk to Twitter rather than potentially stirring international relations.
if they could, they would be liberated with a tweet, democracy in 140 chars or less.
Academics in North Korea apparently are trusted with some access to the Internet at large, so there is a route.
Meanwhile, most people in the country don't have any kind of access to computers, and most of those that do, can only access the country's (allegedly air-gapped) intranet, which cannot be attacked unless someone inside the country physically connects it to the internet.
"You agree to comply with all applicable export and import laws and regulations[…] and sanctions control programs"
The US / North Korea sanctions[2] don’t specifically talk about services, but under the export of goods has this to say:
Treasury prohibitions on exporting goods to North Korea specifically relate to sales involving parties whose property and interests in property are blocked under E.O. 13551. Otherwise, there are no Treasury prohibitions on exporting goods to North Korea. Depending on the goods involved (e.g., luxury goods), the export may be subject to other U.S. export controls, such as those administered by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
So I think they’re be OK as long as it’s the press and not the government that’s running it.
[1] http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/utos-173.html
[2] http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/D...
Remember Lulzsec? aka the FBI?
enable the masses in NK to access the real internet.. create dissent.. initiate homegrown civil war.
Lol? I guess?
Jokes aside, this seems - at least - irresponsible to me.
Edit: I'm not saying they're guilty and should be put in jail for it or something. Not that kind of responsibility. However, they do bear some indirect responsibility that would cause most normal people to feel somewhat guilty.
An analogous type of guilt would be if, for example, I mistakenly dropped something while on top of a tall building and it cracked someone's windshield in the street below, caused an accident, and 3 people died. I didn't kill those people directly, and I definitely did not intend for anything bad to happen, and probably it was also the fault of the driver who let himself be distracted enough by something cracking his windshield to then proceed to have a major accident. It's hard to blame myself for those deaths, but I most certainly will, because I was involved in a critical part of the chain of cause and effect that made these three people die.
Now imagine if you dropped that penny from a tall building, and it caused 100'000 people to die. Some guilt trip that would be...
Furthermore, the way to deal with a bully isn't to try to not upset him. It is to punch him in the mouth (more if necessary) and let him know that his bullying will not be tolerated and that you are not scared of him.
Kim Jong Un needs a few teeth knocked out.
Note that I'm not saying they did this, or have good reason to. It's just that I'm a bit suspicious of anything Anonymous related after the Sabu/Lulzsec story, especially when it relates to propaganda like this.
There is very little precedent for war being the 'right' answer to any problem.
I'd hate to be the script kiddie who has to live with the knowledge that they did something that caused hundreds of thousands of people to die "for the lolz".