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Comment by redact207 | Hacker News Reader

Most of the time the people who Anonymous give the stick to deserve it, but this type of petty schoolyard graffiti attack is questionable. Given the DPRK's sensitive ego, especially at this point in their international circus show when everyone's doing their best to diffuse the situation, injecting 'porn and kitten images' into their network is not helping the effort. At the very least, inject some propaganda or meaningful statement rather than self-glorifying "I wuz here" junk.

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?

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Agreed. This would be really bad if the DPRK decided the Anon hack was an act of aggression. Didn't I just read about this somewhere recently? Oh yeah...

"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 disagree with what Anon is doing here, but what I can't figure out is whether there's ever been a more legitimate target for Anon's attention.

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.

"Most of the time the people who Anonymous give the stick to"

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'.

Certain details about the images on the photostream at http://cdn.thenextweb.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/... , such as the image that reads "We are Anonymous", leads me to believe that "Anonymous" is, in fact, the culprit in this case.

Or someone claiming to be Anonymous. That's the whole point...

Whenever Anonymous attacks, one of the top posts is a reasonable argument such as yours here that it is not helping matters, and I pretty much always find myself in agreement (e.g. wrt SOPA/PIPA last year).

So I'm curious about:

"Most of the time the people who Anonymous give the stick to deserve it"

Who are you thinking of?

Of the top of my head - westboro baptist church, church of scientology, Ohio football rape crew and a string of internet pedophiles.

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.

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