Iran's Cyberwarfare Commander Assassinated | Hacker News Reader

Iran's Cyberwarfare Commander Assassinated

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46 pointsytNumbers57 comments

More informative source from which this is cribbed:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/10...

You know I read about this story this morning, and it actually contained Mojtaba Ahmadi's official title which I can't remember right now but it certainly wasn't "cyberwarfare czar". That makes him sound like some fuckin' cocaine-fueled warlord demanding ransoms out of a cave, and not a government official.

Government officials in the US are often called czars. It's not an item of propaganda, it's just an informal way of talking in English.

Oh ok. Yeah calling him a czar makes him sound super independent and unpredictable.

Then again in Canada we have the ombudsmen.

Isn't ombudsman someone in charge of talking to external stakeholders and dealing with their problems?

An ombudsman, in Canada at least, is an independent official appointed to oversee and investigate the provincial government based on feedback from the public. Every province has their own ombudsman.

You will be delighted to know theres a "drug czar" in the US. It sounded weird to me, too.

I think the idea behind the "czar" title is that the official has more authority to change the underlying organization and it lets the government pretend it's not a giant bureaucracy.

Israel is a dangerous rogue state.

edit: for spelling.

    Israel is a dangerous rouge state.

Slightly red-pinkish?

Israel should cut down on the makeup.

> Israel is a dangerous rouge state.

rouge (noun): a red powder or cream used as a cosmetic for coloring the cheeks or lips

rouge (noun): (in Canadian football) a single point awarded when the receiving team fails to run a kick out of its own end zone.

Canadian football is crazy.

Canadian football also allows motion towards the line of scrimmage, which increases the tempo of the game & fun factor for the fans.

Second most irritating misspelling after "loose".

Wow, super trenchant analysis. They don't even know if it was Mossad, but glad you could chime in. And nice job ignoring the regional context. Because you know, who keeps Hezbollah afloat in Lebanon, and is helping to destabilize their northern (Syria vis a vis the Revolutionary Guard helping out Hezbollah fighters aligned with the Assad govt) and southern (Egypt vis a via aid for the Muslim brotherhood) borders?

Not a Zionist, and not claiming the US or Israel is 'good', but your post _sucks_.

Yes. Israel's tactics is generally to incite conflict, pull in the west countries (mainly the US), thus solving their geopolitical goals.

You can in fact trace the birth of modern terrorism right back to establishment of the Israeli state in the Middle East.

The moment the US stops supporting Israel will mark the end of War on Terror.

It's like a C-SPAN call-in show here.

Yeah, and all the Islamofascists in the neighbouring states will call all the Jews that live there. Hooray!

Top thread comment is a blank anti-Israel comment with no arguments. Congrats guys, you've officially turned HN into a mix of r/politics and r/worldnews.

Zionist scum.

Israel is a liberal democracy surrounded by countries that want to eliminate it from the map and kill all the Jews within its borders.

> said to be found with two bullet wounds near his heart.

Certainly sounds like Mossad. Fum, Fum. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM4h4TsEDqE

When you play the game of drones, you win... or you die.

I for one can't wait for this reveal:

http://rt.com/usa/nsa-assassination-leaks-greenwald-514/

I predict that the chucklehead faction on HN will be torn between two responses: "these are lies" and "this isn't news these programs have been in place forever everybody knows about it".

Meanwhile the libertarians and liberals will fight over "this is just the inevitable consequence of the monopoly on violence that the state represents" and "clearly this means the government must have killed Aaron Swartz and Steve Jobs and that it's only a matter of time before the murder-squads come after you."

As silly as those two propositions might seem, at least they don't contradict each other!

That statement really pisses me off. I'm a conservative. Am I going to say that? Predict me, since you're so good at it. What's coming next from me?

Edit: The OP changed their post. It said "conservative" not chucklehead.

I don't know. Maybe you'll hop on one foot while shaking your fist and frowning? Is there an emoticon for that?

Why don't you go back under your bridge troll.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Some things are lies, some are unverifiable, and other things have been in place forever and were either known or easily guessable.

Since these are three disjoint classes of things, this is not self-contradictory.

...three disjoint classes of things...

I was referring specifically to the alleged assassination program. Into which class does that fall?

It's a matter of record of record that President Obama has targeted and killed American citizens without trial or warrant. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki

It would not surprise me if there were more.

I would like examples of Obama authorizing the assassination of journalists/activists/etc., and not someone who's been called the "bin Laden of the Internet". Its much easier to be outraged about extrajudicial killings when the target isn't linked to Al Qaeda.

al-Alwaki's 16 year old son was also killed in a drone strike. He was a US citizen[1]

Pakistani report shows that in 70 drone strikes between '06 and '09 94 children were killed [2]

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/18/opinion/the-drone-that-kil...

[2] http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/blog/2013/07/22/get-the...

I thought that for a military bombing weapon, the drones have very good statistics for civilian causalities? (If they should be used to target the people they are targeting is another question.)

(Also, terrorists that know they have a target painted on top of their head are not the responsible part, if kids they spend time with die?)

About Pakistani statistics:

Note that Pakistani politicians approving of drones (an unofficial deal [about drones, with USA] was leaked iirc?) are targeted for murder. So public condemnations are not worth much there.

Anyway, afaik Pakistan do lots of cross border terror attacks on Afghanistan and India, then lie consistently. Pakistani claims about this subject just aren't trustworthy.

Remember that 'the bin Laden of the internet' was not operationally involved in any terrorism. His role in Al Qaeda was more like, let's say, Bill Ayer's relationship to the Weather Underground.

So you say Goebbels would not have been an ok US target during WW2, if he was an American citizen?

(Sorry, I just can't see how it is ameliorating that the Nazi side did non-warcrime attacks too, in contrast to alQ? :-) )

As an official government functionary of a country with which Congress had declared war, I imagine there would be scant legal difficulty in finding him guilty of treason in absentia. But absent that, no, I would not find it alright to target Goebbels if he were an American citizen.

Forget about email snooping or IRS targeting, I think as a citizen the first thing I should demand of my government is not to be killed without due process.

It's seriously disturbing that the President has an extra-judicial kill list on which he can place US citizens.

>> As an [active participant] of a country with which Congress had declared war [it is ok to kill a target]

Ok, so your problem is just that alQ is a non-country organization (after the Taliban fell, at least).

There is no party to make a formal declaration of war against, and police is not applicable, so the US population should stop complaining and accept terror attacks...

Right, I got your position.

I think you are arguing dishonestly and know your position is impractical.

The point with doing this "terror" thing is to influence a more or less democratic country by scaring the voters. If a group succeeds with that the politicians will do anything to stop the terror, because they won't get reelected otherwise.

Now, point is -- there will be damn good support of most everything, law book out the window etc, because if the terrorists aren't stopped the voters go apeshit again at the next big attack. (You will get maybe even torture and assassinations of terrorists in neutral counties.)

Again: Most any president, in any democratic country, will do anything -- in order to stop terror groups from scaring the voters.

This reaction on terror is probably built into the democratic system. You don't have to like it, of course.

(No, arguing for a stiff upper lip among the population doesn't help with committed terror groups. If the population doesn't react, the terror groups up their attacks to get the reaction they aim for. )

But I think you knew all that and just looked for a reason to condemn.

Edit: Rewrote for clarity, so I have something to copy/paste next time.

I think you missed my point entirely.

There is an important distinction between a citizen and a non-citizen.

That the US President orders the assassination of a US citizen -- I've got a problem with that. I'm honestly surprised it's a controversial position.

Again: Your point is that you are principally against killing US citizens in organisations that do violence against USA -- as long as the organisations aren't countries which you can declare war against.

One word: Weird. You say a country should never defend itself with military against violent citizens which become e.g. Somali warlords, join Pakistani tribal warfare clans or terrorist groups? (Not even the heavily armed US police can handle all threats smaller than country size.)

Anyway, my argument was that there are arguably even worse reactions to extreme terror from US and other democracies. This is probably built into the democratic system -- scare voters enough and countries will react badly. You don't have to like it.

But I think you understood that.

Edit: If you really don't understand -- you argue for a position by morality. I argue it is irrelevant, both for practical reasons and because of how democracies react to terror. Being Swedish I'm fed up with decisions based only on idealist wishful thinking, so I'm sorry if I sound irritated.

I don't mean to irritate you -- I find it interesting you're Swedish -- I assumed you were an American (very American of me, I know.)

I'm not a pie in the sky idealist. I consider myself fairly pragmatic, but I expect the President to abide by laws, and I expect my citizenship to afford me protections.

I haven't shed a tear over al-Awlaki, I assure you. But either he should have been adjudicated as an enemy combatant or judicially stripped of his citizenship or tried for treason in absentia.

It seems to me like your endorsing a rule of men rather than a rule of law. The problem with that is that it seems well and good when you've Julius and Augustus running the show, but when Nero and Caligula show up it's not so easy to go back.

I get what you say, e.g. the NSA is not a practical problem as long as there isn't a McCarthy and economic depression scenario. Then you would literally risk a 1984 scenario.

Point is, your distinction re "real" war definition with countries is not working.

(The Taliban, for instance, is more or less a real guerrilla army with state backing. Almost all larger terror groups get unofficial state support from somewhere.)

Countries can be seen (and typically behave) as unusually big clans that do clan warfare. That the states wrote specific legal protections for themselves, compared to smaller clans, doesn't make them fundamentally different.

If I should put it simpler, in terms that is easy for you:

You accept military solutions for combatants (combatants or in e.g. logistics) in conflicts with states.

There are often no simple categories as either countries or individuals. There is a big grey area, just consider deniability (e.g. should Hezbollah be seen as another branch of the Iranian rep guard? A proxy? Does anyone know, except maybe the Hezbollah boss?). So there will be cases where military solutions are relevant, even when it strictly aren't any countries involved (at least officially).

In the Middle East, this is especially obvious with more or less clans controlling countries.

For another example, Pakistan grows and deploys terrorist groups as if they were special forces (while vehemently denying it).

So the problem here is you building a moral standpoint of a simplified world view -- X wasn't in a declared war, so it is murder. It just isn't that simple, says 5 minutes of thought.

If this was state sponsored, is it a crime or an act of war?

Does it matter? They have no recourse.

It could be grounds for either. Whether an act is grounds for war doesn't necessarily mean that the country is in a position to strike back. If Israel did this, Iran probably couldn't afford to strike back militarily without incurring the full wrath of Israel's military. They'd also have to be extremely lucky to not have the US get involved as well.

An "act of war" is anything a state decides to go to war over. Given that these assassinations have been going on for several years, evidently not.

Then perhaps there is a third category: an act of terror.

Why do you have to make it into something else? Just call it an assassination.

While the act may induce terror, it's just confusing to lump it in with attacks against civilians. Attacks against military or para-military or chain of command elements are different because people can choose not to join up or to engage in those professions.

Intelligence agencies have been sending "messages" to one another for decades. It's a known hazard of the job.

Is Iran's intervention in Syria a crime or an act of war?

And just in time, too, for a good chance at rapprochement - the Salafists and Israel's conservative faction may see face-to-face on foreign policy for once.

Mossad + NSA == certain death.

And we know that he wasn't taken out by another faction within Iran because…? I'm reminded of the purges that Stalin was so fond of.

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