
Anonymous collateral damage
Anonymous as usual splatter the personal data of innocent people onto the web regardless of the consequences.
The parliamentary aide to a right-wing Finnish MP has offered to resign after the Anonymous hacking collective published what it said was a list of applications to join a local neo-Nazi party. Hacktivists broke into the website of Kansallinen Vastarinta, the magazine of the Suomen Vastarintaliike (Finnish Resistance Movement …
What is your source for these "revelations"? In fact, the people on "that camp" were merely engaging in normal leisure activity and rational political debate. You disgust all right-minded people with your innuendo about the deceased.
I suppose it's easy to fill up at your own propaganda outlets and spout off about things you know nothing about, all because some ill-informed moron heard something about someone in Norwegian politics not wanting to bomb the crap out of Palestine and then extrapolated the hell out of their most paranoid and delusional thoughts to form a moronic theory about what all those decadent Europeans must be doing. When you got to hear the polished version that plays to your stupid prejudices, it probably made you feel like your intellectually-curtailed world-view was somehow confirmed.
But regardless of what the idiotic talking heads are saying to the nodding buffoons alongside you in whichever target audience you belong to, I'd advise you to have some respect for the victims of that tragedy and keep your uninformed outbursts to yourself.
We are all innocent until proven guilty of committing a crime.
The crime committed here was by members of Anonymous.
Freedom of thought must be a universal right, including the right to disagree with existing laws.
No one should have to resign just for having an opinion.
While I have very limited sympathy for racists, I don't agree with what Anonymous did here.
Though I admit that I'm not that familiar with the Finnish political landscape. If this neo-Nazi group is gaining significant political power to the point where they pose a credible threat, than perhaps this was justified.
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But does that justify exposing the details of an MP who then denied membership of the group anyway. Web sites acquire details for all sorts of people who may either have not even entered the details anyway, may have been spoofed into entering the details or may have entered the details.
Does being recorded on the Internet make something true? More so if Anonymous dump the information into pastebin?
A parliamentary aide to an MP from the nationalist party "True Finns" (the clue is in the name) might harbour some neo-Nazi sympathies. How shocking. Next they'll shockingly reveal that some minor UKIP or Conservative party official doesn't particularly care for "darkies", and they "liked Britain better in the good old days".
It's hardly a major coup for Anonymous, is it?
Firstly, I'm not sure how happy I am about this. I think it's good that people in positions of possible power make their views clear to the public, but this isn't necessarily the way to do it (although I can see the similarities between this and, say, a newspaper asking an informant in the party for a list of possible members, something that I don't think would be so easily frowned upon).
The thing is, a lot of people who associate with right wing parties don't make these associations, even if they're clear as day to others. That's why the BNP has spent so much time spouting propaganda to the effect that they aren't in bed with the EDL. It's not because they actually care, it's because a fair number of people who can vote have less of an issue espousing their nationalistic or racist views if they can't be linked to a militant far-right organisation. These people will happily carry on with their delusion that actually the BNP isn't all that bad, they just want to help the poor working white man, until things like this come out, or until videos are shown of Griffin talking with a KKK chief. If it opens the eyes of one person, I'd call it a success, in the same vein as if their campaign against scientology saves one person from losing their life savings, or their life, it's a success.
"The parliamentary aide to a right-wing Finnish MP"
While "true finns" might be xenophobic, they are *not* right wing. In the questions before elections True Finn MP candidates firmly supported adding more benefits to poor (locals) and more taxes to the rich. Bigotry is not a right-wing exclusive.
It could be argued that by leaking the names in the open, it gives the "victims" (and the institutions/companies) a chance to mitigate the consequences. As opposed to what would happen should a black hat get the same info using the same methods.
Hence, it could be argued that "spilling their personal details all over the web" is actually doing them a favor.
(that, of course, relies on the assumption that just notifying the institution of the vuln would not lead to a improvement in security; not a big assumption to make, and one that is backed by ample experience in the past decade).
Devil's advocate icon, obviously.
I don't know what to think about Anonymous tactics but comparing it to McCarthyism is stupid. They did not seek to imprison or "suicide" the people on the list they published. They did not blackmail their neighbors and friends into making false accusations. They did not threaten to harm people's families to coerce them into falsely incriminate themselves.
They just published a list of people who filled a form. Call it Googleism or Phormism all you want. McCarthyism it ain't.