Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Can we get an adult up in here?, in reply to Greg Dawson,
A more appropriate simile would be holding the dom post responsible for what the sunday star times has published. Or really, holding a newspaper responsible for the myspace page of a 14 year old.
That’s a vivid comparison, but not really an accurate one. One Anonymous source frankly described the relationship with Wikileaks to Wired as a partnership, and an ongoing one
I’m quite open to there being public-interest and journalistic merit in this, but I just don't think taking a dump on the reception desk on the way out is a particularly productive thing to do.
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Hard News: Can we get an adult up in here?, in reply to Alex Coleman,
And sure, it sucks that people will have to get new cards, but there are greater collateral damages in the world. I’m also pretty sure that if any of those responsible for the leak are caught, they’ll pay the price, and that they are aware of that fact.
Also, I personally think that the main responsibility for keeping secrets secret belongs to the people promising to keep them secret, not with hackers and people like WL.
Agreed there – Stratfor’s security practices seem to have been hopeless. I still don’t think that justifies the wholesale publication of the details they were supposed to be keeping safe.
Most people didn’t have their card details published – although many did and it seems quite random -- but most people also re-use passwords and those were all published alongside their email addresses. They’ve presumably been scraped already by scammers, spammers and crooks.
There’s just no justification for doing this.
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And further:
So far, two lists of credit card details have been published to the Internet by Anonymous members, one containing 3956 items, the other with 13,191 items. Some of those numbers have apparently been used to donate large sums of money to charitable organizations such as the American Red Cross and CARE.
While to some it may appear that Anonymous is acting as an Information Age Robin Hood, it may not be doing anyone any favors by ringing up unauthorized charges on other people's credit cards. "These donations will never reach the ones in need," writes security guru Mikko Hypponen at F-Secure. "In fact, these actions will just end up hurting the charities, not helping them."
"When credit card owners see unauthorized charges on their cards, they will report them to their bank or credit card company," he explains. "Credit card companies will do a chargeback to the charities, which will have to return the money. In some cases, charities could be hit with penalties. At the very least, they will lose time and money in handling chargebacks."
Awesome.
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Hard News: Can we get an adult up in here?, in reply to Tom Semmens,
The people whose credit card details were published all deserve it – they part of the global elite that fuck over workers everywhere.
It's a real shame that you don't have a clue what you're on about.
Here's a list of 2756 people who had their accounts compromised and in some cases their credit card details published, filtered for .nz addresses.
There are a few familiar names -- the journalist Pattrick Smellie, VuW associate professor Jim Veitch, VuW researcher Tim Beal (a friend of Matt Robson's) , Selwyn Manning at Scoop, a few police and parliamentary addresses and ... well, mostly a lot of ordinary folks. An orthodontist, someone who works at The Mill liquor store, lots of people on xtra and ihug addresses. At least one person who comments regularly at this site.
Should I go on, or are you sufficiently embarrassed now?
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I'm not greatly invested in cinematic film, except on a grokking-the-zeitgeist level. But I do love the way you write about it, Craig.
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Hard News: Can we get an adult up in here?, in reply to Tom Semmens,
This is part of a war.
Wars are won through discipline.
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Hard News: Can we get an adult up in here?, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
But Wikileaks / Anonymous aren’t the same entity. I’m assuming that Anonymous hacked the emails and credit card data and then passed the content to Wikileaks.
Who in turn passed the content to the SST, etc.
Yup.
Are we saying that all these entities are accessories after the fact (legally / morally) to the hacking? Or that the downstream recipients (including the rest of us) should refuse to receive that “tainted” information.
None of the above. I'm saying that a little less adolescent triumphalism would have served the public a lot better.
Wikileaks is responsible only to the extent that it has a dialogue with Anonymous and can say "okay, guys, here's how to help us without totally undermining what we're trying to to". And Anonymous being what it is, it's hard to know what that extent is. But ... arrgh.
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Hard News: That page doesn't exist ..., in reply to Paul Brislen,
Yes, I was expressing sarcasm at the view (widely held in some circles).
Aw, I knew what you were saying.
My apologies – dryness doesn’t always translate. I shall use more smiley faces. ;-)
But that's like putting a "satire" straphead on a satirical column :-)
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When last you saw me I was hunched over a media desk in Eden Park, praying that for 20 minutes we could hold out the French. From what I understand, we did.
You had to bloody remind me of the worst 20 minutes of my life, didn't you?
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And words from a painter about picturing the land.
