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Anonymous civil disobedience just gives the powers-that-be the excuse to arrest anyone they choose.

Nrsolis 15y ago
Civil disobedience usually requires that you perform your action openly and notoriously. Running a program in your home and using an alias hardly qualifies. Seriously, you're defending DDoS attacks?
- jfricker 15y ago
  Defending? No. Stating an observation that tyrannical institutions can use Anonymous as a pretense to arrest anyone with a computer. At least in the USA there is a shred of evidentiary requirement, but much of the world is not so lucky. I suppose it's arguable that Anonymous is acting out of a sense of "Civil Disobedience". Perhaps it's more along the lines of "vandalism". Philosophically speaking, that is.
  - Nrsolis 15y ago
    Vandalism? If I break your window, that's vandalism. If I burn down your home, that's arson. DDoS attacks I've seen have completely shut down some major sites and had some pretty significant second-order effects. There are real dollars and real problems created for real life individuals who depend on the availability of these systems. You can justify it all you like but civic action doesn't justify what these people do. It's mob mentality at work and it resembles a riot more than anything else. Innocent people get hurt in riots and no self respecting individual should be involved in one. Virtual or otherwise.
    - noglorp 15y ago
      Putting gum in a lock == vandalism == DOS of a physical location. Real dollars are lost etc. in that scenario. Seriously... please just stop posting. You are strictly putting words in his mouth so you can have something to argue with.
      - jgfd99 15y ago
        You're trolling, correct? If PayPal shuts down for an hour, it loses a lot of money (transaction costs, administrative costs, paying idle employees, etc.). Not just them, but millions of their customers who rely on PayPal for their business lose out too.
        sesqu 15y ago
        There is no form of protest that does not affect other people and lost revenue is not damage. Your comment reads very mobbish. You are free to disagree with the opinion of the DDoSers that PayPal punished Wikileaks because of close ties with a vindictive government and therefore deserved a tangible reaction, but you can't go arguing that people should only disagree with you to the extent that you are able to ignore them.
        jgfd99 15y ago
        "Your comment reads very mobbish." Explain what "mobbish" means in the context of my comment. Because I disagree with your position, my comment somehow resembles 'mob' behavior? "you can't go arguing that people should only disagree with you to the extent that you are able to ignore them" What does that even mean? Sorry, but that's one huge straw man attack for something I didn't state. You're free to have your own opinion. I did not state otherwise. Further, you state that I am free to disagree with an opinion, but then you state that I cannot have some opinion that you conjured up some argument on your own to misrepresent my position -- and then attacking that distorted position?
        sesqu 15y ago
        Fair enough. I wasn't entirely satisfied with the word, but it was close enough. I meant that the words you (and others I read before) chose were of the polarizing variety, the kinds that people end up using in mobs. That is to say, instead of describing the situation at hand, I felt you were describing the closest clearly illegal thing someone could quickly think of, probably because your information was third-hand. It seemed to me that you felt that the thing these DDoSsers did wrong was that they had an impact on the business of PayPal directly, rather than just the PR of PayPal. Well no, it seemed to me that you wouldn't have agreed with vocal badmouthing either, but that that would have resulted in an entirely different chain of events and so is not worth considering carefully. If your opinion was not that no company's business should be directly manipulated for policy retribution purposes, I misunderstood. It was my intent to assert that this is not a position I consider valid and that the choice to briefly DDoS PayPal was almost certainly taken after considering less and more radical approaches. I saw no evidence towards the positions I do consider valid, that the retribution was overly severe or wholly unjust.
  - meatsock 15y ago
    every act of civil disobedience can be construed as a more petty crime, if you squint. i believe gandi was guilty of loitering but that's not the salient part of his action, philosophically speaking.
    - jfricker 15y ago
      Actually civil disobedience is the act of committing a crime for moral, ethical, or conflicting legal reason. And it is salient. The motivation is in part "to commit this crime I seek to prevent or change a worse crime". To say that Anonymous is acting out of a sense of civil disobedience is to say that they are motivated by a cause. Personally, I have no idea what motivates Anonymous or if they feel morally obligated to act. It's just as likely that they believe they can commit a crime without penalty. The actions of the FBI are, in part, to deter future individuals from participating in Anonymous coordinated attacks by reminding people that they are not that anonymous and there are consequences to one's actions. Gandhi, King and other activists all were willing to suffer the consequences of their actions. They were motivated by a principle higher than blind obedience after all.
- lukeschlather 15y ago
  You might say that being open and notorious is required for effective civil disobedience, but this is clearly still civil disobedience. (And consequently criminal.) Personally, I find nonviolent resistance perfectly defensible for a just cause. Why do you suggest it's indefensible?
  - Nrsolis 15y ago
    I don't buy your argument at all. For one thing, you can apply it to almost any instance of mob action against some other party. Is that really what you'd like to see? I also don't buy your argument that it's nonviolent. By DDoSing a site, your interfering in the legal activity of the target and some outside party. Apply that same principle to the real world and you suggest that it's perfectly reasonable for someone to trespass into a commercial establishment, obstruct the interactions of patrons with staff, and otherwise use resources that are set aside for paying customers. Since I depend on the availability of these sites, I'm not so enamored with folks who interrupt MY work just for laughs. I'm doubly irritated with people who call it "justified". That smacks of one-sided righteousness and anarchy. If you believe in your cause, show your face. Make your case.
    - noglorp 15y ago
      Troll.
    - throw_away 15y ago
      everything you've posted here also applies to sit ins: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sit-in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sit-in the question of whether these guys should have been arrested is distinct from whether they're justified, which is distinct from whether ddos could ever be considered civil disobedience.
      - jgfd99 15y ago
        I don't think that analogy is fair. It's a denial of service. It's similar to going into an Apple Store or any other store, and blocking customer checkout registers, preventing customers from paying and receiving their goods. But instead of affecting 30 customers for that one store, you're affecting millions of customers.
- noglorp 15y ago
  How so? Cite your source please.
- burgerbrain 15y ago
  I never bought that civil disobediences needs to be committed in the open. Rather, I think that is just one of many forms it can take. Example of it not being committed in the open, to no negated effect (and arguably greater effect): People anonymously posting "illegal keys" and cryptosystems for export on the internet for others to obtain. The often anonymous nature of their actions emphasizes how the current laws are absurd for being unenforceable when people with the right knowledge choose for them to be unenforceable.

Civil disobedience usually requires that you perform your action openly and notoriously. Running a program in your home and using an alias hardly qualifies. Seriously, you're defending DDoS attacks?

jfricker 15y ago
Defending? No. Stating an observation that tyrannical institutions can use Anonymous as a pretense to arrest anyone with a computer. At least in the USA there is a shred of evidentiary requirement, but much of the world is not so lucky. I suppose it's arguable that Anonymous is acting out of a sense of "Civil Disobedience". Perhaps it's more along the lines of "vandalism". Philosophically speaking, that is.
- Nrsolis 15y ago
  Vandalism? If I break your window, that's vandalism. If I burn down your home, that's arson. DDoS attacks I've seen have completely shut down some major sites and had some pretty significant second-order effects. There are real dollars and real problems created for real life individuals who depend on the availability of these systems. You can justify it all you like but civic action doesn't justify what these people do. It's mob mentality at work and it resembles a riot more than anything else. Innocent people get hurt in riots and no self respecting individual should be involved in one. Virtual or otherwise.
  - noglorp 15y ago
    Putting gum in a lock == vandalism == DOS of a physical location. Real dollars are lost etc. in that scenario. Seriously... please just stop posting. You are strictly putting words in his mouth so you can have something to argue with.
    - jgfd99 15y ago
      You're trolling, correct? If PayPal shuts down for an hour, it loses a lot of money (transaction costs, administrative costs, paying idle employees, etc.). Not just them, but millions of their customers who rely on PayPal for their business lose out too.
      - sesqu 15y ago
        There is no form of protest that does not affect other people and lost revenue is not damage. Your comment reads very mobbish. You are free to disagree with the opinion of the DDoSers that PayPal punished Wikileaks because of close ties with a vindictive government and therefore deserved a tangible reaction, but you can't go arguing that people should only disagree with you to the extent that you are able to ignore them.
        jgfd99 15y ago
        "Your comment reads very mobbish." Explain what "mobbish" means in the context of my comment. Because I disagree with your position, my comment somehow resembles 'mob' behavior? "you can't go arguing that people should only disagree with you to the extent that you are able to ignore them" What does that even mean? Sorry, but that's one huge straw man attack for something I didn't state. You're free to have your own opinion. I did not state otherwise. Further, you state that I am free to disagree with an opinion, but then you state that I cannot have some opinion that you conjured up some argument on your own to misrepresent my position -- and then attacking that distorted position?
        sesqu 15y ago
        Fair enough. I wasn't entirely satisfied with the word, but it was close enough. I meant that the words you (and others I read before) chose were of the polarizing variety, the kinds that people end up using in mobs. That is to say, instead of describing the situation at hand, I felt you were describing the closest clearly illegal thing someone could quickly think of, probably because your information was third-hand. It seemed to me that you felt that the thing these DDoSsers did wrong was that they had an impact on the business of PayPal directly, rather than just the PR of PayPal. Well no, it seemed to me that you wouldn't have agreed with vocal badmouthing either, but that that would have resulted in an entirely different chain of events and so is not worth considering carefully. If your opinion was not that no company's business should be directly manipulated for policy retribution purposes, I misunderstood. It was my intent to assert that this is not a position I consider valid and that the choice to briefly DDoS PayPal was almost certainly taken after considering less and more radical approaches. I saw no evidence towards the positions I do consider valid, that the retribution was overly severe or wholly unjust.
- meatsock 15y ago
  every act of civil disobedience can be construed as a more petty crime, if you squint. i believe gandi was guilty of loitering but that's not the salient part of his action, philosophically speaking.
  - jfricker 15y ago
    Actually civil disobedience is the act of committing a crime for moral, ethical, or conflicting legal reason. And it is salient. The motivation is in part "to commit this crime I seek to prevent or change a worse crime". To say that Anonymous is acting out of a sense of civil disobedience is to say that they are motivated by a cause. Personally, I have no idea what motivates Anonymous or if they feel morally obligated to act. It's just as likely that they believe they can commit a crime without penalty. The actions of the FBI are, in part, to deter future individuals from participating in Anonymous coordinated attacks by reminding people that they are not that anonymous and there are consequences to one's actions. Gandhi, King and other activists all were willing to suffer the consequences of their actions. They were motivated by a principle higher than blind obedience after all.
lukeschlather 15y ago
You might say that being open and notorious is required for effective civil disobedience, but this is clearly still civil disobedience. (And consequently criminal.) Personally, I find nonviolent resistance perfectly defensible for a just cause. Why do you suggest it's indefensible?
- Nrsolis 15y ago
  I don't buy your argument at all. For one thing, you can apply it to almost any instance of mob action against some other party. Is that really what you'd like to see? I also don't buy your argument that it's nonviolent. By DDoSing a site, your interfering in the legal activity of the target and some outside party. Apply that same principle to the real world and you suggest that it's perfectly reasonable for someone to trespass into a commercial establishment, obstruct the interactions of patrons with staff, and otherwise use resources that are set aside for paying customers. Since I depend on the availability of these sites, I'm not so enamored with folks who interrupt MY work just for laughs. I'm doubly irritated with people who call it "justified". That smacks of one-sided righteousness and anarchy. If you believe in your cause, show your face. Make your case.
  - noglorp 15y ago
    Troll.
  - throw_away 15y ago
    everything you've posted here also applies to sit ins: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sit-in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sit-in the question of whether these guys should have been arrested is distinct from whether they're justified, which is distinct from whether ddos could ever be considered civil disobedience.
    - jgfd99 15y ago
      I don't think that analogy is fair. It's a denial of service. It's similar to going into an Apple Store or any other store, and blocking customer checkout registers, preventing customers from paying and receiving their goods. But instead of affecting 30 customers for that one store, you're affecting millions of customers.
noglorp 15y ago
How so? Cite your source please.
burgerbrain 15y ago
I never bought that civil disobediences needs to be committed in the open. Rather, I think that is just one of many forms it can take. Example of it not being committed in the open, to no negated effect (and arguably greater effect): People anonymously posting "illegal keys" and cryptosystems for export on the internet for others to obtain. The often anonymous nature of their actions emphasizes how the current laws are absurd for being unenforceable when people with the right knowledge choose for them to be unenforceable.