The rights and wrongs of hacktivism
The Economist discusses the right of protection of protest in a free society, and whether Distributed Denial of Service attacks deserve to be a form of protected protest.
The furtive, nameless nature of DDOS attacks disqualifies them from protection; their anonymous perpetrators look like cowardly hooligans, not heroes. This applies to those attacking WikiLeaks too—a point American politicians calling for reprisals against Julian Assange’s outfit should note. Posses and vigilantes, online and off, mete out rough justice, at best. That is no substitute for the real thing.
In $2tn debt crisis threatens to bring down 100 US cities, the Guardian reports on how cities are increasingly at risk of sliding into bankruptcy—just like normal people and countries seem to be.
New Jersey governor Chris Christie summarised the problem succinctly: “We spent too much on everything. We spent money we didn’t have. We borrowed money just crazily. The credit card’s maxed out, and it’s over. We now have to get to the business of climbing out of the hole. We’ve been digging it for a decade or more. We’ve got to climb now, and a climb is harder.”
A Holiday Message from Ricky Gervais: Why I’m An Atheist
I still give my logical answer because I feel that not being honest would be patronizing and impolite. It is ironic therefore that “I don’t believe in God because there is absolutely no scientific evidence for his existence and from what I’ve heard the very definition is a logical impossibility in this known universe”, comes across as both patronizing and impolite.
Those in the U.K., and the more observant of you abroad, will have noticed the uproar recently about the recently passed motion to increase tuition fees. I’ve been watching this, and thinking about the issues behind it, and so here we go. It’s easiest to go about this by dispelling a few myths from both sides of the debate I’ve been repeatedly subjected to.
Myth 1: Students will leave university “saddled with debt”
I came across Paypal’s statement regarding their suspension of donations towards WikiLeaks:
PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity. We’ve notified the account holder of this action.
Of course, PayPal doesn’t seem to have noticed eBay’s daily facilitation of the transfer of hundreds of pirated films, music and software—-which is actually illegal—-during their review of WikiLeaks’ use of the service.