Related Stories
Hacktivists as Gadflies
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of New York Times blog
Posted: April 23rd, 2013
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/13/hacktivists-...
We have had gadflies among us ever since [Socrates], but one contemporary breed in particular has come in for a rough time of late: the hacktivist. Hacktivists, roughly speaking, are individuals who redeploy and repurpose technology for social causes. In this sense they are different from garden-variety hackers out to enrich only themselves. Barrett Brown, a journalist who had achieved some level of notoriety as the the former unofficial not-spokesman for Anonymous, the hacktivist group, now sits in federal custody in Texas. Mr. Brown came under the scrutiny of the authorities when he began poring over documents that had been released in the hack of two private security companies, HBGary Federal and Stratfor. Mr. Brown did not take part in the hacks, but he did become obsessed with the contents that emerged from them in particular the extracted documents showed that private security contractors were being hired by the United States government to develop strategies for undermining protesters and journalists, including Glenn Greenwald, a columnist for Salon. Because Stratfor had not encrypted the credit card information of its clients, the information in the cache included credit card numbers and validation numbers. Mr. Brown didnt extract the numbers or highlight them; he merely offered a link to the database. For this he was charged on 12 counts, all of which pertained to credit card fraud. The charges against him add up to about 100 years in federal prison.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on civil liberties, click here.
Related Stories
Latest News
Key News Articles from Years Past
