Reading the announcement, it’s clear the irony isn’t lost on them.

The theme for this commemoration will be 21st Century Media: New Frontiers, New Barriers. Obviously, we decided upon this before the latest round of news.

The United States places technology and innovation at the forefront of its diplomatic and development efforts. There certainly is an irony here.

Finally someone dreams up a title for a military operation that actually works really well.
OPERATION PAYBACK!

Who is the target? MASTERCARD! Wait what? Payback… Mastercard…

Seriously, “Enduring Freedom”? This thing is writing itself.

I must admit though, nothing compared to Operation Iraqi Liberation. I really really wish someone had the balls of ironic steel in whatever meeting finally scrapped that one. OIL!

Payback: Sometimes it’s an anonymous bitch who smacks you upside the head until you say sorry!

On a separate note, however, I also agree that revenge or in this case “payback” is not an effective tool for making things better for all. Especially when the payback isn’t being directed in a constructive manner, nor being directed toward the parties directly involved.

Maybe I’m an idealist, but I tend to think brute force isn’t the best way to get one’s way in any situation.

My kids are learning to keep their heads down; we live in a “zero tolerance” school district.

Also, it is pretty unpalatable to suppress the free speech of others in order to promote free speech…

I can hear congress critters using this as a convenient excuse to be against net-neutrality even now.

1) No.
2) Duhh.

Maybe I’ll grab a different pic, but that certainly wasn’t my intent. I posted it for informational purposes.

Wikileaks may be flawed. But Americans cannot allow the US to criminalize Wikileaks. If we do, the rights of all citizens are jeopardized.”

so why is wikileaks comparable to the press? it is a data dump. the press identifies misconduct and uses documents (that might be unlawfully obtained) as evidence to show that misconduct. the illegal behavior is to a greater good.

the initial wikileaks did that too. but the current cables did not uncover anything we didn’t already know.
so to me what they are doing is to publish information that was stolen and where they knew the proper owner of the information. similar to the iphone 4 issue earlier in the year.

so right now this is stolen data and we have ton of this data. and obviously when you have tons of data you will find some skeletons in it … one of the reason most of us don’t like the government collecting all kinds of info about us, because even when we are law abiding citizens there will be skeletons in there, same in the cables.

so i guess this leaves us with two questions:
1. is stolen information protected by freedom of speech?
2. does this only hold for government information on any type of information. because i don’t see a reason why it should only go for government info … and with that logic anyone who steals another person’s personal info or email data and publishes in a web database would be protected under freedom of speech.

i honestly don’t think that that is the idea of the first.

Most people never read those. I have. They contain a lot of things that can get a site shut down.

If these Web hosts, DNS companies and payment firms are now going to start following their TOS and AUPs to the letter, I’m pretty sure that there are lots of groups and companies that should also lose Paypal, and hosting.

So, for example the guy at Townhall.com who called for Assange to be killed was violating the hosting agreement Townhall made with Rackspace where they said that they would not publish information where someone threaten another with violence. That clause should be taken just as seriously as the clause about not hosting copyrighted materials.

Just say no to corp personhood.

That is when things went exceedingly downhill and we’ll probably never recover until that heinous personhood status for corporations is eradicated.

Or… right… just go all the way then and be able to “execute” corporations just like people when they commit crimes, etc. – Jailtime and/or executions for CEOs and the board. Kill them. If we’re going to do it to American people then let’s do it to American corporations who want all the same rights (and then some).

That said, I am against capitol punishment, think it’s devolved, cro-magnon bullshit and wish it was removed from this earth like the disease it is. BUT, once again, IF we are to have it… it needs to also be applied to corporations who claim personhood.

So people should just stop voting altogether then. I see what you’re saying, but how many generations we expect this ‘clean up’ to last? How many more years are we willing to spend putting up with corruption while we wait for the non-asshole to show up (considering that many people thought that was Obama and voted accordingly)?

Note: I’m Canadian. This situation isn’t only an American issue, but the US are pulling the biggest strings, as usual.

Right?

Personally, I am hesitant to commit all crime. Even thought crime, the only genre I actively participate in, has been a struggle for me.

It offends me that ppl have so little analysis about the situation at large. I am all for the retaliatory actions against the various companies involved.

I agree that these attacks wont do much to advance liberty. In reality, these attacks wont last – all of those companies will be back up and running online within days. I don’t believe the credit card companies would have much to worry about apart from their web presence anyway – their daily credit functionality would be using a different system not available on via http (one would hope).

But in the long term, on an iterated prisoner’s dilemma, the best strategy is tit for tat. These corporations have just learnt that they aren’t untouchable, just as the governments and diplomats have learned. It was just last week that there was talk of another wikileaks expose, this time on a major bank coming sometime soon.

I would like to hear your reasons for the sentence: “I believe Wikileaks as an organization to be flawed and Assange to be a problematic figure, to put it charitably. ”

While I don’t disagree, I also think that these accusations could be levelled at almost anyone and any organisation at some level. While it’s fun to poke at Mastercard/Visa/Paypal for denying wikileaks, yet accepting KKK monies, _who_ is going to be the person to stand up and say that those organisations should also deny the NYT, The Guardian, etc?