6) Most important, the doc treats Manning as if he were already guilty. They never use the word “alleged.” Not even once.

True, but what’s the practical effect? If Manning’s lawyer was claiming that he wasn’t the leak, then there would be an effect, but I have yet to hear a single supporter of Manning or Wikileaks claim that he wasn’t the source of the leaks. If you can point me to such a statement by someone associated with the Wikileaks scandal, then I’ll yield the point. The defense I have heard was essentially a greater good defense, but even that accepts the claim that Manning leaked the classified information.

But if you examine just below the surface, you find that Sony had dicked over their customers even more.

- Their failure to have updated servers.
- Their failure to be remotely PCI compliant.
- Their failure accept they were compromised.
- Their failure to tell the truth, as the story evolved they admitted the depth of the hack in stages, always downplaying how bad it might have been.
- Their failure to accept that their network was a target for anyone other than Anonymous.
- Their “finding” a text file called Anonymous.txt with the words “We are Legion” paraded around as “proof”.
- Their measured response of lying about how much data was taken, delaying consumer response to protect themselves properly.
- Their failure to accept any fault in the matter, shifting the blame to Anonymous, then hinting maybe Anonymous didn’t do it but they provided cover.

Sony continues to play the woe is us card, we were hacked by very skilled hackers. The Sony network is now being ripped apart by “scriptkiddies” pressing a button and getting the keys to the kingdom, pressing Go! is not the mark of an elite hacker. Their security practices are nearly nonexistent. This let them save a couple of bucks, and leaves the consumer to clean up the mess. If we had actual laws that applied to these corporate entities that made the consumers whole and punished them for being so lax, do you think paying someone to upgrade the Sony kernel from 2008 to 2010 would have looked as costly?

People are blindly willing to accept things are safe, and that corporations will protect us at their expense. We assume putting a Music CD in our computer will not install a rootkit, and if it does they will be reprimanded. We assume the corporation will have to make us whole, but that might mean they donate less to the lawmakers. We assume that with as vigorous as they are in defending their licenses they wouldn’t steal GPL code… but they did.

If the people who were calling for every member of Anonymous to be taken out and shot because the network was down was just as angry at Sony for the complete lack of responsibility that made it possible, something might have to happen. But instead they accept the Sony line of we could not have stopped them, they are elite hackers. The continued hacks might be a two-fold purpose
1 – it is very hard for Sony to claim they care when their network security folds like tissue paper in the rain and plain-text information is readily available.
2 – the coverage of “yet another Sony hack” begins to get them thinking maybe this was not a perfect storm, but that Sony is inept. That consumers need to be educated and need to be active in protecting themselves and not assume the corporations care about protecting you.

@damiro – I love irony and missed I was creating my own this way.
I think part of the problem is in how society needs everything coming at them to fast. I do not believe this “Hacktivism” reaches the levels of a dictator putting down dissidents, as some would like to compare it to, in the end this was them getting hit with a water balloon. They need to go change their shirt and pants, but no real damage.

Oh for the love of god…
http://blogs.forbes.com/parmyolson/2011/05/30/thousands-like-fake-tupac-story-posted-by-hackers/
Forbes is reporting this nugget in their coverage of the TuPac story being liked…
“cyber vigilantes also breached the servers of weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin this weekend.”

Ummm cyber vigilantes might deface a website and expose some crappy security methods.
Hacking RSA, creating duplicate auth devices, and going into Lockheed Martin… not so much.
They might use the same tools, but they are not the same.

And Forbes is helping Sony out by reporting the PSN hack only exposed 100,000 peoples details.
http://blogs.forbes.com/parmyolson/2011/05/31/interview-with-pbs-hackers-we-did-it-for-lulz-and-justice/

I am at a loss for how defacing a website with freaking NYAN CAT, is an intimidating action. ZOMG I CAN’T LEAVE THE HOUSE A POPTART WITH A CATHEAD WILL ATTACK ME!!!!!!! No bombs, no burning crosses, no nooses, no bricks thru windows.

Virtual egg on the face that causes discussion about an issue beyond just smiling and nodding and accepting what your told as perfectly reported…. Priceless…

“You don’t build support by bullying and ruining things for the general population. You build fear and anger towards every part of your stance.”
And yet we reelected the bastards that passed the laws to let guys, hired from pizza box top ads, cop a feel so we can get on a plane. They say give up more to be safe from terrorism, and so many willingly accept it. They say Democrats want DEATH PANELS for Grandma, and people lap it up as fact. Its working for the Government why not for LulzSec?

How is temporarily hacking a website anything different than civil disobedience? Sorry, but this is the equivalent of staging a sit-in, to not allow people to get into the store… while putting up a few fake advertisements. Civil Disobedience in the traditional sense is actually far more damaging physically, materially, and usually for the public image for a company than temporarily hacking a website.

Quite honestly, why SHOULD somebody risk their freedom for a cause, when they can fight longer and in a more organised fashion by doing it anonymously? Would you have condemned the people of India in a struggle against the British Empire if they had used internet hacking tactics as one of their methods for removing the British Empire? Would you have condemned them if they merely did it to make life for the British Empire harder? I don’t think you would have. I think you just have a hard-on for the state, and believe ourselves to be in a system that can fix itself… I believe that you believe we have reached the end of history, the time from which point all things will function the same, and all things can be fixed by using the system itself.

Right all I can say I have never seen better journalism than them before. That’s just it. They are what I consider the best journalists that I know of. period. Whatever influence that corporate sponsorship has (after govt sponsorship is a political hot topic) on all of media..this is still the best. As bad is it may degrade under our new economics, it is a jewel of jourmalism.

They are mainstream media folks. That so many of us still consider PBS progressive shows how conservative things have become.

For me the public broadcasting system lost all credibility when NPR ended a decent report on the Afghan hash industry with the lie that hashish is a component in opium production. That was over 15 years ago.

If the internet is the new commons, then lulz hacking is the new free speech.

Seriously?!?!

With all of the recent hacking activity, your main take away has been – “I think using the same password everywhere is the best practice I can have.”

I can overlook slanted yellow journalism
I can over look a “news” team looking past the difficult questions of torture against someone not convicted of a crime
I can overlook my Government chipping away at my rights and my right to be informed
I can overlook my Government doing the same things they publicly denounce in other countries
I can overlook being forced to work harder and longer so someone rich enough doesn’t have to give up 1% of their million+ income.
Just don’t make it so I have to use different passwords everywhere, this… this is what is important.

*stares blankly and blinks while brain reboots*

You were never on teh interwebs before AOL made it possible were you?

Their goal was not to have your Facebook hacked and have stupid things posted in your name to appear on LameBook, but by using a singular password you made it possible. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but some of that is your own fault.

President Skroob: Did it work? Where’s the king?
Dark Helmet: It worked, sir. We have the combination.
President Skroob: Great. Now we can take every last breath of fresh air from Planet Druidia. What’s the combination?
Colonel Sandurz: 1-2-3-4-5
President Skroob: 1-2-3-4-5?
Colonel Sandurz: Yes!
President Skroob: That’s amazing. I’ve got the same combination on my luggage.
Dark Helmet, Colonel Sandurz: [looks at each other]

It is quite possible they wanted to make a statement about one of the last “news” outlets seen as uncorrupted, selling the party line and making the waters dirty because Julian Assanage has got to be guilty of something we can make stick.
He is guilty of making our lawmakers look like fools, and this is different than any other day because he has proof they can’t slap a secret label on and hide in a drawer from the public.

Manning doing what he did was boiled down to – Cause he’s gay…
I guess the people who are calling for his blood have never had a crisis of conscience, probably because the lack one in the first place. It is nice that among all of the other problems I get to face in life because of small minded bigots, now I can be seen as untrustworthy because of who I sleep with rather than my actions. The lengths some will goto to prop up DADT.

I got the idea from this that maybe they believed in Wikileaks and Manning.

And really, do we actually have to compare this to the Freedom Riders? If I do a bunch of biking today, I don’t expect to hear snarky comments about how I’m no Lance Armstrong. Come on. You can disagree with something without being ridiculous about it.

I never made the claim that they didn’t believe in anything. I said that they didn’t want to stand up and be counted as believing in something.

As for the comparison with the freedom riders… well, it was something of a spur of the moment comparison driven mostly by having seen the documentary on PBS last month. But it does count for something, because its not as if the freedom riders got their napkins taken away as punishment – they were beaten, attacked and locked up in one of the worst prisons in mississippi. Its not that lulzsec “are no freedom riders”, its that the freedom riders are examples of the sort of basic standards for what it means to stand up for something in a way that actually risks something – i.e. not being a coward.

Re: the cycling/lance comparison: If you went down to your local spin class and claimed you had been out on an epic 180km mountain pass spanning ride, I think I’d feel fine noting that you’re no lance armstrong. If you put the work into a decent ride, sweated a bit, wondered if you could actually get over the next hill, then you’re as justified in calling yourself as cyclist as lance is. lulzsec went to the spinning class and claimed they went out for the epic ride. i rest my case.

Regardless of how biased any media outlet it that does not warrant any sort of intimidating action. The pro-wikileakers think they are categorically correct in their opinions. This is a falsehood. Neither side is correct. This is a moral and societal issue.

PBS is no more biased than the pro-wikileakers. The difference is so far none of them have shown the cognitive ability to do anything about it. For this reason they will never, ever win.

The sad thing is that their attempts to gain support always backfire. A world where news isn’t properly reported is of course scary. But you can choose to tune out. PBS isn’t forcing you to change to their opinion.

A much more frightening world to live in is one where we censor ourselves out of fear of retaliation for anything we say or do. This is the kind of world being created by so called hacktivists. They don’t understand that it isn’t the cause that is wrong. It is their methods.

They somehow miss the depressingly obvious irony and hypocrisy in their actions.

Especially how their actions hurt the general populace more than the government ever could.

Look at Sony for an example. If the Sony hack was in response to Sony’s actions with hots and how they treated their customers their is zero logic to be found. Sony dicked over a small amount of customers so in return you dick over the majority of customers?

You don’t build support by bullying and ruining things for the general population. You build fear and anger towards every part of your stance.

Stop acting like sheeple and try doing something positive with your life. Don’t run around yammering about the folks that took risks and tried to do SOMETHING about this stuff. Protests don’t work and writing to your congressman is a waste of your time so come up with a realistic way of fixing some of this stuff and then act on it. THEN you have a right to talk about somebody elses effort to change this stuff. Until then, you’re just another arm chair commander that’s passively watching their rights slip away and the national security state gets bigger.

Ever consider it being just an error? Journalist get technical details wrong all the time. For example, this is the chart they use when talking about firearms: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_L52qeI-j4jM/Sr0k4ki3_iI/AAAAAAAAA0o/7oNaOb3eMyU/s400/journalists-guide-to-guns-1.jpg

@lolipop re:”every clip of Julian Assange just made him look down right creepy.”

Well – he is kinda creepy.

I personally find PBS/NPR too liberal in many cases, but hey I’m used to that. I do not catch Frontline that often (I really should) – but when I do I find it some of the best journalist on TV.

This hacking is nothing more than petty censorship and propaganda. I don’t see a noble cause being exalted, or an evil entity being taken down (like the Westborro Church). Wah – you don’t agree with a news report. Go make your own ‘Loose Change’ if you want to ‘fight the power’.

If they had spun it the way that Wikileaks supporters want to believe it should be spun, that somehow would make it *good* journalism?

But I guess this is all you can expect from a Lulz factory.

The Wikileaks/Assange/Manning story has VERY SERIOUS IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM. This should be clear. Any serious media organization should be dealing very carefully with the story, and with the dangerous precedents being set.

“Should be dealing very carefully with the story?” Well that sounds like a veiled threat. Seriously, what’s the diff between this and throwing a brick through a window? If you don’t like what’s being said, refute it. The counter to speech you don’t like is more speech, not threats, not violence, not vandalism. The mentality that everyone better only say what we like is the same mentality that motivates those that kill journalists. It’s completely illegitimate thug behavior. Those that perpetrated this attack aren’t heros. They’re not free speech crusaders. They’re actions betray the fact that they do not actually care about free speech at all. Lulzsec and others like them deserve to be caught and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. They’re criminals plain and simple.

While I may be sympathetic to Wikileaks, I all too often find myself despising its self-proclaimed supporters.

PBS is like a prostitute that gets paid by someone else to pretend to be your girlfriend. Likewise tv news, papers etc..

Their culturally appropriate response is a form of vandalism, and is illegal. That’s why it’s done anonymously. To call them cowards is silly; if someone spray-paints “LIAR” on a state-run media building in a totalitarian regime and runs before the cops show up, they’re not cowards. They’re pretty fucking brave, I’d say.

And if this was a state media outfit in a totalitarian regime, where only the state has access to the press, then you’d have a point, but none of these conditions exist.

You’re right, this isn’t censorship. It’s intimidation.

I’m sorry, they refused to listen to me for a very long time.

Now more than ever they are starting to listen.

Sony screws its customer base but not even having remotely enough security, and the powers that be sit by.

Manning sits in jail walking the thin line of is it torture or not, for blowing the whistle about the hypocrisy we all suspected but were unable to prove.

Our Government is spending much time and resources trying to demonize the man who had the platform to show us how the sausage is made. To expose the sheer audacity of those in charge, and the lengths they will go to to hide the truth.

They are so terrified of the internet, they have decided that we have cyberwars… and if you screw with us in cyberspace WE WILL BOMB YOU.

They whittle away our basic human rights, and they assume if they send us to the “designated demonstration” location where no one sees us, we do not matter.

They protect the corporations at the expense of the people.

Someone said they should stop turning everything into V for Vendetta, I think we only need once lesson to apply in the real world…
[b]People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.[/b]
Look around you as the vast numbers of dissatisfied people, one might think that our representational government is doing a shitty job. You can’t please all of the people all the time, but other than themselves and their corporate sponsors who the fuck are they pleasing?

My only regret in all of this, is that they did not walk out of the Frontline server with emails showing what was cut and how it was spun so they could avoid “issues” with the powers that be. To have a report that is so unbalanced and ignores/omits the very real torture of someone simply charged with a crime is outrageous. No one died because of what was leaked, despite the claims that people would be killed and Manning and Assanage would both have blood on their hands.

Given how much money and time they are spending pursuing this farce, one wonders how many more pieces of body armor or reenforced vehicles we could have sent to protect the people who are dying so we can be “free” from the outside terrorists. The price of freedom used to be vigilance, now its getting your 6 yr old felt up by the TSA because a detector went off.

But its all ok, Manning did it because hes gay… and them gays are unbalanced when they can’t wear pink camo as outlawed by DADT. Or maybe when faced with the real truth of the situation he did something tangible to wake us the fuck up to how morally bankrupt as a nation we are.

-In the same respect, the Department of Justice is perfectly fine with inproperly jailing citizens on trumped up charges in the name of ‘the greater good’. What’s a Sony hack in comparison to these greater issues? A little perspective is in order..

If you leave your doors unlocked and your windows open, then it’s no longer “breaking and entering” when a thief walks into your house; it’s just stupidity.

Yes it does.

“Yeah… that’s good for freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and open discussion…”

What? Those are things the government provides you, not LulzSec. Besides, we don’t have freedom of speech, the press, or (especially) open discussion so those points are all moot. Neither do we have the right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizure, warrants without probable cause (if warrants at all), nor due process, unusual punishment, fair trial, etc. Read the PATRIOT act.

“You’re right. They’re not picking up on the sarcasm.”

in the more likely event that the world isn’t run by a vast conspiracy, then this is nothing more than different people having different points of view based on the information they have and the way they individually interpret the world. Frontline gave their opinion, and Lulzwhatever decided that their own point of view is so much better and righter, that Frontline should be punished for even saying theirs. thats just being a bully. and it is unquestionably an effort to sensor people who think differently than them.

i also agree that these acts are inherently cowardly. if lulzsec had a spine its members would put names and faces with their actions. part of why civil disobedience has power is because actual people stand up and say “i’m not afraid of you hurting me. this is what i believe.” the message of these hacking attacks is more like “i’m right and your wrong and your lame and uncool so i’m going to kick over your sand castle and yoooouuu caaaann caatttch meeeee :P”

You can split hairs all day long, but as soon as those asshole kids posted passwords and emails, they lost any semblance of higher moral ground.