[hackerspaces] revspace and randomdata in the news re wikileaks ddos story

[Hans Fraiponts]

Thanks for this information.

One thing that bothers me in this tread is there's no clear agreed
upon definition of 'ethics', or ethical.
We can discuss till the cows come home about "frogs are green", if we
don't have a specific agreed-upon definition what 'green' is.

Is this the classic golden rule "don't do onto others..." or an
advanced golden rule? Or a derivative:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Rule
How does this correlate to the existential ethics as defined by
Sartre? Or the other types for instance :
http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Thompson/The_4_Main_Kinds_of_Ethics_An_Introduction.shtml

I have the idea that for most participants in this thread, ethics is a
gut-feeling kind of thing? This is the reason you're all talking next
to each-other.

It reminds me of another debate, for instance, sometimes when there is
a strike in .be the ppl that have joined the strike put up an blockade
so ppl who are willing to work can't get to their workplace. Is this
ethical?
Also, the french come to mind, remember a while ago the truckers
ddos't the country by blocking critical infrastructure with their
trucks, they wanted cheaper prices for gas, it worked. Another
blockade of them was in the nineties, I think it lasted for a week or
two. That's a centrally organised ddos on the highways, at specific
interjunctions, critical infrastructure, and those guys got a away
with it.

And here we're talking about a website or two that got offline.

In brussels, politicians pushed policy's against farmers, those guys
took their tractors went to BXL and kicked some serious ass.
Basically they trashed the main street, consequence : no new policies.
So now no politician feels inclined to step on the toes of the farmers
(too much).

I'm not making a moral judgement here.

Grts,

Hans
(former philosophy student ;-)

On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 03:45, Koen Martens <gmc at har2009.org> wrote:
>
> Hello again,
>
> On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 06:32:11PM +0100, Koen Martens wrote:
> > Just thought i'd share this with you people:
> >
> > http://bit.ly/dlufWO
> >
> > it's a google translation of a dutch article on ict news website
> > 'webwereld' ('webworld').
> >
> > It turned out the arrested young man who was involved with the
> > ddos campaign against mastercard and paypal was someone we have
> > seen in our space a few times, and who hung out on our irc channel.
> >
> > We see this as an opportunity to bring a positive story about hackers,
> > and plan on organising a workshop/discussion around 'ethical hacking'.
> > We will invite press there. We expect to announce all this on
> > monday.
>
> Well, just a short update (sorry for re-hijacking this thread to
> its original subject, i hate to distract people from a good
> flamewar).
>
> In the past week i've been contacted by a lot of media, been on
> national television and various radio stations and talked to
> a bunch of newspapers.
>
> Today we had a very well attended meeting. About 100 persons
> showed up, even though people were adviced by the national
> motorist association to stay at home due to severe winter
> weather. The meeting was about 'ethical hacking':
>
> https://foswiki.sonologic.nl/RevelationSpace/EthischHacken
>
> (dutch and english content)
>
> Allthough we did not really get an answer to whether the ddos
> attacks are ethical, it was a stimulating event with lots of
> different opinions. We had numerous guests, varying from a
> member of the european parliament to lawyers. Also a bunch
> of hackers, and some press (national television and AP).
>
> Subjects varied from the laws regarding networks, telecommunication
> infrastructure and computer systems to political activism. From
> case studies in ethical hacking to a call to arms.
>
> I think everyone learned something today.
>
> I believe we succesfully have conveyed what being a hacker means
> to us, and made a very appreciable effort in dispelling the
> equasion of ddos with hacking.
>
> Just thought i'd let you know. Audio recordings are available,
> most of it is in dutch but two of the sessions are in english:
>
> http://signal.hackerspaces.org/echtehackers/
>
> Gr,
>
> Koen
>
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