The Injustice of the Justice system
The Injustice of the Justice system
I am sure you are all aware of the happenings within the HellBound Hackers community. I am writing this article to clear up a few things with the way the law is run. Within the Justice system they are supposed to being wrong doers to justice. Well the way I see it there is another thing that they do…they bring the people with power they cannot control to "justice." I am sure you all know of whom this article is inspired by. He has done good for the world in his actions and the government could not have done them. So instead of saying "Thanks for this" they have come and slapped a bunch of crap charges together and thrown them at them.
Now people are taught from a young age that acting in an ethical way is the best way to act. I find this is starting to become less and less (for lack of a better word) allowable now a days. If you act in a way that will better many people lives by say stopping someone who oppresses others in means of force you are frowned upon. Now if you were that oppressor you for some reason are not frowned upon. Why is it that people like Nazis, KKK and other racist communities are allowed to thrive? These are people who take it upon themselves to bypass the laws that govern us and do what they think is right. Sure some will be punished if they go to an extreme that no living being should but that is about it. Gangs thrive all over the world and the government do nothing. Why is an electronic threat so bad?
They think that one who can remove a site without using a known exploit or tools programmed by others are dangerous. Yes they can be. But then again so can a bomb or a missile. They are still produced and held "just in case." Why is it that when the power is not in the hands of the government they get all scared and try to take out the "other power" when all they "other power" is doing is bettering the world?
I can see that no one really understands the severity of what is happening to the internet now adays. The internet was the last stronghold of the free. now the free that try to better the world are being torn down. If you were a parent and you found a site with pornography of a child the age of yours would you not want the site removed? I for one would. But the rules of certain places find people who want to learn about computer security more of a threat than people spreading propaganda about harming people. This is a little backwards of what justice is. Governments everywhere are doing this and the true hacker is in jeopardy.
A true hacker in my mind is one who has knowledge of the inner workings of technolgy and use it to better humanity. This would include (in my mind) removing racist sites that state that all people that are not like them should be destroyed, beat, tormented and other wise inconvienenced. Also the removal of sites of disgust is a key element of their mind set. This would mean removing child pornography sites, and other sites of this nature. A true hacker works for the good of many not the good of ones self. Few people fit into this category. The true hacker lives without hat color and without care of what other hackers think of them. All they care about is the good of the rest of us.
Back on track the government is scared of these types of people. They have no way to control these kinds of people like they control the rest of the normal people. They do not care about ethics when they want to take down these people because they need SOMETHING to control them with. so they slap crappy charges and send them to court to be sent to jail. That is how they control them. Place them in jail so they cannot do any damage. But they do not do damage in the sense of a car bomb or other such things. They do damage to the reputation of the government because they are uncontrollable. People who get sent off to jail for removing unethical things is like sending someone to hang for putting down a dieing dog. The ethics we are taught are no longer needed because they are just going to be ignored.
Why are there people that stand up for humanity and human rights? They are obviously needed because they are the only ones that will put a stop to racisim and hatred. Is it Illegal to care for people? Is it illegal to stop someone from hating people? Is it illegal to stand up for your rights as a human in the world? Is it illegal to stop the spread of facists? If you answered yes to these then you are of the governmental mind set. If you answered no then you are along the same mindset of the true ethical hackers in the world.
Now I will touch base on the difference between what I claim to be a True Hacker and what a lot of other people who call themselves hackers are:
- A True Hacker will stop the spread of unethical material thus providing a safer internet while a Hacker will stop the spread of any material they can stop.
- A True Hacker will use their ethical mindset before acting on any threat to the internet while a Hacker will use their knowlege and act to stop what ever they can to gain fame and glory for themselves.
- A True Hacker will do all in their power to stop people from seeing unethical material while a Hacker will do all in their power to get noticed.
Those are only a few points but you get the idea of where this is going. In conclusion I think that the government should look deeper into who they persicute and what they act upon. Stopping someone from protecting others is like handing a mad man a gun and letting them go at it downtown London. The thought put into it is unethical because people will get hurt. Now I hear all you people saying "But How can you get hurt by pictures and words?" Well my response to that would have to be, "There are more ways to be hurt in life other than physical pain. There is Mental Pain and anguish as well. If you came across a group of people who took you, centered you out and slandered you because you had blue eyes would you care? Do you think if they did that to ALL people with blue eyes it would be acceptable? Now what if they made a cult and all they did was put pain and anguish of any kind on these Blue eyed people?" Now I am sure you see where that is going so just to put it bluntly the Justice system is no just in the way they make decisions of who is a threat and who is not. Thank you for taking the time to read this article.
AldarHawk
ghost 18 years ago
To right, i have always though justice is very unjustified in many cases. (an example, in the uk theres was a 17 guy had sex with a 15 girl and got put on the sex affenders list, then married this girl later in life, he is still considered a sex affender and what for? Having sex with his wife ^o) Thats justice for you.
ghost 18 years ago
tancurrom - regardless, it is illegal to have sexual intercourse in the UK under 16.
aldarhawk - Brilliant article mate, it has inspired me and i appreciate everyword. Hopefully this and cheese's article on true hacker will be one of those well known documents.:ninja:
ghost 18 years ago
This article is brilliant. It really cleared alot of questions up for me and made me determined as ever to strive torwards being the "True Hacker".
ghost 18 years ago
Wow. Great article. Laws do tend to be fairly unjust in many situations. This is one of them. The one thing I don't agree with is the part where you said "Is it illegal to stop someone from hating people?" I don't believe that you CAN stop someone from hating. You can change their actions and you can make them stop physically showing hatred for people, but if it's what they truly believe in, then you can't change their minds, and if you're able to change their minds, they never truly believed in it at all. I suppose that also applies to this situation…You can arrest a hacker, stop them from hacking, but you're never gonna be able to change the fact that they're a hacker.
ghost 18 years ago
Anyone who values a written law more than the life of others is not a friend of mine. This article puts too much emphasis on the idea of a "universal justice." Justice is a man-made concept, don't let it control everything you do. Another thing, points 1 & 3 of your "A True Hacker will…" part are very totalitarian. Ethics differ from person to person, therefore you're forcing your ideas and 'ethics' upon every Internet user.
What_A_Legend 18 years ago
this was an awsome artical really put your oppinion across. And how ever sad this whole incident is it has brought the HBH comunity closer together.
ghost 18 years ago
Yeah this is sad but true. If you kill 10 people with a gun you get 25 years in jail. If you hack NASA and discover that UFO-s exist you get 75 years in jail 4 years after you got arested.You rot in jail till you die only because you were curious to find out the truth.Justice is just an illusion …
ghost 18 years ago
I agree with with Xero. Justice is always relative depending on what your interests are. If your interests are to protect people it doesn't make that form of justice any better or worse, it's just one concept of it. Besides, the internet is great specifically for the reason that you can freely show your opinions. Even if they are racist or bigoted. If someone can start arbitrarily deciding what types of sites are OK on the net and what sites aren't, what's to stop someone from removing all the hacking sites. Or the activist sites, or any site that is not OK by their way of thinking?
AldarHawk 18 years ago
download: So you are saying that people who spread propaganda through the web are free and safe and deserve to? What if this person was to come to your house and do this? What is the difference there? Electronics? it is stupid and wrong. What you are saying is if a man like Hitler were to come into play in this day and age and spread his thoughts and propaganda to kill another race via the internet it is fine and dandy because it is done over the internet. Please think shit through before you go an post this type of shit. What I am putting across is that the True Hackers are Activists that stand up for ALL humans rights. Not like the KKK who want all colored people killed and that shit. And just think of the Hackers manifesto with us all living with no race, no color, no bias.
ghost 18 years ago
I don't like Hitler or the KK any more than you do, but you just said it yourself. "No bias", just because we don't agree with thier sense of morality dosn't mean we have more of a right to communicate over the internet than they do. Who is to say that anyone is right or on higher moral ground than anyone else? Besides, if you don't want to view their website or propaganda you don't have to, you can go to another site instead.
ghost 18 years ago
People are being taught, if anything, to act in more ethical ways. Racism is on the down. Look back 50 years. A hundred years. Hell, look back 10 years. The ranks of the racist are always growing smaller. Sure ,they swell a little bit now and then,but there is a general trend of less racism. You are not frowned upon if you stop others from usin gforce to hurt oppress others. But the person who inspired this article wasn't doing that. He was stopping people from stating what they believed. There is a difference.You say that the KKK and nazis and other racist communities take it upon themselves to bypass the laws that govern us and do what the think is right. Well, what has mr. cheese done? Bypassed internet crime laws and "taken it upon himself to bypass the laws that govern us and do what the think is right." So it's alright for someone you AGREE with to do this but not okay for someone you DISAGREE with to do this? Justice is blind, my friend. It's either okay to do this or notokay to do this. Tell us which it is.
Governments are doing nothing to stop gang violence? Maybe they aren't being sucessful, but ssaything that they aren't trying and in some cases succeeding is a lie.
Do eighteen year olds stand at the commands of a missle? What they are afriad of is people who don't understand what justice is taking down sites because they disagree with what the people who run them are saying. They would never put a person who was going to fire those missles because of their personal beliefs behind the commands of the missle. Those atomic missles are used for defense – and in most cases not used at all.
You and alot of other people like jeremy hammond and mr. cheese. And they are being thrown in jail because they think that justice doesn't apply to them. Let's define freedom. It is "unrestricted, unconfined or unfettered" Well, saying that someone can't be a racist and can't have certain sexual views is restricting, confining and fettering. So you are the one who will lead to an internet that is not free. What freedom do you want? The freedom of everyone to agree with you? Cause that's what this is sounding like. And as for your last omment, 30% of the people on this site are here only to learn how to hurt other people, and for 21% of people that is one of two reasons that are here. So this isn't a site purely providing info about computer securityto ethical people. Your polls say it the best: most people are here to learn how to hurt other people digitally – how to exploit sites. And propaganda about hurting people are usually not true threats. Look up that term and do some reasearch into what is and is not considered a threat. With 2 racially motivated killings this year, I don't think that this propaganda is doing it's job. If it's not making a difference, why even bother removing it - espessially if that threats they are miaking aren't even true threats.
You define a hacktivist. Just the first part of your deifinition is a hacker. You don't have to go around shutting down sites with a political agenda in order to be a hacker. And the second part of your definition is saying 'You are only a hack if you agree with me that racist people should all have duct tape put over their mouths and shoved somewhere were they cannot express their views'. As for your high and mighty ethics, I've punched hole after hole in them and all you do is sit there and say 'but racist people are bad'. Guess what? That;s not good enough. The beutiful thing about freedom is it applies to everyone, not just the people you agree with. The problem is that 'ethics' are different for each person. The goonz attacks indymedia. They were wrong. So how are you justified in attack protest warriors or racist sites? Hacktivist philosophy is full of circular logic and in the end, states "The rules only apply to the people I don't like". In my mind, silencing people because you don't like them is wrong. In your mind, its an ultimate good. ARe one of us unethical? Well, you think I am and I think you are. So ethics are arbitrary. When you say all hackers abide by this set of ethics, that they remove sites that violate this that and the other thing, you are saying that ethics are not arbitrary. And you state that everyone whould agree with you through doing so.you came across a group of people who took you, centered you out and slandered you because you had blue eyes would you care? Do you think if they did that to ALL people with blue eyes it would be acceptable? Now what if they made a cult and all they did was put pain and anguish of any kind on these Blue eyed people?" Now I am sure you see where that is going so just to put it bluntly the Justice system is no just in the way they make decisions of who is a threat and who is not. Thank you for taking the time to read this article.
I;ve handed one essay into HBH zine and a second that is a response to this is in progress. Keep your eyes peeled. In the one refuting this, I will be provding quotes from famous philosophers as well as cold hard facts to back up the general spirit of the comments here: and I am sure there are about a million typos and spelling mistakes here: I promise those will not exist in the actual article either.