Encouraging attacks on the website of lawyer Claes Borgström is certainly a huge failure by hacktivists.

Yup, agree with all of this. Small businesses that rely on PayPal were also hit during the attack so it was rather counter-productive. Also this new method will help get the leaks out there rather than us General Public having to rely on whatever the Guardian or Times thinks worthy of printing.

This is ludicrous. Are you really under the impression that the freedom being defended is the freedom of oligopolistic corporate behemoths to blacklist whoever they want? So what if it’s “lawful” to do so? Who cares? And how exactly do you suggest that the activists concerned should otherwise impede US pressure? One good way might be by, I don’t know, raising the costs of bowing to it for those companies that choose to do so. Let’s +please+ just stop beating our breasts about the injustice being done to these poor, hard-done by multi-million dollar business empires.

They should get as much out as quick as they can.

The rumour about a major American bank committing treason sounds very interesting.

Another upside to this strategy is thst it’s one we can all join in. Hacking, apart from being dangerous and morally dubious, requires skills most people don’t have.

I agree with TimH @3. The OP seems to be arguing that we should all sit back and get screwed by Uncle Sam for the sake of a few days’ revenue of a few small businesses.

Get your priorities in order.

And don’t publish stuff like this anonymously.

Gentlemen, prepare for the Anonymous chicks to hand out your mission pizza slices whilst delivering your leak load to the unbelievers.

we should all sit back and get screwed by Uncle Sam for the sake of a few days’ revenue of a few small businesses.

“get screwed by Uncle Sam” = “not able to read ambassador’s gossip about Berlusconi”

Drama queens.

Attempting to assign a motive to Anonymous is pointless

Weather the storm until they get distracted by lolifur beastopædowrrryphiliac porn again, and carry on as normal.

It’s a bunch of people doing it for teh lols. The same bunch of people who once called a single pizza shop in the USA, over and over, repeatedly asking for the “Friday special”. When the duty manager blew a fuse and phoned the police, many of them spent a while explaining their favourite pizza toppings, over the phone, to policemen in a different country to themselves.

Pretending they’re any kind of homogeneous force – for good or evil – is pointless. They are Anonymous, they are Legion, and they are all – without exception – /b/tards.

@8 – Be fair – although this bunch of leaks has sometimes resembled the diplomatic version of Heat magazine there has been a lot of useful info coming out too.

Such as Hilary Clinton ordering spying on UN figures. And the info on the Middle East. The counter argument tends to be ‘we always knew they were at it’. Well, we did, but now we’ve got it in writing.

And previous leaks on Iraq and Afghanistan have given some very critical insights into the way various countries have behaved in those wars.

Its not all (by a very long way) been all tittle-tattle over the Ferrero Roches.

not sure what problem was bunch people turn up at the door and disrupt trading for a bit, peaceful, non-violent, blown out of all proportion by those who know very little and read right wing press scare stories, hilarious

@5 Makhno: Hacking, apart from being dangerous and morally dubious, requires skills most people don’t have.

But script-kiddyism, which is what Anonymous do, requires very little skill and anyone can do it.

@3 Tim H
“Are you really under the impression that the freedom being defended is the freedom of oligopolistic corporate behemoths to blacklist whoever they want?”

No. The freedom being defended is for oligopolistic corporate behemoths not to have blacklists forced upon them from governments with no court order.

Of course, it could just be a bunch of script-kiddies doing it for the lulz

@6 Cherub
“The OP seems to be arguing that we should all sit back and get screwed by Uncle Sam for the sake of a few days’ revenue of a few small businesses.”

And fucking with with companies like this is hurting Uncle Sam how?

“And don’t publish stuff like this anonymously”

says one pseudonym to another, more traceable, pseudonym.

“No. The freedom being defended is for oligopolistic corporate behemoths not to have blacklists forced upon them from governments with no court order.”

OK. Well, a good way might be to make the blacklists ineffective by imposing greater punitive damage on the companies that comply with them than the US Government would be willing to mobilise. So: very effectively drain the tactic of its power, or …? What alternative do you propose? A petition maybe?