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Let's not forget that this gentleman is a neo nazi and white supremacist of the vilest sort.[1] I may be downvoted to hell and then some, but it's impossible t

Let's not forget that this gentleman is a neo nazi and white supremacist of the vilest sort.[1] I may be downvoted to hell and then some, but it's impossible to look beyond those facts before mythologizing him into some sort of hacker hero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev#After_prison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev#After_prison

shakna 8y ago
One can both dislike a person and believe their actions were above board. He doesn't have to be hero worshipped - his actions in this particular case should stand on their own. His terrible beliefs may only come into it if they are relevant to what actions he performed. Serving prison time for notifying people of a serious privacy breach doesn't seem to be a balanced approach.
- CaptainZapp 8y ago
  I don't agree what happened to him based on his "hack" and deem AT&T's (and the legal system's) actions despicable in this manner. Reporting on his "hacker hero antics" without putting it in context of what a personality he really is is, in my book, whitewashing of history and engaging in revisionism.
  - shakna 8y ago
    Tone can be hard to convey over the internet - try and imagine this conversation is happening in a cafe over a coffee. I'm calm, and not trying to disagree with you for internet points or anything of the like. Just trying to have a conversation. I just lack the skill to write things in a sensitive enough manner. --- Whilst I agree with you in part, I also believe that over-emphasising personality traits or behaviours of a person also engages in revisionism. One should be able to view an event entirely separate from the person, if the person's generalised behaviour isn't relevant. We don't need to think about the man at all, in my own opinion, in this particular case. Redact his name if you have concerns that the man is unworthy of attention. Adding complaints of a person to any mention of them is calling for jury and judgement. It's a distraction from what's important. It takes an event that should be discussed and explored, and twists it so you are forced to take sides about the person. You can use these tactics to derail any conversation. It's a debating tactic commonly used in politics to avoid answering questions. It might be better in future just to say something along the lines of "Aside: Can we not use his name? The guy is actually a racist, and has a pretty deplorable past." We don't want to get lost in the debate of a man's merits, when his actions may themselves be meritorious.
    - watwut 8y ago
      But when one claims that weev did it as white hat "to let them know about vulnerability" then personality traits and behaviors become relevant. They are not relevant for judging whether scrapping data from unprotected 14mil urls should be seen as hack. They are relevant to whether suggestion that he was well intentioned white hat doing public service claims sounds naive or likely. It matters when I have to decide whether I will buy his framing of events and motivations or not. Such claims very much existed and were predominant interpretation of evens in circles I was in. Edited to add: then you had weev using his bigger fame and sort of new credibility to try to cause further harm to person he harassed somewhere around going to/from prison. So to me, it makes sense for people seen it at the time to jump into these discussions to prevent further rise of credibility.
- eridius 8y ago
  > Serving prison time for notifying people of a serious privacy breach doesn't seem to be a balanced approach. Except his crime wasn't "notifying people of a privacy breach". It was breaching that privacy. There was absolutely no reason whatsoever for him to actually scrape the personal information of 114k people.
  - dbuder 8y ago
    (lasting) proof
ndnxhs 8y ago
How is that relevant to the parent comment?
- CaptainZapp 8y ago
  It's relevant in context to the despicable person he has proven to be, who is mythologized as a great hacker.
  - Buge 8y ago
    Scraping urls doesn't make you a great hacker.
    - watwut 8y ago
      He was mythologized at the time and after. I remember having impression of him being genius and being overall good guy. People really wanted him to be that way, because they wanted him to win and kept to illusion long after. That he is neonazi and harassed people quite hard (to the point of seriously affecting their careers and lives) are things that I learned only much later and people still don't like those two being brought up in pretty much any context.
  - stuntkite 8y ago
    He's more Andy Kaufman than Steve Wozniak. I don't think anyone who has a clue thinks he's a great hacker. However, he might be one of the most effective shit wizards that have existed.
    - CaptainZapp 8y ago
      Andy Kaufman was funny at least.
      - stuntkite 8y ago
        Was he? Definitely the model of a modern troll in my book. I thought he was weird, but not funny really. He wasn't a nazi, so that was good.
stuntkite 8y ago
That's the real deal with his "hack" releasing this data from his trolling security company. He knew it wasn't a hack but he also knew he could use it for his pathological tolling. The criminal charges were more about how he presented everything and that he's a notorious public figure who denies being a nazi while being the sysadmin for Stormfront. AT&T wanted to mess with him, but the courts were super excited when they heard who they were going to try to convict. I am glad he won the case though. It could have been really problematic case law if he didn't. I'm also glad they tried to pin him to the wall for it. GNAA/Goatse Consulting (his "firm" that did the hacks. GNAA is a massively offensive racist and homophobic acronym.) and the thing he built with the help of many others felt like it was dominating tech culture's sense of humor for a while. The racist jokes were just for the sake of trolling.... right? Right? I think the deal with Weev is that everything he does is both serious and a joke. He does appear to be a nazi but if you try to stitch together his actual person it gets twisted really quickly. He has a personality disorder. I think a lot of people caught in his reality distortion field didn't quite get that playing around with "edgy" troll stuff normalizes things that eat up self and society. I definitely have seen a change in the casual dabbling with it since Charlottesville. While I have some sympathy for people that believed the lie that it's all jokes... I don't think Weev ever thought it was just jokes. He's extremely smart and fucking dangerous. I hope one day he gets a moment to reflect and use his brain for something that isn't being the fentanyl of meme pushers. EDIT: DO NOT GOOGLE GNAA or GOATSE AT WORK
- CaptainZapp 8y ago
  Goatse Consulting Seriously? Probhably most readers are too young to remember this "important" piece of internet lore. Let's just say it was the first, massively not safe for work web site.[1] Naming his company after that is quite fitting. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goatse.cx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goatse.cx
  - stuntkite 8y ago
    Goatse Security actually, but yeah. Him and people from GNAA called it a security firm. Sort of grey hat trolling for hire? I guess it could be considered the template for what got us Cambridge Analytica, Brexit, and Trump. I'm not sure if it's up anymore, but the GNAA public code repo used to be just full of interesting software solutions for mass griefing people. Here[0] is a DEFCON talk from a GNAA/lulsec affiliate talking about trolling as an art. I think the talk actually has some interesting things going on when looked at through the lens of what weaponized trolling has produced in the now. At one point someone in the audience asks the presenter to read his "funny" slides and it's a racist "joke" comic. He acts embarrassed and says "I don't believe this stuff." He does break down a few of their trolling tools from their repo that they were pretty proud of at the time. So the curious can scope that out if you don't have to browse to any of their official sites or do a risky google. This was before Facebook so it's mostly IRC tools and general troll culture commentary. They used the ATT dump, knowing it wasn’t really illegal to get hype to sell their services. I think it worked? Here's a pretty good piece on him with a reporter who followed him around during the first trial. I think it covers a lot of it[1]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHqGV5WjS4w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHqGV5WjS4w [1] https://medium.com/matter/the-martyrdom-of-weev-9e72da8a133d https://medium.com/matter/the-martyrdom-of-weev-9e72da8a133d EDIT: DO NOT GOOGLE GNAA or GOATSE AT WORK. Links should be mostly SFW. Obviously YMMV. It's content made by/about professional offensive assholes.
gdfasfklshg4 8y ago
His politics are orthogonal to this case.
lesss365 8y ago
Pretty sure he's Jewish, and he gives the impression that he's seeking attention through acting like an edgelord and spouting extreme/hateful BS. I have a mixed racial background and am of Jewish heritage, and could never take offense to what he spews because of the insincerity sensed in his tone and his own supposed Jewish heritage. If anything I just laugh at him because, like Alex Jones and Ann Coulter, he's a performance artist. A Tony Clifton, if you will

shakna 8y ago

One can both dislike a person and believe their actions were above board. He doesn't have to be hero worshipped - his actions in this particular case should stand on their own. His terrible beliefs may only come into it if they are relevant to what actions he performed. Serving prison time for notifying people of a serious privacy breach doesn't seem to be a balanced approach.

CaptainZapp 8y ago
I don't agree what happened to him based on his "hack" and deem AT&T's (and the legal system's) actions despicable in this manner. Reporting on his "hacker hero antics" without putting it in context of what a personality he really is is, in my book, whitewashing of history and engaging in revisionism.
- shakna 8y ago
  Tone can be hard to convey over the internet - try and imagine this conversation is happening in a cafe over a coffee. I'm calm, and not trying to disagree with you for internet points or anything of the like. Just trying to have a conversation. I just lack the skill to write things in a sensitive enough manner. --- Whilst I agree with you in part, I also believe that over-emphasising personality traits or behaviours of a person also engages in revisionism. One should be able to view an event entirely separate from the person, if the person's generalised behaviour isn't relevant. We don't need to think about the man at all, in my own opinion, in this particular case. Redact his name if you have concerns that the man is unworthy of attention. Adding complaints of a person to any mention of them is calling for jury and judgement. It's a distraction from what's important. It takes an event that should be discussed and explored, and twists it so you are forced to take sides about the person. You can use these tactics to derail any conversation. It's a debating tactic commonly used in politics to avoid answering questions. It might be better in future just to say something along the lines of "Aside: Can we not use his name? The guy is actually a racist, and has a pretty deplorable past." We don't want to get lost in the debate of a man's merits, when his actions may themselves be meritorious.
  - watwut 8y ago
    But when one claims that weev did it as white hat "to let them know about vulnerability" then personality traits and behaviors become relevant. They are not relevant for judging whether scrapping data from unprotected 14mil urls should be seen as hack. They are relevant to whether suggestion that he was well intentioned white hat doing public service claims sounds naive or likely. It matters when I have to decide whether I will buy his framing of events and motivations or not. Such claims very much existed and were predominant interpretation of evens in circles I was in. Edited to add: then you had weev using his bigger fame and sort of new credibility to try to cause further harm to person he harassed somewhere around going to/from prison. So to me, it makes sense for people seen it at the time to jump into these discussions to prevent further rise of credibility.
eridius 8y ago
> Serving prison time for notifying people of a serious privacy breach doesn't seem to be a balanced approach. Except his crime wasn't "notifying people of a privacy breach". It was breaching that privacy. There was absolutely no reason whatsoever for him to actually scrape the personal information of 114k people.
- dbuder 8y ago
  (lasting) proof

ndnxhs 8y ago

How is that relevant to the parent comment?

CaptainZapp 8y ago
It's relevant in context to the despicable person he has proven to be, who is mythologized as a great hacker.
- Buge 8y ago
  Scraping urls doesn't make you a great hacker.
  - watwut 8y ago
    He was mythologized at the time and after. I remember having impression of him being genius and being overall good guy. People really wanted him to be that way, because they wanted him to win and kept to illusion long after. That he is neonazi and harassed people quite hard (to the point of seriously affecting their careers and lives) are things that I learned only much later and people still don't like those two being brought up in pretty much any context.
- stuntkite 8y ago
  He's more Andy Kaufman than Steve Wozniak. I don't think anyone who has a clue thinks he's a great hacker. However, he might be one of the most effective shit wizards that have existed.
  - CaptainZapp 8y ago
    Andy Kaufman was funny at least.
    - stuntkite 8y ago
      Was he? Definitely the model of a modern troll in my book. I thought he was weird, but not funny really. He wasn't a nazi, so that was good.

stuntkite 8y ago

That's the real deal with his "hack" releasing this data from his trolling security company. He knew it wasn't a hack but he also knew he could use it for his pathological tolling. The criminal charges were more about how he presented everything and that he's a notorious public figure who denies being a nazi while being the sysadmin for Stormfront. AT&T wanted to mess with him, but the courts were super excited when they heard who they were going to try to convict. I am glad he won the case though. It could have been really problematic case law if he didn't. I'm also glad they tried to pin him to the wall for it. GNAA/Goatse Consulting (his "firm" that did the hacks. GNAA is a massively offensive racist and homophobic acronym.) and the thing he built with the help of many others felt like it was dominating tech culture's sense of humor for a while. The racist jokes were just for the sake of trolling.... right? Right? I think the deal with Weev is that everything he does is both serious and a joke. He does appear to be a nazi but if you try to stitch together his actual person it gets twisted really quickly. He has a personality disorder. I think a lot of people caught in his reality distortion field didn't quite get that playing around with "edgy" troll stuff normalizes things that eat up self and society. I definitely have seen a change in the casual dabbling with it since Charlottesville. While I have some sympathy for people that believed the lie that it's all jokes... I don't think Weev ever thought it was just jokes. He's extremely smart and fucking dangerous. I hope one day he gets a moment to reflect and use his brain for something that isn't being the fentanyl of meme pushers. EDIT: DO NOT GOOGLE GNAA or GOATSE AT WORK

CaptainZapp 8y ago
Goatse Consulting Seriously? Probhably most readers are too young to remember this "important" piece of internet lore. Let's just say it was the first, massively not safe for work web site.[1] Naming his company after that is quite fitting. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goatse.cx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goatse.cx
- stuntkite 8y ago
  Goatse Security actually, but yeah. Him and people from GNAA called it a security firm. Sort of grey hat trolling for hire? I guess it could be considered the template for what got us Cambridge Analytica, Brexit, and Trump. I'm not sure if it's up anymore, but the GNAA public code repo used to be just full of interesting software solutions for mass griefing people. Here[0] is a DEFCON talk from a GNAA/lulsec affiliate talking about trolling as an art. I think the talk actually has some interesting things going on when looked at through the lens of what weaponized trolling has produced in the now. At one point someone in the audience asks the presenter to read his "funny" slides and it's a racist "joke" comic. He acts embarrassed and says "I don't believe this stuff." He does break down a few of their trolling tools from their repo that they were pretty proud of at the time. So the curious can scope that out if you don't have to browse to any of their official sites or do a risky google. This was before Facebook so it's mostly IRC tools and general troll culture commentary. They used the ATT dump, knowing it wasn’t really illegal to get hype to sell their services. I think it worked? Here's a pretty good piece on him with a reporter who followed him around during the first trial. I think it covers a lot of it[1]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHqGV5WjS4w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHqGV5WjS4w [1] https://medium.com/matter/the-martyrdom-of-weev-9e72da8a133d https://medium.com/matter/the-martyrdom-of-weev-9e72da8a133d EDIT: DO NOT GOOGLE GNAA or GOATSE AT WORK. Links should be mostly SFW. Obviously YMMV. It's content made by/about professional offensive assholes.

gdfasfklshg4 8y ago

His politics are orthogonal to this case.

lesss365 8y ago

Pretty sure he's Jewish, and he gives the impression that he's seeking attention through acting like an edgelord and spouting extreme/hateful BS. I have a mixed racial background and am of Jewish heritage, and could never take offense to what he spews because of the insincerity sensed in his tone and his own supposed Jewish heritage. If anything I just laugh at him because, like Alex Jones and Ann Coulter, he's a performance artist. A Tony Clifton, if you will