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I think this is setting a very dangerous precedent. Yes, it was lame what Mastercard did to Wikileaks, but it wasn't technically illegal. What Anon is doing to

I think this is setting a very dangerous precedent. Yes, it was lame what Mastercard did to Wikileaks, but it wasn't technically illegal. What Anon is doing to Mastercard, however, is completely illegal and damaging, not only to MC but to its customers too (who are innocent bystanders in this case).

carbocation 16y ago
I'm going to try to articulate a position that I think that I understand but is not mine, so please bear with me. Let's put aside what is "legal" and focus on what is "socially desirable" business behavior from the perspective of Anon. MasterCard, as a private entity, has wide leeway in how it chooses to deal with other private entities such as Wikileaks. Is this socially desirable? While I have no special insight into what Anon is thinking, I would surmise that they are not pleased that private entities are restricting free-flow of information and acting as a state's agents even when not compelled to do so by the force of law. We've heard from many business (Amazon, PayPal, etc) that blocking WikiLeaks (and consequently inhibiting free distribution of classified US documents and secret corporate information) is, at its core, a profitable business decision. I would guess that Anon is trying to send a message that such an "anti-freedom" decision (scare quotes intentional) can instead become very expensive.
- marknutter 16y ago
  But what is "socially desirable" is a completely subjective thing though. There could be a small group of Anons that think banning gays from entering the military is "socially desirable" and use that as a basis for taking down websites of companies who work with the military. It's Mastercard's choice whom they do business with, and by launching this attack Anon is only further solidifying the misguided popular belief that Wikileaks is akin to a terrorist organization. It may seem like a victory in the short term, but in terms of Wikileak's PR I think it's a huge setback.
  - borism 16y ago
    It's Mastercard's choice whom they do business with No it's not.
    - jlgosse 16y ago
      I'm really interested in this, and I'm confused as to why people are voting you up. You provided an answer with absolutely no evidence to support what you said and people find the answer either, a) Helpful or b) Interesting. Can you explain how it isn't their choice? Mastercard, VISA and American Express turn down applicants ALL the time, so doesn't this go against what you are saying here?
      - defen 16y ago
        I'm not sure what his point was, but technically it's true, at least in the U.S. There are a host of "protected classes", and if you refuse to do business with someone because they're in that protected class, you get in Big Trouble. This includes race, color, gender, age, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class
        marknutter 16y ago
        It's not true, otherwise signs that say "no shirt, no shoes, no service" would be illegal. You're referring to laws against discrimination based on race, sex, or disabilities. This says nothing about refusing service to people for other reasons, such as a rowdy bar patron or someone who violates Terms of Service.
        jbooth 16y ago
        It's generally understood that refusing to do business with someone for political reasons, unless the person's politics involve genocide or something, is against the social contract. Not illegal, but generally not approved of by anyone (unless you have the whole US media playing the mccarthy card against the person, apparently).
- corin_ 16y ago
  It's not a dissimilar concept to strike action, in that it may well have a negative effect on customers, but is believed to be neccesary none-the-less. I fully support unions and strikers, however I'm not sure how I feel about this kind of action. The similarity ends with differences such as strikers have names, faces, spokespeople, they decide together if they are for or against striking, it isn't one or more people with nothing to do with the company who makes the decision.
  - varjag 16y ago
    The difference might not be as huge, Round Robin was not invented for nothing. Just that the online world has more opportunity for anonymous sabotage.
  - noblethrasher 16y ago
    Strike actions have symmetry and boundedness. Withholding labor obviously affects both the company and the workers and the action can only go so far since both sides need each other to survive. This kind of action is asymmetric and unbounded: Anon can hurt MasterCard without cost to himself (presumably) and he can theoretically carry it out for as long as he wants. This can only lead to some kind of escalation if MasterCard (and similar entities) want to survive.
    - corin_ 16y ago
      Agreed. My comparison was purely in reply to the concept of "you shouldn't hurt a company to improve things, because it hurts their customers too."
      - ghostDancer 16y ago
        Well the you can compare it with commercial sanctions to Cuba, Irak or North Korea that the international community don't suffer too much (they're not big players) but the people of those countries do, not only their governments.
        16y ago
- ebaysucks 16y ago
  "Socially desirable" is the right way to think about it. Law has always been "mob rule", with competitive courts competing to define what this entails. "Legal" just means the government agrees with it. The state claimed a monopoly on "law" along the way. The tension we see today is that the "legal" does not represent the "socially desirable" / "law" anymore. Granted, a binary offline/online result using DDOS attacks is a very rude reputation system, but the reputation feedback processes can be improved upon by competition (semantic web startups anyone?).
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    Law has always been "mob rule", with competitive courts competing to define what this entails. Exactly. In the US we have a system of checks in balances to pit competing mobs against each other in a way such that it is sufficiently difficult for a mob to rule over a large population. But if the mob gets sufficiently large, they can rule. And likewise, for small geographic regions we often do have mob rule.
dagw 16y ago
The cynical part of my brain is currently quite convinced that there several members of some US security agency currently on 4chan instigating these pointless attacks in an attempt further turn public opinion against wikileaks and their supporters. People quickly switch from indifferent to hostile once they are personally affected.
- borism 16y ago
  Ridiculous. USG agencies already have their hands full of dealing with this stuff, not adding more to it.
  - khafra 16y ago
    The agent provocateur is hardly an unknown or last-resort tactic for any modern government: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/fbi-plant-banned-by-mosque-ndash-because-he-was-too-extreme-2153057.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/fbi-plant-b...
    - borism 16y ago
      alright, alright, you win. 4chan is CIA's covert operation to install New World Order.
powellc 16y ago
While I too, am not sure that I agree with the position Anonymous is taking, I do feel like the fact that even you qualify the word "illegal" with "technically." And the first reply makes a fine case for why MC's positions and reasons not to do business stink of the heavy hand of a certain first-world nation. Excepting that, I would also argue that what has happened to WikiLeaks in the wake of the documents being release by the bureaucratic nations of the world is setting a far more dangerous precedent online. I, for one, hope ICANN is working on solutions to DNS being effectively held hostage by a few sovereign nations.
alextgordon 16y ago
If a bunch of script kiddies (albeit in considerable number) can take down MasterCard, then it's pretty much MasterCard's fault alone. It's not like they didn't have the money or opportunity.
- eli 16y ago
  Seriously? Blame the victim?
  - redthrowaway 16y ago
    When MasterCard does millions of dollars a day worth of online transactions, which can be halted by LOIC, then yes, blame them. LOIC is really, really basic, and anon has never really gathered any respectable amount of bandwidth. Most small botnets put them to shame. What I suspect, however, is that actual botherders are using these raids as cover. They can still DDoS the target, but 4chan takes the blame. The recent addition of "hivemind" functionality to LOIC, which slaves the user's computer to an irc feed that controls targeting and firing, seems like the perfect opportunity for a botherder to set their botnet to take orders from same.
    - eli 16y ago
      Online transactions weren't halted, mostly just the corporate brochure-ware sites. And attacking a website is never justified. It is wrong regardless of how much effort the owner puts into securing it. Likewise, it's exactly the same crime to steal a car that has an alarm as one that doesn't.
      - redthrowaway 16y ago
        Meh. I'm not defending the attacks. I do think, however, that the moral landscape is significantly greyer than you depict. No nascent movement in history has been morally acceptable by the standards of the establishment. Whether this becomes the American Revolution, the Khmer Rouge, or That One No One Ever Heard Of Or Remembers remains to be seen. As to your specific point, leaving my car unlocked with the windows down overnight on a dark street in Detroit doesn't make the inevitable thieves justified, but it does make me retarded, and completely undeserving of sympathy.
ceejayoz 16y ago
Making Rosa Parks get out of her seat was lame but not technically illegal. Her refusal was completely illegal and plenty of folks argued it was damaging. I don't see why civil disobedience should cease to be civil disobedience just because it's on a computer.
- eli 16y ago
  Yes, and it kicked off the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Not slashing tires or road blockades.
  - bradleyland 16y ago
    An incredibly critical point. A boycott is only effective if the disgruntled group has enough population to affect the business of the target. There in lies the problem with a DDoS attack. It is not a symmetrical response. A small group of people could execute such an attack, while the majority of actual customers may not have an issue with their actions.
    - jacquesm 16y ago
      Judging by the difficulty that MC has in dealing with this one I wonder how big that 'small group' really is.
      - eli 16y ago
        As compared to total MC customers and daily transactions, I'm sure it's infinitesimal
      - danohuiginn 16y ago
        according to netcraft, it only took 400 machines. http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2010/12/08/visa-com-taken-down-by-botnet-volunteers.html http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2010/12/08/visa-com-taken-...
    - Daishiman 16y ago
      A small group of MC lawyers and executives also has say on whether you can use of the three largest payment methods on the planet to fund a group you sympathise with. When it comes to oligopolies, the usual rule of corporations as private, independent entities that can do whatever they please, goes out the window.
lhnz 16y ago
I guess it goes to show that Mastercard should think about what is best for their customers as opposed to what is best for the government. The reality is that, nowadays, if you make an unpopular decision with a large part of internet users you may get DDOS'ed.
rorrr 16y ago
Visa + Mastercard is a duopoly. They have been abusing their domination for years. I don't feel sorry for MC.
- marknutter 16y ago
  You do realize that there are actual human beings working for Mastercard who are just like you and I who are getting hurt by this, right? There are real people behind these websites.
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    Following orders is not a valid defense for wrongdoing. If you work for a company, you're complicit in their wrongdoings.
    - nkassis 16y ago
      That's not true at all. A secretary filling documents should not be held responsible for the way the corporation is run. That's just plain idiocy to claim that employees of a company are to be held responsible for corporate policy. Now if they did something illegal while working, that' another story but I don't think that's what you meant here.
      - steveklabnik 16y ago
        Nope, that's exactly what I mean here. Now, we're talking about my own personal set of ethics here, but it's pretty straightforward: * Your role is an employee is to help accomplish a corporation's objectives. * (In this case) the corporation's objectives are unethical. * You're contributing to something unethical. That being said, nobody is perfectly ethical. But if I worked for Amazon or PayPal, I'd have quit by now, and I'd never have taken a job with MasterCard in the first place. I also don't mean "held responsible" in a legal sense, either. They've done nothing wrong legally. Legality != morality, though.
        16y ago
roel_v 16y ago
Meh. In a few years when we all depend on the internet even more, the law will catch up with this sort of internet petty vandalism. A couple of people will get sued and thrown into jail, joe schmoe user will be cut off from the internet the moment a ddos is detected from his ip, and people coordinating 4chan ddos'es will be tracked and arrested. The only reason these things work today is because of a lack of urgency. I mean, when this starts happening every week, people will call for regulation, it may take a few years to get it sorted out politically, then another few before the policy catches up, and things like this won't be possible any more. In the mean time, the damage done is relatively small. Yes it sucks for some online merchants, but let's not blow this out of proportion. I remember 10 years ago there was a 'digital sit in' (the term 'ddos' didn't exist yet) on my at that time employer's website. There were camera crews coming in, interviewing our CEO's, it was big news. In reality, the effect was minor; averaged over the few days around it, the loss of sales was not even statistically significant.
- ZoFreX 16y ago
  I for one can't wait for the day when a government agency can detect that I'm initiating a DDOS from my home connection the second I start and immediately disconnect me, without a warrant, court order or trial.
  - SageRaven 16y ago
    Then you initiate it from the McDonald's parking lot, silly! Isn't free wireless grand?
  - roel_v 16y ago
    When you drive too fast with your car, the policy will stop you and give you a fine, or take away your car on the spot. All within the bounds of the law, court-supervised. I'm not seeing the difference. Imagine 100 years ago, when building and driving cars was practiced by enthusiasts only, how they must have lamented the prospect of not being able to drive as fast as they would like to on all roads! I'm not saying I'm looking forward to more control over the internet, but the Wild West days are over, and as the internet and computers become more fundamental in societal functioning, some form of oversight to safeguard a good functioning are inevitable.

carbocation 16y ago

I'm going to try to articulate a position that I think that I understand but is not mine, so please bear with me. Let's put aside what is "legal" and focus on what is "socially desirable" business behavior from the perspective of Anon. MasterCard, as a private entity, has wide leeway in how it chooses to deal with other private entities such as Wikileaks. Is this socially desirable? While I have no special insight into what Anon is thinking, I would surmise that they are not pleased that private entities are restricting free-flow of information and acting as a state's agents even when not compelled to do so by the force of law. We've heard from many business (Amazon, PayPal, etc) that blocking WikiLeaks (and consequently inhibiting free distribution of classified US documents and secret corporate information) is, at its core, a profitable business decision. I would guess that Anon is trying to send a message that such an "anti-freedom" decision (scare quotes intentional) can instead become very expensive.

marknutter 16y ago
But what is "socially desirable" is a completely subjective thing though. There could be a small group of Anons that think banning gays from entering the military is "socially desirable" and use that as a basis for taking down websites of companies who work with the military. It's Mastercard's choice whom they do business with, and by launching this attack Anon is only further solidifying the misguided popular belief that Wikileaks is akin to a terrorist organization. It may seem like a victory in the short term, but in terms of Wikileak's PR I think it's a huge setback.
- borism 16y ago
  It's Mastercard's choice whom they do business with No it's not.
  - jlgosse 16y ago
    I'm really interested in this, and I'm confused as to why people are voting you up. You provided an answer with absolutely no evidence to support what you said and people find the answer either, a) Helpful or b) Interesting. Can you explain how it isn't their choice? Mastercard, VISA and American Express turn down applicants ALL the time, so doesn't this go against what you are saying here?
    - defen 16y ago
      I'm not sure what his point was, but technically it's true, at least in the U.S. There are a host of "protected classes", and if you refuse to do business with someone because they're in that protected class, you get in Big Trouble. This includes race, color, gender, age, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class
      - marknutter 16y ago
        It's not true, otherwise signs that say "no shirt, no shoes, no service" would be illegal. You're referring to laws against discrimination based on race, sex, or disabilities. This says nothing about refusing service to people for other reasons, such as a rowdy bar patron or someone who violates Terms of Service.
        jbooth 16y ago
        It's generally understood that refusing to do business with someone for political reasons, unless the person's politics involve genocide or something, is against the social contract. Not illegal, but generally not approved of by anyone (unless you have the whole US media playing the mccarthy card against the person, apparently).
corin_ 16y ago
It's not a dissimilar concept to strike action, in that it may well have a negative effect on customers, but is believed to be neccesary none-the-less. I fully support unions and strikers, however I'm not sure how I feel about this kind of action. The similarity ends with differences such as strikers have names, faces, spokespeople, they decide together if they are for or against striking, it isn't one or more people with nothing to do with the company who makes the decision.
- varjag 16y ago
  The difference might not be as huge, Round Robin was not invented for nothing. Just that the online world has more opportunity for anonymous sabotage.
- noblethrasher 16y ago
  Strike actions have symmetry and boundedness. Withholding labor obviously affects both the company and the workers and the action can only go so far since both sides need each other to survive. This kind of action is asymmetric and unbounded: Anon can hurt MasterCard without cost to himself (presumably) and he can theoretically carry it out for as long as he wants. This can only lead to some kind of escalation if MasterCard (and similar entities) want to survive.
  - corin_ 16y ago
    Agreed. My comparison was purely in reply to the concept of "you shouldn't hurt a company to improve things, because it hurts their customers too."
    - ghostDancer 16y ago
      Well the you can compare it with commercial sanctions to Cuba, Irak or North Korea that the international community don't suffer too much (they're not big players) but the people of those countries do, not only their governments.
      - 16y ago
ebaysucks 16y ago
"Socially desirable" is the right way to think about it. Law has always been "mob rule", with competitive courts competing to define what this entails. "Legal" just means the government agrees with it. The state claimed a monopoly on "law" along the way. The tension we see today is that the "legal" does not represent the "socially desirable" / "law" anymore. Granted, a binary offline/online result using DDOS attacks is a very rude reputation system, but the reputation feedback processes can be improved upon by competition (semantic web startups anyone?).
- kenjackson 16y ago
  Law has always been "mob rule", with competitive courts competing to define what this entails. Exactly. In the US we have a system of checks in balances to pit competing mobs against each other in a way such that it is sufficiently difficult for a mob to rule over a large population. But if the mob gets sufficiently large, they can rule. And likewise, for small geographic regions we often do have mob rule.

dagw 16y ago

The cynical part of my brain is currently quite convinced that there several members of some US security agency currently on 4chan instigating these pointless attacks in an attempt further turn public opinion against wikileaks and their supporters. People quickly switch from indifferent to hostile once they are personally affected.

borism 16y ago
Ridiculous. USG agencies already have their hands full of dealing with this stuff, not adding more to it.
- khafra 16y ago
  The agent provocateur is hardly an unknown or last-resort tactic for any modern government: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/fbi-plant-banned-by-mosque-ndash-because-he-was-too-extreme-2153057.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/fbi-plant-b...
  - borism 16y ago
    alright, alright, you win. 4chan is CIA's covert operation to install New World Order.

powellc 16y ago

While I too, am not sure that I agree with the position Anonymous is taking, I do feel like the fact that even you qualify the word "illegal" with "technically." And the first reply makes a fine case for why MC's positions and reasons not to do business stink of the heavy hand of a certain first-world nation. Excepting that, I would also argue that what has happened to WikiLeaks in the wake of the documents being release by the bureaucratic nations of the world is setting a far more dangerous precedent online. I, for one, hope ICANN is working on solutions to DNS being effectively held hostage by a few sovereign nations.

alextgordon 16y ago

If a bunch of script kiddies (albeit in considerable number) can take down MasterCard, then it's pretty much MasterCard's fault alone. It's not like they didn't have the money or opportunity.

eli 16y ago
Seriously? Blame the victim?
- redthrowaway 16y ago
  When MasterCard does millions of dollars a day worth of online transactions, which can be halted by LOIC, then yes, blame them. LOIC is really, really basic, and anon has never really gathered any respectable amount of bandwidth. Most small botnets put them to shame. What I suspect, however, is that actual botherders are using these raids as cover. They can still DDoS the target, but 4chan takes the blame. The recent addition of "hivemind" functionality to LOIC, which slaves the user's computer to an irc feed that controls targeting and firing, seems like the perfect opportunity for a botherder to set their botnet to take orders from same.
  - eli 16y ago
    Online transactions weren't halted, mostly just the corporate brochure-ware sites. And attacking a website is never justified. It is wrong regardless of how much effort the owner puts into securing it. Likewise, it's exactly the same crime to steal a car that has an alarm as one that doesn't.
    - redthrowaway 16y ago
      Meh. I'm not defending the attacks. I do think, however, that the moral landscape is significantly greyer than you depict. No nascent movement in history has been morally acceptable by the standards of the establishment. Whether this becomes the American Revolution, the Khmer Rouge, or That One No One Ever Heard Of Or Remembers remains to be seen. As to your specific point, leaving my car unlocked with the windows down overnight on a dark street in Detroit doesn't make the inevitable thieves justified, but it does make me retarded, and completely undeserving of sympathy.

ceejayoz 16y ago

Making Rosa Parks get out of her seat was lame but not technically illegal. Her refusal was completely illegal and plenty of folks argued it was damaging. I don't see why civil disobedience should cease to be civil disobedience just because it's on a computer.

eli 16y ago
Yes, and it kicked off the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Not slashing tires or road blockades.
- bradleyland 16y ago
  An incredibly critical point. A boycott is only effective if the disgruntled group has enough population to affect the business of the target. There in lies the problem with a DDoS attack. It is not a symmetrical response. A small group of people could execute such an attack, while the majority of actual customers may not have an issue with their actions.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    Judging by the difficulty that MC has in dealing with this one I wonder how big that 'small group' really is.
    - eli 16y ago
      As compared to total MC customers and daily transactions, I'm sure it's infinitesimal
    - danohuiginn 16y ago
      according to netcraft, it only took 400 machines. http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2010/12/08/visa-com-taken-down-by-botnet-volunteers.html http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2010/12/08/visa-com-taken-...
  - Daishiman 16y ago
    A small group of MC lawyers and executives also has say on whether you can use of the three largest payment methods on the planet to fund a group you sympathise with. When it comes to oligopolies, the usual rule of corporations as private, independent entities that can do whatever they please, goes out the window.

lhnz 16y ago

I guess it goes to show that Mastercard should think about what is best for their customers as opposed to what is best for the government. The reality is that, nowadays, if you make an unpopular decision with a large part of internet users you may get DDOS'ed.

rorrr 16y ago

Visa + Mastercard is a duopoly. They have been abusing their domination for years. I don't feel sorry for MC.

marknutter 16y ago
You do realize that there are actual human beings working for Mastercard who are just like you and I who are getting hurt by this, right? There are real people behind these websites.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  Following orders is not a valid defense for wrongdoing. If you work for a company, you're complicit in their wrongdoings.
  - nkassis 16y ago
    That's not true at all. A secretary filling documents should not be held responsible for the way the corporation is run. That's just plain idiocy to claim that employees of a company are to be held responsible for corporate policy. Now if they did something illegal while working, that' another story but I don't think that's what you meant here.
    - steveklabnik 16y ago
      Nope, that's exactly what I mean here. Now, we're talking about my own personal set of ethics here, but it's pretty straightforward: * Your role is an employee is to help accomplish a corporation's objectives. * (In this case) the corporation's objectives are unethical. * You're contributing to something unethical. That being said, nobody is perfectly ethical. But if I worked for Amazon or PayPal, I'd have quit by now, and I'd never have taken a job with MasterCard in the first place. I also don't mean "held responsible" in a legal sense, either. They've done nothing wrong legally. Legality != morality, though.
      - 16y ago

roel_v 16y ago

Meh. In a few years when we all depend on the internet even more, the law will catch up with this sort of internet petty vandalism. A couple of people will get sued and thrown into jail, joe schmoe user will be cut off from the internet the moment a ddos is detected from his ip, and people coordinating 4chan ddos'es will be tracked and arrested. The only reason these things work today is because of a lack of urgency. I mean, when this starts happening every week, people will call for regulation, it may take a few years to get it sorted out politically, then another few before the policy catches up, and things like this won't be possible any more. In the mean time, the damage done is relatively small. Yes it sucks for some online merchants, but let's not blow this out of proportion. I remember 10 years ago there was a 'digital sit in' (the term 'ddos' didn't exist yet) on my at that time employer's website. There were camera crews coming in, interviewing our CEO's, it was big news. In reality, the effect was minor; averaged over the few days around it, the loss of sales was not even statistically significant.

ZoFreX 16y ago
I for one can't wait for the day when a government agency can detect that I'm initiating a DDOS from my home connection the second I start and immediately disconnect me, without a warrant, court order or trial.
- SageRaven 16y ago
  Then you initiate it from the McDonald's parking lot, silly! Isn't free wireless grand?
- roel_v 16y ago
  When you drive too fast with your car, the policy will stop you and give you a fine, or take away your car on the spot. All within the bounds of the law, court-supervised. I'm not seeing the difference. Imagine 100 years ago, when building and driving cars was practiced by enthusiasts only, how they must have lamented the prospect of not being able to drive as fast as they would like to on all roads! I'm not saying I'm looking forward to more control over the internet, but the Wild West days are over, and as the internet and computers become more fundamental in societal functioning, some form of oversight to safeguard a good functioning are inevitable.