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I guess that's what counts as hacktivism these days. Doxxing working class people and their supporters. It's nice to see the left and right's true colors here

I guess that's what counts as hacktivism these days. Doxxing working class people and their supporters. It's nice to see the left and right's true colors here and how easily they pulled back the veil of opposition to reveal their true contempt for the lower classes and the real class war underpinning everything. These last two years, I have seen so much scary authoritarianism from well-meaning people using their own moral righteousness as all the justification they need for oppression. I fear things will get worse before they get better.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
Isn’t this freedom? The right to donate and the right to know who did? Aren’t these donations considered speech (US centric)? Or it only distasteful when your speech and opinion is public? I support very robust free speech perspectives and freedom of speech rights, but there are also consequences for our speech (and the protections, in the US at least, are from your government only).
- fr33d0m_ 5y ago
  Last I heard, "hacking" and DDoS attacks were illegal and against the law?
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    I don’t endorse illegal activities, ever, full stop. I speak only of the results. Don’t speak or support what you’d be embarrassed to see successfully attributed to you on the front page of a newspaper. Everyone’s opsec streak runs out eventually, and anonymity should have bounds once you’re influencing the public sphere (politics, in this case). (all of my political donations are public in FEC filings, even those I’m not required to disclose)
    - dahfizz 5y ago
      Do you also support exposing homosexuals who don't want to come out? People have a right to privacy. Stealing private information is the opposite of freedom.
      - toomuchtodo 5y ago
        Only in the case where the subject in question is pushing public policy to hurt homosexuals while secretly being one themselves. Public figures are held to a higher standard of accountability, and a loss of some privacy is expected depending on how far your life dips into public policy and influence. The purpose in this case would be to expose the malicious hypocrisy. You’re Average Joe or Jane? Of course not, not under any circumstances. Their bedroom is their business only. I can’t stress this enough. > People have a right to privacy. Stealing private information is the opposite of freedom. Higher level, to demand anonymity when pushing resourced ($$$) speech in a democracy is attempting to subvert the political system while avoiding recourse for bad faith intent and/or actions (my observations from a systems analyst perspective). Nuance and absolutism are incompatible.
    - meany 5y ago
      It sounds like you're saying the "ends justify the means". Perhaps its not embarrassment that makes people want privacy, but fear of retribution. Consider someone living during the McCarthy era in the US. Speaking up could be career ending, and in the long run, if things had progressed to a more authoritarian regime, life threatening. As one of the earlier posters said, I think many people see a slide into authoritarianism on both sides of the political spectrum. And it strikes me, that not being able to have secrets or privacy supports authoritarianism more than furthering democracy.
  - bawolff 5y ago
    So are much of the protest activity (not in general, but many of the specific activities of this protest are)
- busterarm 5y ago
  One of the four pillars of ethical journalism is minimizing harm. Knowing if there are big and powerful donors may be important to surface, but outing your neighbors has no journalistic upside. It's all about tribe vs tribe at that point. If you publish this and target the mob at ordinary people, you deserve to be forced out of the profession, in my opinion.
  - fr33d0m_ 5y ago
    Where are the "ethical journalists" trying to publish the donors of... "GoFundMe allowed support for CHAZ/CHOP zone in Seattle even after murders" Black Lives Matter - Los Angeles https://www.gofundme.com/f/h2tqv-black-lives-matter-los-angeles https://www.gofundme.com/f/h2tqv-black-lives-matter-los-ange... ANTIFA Takes Donations (for NAACP) https://www.gofundme.com/f/antifa-takes-donations https://www.gofundme.com/f/antifa-takes-donations
hans1729 5y ago
For all you know, this was $state_actor_invested_in_western_chaos, so don't be ridiculous. How you derive the "true colors" of "the left and right" from the fact that someone decided this is an exploit worth investing in, seems to be beyond my understanding? edit: fascinating, this comment received positive votes and then went straight to -3 within seconds.
BoorishBears 5y ago
Being objective here: - 90 percent of Canada's truckers are vaccinated, so why are you using working class as a substitute for protestor, then using that to call this class warfare? - Don't you think working class people will care most about this list? The people with the most time to scour lists and make angry tweets probably most likely aren't UHNW individuals... - Don't you see the irony is claiming authoritarianism has landed under the guise of morality, then assigning morality based on party orientation? Somehow painting the right as working class victims, and the left as upper class aggressors?
- busterarm 5y ago
  > then assigning morality based on party orientation? Somehow painting the right as working class victims, and the left as upper class aggressors? Actually you read that into that based on your own biases. I was deliberate _not_ to do this specifically. The establishment media and government mouthpieces, both left and right, have demonized the shit out of this protest and painted them as nazis, terrorists or any other fear word they can get away with. Truly independent journalists have been painting a very different picture by doing the things that traditional media won't do: long form interviews with protestors and ordinary Ottawans.
  - BoorishBears 5y ago
    I don't get this... You're saying it's my bias that the protestors are right leaning, and therefore the attackers are left? Isn't that just an open fact? You omitting it doesn't make it not true...
    - busterarm 5y ago
      > Isn't that just an open fact? No, it isn't. Not in their own words. If you've only been watching CBC/CNN, well, that's a big part of the problem then.
      - BoorishBears 5y ago
palijer 5y ago
This read [1] is pretty interesting in regards to the increase in support for authoritarianism that you are seeing. It could just be yet another evolutionary quirk that doesn't work in the modern age. Perhaps all the development into algorithms that make people click on things, when people click on things they are outraged about is a contributing factor to this if there is a link between perceived moral division and support for authoritarianism. [1] - https://www.psypost.org/2022/02/study-provides-first-evidence-of-a-causal-link-between-perceived-moral-division-and-support-for-authoritarian-leaders-62479 https://www.psypost.org/2022/02/study-provides-first-evidenc...
dang 5y ago
Please don't take HN threads in the direction of generic ideological flamewar. It makes the discussion much more predictable and repetitive, and usually much nastier. We're trying to avoid all that here, and you can make your substantive points without it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- busterarm 5y ago
  This is anything but generic ideological flamewar here, dang. I'm clearly slamming both "tribes" for their tribalism here. More importantly, I'm someone deeply involved with the kinds of people that would have been able to perform this kind of hack and would do so for political reasons. I am directly calling their behavior awful. I'm explicitly condemning the doxxing of ordinary people for their political activity and frankly am shocked that you would even suggest that to be against the rules or even controversial.
  - dang 5y ago
    Ok, fair enough. On closer reading, I think I pattern-matched your comment the wrong way! (That said, it's still rhetorically in the flamewar style and that's the wrong style for HN. We want curious conversation here.)
    - busterarm 5y ago
      > (That said, it's still rhetorically in the flamewar style and that's the wrong style for HN. We want curious conversation here.) Fair. It can be an unfortunate component of my writing style. Too many decades in front of computers and all.
    - seneca 5y ago
      > Ok, fair enough. On closer reading, I think I pattern-matched your comment the wrong way! Just want to say I respect and appreciate the humility here. It's easy for a moderator to just shut down disagreement.
- nathanaldensr 5y ago
purple_ferret 5y ago
Yes, it's very idealistic to think 'hacktivists' would take the upper ground here in what is already a very dirty fight. I mean you have 61% of donors not even being Canadians. They're funding a movement that shut down a major commerce corridor into the US, directly affecting the US economy. To say this is about the 'working class' is naive. I mean you think Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, was tweeting support of it because he loves the working class?
- 0xbadc0de5 5y ago
  To be fair, the US has roughly 10x the population of Canada. So any support from the US is going to appear outsized unless interpreted on a per-capita basis.
- _-david-_ 5y ago
  A large number of donors for BLM weren't from the US. Do you also support doxing them?
  - purple_ferret 5y ago
    I don't support doxing anybody. I just don't believe the narrative that the truckers and their supporters represent the oppressed working class.
rpmisms 5y ago
Per dang's nice request, let's open this up a bit and talk about why this is happening. It's now acceptable (and even lauded in the comments of this post) to doxx people with the wrong opinion. What changed to make otherwise reasonable people approve of this course of action? I want to know what societal switch flipped. I've seen it posited that it's due to the pseudo-anonymity of the internet, but that doesn't seem to fully explain it. Something has fundamentally changed to allow this level of dehumanization towards the "others".
- busterarm 5y ago
  Thank you.
- tux1968 5y ago
  > Something has fundamentally changed to allow this level of dehumanization towards the "others". Nothing has changed in the level of dehumanization. It's clearly a very human failing that has played out in history time and again. The only reason it feels more prevalent, is because we've turned it inward toward what used to be a more cohesive group. So we can ask why we're breaking apart, but there's no mystery about why we dehumanize the "others" -- we always have.
  - useragent86 5y ago
    Of course, you're right. At the same time, we may ask why American society seems to be more ideologically polarized now than at various times in recent decades. If the root cause is natural human failing, what is the second-level cause? Could it be that American society has been under a form of ideological siege and sabotage for many years, that is now coming to fruition? For example, it's documented that, as far back as the early 20th century, the USSR funded programs to demoralize American society through means as seemingly innocuous as making public art and architecture uglier. As well, Marcuse's "long march through the institutions" has now had 50 years to take effect, and polls have shown that American academia is much less ideologically diverse than in past decades, now being nearly entirely formed of those who vote for one party. There are elements of history that seem like weather, coming and going in cycles, but there are also parties taking active roles to effect certain ends, and we would be wise to be aware of their influence.

toomuchtodo 5y ago

Isn’t this freedom? The right to donate and the right to know who did? Aren’t these donations considered speech (US centric)? Or it only distasteful when your speech and opinion is public? I support very robust free speech perspectives and freedom of speech rights, but there are also consequences for our speech (and the protections, in the US at least, are from your government only).

fr33d0m_ 5y ago
Last I heard, "hacking" and DDoS attacks were illegal and against the law?
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  I don’t endorse illegal activities, ever, full stop. I speak only of the results. Don’t speak or support what you’d be embarrassed to see successfully attributed to you on the front page of a newspaper. Everyone’s opsec streak runs out eventually, and anonymity should have bounds once you’re influencing the public sphere (politics, in this case). (all of my political donations are public in FEC filings, even those I’m not required to disclose)
  - dahfizz 5y ago
    Do you also support exposing homosexuals who don't want to come out? People have a right to privacy. Stealing private information is the opposite of freedom.
    - toomuchtodo 5y ago
      Only in the case where the subject in question is pushing public policy to hurt homosexuals while secretly being one themselves. Public figures are held to a higher standard of accountability, and a loss of some privacy is expected depending on how far your life dips into public policy and influence. The purpose in this case would be to expose the malicious hypocrisy. You’re Average Joe or Jane? Of course not, not under any circumstances. Their bedroom is their business only. I can’t stress this enough. > People have a right to privacy. Stealing private information is the opposite of freedom. Higher level, to demand anonymity when pushing resourced ($$$) speech in a democracy is attempting to subvert the political system while avoiding recourse for bad faith intent and/or actions (my observations from a systems analyst perspective). Nuance and absolutism are incompatible.
  - meany 5y ago
    It sounds like you're saying the "ends justify the means". Perhaps its not embarrassment that makes people want privacy, but fear of retribution. Consider someone living during the McCarthy era in the US. Speaking up could be career ending, and in the long run, if things had progressed to a more authoritarian regime, life threatening. As one of the earlier posters said, I think many people see a slide into authoritarianism on both sides of the political spectrum. And it strikes me, that not being able to have secrets or privacy supports authoritarianism more than furthering democracy.
- bawolff 5y ago
  So are much of the protest activity (not in general, but many of the specific activities of this protest are)
busterarm 5y ago
One of the four pillars of ethical journalism is minimizing harm. Knowing if there are big and powerful donors may be important to surface, but outing your neighbors has no journalistic upside. It's all about tribe vs tribe at that point. If you publish this and target the mob at ordinary people, you deserve to be forced out of the profession, in my opinion.
- fr33d0m_ 5y ago
  Where are the "ethical journalists" trying to publish the donors of... "GoFundMe allowed support for CHAZ/CHOP zone in Seattle even after murders" Black Lives Matter - Los Angeles https://www.gofundme.com/f/h2tqv-black-lives-matter-los-angeles https://www.gofundme.com/f/h2tqv-black-lives-matter-los-ange... ANTIFA Takes Donations (for NAACP) https://www.gofundme.com/f/antifa-takes-donations https://www.gofundme.com/f/antifa-takes-donations

hans1729 5y ago

For all you know, this was $state_actor_invested_in_western_chaos, so don't be ridiculous. How you derive the "true colors" of "the left and right" from the fact that someone decided this is an exploit worth investing in, seems to be beyond my understanding? edit: fascinating, this comment received positive votes and then went straight to -3 within seconds.

BoorishBears 5y ago

Being objective here: - 90 percent of Canada's truckers are vaccinated, so why are you using working class as a substitute for protestor, then using that to call this class warfare? - Don't you think working class people will care most about this list? The people with the most time to scour lists and make angry tweets probably most likely aren't UHNW individuals... - Don't you see the irony is claiming authoritarianism has landed under the guise of morality, then assigning morality based on party orientation? Somehow painting the right as working class victims, and the left as upper class aggressors?

busterarm 5y ago
> then assigning morality based on party orientation? Somehow painting the right as working class victims, and the left as upper class aggressors? Actually you read that into that based on your own biases. I was deliberate _not_ to do this specifically. The establishment media and government mouthpieces, both left and right, have demonized the shit out of this protest and painted them as nazis, terrorists or any other fear word they can get away with. Truly independent journalists have been painting a very different picture by doing the things that traditional media won't do: long form interviews with protestors and ordinary Ottawans.
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  I don't get this... You're saying it's my bias that the protestors are right leaning, and therefore the attackers are left? Isn't that just an open fact? You omitting it doesn't make it not true...
  - busterarm 5y ago
    > Isn't that just an open fact? No, it isn't. Not in their own words. If you've only been watching CBC/CNN, well, that's a big part of the problem then.
    - BoorishBears 5y ago

palijer 5y ago

This read [1] is pretty interesting in regards to the increase in support for authoritarianism that you are seeing. It could just be yet another evolutionary quirk that doesn't work in the modern age. Perhaps all the development into algorithms that make people click on things, when people click on things they are outraged about is a contributing factor to this if there is a link between perceived moral division and support for authoritarianism. [1] - https://www.psypost.org/2022/02/study-provides-first-evidence-of-a-causal-link-between-perceived-moral-division-and-support-for-authoritarian-leaders-62479 https://www.psypost.org/2022/02/study-provides-first-evidenc...

dang 5y ago

Please don't take HN threads in the direction of generic ideological flamewar. It makes the discussion much more predictable and repetitive, and usually much nastier. We're trying to avoid all that here, and you can make your substantive points without it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

busterarm 5y ago
This is anything but generic ideological flamewar here, dang. I'm clearly slamming both "tribes" for their tribalism here. More importantly, I'm someone deeply involved with the kinds of people that would have been able to perform this kind of hack and would do so for political reasons. I am directly calling their behavior awful. I'm explicitly condemning the doxxing of ordinary people for their political activity and frankly am shocked that you would even suggest that to be against the rules or even controversial.
- dang 5y ago
  Ok, fair enough. On closer reading, I think I pattern-matched your comment the wrong way! (That said, it's still rhetorically in the flamewar style and that's the wrong style for HN. We want curious conversation here.)
  - busterarm 5y ago
    > (That said, it's still rhetorically in the flamewar style and that's the wrong style for HN. We want curious conversation here.) Fair. It can be an unfortunate component of my writing style. Too many decades in front of computers and all.
  - seneca 5y ago
    > Ok, fair enough. On closer reading, I think I pattern-matched your comment the wrong way! Just want to say I respect and appreciate the humility here. It's easy for a moderator to just shut down disagreement.
nathanaldensr 5y ago

purple_ferret 5y ago

Yes, it's very idealistic to think 'hacktivists' would take the upper ground here in what is already a very dirty fight. I mean you have 61% of donors not even being Canadians. They're funding a movement that shut down a major commerce corridor into the US, directly affecting the US economy. To say this is about the 'working class' is naive. I mean you think Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, was tweeting support of it because he loves the working class?

0xbadc0de5 5y ago
To be fair, the US has roughly 10x the population of Canada. So any support from the US is going to appear outsized unless interpreted on a per-capita basis.
_-david-_ 5y ago
A large number of donors for BLM weren't from the US. Do you also support doxing them?
- purple_ferret 5y ago
  I don't support doxing anybody. I just don't believe the narrative that the truckers and their supporters represent the oppressed working class.

rpmisms 5y ago

Per dang's nice request, let's open this up a bit and talk about why this is happening. It's now acceptable (and even lauded in the comments of this post) to doxx people with the wrong opinion. What changed to make otherwise reasonable people approve of this course of action? I want to know what societal switch flipped. I've seen it posited that it's due to the pseudo-anonymity of the internet, but that doesn't seem to fully explain it. Something has fundamentally changed to allow this level of dehumanization towards the "others".

busterarm 5y ago
Thank you.
tux1968 5y ago
> Something has fundamentally changed to allow this level of dehumanization towards the "others". Nothing has changed in the level of dehumanization. It's clearly a very human failing that has played out in history time and again. The only reason it feels more prevalent, is because we've turned it inward toward what used to be a more cohesive group. So we can ask why we're breaking apart, but there's no mystery about why we dehumanize the "others" -- we always have.
- useragent86 5y ago
  Of course, you're right. At the same time, we may ask why American society seems to be more ideologically polarized now than at various times in recent decades. If the root cause is natural human failing, what is the second-level cause? Could it be that American society has been under a form of ideological siege and sabotage for many years, that is now coming to fruition? For example, it's documented that, as far back as the early 20th century, the USSR funded programs to demoralize American society through means as seemingly innocuous as making public art and architecture uglier. As well, Marcuse's "long march through the institutions" has now had 50 years to take effect, and polls have shown that American academia is much less ideologically diverse than in past decades, now being nearly entirely formed of those who vote for one party. There are elements of history that seem like weather, coming and going in cycles, but there are also parties taking active roles to effect certain ends, and we would be wise to be aware of their influence.