4 ms·

Deliberately dramatic and made to seem like as if cyber criminals are as dangerous as the mafia with guns.

Rainymood 11y ago
Heh, at least it's better than them happily typing away at keyboards while wearing ski-masks in a dimly lit room. I thought Vice was 'good' journalism, turns out they pretty much sensationalise everything :(
- leaveyou 11y ago
  Knowing the real Romania, I had the same revelation about Vice. These guys can go anywhere and pay some poor locals from some slums to say anything they want to hear, add some historic flashbacks (communist if possible) and urban mythology to it and bam !, they have a story to sell. Ridiculous
- anc84 11y ago
  Vice was always about hype. I can't remember anything I ever read or saw from them what I would consider good journalism.
Udo 11y ago
This fits in nicely with the general narrative. At one point they portray this guy who they say cost the NASA JPL half a million dollars, whereas he said he merely hacked their email server and asked for a job. My suspicion is that hacking damages are stated in "cop dollars", a wildly arbitrary unit of non-currency. Worth mentioning in this context is also the guy who complains about sitting in a max sec prison for hacking Hillary Clinton's email account, a judicial measure the reporters justify by claiming the damage was so great it plagues Clinton still in the 2016 presidential campaign. I think this is mostly a social failure. You have this group of moderately skilled young people who do this basically to make ends meet. The majority of them would probably rather take job offers from the companies they compromise. However, the film also details a lot of low-skill, traditional wire fraud like eBay scamming - which is tangentially related because it's also computer-enabled crime, but happens on an entirely different level that has nothing to do with hacking at all. The most obnoxious part of the film for me were the priest's soundbites, especially the thing with the bees. Less than nothing was accomplished by adding these weird religious statements to something that is apparently supposed to be a documentary.

Heh, at least it's better than them happily typing away at keyboards while wearing ski-masks in a dimly lit room. I thought Vice was 'good' journalism, turns out they pretty much sensationalise everything :(

leaveyou 11y ago
Knowing the real Romania, I had the same revelation about Vice. These guys can go anywhere and pay some poor locals from some slums to say anything they want to hear, add some historic flashbacks (communist if possible) and urban mythology to it and bam !, they have a story to sell. Ridiculous
anc84 11y ago
Vice was always about hype. I can't remember anything I ever read or saw from them what I would consider good journalism.

Udo 11y ago

This fits in nicely with the general narrative. At one point they portray this guy who they say cost the NASA JPL half a million dollars, whereas he said he merely hacked their email server and asked for a job. My suspicion is that hacking damages are stated in "cop dollars", a wildly arbitrary unit of non-currency. Worth mentioning in this context is also the guy who complains about sitting in a max sec prison for hacking Hillary Clinton's email account, a judicial measure the reporters justify by claiming the damage was so great it plagues Clinton still in the 2016 presidential campaign. I think this is mostly a social failure. You have this group of moderately skilled young people who do this basically to make ends meet. The majority of them would probably rather take job offers from the companies they compromise. However, the film also details a lot of low-skill, traditional wire fraud like eBay scamming - which is tangentially related because it's also computer-enabled crime, but happens on an entirely different level that has nothing to do with hacking at all. The most obnoxious part of the film for me were the priest's soundbites, especially the thing with the bees. Less than nothing was accomplished by adding these weird religious statements to something that is apparently supposed to be a documentary.