Firstly I'd like to get straight to the point. The video of the military gunner shooting down civilians in the street was absolutely horrifying. I had never seen the actual footage before when the WikiLeaks stories were all over the TV (how's that for media filtering), but to witness the slaughter made me realise something. Yes, I say, yes to this information being publicly released. Why was it confidential material in the first place? Because its a demonstration of wrong decision. Wrong decisions made by people representing an entire country, and governments don't want you to see that, do they?
Of course, its difficult to draw the line defining what content should remain private and what should be deemed as rightfully public. The solution? Make right decisions so you don't have to hide information. Easier said than done of course, but hackers are there to (ironically) snoop out the higher authorities and their books of shame.
I've always wondered what its like to be inside the mind of a hacker. I'd like to ask one some questions. What are your motives? How did you learn to do all of this? Have you ever been hacked yourself? What have you achieved in doing this? This week I was able to seek a form of justice written in short essay format by The Mentor. The Hacker's Manifesto appeared in the lecture this week, and is a great demonstration of how government power is much more unruly than that of a curious hacker. Governments lie, murder, cheat, yet individuals are getting thrown behind bars for 'stealing' information.
I liked Crabtree's emphasis on application in this week's reading. It's just simply astounding that the imagination of a student with a computer can come up with something that effectively "introduced file sharing – or peer-to-peer (P2P) technology – to a mass audience." A mass audience. Do you know how large the scale of P2P networking is today? It makes me wish I were born a decade earlier so I could experience this impact in full. Oh, also that I have been subject to much online reciprocity in recent times, and due to this, I actually do help those in need if I can.
Of course, because you were all wondering, I went home today and found that my Windows Firewall is actually turned on. Not sure whether I should download ZoneAlarm yet.
Have you ever been subject to a hacker attack, trojan, or keylogger? Let me know.
The military shooter video made me feel sick to my stomach, and the fact that government authorities have kept this so well hidden is so dis-heartening because it raises the question- how much more footage similar to this is being hidden from us that Wikilieaks haven't gotten their hands on yet? I believe that hacking is ethically wrong when it's done for the wrong reasons, ( for example hacking in to peoples' personal computers and stealing bank details, etc) but when it's done to show the general public what the media have been hiding from us, I'm all for it.
ReplyDeleteI too would be very interested in sitting down to have a good chat with a professional hacker. I believe that while hacking is wrong in most cases, it is, however, a very smart skill and talent. A skill that I'm sure takes a very long time to master. I would be very curious to know how one becomes a hacker, or why one choses to hack in the first place. It's certainly an interesting topic.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about Ted's explanation of the 'original' hacker, did he say that it was more about creation? Rather than tearing things down the hacker 'adds' to the information available by giving a fuller picture and also by repurposing already existent info. In that case, maybe we are all just hackers too doing digc as we are all sourcing additional information, challenging what is mainstream and digging between the cracks so to speak. We are finding that there is more detail to issues than we first thought and in that sense we are expanding our own information, then additionally we are producing even more information by blogging about all this online.
ReplyDeleteHmm... "Make right decisions so you don't have to hide information" - that's pretty much as ideal as the world can get, right? However, if there's one thing we have learnt from this course - it is that ETHICS is a wishy washy topic with oh so many boundaries. It is hard to define what is the "right decision" but I wish it were possible!
ReplyDeleteI think in the end, the best balance is to have people who are snooping around - some things remain private but others will be exposed. Perhaps this constant fear of being caught out (through hacktivism) will make this sort of corruption less common?
I have been the victim of viruses, worms and trojans for sure - one of the worst one being some kind of virus that forced my background to be a sign saying WARNING - YOU HAVE A VIRUS (worded a bit differently)that I could not get rid of. I don't like viruses and I dislike the fact that hackers can sometimes work in such a negative way - but I appreciate the work the one's on the other side are doing!
I was wondering where hackers learn to hack as well. I wouldn't even know where to start. But if you could, would you take the "everyone should have access to everything" approach that Assange takes? I agree that the footage of the apache helicopter shootings should have been released (however horrific it is) as well. But what about other leaks like the contents of Sarah Palin's email account? Did that need to be released? I imagine a hacker would have an ethical nightmare if they worked on a case by case basis
ReplyDeleteYes, the military footage depicted a terrible consequence of war, that is innocent casualties. However the question of why it was hidden is one people tend to not agree with.
ReplyDelete"Because its a demonstration of wrong decision. Wrong decisions made by people representing an entire country, and governments don't want you to see that" - partly.
However the main reason given by military spokespersons and one I can certainly see is that, the video does nothing to help the situation and in fact puts soldiers at risk of harm as people become hostile towards them during this tough time in history.
What is the point of pissing the general population off as well as the militants they are fighting against? It would only make an unpopular war worse. I'm not saying the video shouldn't have been made public, since anything to stop the war quicker the better, I'm simply pointing put that those higher up always make difficult decisions "for the good of most" not necessarily what is most ethical.
Good post Kyle, I too was very horrified after I watched the whole video, and I do believe that sort of thing should be made public, i think pretty much everything wikileaks posts should be made public. in terms of naming names I think in some cases people should be named, it's a bit of a censorship paradox if you ask me...
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