Anonymous Claims Crashing CIA Website, Stealing 46,000 Peoples’ Info and Now is Threatening Israel.

To read later much later

I hope if anyone from Anonymous reads this, they look at  JoeUser and it's associated sites as just small potatoes not worth the bother.

Oh look, it's another anonymous threat against what we perceive to be relatively good guys.

Wonder if they will do another attempt on the Mexican Drug Cartel. . .

They should do just that. Target the bad guys and let the others quake in their boots. I don't condone what they do but if they can then others can too. Lets hope the others are more for the right thing to do rather than what Anonymous is doing.

I guess what concerns me is that everyone mentioned here has their own ideas on who the bad guys are and aren't. They may even have some in common. The definitely have more they disagree on, I'm sure. Unlike the stand-off you might say exists between some of the nuclear capable countries, we have yet to reach that point in 'hacking' where anyone has pulled out the 'bomb' so to speak. While they search for it and take pot shots at one another with no way to control any of it, we are ALL potential victims.

Something we will continue to live with like it or not. I have no control over this type of stuff and therefore really don't worry about it. If something were to affect me I would deal with it as others will the best we can. A person could write pages and pages about this stuff in the news everyday. My opinion is a lot of this writing and news just adds fuel to the problem. The Anonymous and other groups feed off the big news stations and other reports. Not saying this post will ever be seen but the big places that do the feeding should just stop. I'm sure the problem is being worked on by the powers so to speak. Stop feeding and work on it by being quiet. If av stoped seeing all the attention they get and the world continues to work on finding them, maybe they would reach out in a different way and it could help to track them down. Lets make it the big one that's talked about because we managed to track down and get all the main people not all the attention we now feed them, because they love this attention. Worry about ones self not what the hell everyone else is doing. Another big problem with this World and people.

You're saying... ?

I can't express how disappointed I am in Anonymous. This is just sad. There are so many terrible things going on in the world and they decide to attack Israel? I guess the slaughtering in Syria escapes their view.

Perhaps there really are no 'good guys' anymore, is how I read it.

This  isn't like nuclear bombs that can be detected and as they are being made or tracked after. There is no physical count or inventory. There is no way to barter or negotiate. Someone will always be making the bigger better virus and because someone will always be making the bigger better protection from it. There is no way to monitor or control it. None. So at what point does it stop or go to far. We have nuclear pacts, germ warfare agreements, etc. They may be not worth the paper they are written on in some cases but this shit...there is no way to control or monitor at ALL. And how controllable are viruses anyway. How controllable is the spread of a virus. You could target a system in one building and a single email could send it where...the CDC, a hospital facility, and airport???? 

Some country that cannot compete with the tech-war is going to get pissed or paranoid enough that they will retaliate the old fashioned way and just launch a damn rocket rather than be shut down or shut off from the world.

This shit is just scary.

When those Iranian warships crossed the straight enroute to Syria I knew something was up. You don't send training crews into a potential warzone. Israel was ready to blast them out of the water. Had they done so Iran would then have a legitimate reason to go to war, their ships were in international waters. Flash point.

The timing of this couldn't be worse for Israel considering the situation in the middle east. It's been scary before but if Anonymous can interfere then it's downright dangerous.

I wish they'd quit targeting our governments, states (Alabama? REALLY? C'mon!), and Federal Agencies and do something productive. They're no Robin Hoods and it feels like they've been corrupted by their power and prestige. Typical.

You know, I have absolutely no idea if this threat from Anonymous is real or not.

However, I do know how *governments* react to real, imaginary or perceived threats that have some sympathy from the general public: by launching gigantic misinformation campaigns.

Hitler started WWII by convincing the Germans that the Polish had attacked Germany in the Gleiwitz incident. In reality, as we now know, it was a staged attack by Nazi forces posing as Poles. This staged attacked rallied German public opinion onto Hitler's side, and enabled Hitler's invasion of Poland.

As Herman Goering said in the Nuremberg trials:

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."

Unfortunately the above was true then and is still true today. So, these day and age, I always take everything I read in the media with a huge grain of salt.

Now, I haven't read up on the reasons for the attacks on Israel, and if the OP is right, then they are quite misguided.

Now, that being said, I am not a defender of Israel.  In fact, I do not see them as a legit nation.  Where do western governments get the right to declare a piece of land, already controlled by a group of people, a new nation?  "Israel" is in fact Palestine, and the Jews are the illegitimate occupiers of the land currently.  This would be no different if say, the EU decided that the US was now Mexico, and the EU supported this move by supplying Mexico with arms to defend and control the populace.  Its downright sickening.

To top it off, the Israeli's use force, sometimes to the extent that violate human rights, to "defend" the nation of Israel.  Its like there memory of there abuse at the hands of the Nazi's has vanished, because the same tactics are being used on the Palestinians.  

My two cents.

Don't know why people throw up the word Nazi when they complain about human rights in Israel. They are a legit nation. Like most nations it was born from conflict and persecution of other people, like all nations it will defend itself from perceived threats.

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter ...

My only issue is, why is it "patriotic" to go after someone who threatens Israel?   Did these guys do anything to threaten AMERICA?   Last I checked, patriotism is about defending AMERICA.  Let the Israeli patriots take care of Israel. 

I know it's maybe a stretch....but Alabama is in the USA [last I checked]...;)

Perhaps taking the threat seriously (based on past performance) and dealing with it might be a good thing. I somehow doubt that by neutralizing Anonymous we'll be doing harm to the world. Also, if nothing happens, I'm sure we'll all be relieved. Were you suggesting that the data stolen from the State of Alabama and crashing the CIA website (and associated sites) wasn't the work of Anonymous but rather of The USA or Israel?

If your thought is that this is some made up threat, then perhaps the claim that there was no Luftwaffe, only a poorly spun Lufthansa might resonate.... and the Estado Novo never really existed at all.

Crono908 - You should avail yourself of the facts of history rather than the superficialities in your reply #15. In fact, Jews have lived in the current borders of Israel since before the First Diaspora uninterrupted until the present. The claim to Jerusalem and Israel was never surrendered. Quite the opposite.

Perhaps the most galling to the "Amalekites" (literal and figurative) throughout history is the Jews rather unsettling ability to survive, prosper and enrich the world. You might read Abba Eban's works regarding the history of the Jewish people and Israel (starting in roughly 3100 B.C.E.).

No, I'm just saying that you shouldn't believe everything you read without checking the facts from several *independent* sources yourself. The US invading a sovereign nation like Iraq because of Bush and imaginary Weapons of Mass Destruction comes to mind, for instance. Something eery similar seems to be happening with Iran now.

I, for one, am sick and tired of being mislead like a little brainless lamb. That's why sites like Wikileaks are so important, they unmask the absolute hypocrisy that's behind the actions of many nations.

This said, I'm also of the opinion that you can't trust an unregulated rogue group like Anonymous. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and Anonymous are not immune to this. Nor is Wikileaks, unfortunately.

I couldn't agree more, Jorge. Trying to find those dependable sources is a central trust issue. At the end of the day, neither you nor I have the tools to uncover it by ourselves from a primary source.

The interconnectivity makes 'independent' sources even more difficult to find. Ideally, one would like to find 2 or 3 sources getting their info from trustworthy sources. However, truly there is no real 'pure' reporting... every eye and ear has a bias.

eerily similar [one word at a time... it requires an adverb. No biggy. I'll fix it before that... Jafo... gets it]. Actually, Saddam said very little to provoke the Iraq 'thing'. Ahmadinajad and the Ayatollas (a new singing group) are doing quite the opposite. They are deliberately stating they intend to destroy Israel... and strike Europe and the West, to many reporters and at every opportunity. I cannot believe that to be a lie.

Anonymous is a different p.i.t.a. Hard to know, I agree. Still, I won't cry at their disappearance.

Except WinStep. And my love of it, which is pure and unbiased. You gonna argue with that? Huh? 

BOTH are blights on humanity.

Yeah, and that is the big problem. But the thing is, we shouldn't have to - instead, our sources *should* be reliable and independent. But they are not.

I realize I'm going all over the place with this, but this reminds me of what is happening now with Greece and the economic crisis. The Greeks are being labeled as 'lazy' and 'spoiled' when, in reality, the Greek people are no different from you and I, and are suffering tremendously with all these austerity measures.

It's the corruption in their government that created this situation, but some still blame the Greeks in general because they're the ones who voted for those in power. However, this argument fails to take into account that we do not live in a true Democracy: we can only vote for those the political parties put before us, but, by the time those 'leaders' get into a position where they can be elected, they're already owing favors left and right. The system is corrupt from the root, and our democracy system is generally no different than a dance of the chairs.

Tommy Douglas best describes this in his famous 'The story of Mouseland' speech, a speech everybody should listen to at least once. You can find a Youtube video of this speech HERE.

Tommy Douglas was elected into office, founded the Canadian national health care system, and became known as the greatest Canadian of all time.

So, we *should* be able to trust our governments to do the best for the people who elected them into power, as neither you nor I have the tools to audit what they are doing by ourselves. It's their job, it's what we are paying them for. But alas, once corruption is endemic, they can't be trusted and our choices are not real choices, just more of the same.

It's like our current Portuguese prime-minister, he brought the previous government down and was elected on the premise that the Portuguese people had no need for more austerity measures. And what is the first thing he does once he is in power? Yep, that's right, more austerity measures, more cruel than anything his predecessor came up with. These annihilate the middle class and destroy an economy based mostly on small and medium companies, putting even more people in the unemployment queues and pushing many others into real poverty, a vicious cycle that will be very hard to break away from. As for the 'established powers' (the other cats, in Tommy Douglas speech) - the true culprits of this situation - well, they are still there and thriving.

Because our system makes sure an elected government stays there for at least 4 years, we can no longer undo what we did even though this guy got elected based on a blatant lie. Even if we could, chances are the replacement government would do exactly the same thing. They're all cats, after all, so they all cover each others backs.

Going back to news sources, I don't buy a newspaper because I want to be lied to. I expect journalists to tell me the truth based on facts, or, at the very least, unbiased opinions. Again, this is not what happens, we get a mix of truths, half-truths, and downright lies, and, because of our inability to uncover the truth by ourselves, as you said, we will believe most of it - or none of it.

In the end, the only way out of this situation seems to be having some kind of independent 'bodies' to police both press and governments. And we get right back to the beginning, because who will then police the police?

Nope, but only because you are a *primary* source.

I'm saying it smells. Now we have this... faction... that by its very definition anyone can belong to who so chooses. There are no leaders, and no unifying goals (except, perhaps, against corporate fascism). It is a too vapid argument for me to go to the voting booth for more radical measures against the freedoms we take for granted while visiting the internet.

Anonymous is today a tool that cannot be controlled, and thus can be blamed for anything. With no leadership and no dogma, there is nothing stopping anyone else from connecting what we consider "evil" traits to their... "organization". In other words, I am deeply suspicious of many of the activities that are undertaken in the name of Anonymous. They may well be paid for by those supposedly attacked.

Well said.