AnonOperations said:
HyenaThePirate said:
Anonymous and Wikileaks are anything other than what they appear to be: self-serving, over-dramatic, attention-seeking children with a far too rose-tinted view of the world and an even worse over-estimation of the impact of their "accomplishments."
I have no desire to gain support from people that believe this about wikileaks.
That's good, because I have no desire to GIVE support to people who can't read and properly comprehend someone's complete statement. The point of my statement, in its entirety was that instead of recognizing that Anonymous and Wikileaks have that appearance to what I feel is a majority of common lay people and perhaps engaging in efforts to change this appearance through decisive action, everyone I've seen simply prefers to make excuses for it or flat-out to ignore it.
That attitude of "if you are not with us, you by default, must be against us" isn't going to get Wikileaks very far. In fact, in the long run, without popular opinion behind them, they risk becoming a target for the government, corporations, and even rogue entities with an axe to grind or something to prove. Worse, if the very people wikileaks and anonymous claim to want to help decide to believe what the corporations and governments say about them being a destructive, negative force of immature children hellbent on causing mayhem, its going to make it incredibly hard for them to operate with impunity. People will ignore the questionable methods the government will use, the laws they will pass in order to support their crusade, and they will turn this into a valiant quest to quash a dangerous hacking organization full of what they will describe as anarchist, identity thieves, and pedophiles.
Don't believe me? Take a look around at the various "opinions" about Anonymous and Wikileaks right now. The average person isnt reading gaming forums, they are reading the CNN and Fox News websites. And thus, they are being swayed even now as we speak. This is why you stated that they went to leakspin after the whole DDOS of Mastercard situation... because the negative spin from the media painted Anonymous and Wikileaks as people who have little disregard for normal, hard-working blue collar folks who just want to pay their bills and keep their private information private. Did you notice how immediately after that, the subject of Net Neutrality instantly came back up again? Did you notice how nobody cried about it this time?
Wikileaks and Anonymous may be attempting to do the noble thing, but the reality is most people right now probably aren't seeing it that way. Removing our own sense of arrogance about what educated people should or shouldn't be aware of, we should recognize that these nobly intended actions were spun and turned into an warning of a threat about how wikileaks might get access to your private banking and medical information and display it on a whim.
We're talking about people who are masters of FEAR.
And FEAR = $$$.
$$$ makes the world go round.