Singular Thoughts - Hackers

Let me first start off by saying that I normally wouldn't post things as highly controversial as this but I feel like there's a few things that need to be said about them. This comes up from the recent article I read on Gamespot stating that a hacker group called Lulzsec has ended their “50 hacking spree”.

The full article can be found here : http://www.gamespot.com/wii-u/hardware/wii-u/news/6321251/lulzsec-disbands-following-battlefield-heroes-breach

I take no credit for the article of course, however I would like to give credit to Tor Thorsen who wrote the article because considering it's implications. It takes a lot of willpower or professionalism to write something that is mostly impartial for people who threaten the same industry one works in.

With that said I think there's nothing wrong with hacking in general. It's entire purpose is to intrusively retrieve, or access information in something that doesn't belong to oneself which by itself is extremely against the law, but there are cases where hacking can beneficial, such as hacking a corrupt government's defenses, or information or so on, but that's being too accrediting towards most hackers.

While there are hackers who do it for a good cause, those are more than rare, and the majority are made up of people with ill intent; Lulzsec happens to fall into this category. The first thing they breached is the law itself by hacking into systems that aren't their own, and often belonged to businesses who had no qualms with the group to begin with. This turns it an unprovoked and intrusive attack on someone else's property, that is already more than enough to label them as criminals by law definition, as the Supreme Court's stance on privacy is that it is a basic human right protected by the 9^th amendment, and to me, protected by the 4^th amendment.

From my experience in Criminal Justice classes there is a lawful counter to the amendments in that someone has all of their rights and is protected by the law of the land, as long as they don't prevent someone else from having the same rights. As for the amendments themselves, since Lulzsec were intruders to begin with, the invasion of privacy is clearly there. In terms of the 4^th amendment, while it's pretty much impossible for Lulzsec to have gotten a normal warrant to search and seize any sort of property, they have also broken this amendment by not following it.

So by a lawful standard at least in my terms, Lulzsec are criminals, but from what I've seen there's much more of a reaction to their actions through unlawful standards.

The first thing I've seen a lot of posters talk about is if Lulzsec had any sort of good intentions. I personally don't believe that is the case, as their farewell statement clearly pointed out that they did their actions “because they could”, that already doesn't leave a lot of room for arguing for a rational good intention. Next I saw a comment about how if they were good intentioned they wouldn't have released personal information out to the public, this is also true, as there is nothing to be gained from doing so. Finally there's my view of hackers in general, they did not direct their efforts to a good cause, as hacking a gaming company or the government's databases really doesn't help them at all.

There is however one saving grace for Lulzsec that people who argue on their behalf talk about, that is stating that they were “testing the defenses” of everyone they hacked. While I don't read minds, and I can't actually confirm or deny that is what their actual intention is, according to their public statement that is anything but what their goal was. Finally I read that there is a belief going on that people that have participated in groups such as Lulzsec are hired to work for anti-virus companies. This definitely make sense as what better people to hire than the own people you're trying to fight against? But at the same time this is unlikely to me, after all what's stopping the same hacker from just opening the company site up to their friends and and possibly ruining the company for good. Again while I wouldn't deny it happening, hiring a hacker to work for a anti-virus company seems akin to “having the inmates run the prison”.