Hackers, Spammers and Priests

I have always admired those who adhere to an "ideology", for it reflects a discipline, a commitment, to an intellectual principle. Now, sometimes the whole effort goes wrong, as did the Soviet Union's communist ideology. But still, it beats a chaotic system of no profound definition, like  . . . well, like that of the Philippines, where the courts don't serve justice and the legislature is a gaggle of well-named shapeshifters under the influence of the moneyed and the Constitution is roundly ignored. But, hey, executive is good, for now, holding the place together peachy keen.

Today our topic is the ideology of hackers, spammers and priests. Here are Humpty Dumpty's short form definitions:

• Hackers: marauders who deface, disrupt or steal someone's proprietary computer programs and information.
• Spammers: volume distributors of unwanted information aimed at selling things or jamming computers with an abundance of transactions.
• Priests: preachers who live weird lifestyles and insist the rest of us live our normal little lives along the lines the preachers dictate.

You may not immediately grasp how the priests are related to computer thugs, but kindly bear with me.

The most prominent band of computer hackers is "Anonymous", a lose confederation of mischief makers who always attach a "good reason" to their mischief. They have adopted the stylized mask of Guy Fawkes, a Spanish Catholic rebel, as their logo. Never mind that he was convicted of treason and would have been hanged had he not jumped from the gallows platform and broken his neck.

Anonymous hackers are praised in many circles. They are the rebels in white hats, the Pancho Villa style popular heroes, banditos expressing the public's pent-up frustration and outrage. In their minds of their fans, they are closer to Batman than the Joker, more like Zorro than the corrupt, brother to Robin Hood, raiding the rich to feed the poor, not like the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Of course, that picture is entirely wrong. That is simply a fiction, a popular folk tale.  A lie.  Because hackers are nefarious destroyers of good will and good work.  Lunatic, self-justifying troublemakers who destroy wealth and add to poverty.  They are what they criticize, totalitarians of a different cloth, consumed with the fiction that they and only they are on the "right path".

Doesn't that sound like a priestly position to you?

Indeed, read the Anonymous mission statement, shown in the picture above, and you see the same threats and intimidation used by extortionist gangsters. Or clan leaders, come to think about it.

Pancho Villa's real name was José Doroteo Arango Arámbula and he was a general in the Mexican army when he was not raiding.  Batman of course was millionaire Bruce Wayne.  Zorro was Don Diego de la Vega, a nobleman seeking justice against those who would harm his family. Robin Hood was, according to some, the Earl of Huntington, a nobleman dispossessed of his land and goods, taking up the people's cause against authoritarian injustice.

Philippine hackers command no such honors or glory.  No one rallies around their leadership. Most shake their heads in dismay, or even disgust.  They are a small band of people whose sense of right is very wrong. Indeed, they presume to DICTATE what is right, and what is wrong. They sit at their computer tables and plow into other people's private lives, judge, jury and executioner.

They are talent and skill misdirected and misused. They could be working earnestly to create good will and constructive solutions but they choose instead to destroy.

They are more like the brutal Sheriff of Nottingham than Robin Hood. More like the Joker than Batman.

The wild-eyed crazy lady down at Seventh and Flower in Los Angeles, shouting madly at the pole holding up the street light, has about the same delusional vision of self. The same kind of self-justification and artificial reality that creates its own values and distorted acts. Rationalizations of bad behaviors abound.

Hackers may have an ideology, but they are the opposite of mankind striving for the highest road.

Spammers are often hackers with a different method. They impose their messages on people who don't want those messages.

One popular spam destruction technique is the "denial of service" flooding of a web site with messages. Legitimate visitors are eventually locked out by the volume of messages. Computers around the world are kidnapped and harnessed to fire obstructions at the target site. Top Blogger Raissa Robles has recently apparently had her site effectively shut down by such an attack. "Database error" we'd get when trying to visit. Because some clowns with a keyboard and ideology determine that others ought not have the right to express themselves. Little lord jesuses with a very very small j.

This site is currently undergoing what looks like the early stages of a budding, building, spam-based denial of service attack. The daily volume of spam attacks is relentlessly upward bound. It started with two or three a day. Now hundreds per day. Soon it could be thousands.

I'm not a technology buff. I have no staff and no budget. If the spammers win, JoeAm goes off the air.

• It's no loss for me. It is rather like getting fired and retiring early.  I go to the beach.

• A gain for the hackers? How, they have built nothing.

• A win for the Philippines? Only if your mirror of values was built in a fun house of distorted images.

These are idealists with rotten ideals. Like NPA rebels. Extortionist gangsters who have no idea about economic well-being or social justice or who is really punished by their acts.

Do you think the government is punished by a defacement of a web site and interference with normal online business? Or are innocent people who need the government's help punished?

I tell you, these idealists are scoundrels. They harm the innocent.

That's where we get to priests

RH has been put on hold by the Supreme Court. More specifically, by Catholic judges on the Supreme court who cannot seem to grasp the distinction between government and faith.

The justices look to me like hackers, hijacking the government's earnest good work for their narrow religious ideology.

The priests are spammers. They live a lifestyle that is bizarre, unable to commit to a wife because Jesus might get jealous. Yet they instruct the rest of us, whether we belong to their union of faithful or not, how to live a proper lifestyle. Their relentless bombardment of the air waves, the newspapers, the pulpits, the halls of congress and the judicial benches floods the Philippines with muck the rest of us simply can't get through.

They have an ideology. They bludgeon the rest of us with it, and prevent us from doing our honorable good works.

Hackers, spammers and priests. Cut of the same cloth.