Latvian "Robin Hood" Hacker Leaks Bank Details

eldavojohn writes "Move over Russell Crowe, an anonymous hacker in Latvia is being hailed as a real life modern Robin Hood. The hacker refers to himself as 'Neo,' claims allegiance with the Fourth Awakening People's Army, and is outing banks that are capitalizing off of the horrible economic status Latvia is currently suffering from. No word on how he is acquiring the information but it is slowly being leaked to TV sources via Twitter and the common people love him. The hacker is thought to be based in Britain but a TV reporter pointed out the fine line Neo is walking, 'On the one hand of course he has stolen confidential data ... and he actually has committed a crime. But at the same time there is value for the public in the sense that now a lot of information gets disclosed and the whole system maybe becomes a little more transparent.' An example of a juicy tidbit he revealed is that managers of a Latvian bank did not take the salary cuts they promised they would after the government bailed them out of economic trouble. You can imagine that taxpayers were upset and thankful they knew this information."

Some sympathy some not so

[JoshuaZ]

Ok. Clearly the fact that the pay cuts for the executives didn't occur is something that this individual should have leaked and was the right thing to do. ( Why didn't the government insist on minimal transparency about the salaries in the first place? Because apparently corruption and lobbying is the same everywhere). Frankly, in TFA I don't see any information listed that shouldn't have become public. It doesn't look like they leaked anything that allowed people to take money from accounts or to steal identities or to create damage to the banks' computer networks. If there's any indication that Neo has done anything bad (other than choosing a really pretentious and unoriginal alias) I don't see it in TFA.

Don't fuck with the big banks

[Bloopie]

I don't know anything about Latvia. Here in the U.S., though, you don't fuck with the big banks. They have money and power--which they will throw at your political opponents [nytimes.com] if you become too much of a "problem."

From the article I just linked to:

Republicans are rushing to capitalize on what they call Wall Street's "buyer's remorse" with the Democrats. And industry executives and lobbyists are warning Democrats that if Mr. Obama keeps attacking Wall Street "fat cats," they may fight back by withholding their cash.

"If the president doesn't become a little more balanced and centrist in his approach, then he will likely lose that support," said Kelly S. King, the chairman and chief executive of BB&T.

Balanced and centrist? I guess that just about sums it up.

Danger

[Elektroschock]

I mean, when you think of international conferences, most ^evil^ lobbyists use the wi-fi in the conference hotel. The presentation is boring, so 60% of them read their mails during the conference. Of course a criminal could just monitor their traffic, read their mails and grab their access passwords, then sent their mails and stuff to wikileaks. It is a danger to our national security because it is technically feasible but no one does. So the protection against criminal action is actually ethics not technology. The real danger is that Robin Hack gets famous and popular, and these pratices get spread by kiddies who enjoy to "Hack the Banksters". Or maybe the Chinese do, no idea.

Someone Mentioned this a Few Days Back.

[BJ_Covert_Action]

I don't recall who, or on what thread, but someone posted a comment a couple days back that said something along the lines of, "People used to cheer for bank robbers. It will happen again." I figure this was a reference to John DIllinger [wikipedia.org] and the like. It appears that whoever it was that said that has some decent predictive powers...or at least a good bit of luck every once in awhile.

Re:Some sympathy some not so

[Danse]

I don't know about Latvia, but around here vigilantism isn't looked on too kindly by most courts.

Depends on the circumstances I think. It's not like he stole the documents at gunpoint or something. This being a non-violent, non-destructive crime, I think they may be more lenient. That is, at least, if the courts aren't as corrupt as the banks.