Contents of Leaked HBGary Emails Reveal Wrongdoing 369
chargersfan420 writes "Ars Technica has sifted through the contents of the HBGary emails leaked last week in the attack by Anonymous and posted an interesting story about some of the things they were up to (which include rootkit development, selling rootkits to the private sector, and an entire list of 0-day exploits in a variety of OSes and other software, among a variety of other devious plans). Today they are reporting a democratic push for a congressional investigation of HBGary Federal."
Careful what you wish for (Score:2, Interesting)
a democratic push for a congressional investigation of HBGary Federal
You're going to dig for info on their union-busting, but you're going to be very embarrassed if you find out that the Obama administration was in bed with these scumbags on some other sleazy project(s) that come up too. They were working for the banks, but some of these firms were (or at least had been) working for the government too. Might want to check with the White House before you start digging too deep.
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How better to hide incriminating evidence if you're the one in charge of the investigation in the first place?
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Some democratic members of Congress claim to want an investigation. Easy enough to claim to want that as a democratic congressman in a republican congress. Nota bene, the White House hasn't called for an investigation. You think these kinds of investigations are totally partisan? You think there won't be members of the investigative committee who are gunning for Obama? Okay, you might think that, but I doubt Obama does.
Anyone want to take bets on this, what are the odds that there will be an investigation o
Re:Careful what you wish for (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone want to take bets on this, what are the odds that there will be an investigation of HBGary? Anyone want to put up some money on the "Sure, there will be an investigation" side?
Can I be on the "There will be an investigation, but not a good one." side?
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Re:Careful what you wish for (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the main wrongdoing is not the *acts* themselves, but using knowledge gained/obtained by funding of their government military contracts (ostensibly to be used on the non american enemy) and then going around and selling those services for private companies to use against american businesses/corporations/individuals.
I think it is sort of a research to make sure the military isn't effectively funding private espionage. Forget the part where it is American businesses. What's even worse is it is possibly espionage against unions (political speech)
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It is the role of congress to investigate and give oversight to governmental agencies. The whole point of an investigation is to see if there was wrongdoing.
Proposing an idea is legal. Proposing an il
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Feeling a bit threatened? Perhaps the key to your inadequacies lies with you, and not other people. There's really nothing you can do to change the facts, as far as I know, those pills, weights, and pumps don't work. You may as well just accept your shortcomings. I've even heard *snicker* some women prefer it that way *chortle*.
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They won't be in charge of a Congressional investigation, the Republicans would be.
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How better to hide incriminating evidence if you're the one in charge of the investigation in the first place?
Why would they have to hide this? Its no longer admissible, thanks to Anonymous.
Allegedly stolen property by a criminal organization during a criminal break-in with no chain of custody essentially sanitizes the evidence
and probably any other evidence obtained via this evidence.
They should write a check to Anonymous thanking them for the service.
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congressional investigations don't have to adhere to the same rules of evidence that apply in a court of law, so "inadmissibility" isn't a concern here.
Re:Careful what you wish for (Score:4, Informative)
I think you may be mistaken. It may fall under bulletpoint #3, but I doubt that covers a corporation.
Exceptions to the Exclusionary Rules
Courts will sometimes allow illegally-obtained evidence to be used in a criminal trial. This usually occurs when the court realizes that the information is vital to incriminating a person who may be guilty of a serious offense.
Evidence obtained illegally may be excluded from the exclusionary rule when it:
* Comes from a private person who was not acting for the government
* Comes from the state government, which turns the evidence over to the federal government
* Violated a person’s rights, but the person is not the one who is on trial
* Would have been found eventually through legal means
* Cannot be used to the defendant’s advantage because of other evidence
In short, when the federal government has jurisdiction over a case, any evidence that a third-party obtained can be used in the case as long as the federal government did not ask that third party to commit the act.
http://www.lassiterlawoffice.com/articles/the-exclusionary-rule/ [lassiterlawoffice.com]
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They weren't even under investigation until the break in.
So there is no possible claim to inevitability of discovery, and pretty much ANY evidence developed out of this evidence is tainted.
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I think that the authorities could get a subpoena for the emails based on reasonable suspicion (the anon leaks). . I don't think anyone could credibly argue that anon were acting in concert with the police/FBI/etc.. Furthermore, HBGary is already being sued, so they can't delete their emails.
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How is the evidence tainted?
You have fourth amendment protection from the state, not from random hoodlums.
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Then why didn't they name it the 9999/10000 commission?
Re:Careful what you wish for (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Careful what you wish for (Score:5, Insightful)
I would have modded you up, but you're already at 5.
Evidence based support of politicians. Evidence based policy. Evidence based... stuff in general.
If it turns out that the folks I voted for are scumbags, I'd like to know so they can be kicked out, taken to court, discredited, whatever. It's not "my team" and "their team", this is not about tribes or who's dad can beat up who else's dad, this is about the governance of of the USA.
If more people thought like this we wouldn't have the ridiculous spectacle of politicians throughout the western world getting away with all sorts of dodgy behaviour because "if you don't vote for me the other tribe will win!" and we might actually get a government we want.
Re:Careful what you wish for (Score:4, Insightful)
That's why we need 2 congressional investigations in parallel. One run by Republicans digging up any dirt they can find on Democrats, and one by Democrats digging dirt on Republicans.
What we really need is a Highlander style competition amongst politicians. That way there's just one we need to feed to a tree chipper to restore democracy in the U.S.
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That's why we need 2 congressional investigations in parallel. One run by Republicans digging up any dirt they can find on Democrats, and one by Democrats digging dirt on Republicans.
but it is not election time yet. They are good at doing that during that time
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You might not have gathered from my over the top suggestion that it's not entirely sincere. While the tree chipper is tempting, I would actually advocate equally hands on and personal but considerably less violent interaction.
I do believe constituencies need be kept small enough that the representative cannot help but to come into social contact with them regularly. It's harder to screw someone over if you might need a favor from him later, want to be able to look him in the eye when you meet at the corner
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You think that commerce within a state is unrelated to commerce without a state?
Wickard v. Filburn is the ultimate manifestation of that detestable slippery slope logic. Do you think it was within the authority of the commerce clause to use the full power of the state to prevent a man from simply growing a crop on his own land to feed his own animals? After all, that "affects interstate commerce" according to the FDR administration because of what he wasn't buying. By this standard everything is interstate commerce, all the way down to a windowbox full of herbs or the software you mi
Re:Careful what you wish for (Score:5, Insightful)
This is in no way to say that I think the Obama administration is completely blameless and angelic in all things. If we were to discover that this firm was working on some of the same hacking and propaganda techniques on behalf of the government, then I'd damned well like to know about that as well. If the Obama administration was using these tactics on American citizens, I hope the investigation uncovers it somehow. And if you, parent poster, murdered a bunch of people ten years ago, I would hope that you are sent to jail for it. You know, if you did that. But in the meantime, we've got documents pointing to fraud being done by this firm on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce, so why don't we start with that?
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A CEO, a republican and a unionised worker sit down in a cafe in front of a plate of 12 cookies. The CEO takes eleven of the cookies then whispers to the republican "hey, watch out for that union guy, he wants a piece of your cookie!"
If you think unions are unnecessary, and that they hold as much lobbying power and effectiveness as the "special interests" who eat from a much finer table then you really do need to look at reality, because you sure aren't seeing it right now.
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Re:Careful what you wish for (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you ever considered that we might like to know about government malfeasance even if it's done by people we voted for? (hell, especially in that case).
If this radical idea had occurred to the Republican voter base back in 2001, maybe they wouldn't have to deal with a Democratic President in the first place.
Democratic != democratic (Score:3)
Capitalization is important. Consider the sentence:
i helped my uncle jack off a horse
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It doesn't matter what you wish for. This will never happen.
The obvious question (for me) was, why would congress get involved? If people at this company were cracking security and spreading exploits, wouldn't that be a case for the cyber unit of the local police? Or if there's some interstate/international level of operations, perhaps the FBI?
Well, I RTFA. It seems this company and some partners were hired by Uncle Sam to work on cracks to be used against terrorists.
And there you go, end of story. Hid
Re:Careful what you wish for (Score:4, Informative)
You're going to dig for info on their union-busting, but you're going to be very embarrassed if you find out that the Obama administration was in bed with these scumbags on some other sleazy project(s) that come up too.
If Obama has unclean hands he deserves whatever he gets.
In reality, this is nothing but empty sabre rattling.
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Question nothing. Follow the tribe. Abdicate your responsibility as a citizen. Hide inconvenient truths. Look the other way. Be a sheep.
Does that sound about right? Because that's what it sounds like you're saying.
Score one for Anonymous. (Score:5, Insightful)
of course good guys, indifferent guys, and bad guys will do things by hiding behind such a mask. but, that doesnt make the presence of that mask, something bad.
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It is really sad when we have vigilantes who are better and more capable than our own law enforcement at just about every aspect of what law enforcement is supposed to do.
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No, law enforcement is hampered by the law and Constitution.
Anonymous aren't shackled by laws.
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No, I get that point, but that's not what's going on here. Law enforcement is not only hampered by issues like this. They're totally incompetent in general. It's quite sad.
I want warrants and due process. Yes, Anonymous has the advantage of not having to bother with these things. And it is a large advantage. And even if law enforcement had the same advantage, I still think they'd fall all over themselves and be completely incompetent.
I mean, basically law enforcement already has that advantage. There are en
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Law enforcement is empowered by the law. Discard the law because it 'hampers' them, and they're just another group of thugs with no legitimacy.
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Huh? Are you seriously advocating that law enforcement break into computer systems of suspicious companies?
I'm no lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that would get the police/FBI into heaps of trouble.
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It is really sad when we have vigilantes who are better and more capable than our own law enforcement at just about every aspect of what law enforcement is supposed to do.
So what you're saying is you expect a branch of law enforcement who is good at harassment and illegal computer access?
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One that is competent at computer security would be nice.
Being able to break into something isn't just about breaking into stuff. It's also about making sure your stuff doesn't get broken into.
With "chain of custody" sorts of things, that's rather important.
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Case of "Life imitates Art". Every superhero comic is about that.
What i fail to grasp is why is it cool in fiction but sad in reality? (honest question)
Re:Score one for Anonymous. (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget ACS:Law as well.
Us Britons had to suffer their bullshit and lies for many years.
No more people suffering their crap anymore. And they will get the punishment they deserve.
Now if only someone would go after Global Debt Recovery AKA Tower Investigations AKA a bunch of other terrible companies who buy off loans legally out of date and scare people in to paying up or face "harsh punishments"...
The Anonymous Movement isn't one group, it is many, there are no members, just people with the same ideals.
This gives them power.
Of course, no doubt many countries are in the process of getting rid of any anonymity online.
It won't work, but they will try. Even many ISPs are against some of the crap governments try to pull.
The moment a "No-Anonymity" law is mentioned, all rights groups it applies to will instantly shoot it down. (you can bet your ass EFF will be on it in a heart beat)
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Countermeasures against HBGary (Score:3)
1) Don't use Windows
2) Don't use Facebook
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Re:Countermeasures against HBGary (Score:5, Funny)
4. Don't be evil and you won't have anything that could be used against you
Oh man. That was funny. You had me a moment there.
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It's true. If you set out to behave ethically in all your endeavours, and are honest and forthright with people, the only attacks people can make against you will be lies. Sure, you'll face attacks, but you don't have anything that you would need to be actively hiding to stay "safe".
Re:Countermeasures against HBGary (Score:5, Interesting)
That only holds true if
1. "ethically" is the same as "legally".
2. You're version of "ethically" is the same as everyone else's version of "ethically".
Re:Countermeasures against HBGary (Score:4, Insightful)
3. You are omniscient and avoid running afoul due to ignorance.
No matter how ethically you behave, if someone wants to nail you to the wall because they don't like you, they can probably dig up something you've failed to do -- some tax law you fail to meet, some paper you failed to sign before you did something, some place you happened to be that you didn't know you shouldn't be, etc.
Also, in some countries, you can get in trouble for failing to pay bribes. I consider bribes unethical. See the problem?
Of course, neither of these run afoul of the "actively hiding" clause -- they depend on the "ignorantly hiding" clause. But once you realize that the only reason you're not in trouble is because you failed to disclose something, do you disclose it (acting ethically) and pay the penalty (no longer being safe), or do you hide it (no longer acting ethically) and fly under the radar?
Ethics are social. This world has many societies, and they aren't all compatible.
Hey, for a historical example, Jesus was killed because he was condemning the unethical acts of the Jewish elite. They accused him of things he readily admitted to (as well as a bunch of lies) that were punishable by their law by death by stoning. Of course, if they'd followed that law (ethical to them) then they would have been guilty of murder under Roman law -- Romans considering stoning both unethical and illegal.
Those who are truly willing to live by their ethical code have to be willing to die by it. They are by no means "safe".
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And what about the day when you log in to your account and discover you have posted pictures of yourself doing illegal things, and that you have ongoing conversations with criminals and terrorists. You can yell your innocence all you want, but can you "prove" those weren't your posts? The fact that I don't have a facebook account offers me no real protection if HBG or someone else decides to make one for me, all transacted off of my apparent IP address.
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Re:Countermeasures against HBGary (Score:4, Insightful)
3) Don't use Flash
4) Don't use Java
Interesting what they have unpublished 0-day exploits for.
Wow. (Score:4, Insightful)
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It shouldn't surprise anyone that the NSA and their private counterparts have databases of 0-day vulnerabilities and rootkits lying around to use for whatever "legitimate" spooking purposes arise.
Quite the opposite. I'm sure every major and minor computer security firm has a large database of virii, hacks, exploits, trojans, and other various malware. How are you supposed to defend your customers against malware if you don't have any examples?
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Yes, but the former is ethical and the latter is decidedly NOT.
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So they were clearly and intentionally on the more shady end of ethical boundaries.
Yes, exactly! They were CLEARLY, and INTENTIONALLY, on the... uhh.. well, the "more shady" end of what we like to call "ethical boundaries". Clearly!
Small d ? (Score:3)
I suspect that what was meant was that there is a Democratic push (by big D Democrats) to investigate HBGary. I haven't heard of any sit-ins over the issue, at least as yet.
And i TOLD you. (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone spending a few years in the early stages of internet, in which those underground circles were not so underground like today, would be able to know and tell the same. Its the rebel net culture. That underground is multitudes over the level of what the private lackey corps or govts. can afford to hire or educate. They are of a sort that grows/breeds on its own.
Despite their roads have diverged with most of us the early netizens like me, i indeed learned to develop a deep respect for their kind. For, even if they do a lot of shady stuff, they do have a very strong attachment to some principles. and that's something to be respected.
Anyway. see, what they have done. good luck to govt and their lackeys in finding who did it. they may even be inside hbgary itself. you'll never know. once a rebel, always a rebel.
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...they do have a very strong attachment to some principles. and that's something to be respected...
One should always be wary of principled men.
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> For, even if they do a lot of shady stuff, they do have a very strong attachment to some principles. and that's something to be respected.
That is, to me, the ultimate conundrum in a nutshell. What is better? A democratic government comprised of people selected by a process which severely inhibits principles, or a renegade cabal of vigilantes whose unity derives from a set of moderately respectable (if often conflicting and sometimes harmful) principles.
Sure, the "right" answer is a principled democrati
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surely, if you look at the face of it, you will see pimpled teens going about with sql injection scripts grabbed off the net.
but, see, the group which was dubbed as pimpled teens, staged a 'social engineering' attack, and grabbed email history of a filthy outfit, deleted their backups, and posted it online.
it doesnt take too much brain to see that the skill level of this group is as not low as you propose.
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Not only that, they (in theory) did it all while staying anonymous. I wouldn't even begin to know how to do that part of it.
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On the other hand, it's the results that matter,
Explains why Aaron Barr left in a hurry (Score:2)
Talk about rats leaving a sinking ship...
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I never get the point about rats leaving a sinking ship. Where the fuck are the rats going anyway???
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I never get the point about rats leaving a sinking ship. Where the fuck are the rats going anyway???
Actually, Brown Rats are excellent swimmers.
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Better to swim with the debris than get carried under by a large (flooded) container that used to float.
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I thought he ran after he shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel.
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Haha. Read the memo they left in the conference (Score:5, Interesting)
down below.
http://sophosnews.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/hbgary-rsa-sign.jpg?w=640 [wordpress.com]
"A group of AGGRESSIVE hackers known as 'Anonymous' illegally broke into blah blah
corporate lack of shame. you produce rootkits, viruses, 0 day exploits, malware to spy on people, steal their confidential, legally private information to SELL them, and then you dub that information 'proprietary' information belonging to you
i wonder what will they say in their defense in front of senate committee. what's more, i wonder what will the senate committee say to them, in regard to their dealings with this filthy outfit.
whats the slogan of hbgary anyway ? "hey - we produce viruses, rootkits, 0 day exploits and malware to steal your private information to sell to corporations and government !!!" ?
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That's the worst slogan I've ever heard.
It's not even catchy.
Re:Haha. Read the memo they left in the conference (Score:5, Insightful)
> i wonder what will the senate committee say to them, in regard to their dealings with this filthy outfit.
Here's my guess: "When Blackwater got caught doing evil shit, they had to split up into a bunch of shell companies with different names so we could keep paying them enormous sums of taxpayer money to keep doing business as usual. Now you are going to have to do the same. One of the contractors from one of the new Blackwater shells who works for the CIA just got caught shooting non-combatants in the back, and we are having a motherfucker of a time keeping people from making the connection. Like that guy, we'll give you diplomatic immunity or state secrets protection, or whatever we need to do to prevent justice from being served, but it is a pain in the ass. Don't get caught again."
Of course, that's not going to be the public part.
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Interesting that you think that a corporation is a person, and as such you can apply the same analysis you apply to people, to it. I guess you also support the government treating corporate entities as people with rights.
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It's not like the government is going to put the "corporations are people, too" thing up for a public vote, and even if they did the corporations would force the vote to go their way. As such, you may as well try to give them the drawbacks of being people, too.
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LOL So instead of tackling the problem, just try to make it shitter for them? I guess that's a fall back position, but the former is the real solution.
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All I have to say is... (Score:2)
Where money and power is concerned there is no freedom and nothing is sacred; except money and power.
I call shenanigans (Score:2)
The problem I have with this is that I think its just noobs selling shit to boobs.The more this story develops I become more and more uncertain that HBGary had te technical know how to make working root kits, and 0-days for multiple OS's. I betcha these guys would just sit waiting for bugtraq to update and hurriedly package it, that i do believe they are capable of. Some of the things that were apparently willing to sell or selling require superior technical understanding, and if the twats at HBG had that,
Re:I call shenanigans (Score:4, Informative)
RTFA.
There were contracts and delivered goods with 0-day kits to both government and corporate sources.
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Were they actually delivered, or were they merely advertised? I know that often what marketing sells as feasible is far from what is actually delivered.
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And the problem with this is? (Score:2, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yes_Men
The Yes Men often deploy a satirical approach: they pose as a powerful entity (typically a corporate or government representative or executive) and make ridiculous and shocking comments that caricature the ideological position of the organisation or person. Furthermore, they acknowledge the idea that many corporate or government entities manipulate their ideology using spin; in response, the Yes Men use this power of spin to their own advantage, and use media outlets
So what about the DoJ (Score:4)
Are they gonna be investigated too?
confucius say (Score:2)
"He who lives in glass house should not throw stones"
ok it's not attributed to him, but is attributed (in various slightly differing forms) to a wide variety of people, including Ben Franklin. Nothing quite as entertaining to see someone tasked with bending laws get bent over BY the laws, from their own pen.
The Facebook "Revolution"... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Hairy Back Gary, that guy that lives in your mother's basement. The one she calls your uncle.
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I thought it stood for "Huge Balls" Gary. As in, that guy must have some huge fucking balls doing what he did.
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Karma: a concept for people who want to believe in justice but don't want a daddy-figure meting it out. Sorry, but no. There is no such force as karma, unless we make it. If we want justice, we shouldn't wait for a holy sky father or invisible morality scale to create it, we need to do it ourselves.
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I think that what he meant was, the result was what some might term "karmatically appropriate" (even if we don't properly understand a true meaning of karma). Here's how:
- Many people see Anonymous as posing a threat of illegal stuff. (or Stuff we don't like, depending on who you ask.)
- HBGary Federal positions themselves as someone who can identify who Anonymous are, so that we can punish them for illegal stuff.
- Anonymous retaliates, and exposes all of HBGary Federal's communications.
- Apparently, HBGary
Re:Somehow (Score:4, Interesting)
Really? It doesn't have anything to do with justice? [wikipedia.org] You DO realize that there are several eastern religions that talk about karma, and that while it isn't the same in all of them, most conceptions of karma can be boiled down to "you reap what you sow." How is that not justice?
It still stems from the misconception that the self is separate from the universe. Being separate, the self is an uncaused cause. We all understand how cause and effect work, if that were all karma were, there would not be a separate word for it, it would just be "causation." No, karma springs from the idea that the self is a separate uncaused cause, and therefore, there needs to be some spiritual method of restoring balance caused by the unbalancing actions of the separate self. That method is karma.
The most common conception of karma is in relation to reincarnation, that how you act in this life determines what you are reincarnated as. That is a form of wishing after justice. The next most common conception is of a kind of universal enforcement of "you reap what you sew," which posits that if you do bad things, bad things will happen to you. As we can see that bad things do not always happen to bad people, that leads right back into believing in reincarnation, karma will ensure those bad people are punished, if not in this lifetime, then the next. That is the sense the OP was using it in.
If you take the self out of the picture, then all the concept of karma is saying is that bad things are bad, while good things are nice. Bad things lead to hurt, while good things lead to happiness. As there is no "self" in this discussion, it doesn't matter who perpetrates the action and who receives the bad feelings. I kick you in the nuts, you feel nut-pain, THAT is real karma. And also not how the OP was using the term at all.
Are we done with school yet, or would you like another lesson?
Re:Wait, there is more! (Score:4, Insightful)