Finally, some nice posters! Print them on bright yellow paper.
Category: Idiot Overlords
Najib vs Bersih
An article in TheStar today reported that, “The July 9 rally organisers will be held responsible if the rally causes chaos in the country, warned Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak on Sunday.”
I think that it is unfair to do so. It is the job of the police to ensure that things remain peaceful. If there is any party that should be blamed for any chaos, it’s the police.
Our local police should learn from some of their foreign partners on how to facilitate rallies so that they do not disrupt traffic and business too much.
Furthermore, if there is any party that is going to cause chaos in the country, it is likely to be the PERKASA group, whom have been very vocal with their intentions.
Like the adage goes, if you cannot beat them, join them. It would have been an unexpected move if our local police grow up from being bogeymen and became facilitators instead.
The article goes on further to quote our PM as saying that, “We do not want to win elections based on manipulation. We want to win because the rakyat supports and trusts us.”
That’s rich, coming from the person who engineered the defection of several state assemblymen and grabbed power in a state, expressedly against the results of the elections.
Sigh.
Fear Mongering
What can I say – we have only ourselves, as Malaysian citizens, to blame for putting jokers like him into parliament.
I’d advise all Malaysians to listen to the whole speech but the juicy part happens at around 13:30 where “anything can happen”.
Operation AntiSec
Now, this is an interesting development. The guys at LulzSec has declared war on any government or agency that crosses their path. From the ‘press release’, “If they try to censor our progress, we will obliterate the censor with cannonfire anointed with lizard blood.”
What makes it more interesting is that, “we are now teaming up with the Anonymous collective and all affiliated battleships.”
That makes things much more interesting. LulzSec has been recently targeting and attacking a bunch of sites, breaking in and getting a lot of private information – including a ton of passwords to porn sites.
They have declared that, “Top priority is to steal and leak any classified government information, including email spools and documentation. Prime targets are banks and other high-ranking establishments.”
This puts a whole new twist to the Jul 4th 1337 hour attack of OpMalaysia. I do not know how the second wave of attacks would pan out but I have the feeling that it should be more interesting than the first volley. I wish all those people working on the defensive lines – bonne chance, mes amis!
(I wonder if I know anyone behind the defensive lines…)
OpMalaysia Round #2?
I just read an article in FMT that mentioned a second thread from Anonymous to take down the PMO website on July 4th at 1337 hours. It’s not 1.37pm, it is 1337 hours, dear reporters.
I watched through the video above a noticed a small Freudian slip. I was fairly impressed by the well written monologue, which is the reason why the slip caught my attention immediately – it stuck out like a sore thumb – “And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there?”
Notice it? If not, watch the video a few more times.
For the moment, I don’t think that this particular bunch of Anonymous hackers have been doing much harm. Taking down a government website is probably a fun exercise for both sides. It is not something that requires much sophistication, which is the reason why I am not quite sure that it is Anonymous doing it.
The other Anonymous attacks seem to exhibit far more sophistication. That said, since they are so loosely organised, they probably have very different sets of volunteers involved in it. While I do not advocate armed response, I can appreciate these things enough to be excited to see the results of what they can do.
I am still trying to discern the motive behind these attacks. While I have correctly identified the reason for it, I have yet to divine their true motives. Personally, I think that these hackers are going after the wrong target.
Anyway, the guys who are running the PMO website have a sense of humour – they advertise their server as an Atari/2600!
Bersih 2.0
Quoting a local news portal, ” Information, Communications, and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Rais Yatim today expressed belief that yesterday’s mass attacks on local websites may be connected to the upcoming Bersih rally. Rais described the cyber attacks as politically-motivated and intended to disrupt the workings of the government, but did not provide details as to how the denial of service attacks were related to the July 9 rally pushing for electoral reforms.”
He claimed that, “These cyber attacks are strange and, sadly, politically motivated.”
I’d like to know what he has been smokin’.
I am particularly unhappy with how the government is starting to censor the Internet. Blocking websites for whatever reason, is a form of censorship – particularly if there is no evidence nor proof that any of these sites actually broke any Malaysian law.
Even if the websites have been found to be guilty of copyright infringement, the law spells out the necessary punishments in the form of fines of up to RM10,000 per infringing copy. The law does not spell out blocking the site or shutting down a shop, as a valid form of punishment.
All I hope for is a government that adheres to the law and has a sense of justice and fair play. At the moment, our government has clearly got neither with delusional idiots running the show at the top – people who think that they know everything but know very little i.e. bodoh sombong.
I’d love to be at the Bersih launch party but I’ve got a party of my own to attend. I’m scheduled to be out of town during the first week of July but I’ll try my best to get back. 🙂
OpsMalaysia Aftermath
Seems that #OpsMalaysia has ended yesterday with a fizzle. While there were a number of hackers who had managed to attack a number of government related sites. However, most of these sites were able to recover quickly as corrective action was taken.
I would have to say that I do not think that most (or any) of these sites were attacked by Anonymous but were just attacked by other individuals or groups of individuals under the cover of the operation.
That said, I think that this is not the end of the operation as our country has basically extended an open invitation to subsequent waves of attacks. Sites, such as The Pirate Bay, have been blocked by some of our local ISPs and remain blocked.
However, it is really simple to work-around these blocks. Just point your DNS settings to one of the public DNS servers such as the ones provided by Google. You can get some configuration instructions here.
Then, you can continue to use TPB as if the censors weren’t in effect. While I do not condone illegal file-sharing, I do not think that our governments’ actions in this case was right. It should take more than just accusations to block a site.
Which court in Malaysia has found TPB guilty of breaking the law? Where’s the evidence? Where’s the due-process?
As I understand our Copyright Act, TPB is not guilty of breaking any law. Our law has a ‘fair use’ clause that allows a person to have up to three copies of a copyrighted work. But the most damning fact is that the TPB does not possess nor store any copyrighted works. It is just a search engine and an index. Hence, the government has no legal grounds to block TPB.
If the government wishes to block a search-engine or an indexer, they need to block Bing, Google, Yahoo as well.
Sybreon Ones Nought 