{"id":5608,"date":"2012-02-16T22:55:37","date_gmt":"2012-02-17T06:55:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=5608"},"modified":"2012-02-27T07:26:56","modified_gmt":"2012-02-27T15:26:56","slug":"no-news-is-bad-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=5608","title":{"rendered":"No News Is Bad<\/em> News"},"content":{"rendered":"

On 24 December, the Stratfor<\/abbr><\/a> computer site was learned to be hacked; e.mail, e.mail addresses, and credit-card information were stolen. Initially, Anonymous couldn't agree within itself whether its members were responsible, but the deniers fell silent.<\/p>

The credit-card information was used to make charitable donations, which subsequently had to be returned (at a net loss) by the charities. Those whose e.mail addresses were stolen had them publicly dumped (and thus made available to spammers), and were subjected to hoax mailings by Anonymous.<\/p>

And we were told that the e.mail itself would be released, so that the world could see that Stratfor<\/abbr><\/a> were really a malevolent force, which revelation would ostensibly justify the hacking.<\/p>

After seven weeks, the e.mail that was supposed to expose the wickedness of Stratfor<\/abbr><\/a> has not<\/em> been released. There's more than one possible explanation. Perhaps the responsible members of Anonymous have obscure but compelling reasons to release the information all-at-once, and to organize it before doing so. Perhaps these members have been found and whisked-off to secret internment camps, along with anyone who might have reported their disappearances. Or perhaps<\/em> the e.mail would reveal no more than that Stratfor<\/abbr><\/a> communicates off-the-record with sources, some of whom could (reasonably or otherwise) be regarded as villains, and perhaps other members of Anonymous noted that almost any reporting and news-analysis service does the same thing<\/em>, so that Anonymous would appear to subvert freedom of the press.<\/p>

(I kinda favor that third explanation. Like many members of the Occupation Movement — who also<\/em> like to claim the prerogatives but duck the responsibilities of association, and to wear Guy Fawkes masks and fantasize about being Vs — many members of Anonymous seem inclined to try to silence<\/em> those whose views they find greatly disagreeable, but only so long as these members aren't made to recognize<\/em> that they're engaged in censorship<\/em>. [<\/span>Up-Date<\/span> (2012:02\/27):<\/span> It has now been announced that the e.mail is being released in coöperation with WikiLeaks<\/a>.]<\/span>)<\/p>

But, whatever may be the reason, the e.mail has not been released, and that failure or delay is itself a news story<\/em> — which story you've not<\/em> read in the Times<\/cite> (of London, of New York, or of Los Angeles) nor heard from the major broadcasters. Possibly that's because they're such lack-wits that it hasn't occurred to any<\/em> of them that there's a story here. I rather suspect, however, that it's because they're scared<\/em>. A group such as Anonymous could take-down pretty much any of these news services just as they did Stratfor<\/abbr><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On 24 December, the Stratfor computer site was learned to be hacked; e.mail, e.mail addresses, and credit-card information were stolen. Initially, Anonymous couldn't agree within itself whether its members were responsible, but the deniers fell silent. The credit-card information was used to make charitable donations, which subsequently had to be returned (at a net loss) […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,117,318,9,104,4],"tags":[1076,807,1077,1078,392,806,1079,1080,1085,1086,182,1081],"class_list":["post-5608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-communication","category-ethics-philosophy","category-ideology-philosophy","category-news","category-public","tag-anonymous","tag-censorship","tag-crackers","tag-cracking","tag-freedom-of-expression","tag-freedom-of-speech","tag-hackers","tag-hacking","tag-hacktivism","tag-hacktivists","tag-journalism","tag-journalists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5608\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}