Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Hacker Pleads Guilty to '08 Scientology Attack

CNN reported FBI didn't expect charges to be filed in alleged bomb/death threats

According to a news release from the Justice Department's Los Angeles office, Dmitriy Guzner of Verona, N.J., pleaded guilty to computer hacking charges related to the 2008 distributed denial of service attack (DDOS) on Scientology websites. That's where hackers get so many zombie computers to visit a site that the server overload becomes crippling and the site crashes.

Big Whoop. Old News. Anonymous based websites get DDOSed all the time.And more often. I don't see the FBI to concerned about that.

What is odd though, Scientology, on just about every press release, regarding Anonymous includes their now famous tag-line, "...there were instances in which the church reported bomb threats against it, and even white powder mailed to one or more of its locations. At the time, the FBI said it was investigating those allegations as well."

And the news agencies just do a copypasta of the press release without any fact checking.

Say What? Isn't that the news reporter's job - to CHECK FACTS BEFORE REPORTING?

Well, it seems in this day and age of fancy graphics and plastic-faced news, that's just too time consuming and would cut into the all important hair-styling time. It's now up to the reader/viewer to inform the news agency that they mis-reported an item. The top story is a prime example:

The following update was added to that story: "Updated, 7:03 p.m.: Commenters point to this May 2008 video (minute 1:20) where a CNN anchor reported that the FBI did not expect that charges would be filed regarding alleged bomb or death threats."

It's not too tough. Took 2 minutes to search the FBI's website for information about Scientology. Anything about bomb threats? Nope. How about death threats or white powder. Nadda. Zippo.

And how often does Scientology churn out these now year old lies? Every chance they get. Below is an excerpt from the WSMV News4 report in Nashville, inquiring Brian Fesler, a Scientology spokesman, why the church's hired security team tackled a protester and had him arrested. (Note: As of yesterday, it's been reported that all charges have been dropped against said protester)



You'd think they've taken a page out of the Bush/Cheney playbook under fear-mongering (remember no WMD's found in Iraq?) Nope. Hubbard already had a policy set-up back in 1960's to deal with enemies of Scientology. It's called Fair Game.
"If attacked on some vulnerable point by anyone or anything or any organization, always find or manufacture enough threat against them to cause them to sue for peace." ~ L. Ron Hubbard, "Dept of Govt Affairs", HCO Policy Letter of 15 August 1960.

If major news agencies continue on their corporate mouthpiece trend, they'll soon be going the way of the newspaper, and readers/viewers will continue to go to bloggers for their news. Sure, bloggers, like me, sometime have an agenda. But we also try to back-up our opinions with facts. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a hair-styling appointment, lol.

No comments:

Post a Comment