“In coordination with federal authorities, the LAPD is now conducting a massive manhunt for The Dark Knight Christopher Dorner, so that they may effectively silence him forever without due process. And now since the authorization of drones have been approved for the first time ever to pursue and execute an American citizen on United States Soil, the US Government will stage this event to set a new precedent from which it can assassinate American citizens for little to no reason at all. But do not misinterpret us for we do not condone the vicious acts that Dorner has allegedly partaken in. Instead we sympathize and resonate with his struggle. Dorner was not born a killer he was a law abiding citizen that was tainted by the corrupt and inhumane practices of the Los Angeles Police Department who serve only themselves. We however do not accept this fate, and call upon our brothers to raise arms against the LAPD, for justice and for the lulz (?) we will rise to disrupt, dismantle and dissect all aspects of the manhunt whilst revealing the LAPD’s unwarranted hypocrisy.”
—-the criminal computer hacking vigilante group Anonymous, in a statement of support for renegade cop-killer Chris Dorner, who, with any luck, will have been captured or shot dead by the time this is posted.
Dorner and Anonymous, a match made in Hell.
In case it somehow eludes you, this is only the Unethical Quote of the Week because Ethics Alarms has no “Incoherent Quote of the Week,” “Idiotic Quote of the Week,” or “Pompously Embarrassing Quote of the Week.”
Anonymous stands as a illuminating example of what happens when power, in the form of technological expertise, falls into the hands of child-like individuals completely devoid of ethics training, understanding, or analytical tools. Adept with a keyboard, their concepts of right and wrong are at the rudimentary level of higher primates in a jungle environment. Hence we get nonsense like …
- “…the LAPD is now conducting a massive manhunt for The Dark Knight Christopher Dorner, so that they may effectively silence him forever without due process.” No, the LAPD is conducting a manhunt because Dorner is a mad-dog killer of innocent citizens, and has to be stopped before he kills again. This organization’s reasoning stops at cognitive dissonance: hate what it hates, and you are thereby virtuous and good, even if you’re a vicious killer.
- “And now since the authorization of drones have been approved for the first time ever to pursue and execute an American citizen on United States Soil, the US Government will stage this event to set a new precedent from which it can assassinate American citizens for little to no reason at all.” Well, no, actually the precedent that will be established is that drones can be used for the same purpose as police helicopters with snipers, which have been used in similar situations for quite a while. And using drones to stop a mad-dog murderer cannot possibly create a precedent for killing “American citizens for little to no reason at all”—that is, to those who understand the meaning of such words as “precedent,” which is to say, none of the logic- and language-challenged nerds who wrote this pathetic statement.
- “But do not misinterpret us for we do not condone the vicious acts that Dorner has allegedly partaken in. Instead we sympathize and resonate with his struggle.” If you sympathize and “resonate with” his conduct, his choice of resorting to mindless violence against innocents to vent about his “struggle,” then you sympathize with cold-blooded murder. If you interfere with efforts to bring Dorner to justice for those act, you are, by definition, condoning them. There are probably rationalizations in there somewhere, but I’m afraid to go looking for them for fear of being eaten by the stupid.
- “Dorner was not born a killer he was a law-abiding citizen that was tainted by the corrupt and inhumane practices of the Los Angeles Police Department who serve only themselves.” Interestingly, no human being is born a killer, and even Jack the Ripper was a law-abiding citizen until he started killing people.
- “We however do not accept this fate, and call upon our brothers to raise arms against the LAPD, for justice and for the lulz we will rise to disrupt, dismantle and dissect all aspects of the manhunt whilst revealing the LAPD’s unwarranted hypocrisy.”
Bhtyewmyytrvhhhrd.
“For the lulz, ” as far as I can tell, means “for laughs” or “for the Hell of it.” Yes, we are being lectured about right and wrong by a group that will side with a killer for giggles. Anonymous is an organization filled with individuals with the ethics of the guys who key your car, release computer viruses and put Ex-Lax in brownies. The technical term is “assholes.” There is none more accurate.
Dorner wrote a obviously deranged manifesto that has served as kind of national Whack-O-Meter: if it makes sense to you, you need help, and shouldn’t be around sharp objects. The additional fact that so many of these warped Dorner supporters believe that frustration with a system, any system, justifies a killing spree should sound loud alarms regarding the dearth of values being conveyed by our leaders, our schools, our media and our culture. Anonymous would be frightening if it were run by diabolical geniuses; since it is apparently run by people who think that a statement like the Unethical Quote of the Week makes sense, it is terrifying.
Ethics Alarms 
Damn. And I was just starting to like those characters!
Anonymous is a highly-decentralized and amorphous body with no real decision-makers other than the people who take actions and attribute said actions to the group. This has… implications.
Oh, and yes, that is essentially what “for the lulz” means. “Lulz” is a somewhat degraded phonetic spelling of “LOLs”, where “LOL” is an acronym for “Laugh Out Loud”. In the plural, it refers to the assorted comments of “LOL” that someone gets following a humorous action or post.
So… yeah. Not really sure what else to say about this.
Some of the videos attributed to Anonymous are pretty hard hitting and, as far as I can tell, factually accurate. As to this one, I can’t extend any sympathy to Dorner or consider him any sort of martyr. He’s killed three people already on an excuse that, if honestly his, can only condemn him as a murderous maniac. What makes him even more dangerous than the other killers we’ve seen recently is that he’s a heavily armed cop with a military background.
Like I said, Anonymous isn’t really a group in the sense that we usually think of the term — it’s more an amorphous collective of people. Some of them are more mature than others… to put it mildly.
I tired of the amorphous group defense during the regrettable OWS experience. As I understand it, an amorphous group can deny responsibility for anything a member does that is illegal, embarrassing or stupid, but when it manages something coherent, that’s the “real’ group. Not in my book. An amorphous group is an irresponsibly managed group, and “Anonymous” is 100% accountable for everything done under their name, or by renegade members it fails to control. Any organization that supports a cop killer is by definition indefensible, and any group that publishes a piece of semi-coherent drivel like that quote is a confederacy of dunces.
How in Hell was I defending them? That comment was attempting to explain the inconsistencies in their behavior and their conduct.
And they’re not an irresponsibly managed group. They’re not managed _at all_. In fact, they’re only debatably a group to begin with, as it depends on which definition you use — they qualify, if barely, in the sociological sense, but emphatically do not do so in the organizational.
And yes, this is indefensible conduct. You’ll get no debate from me on that.
Apologies—by saying that I tired of “amorphous group” being used as a defense, I wasn’t suggesting that you were using it that way, just that the description, accurate though it may be, has too often been accepted as an excuse. for misconduct.
Anonymous isn’t a group, it’s an idea.
And what is that idea, pray tell? That it’s fine to sabotage other people’s websites? That breaking the law because you can is acceptable? That handiness with a laptop entitles someone to wreak havoc at will? Is it that juveniles who have never dealt with the complexities of public policy are somehow empowered to punish those who do? That vigilante action is acceptable in a civilized society? That “for the hell of it” justifies interfering with the lives of innocent people? “Duh!” and “Me hurt you” aren’t ideas, they are grunts of the socially inept and arrogant. You have to do better than that—and you can’t.
All groups form around ideas. Never heard of a group that didn’t have a common idea…
That line saying “anonymous is an idea” is romantic bullcrap.
Anonymous is only slightly less mature than Gawker media employees. This has a lot to do with their age, which seems to be the high-school and college demographic. If you remember what people thought and protested for in high school and college, Anonymous fits right in.
Things I remember people protesting for in my day:
The high school newspaper staff and supporters protesting for the right of the student paper staff to publish rumors of what girls at the school was pregnant because “freedom of the press”.
The right of the college Black Greek Organization to hold parties in the student union and sell alcohol to minors because “racism” and “this is an effective way for them to raise money”.
That the university needed to impose sanctions on Israel and South Africa and force Israel to give its land to the Palistininians and force South Africa to end Apartheid. The university also needed to arrest anyone drinking a Coke or Pepsi for supporting Apartheid.
That the university needed to eliminate all forms of government and laws on campus because government is what causes all human suffering and violence (the militant anarchists).
The university security force needed to be eliminated and replaced with a militia under student/worker control which would respond and deal with incidents of racism, sexism, and homophobia (supported by the Maoists, the Trotskyists, and the Marxist-Leninists, but not the Stalinists).
Anonymous is just these same people joined together nationwide, with a web presence. There is no one voice, but, like a collection of unions pledged to support each other in any strike, there is a lot of unity in actions. When a small group decides to do something, a large number of people within Anonymous seem to contribute to “the cause”.
Their “contribution” to this issue is completely negative. I have followed this and there are several troubling issues with Dorner’s situation that I think deserve investigating and thought. With groups such as Anonymous making such borderline insane statements, that will never happen.
Yes indeed, as to the last statement. When legitimate issues are muddled by incoherent advocacy by inherently disreputable groups and individuals, cognitive dissonance works overtime to discredit the issues by their association with clowns, radicals and fools. Sometimes I think our entire nation’s public policy course is driven by this phenomenon.
The only thing I can take away from this entire ordeal is that there are many people in this country who have the following views:
1) Police are or can be corrupt, and this is just how it is.
2) Sometimes the system isn’t fair, even though you know that you are in the right.
3) It’s understandable to go insane and take as many others with you as possible.
I don’t say this to lend support or credence one way or the other, but I view it as either a symptom, or an understanding of where our culture/society is today. If people feel this way enough that they can lend a “mild support” of a murderous villain, then what is truly wrong in our society?
That people don’t trust our institutions, so when lacking the skills, temperment, knowledge, resources or leverage to address what they perceive as injustice, feel justified in defying societal norms and standards out of pure futility, anger and frustration? see: “Falling Down”: “I’m the bad guy????”
Yup. I knew someone could say it better than me. And who wouldn’t feel this way with every citizen with a camera being harassed or beaten by a cop and arrested.
The problem the police have is that there are a lot of them, in a lot of difficult situations, they get blamed for situations where they handle things correctly, they get vilified by people who have no idea what they’re talking about, and they occasionally engage in clear misconduct, which is then nationally publicized and projected onto every cop. Beating the people with cameras isn’t an option, of course. It would help in TV stations and websites would stop selectively editing video to leave out the provocations for police violence, when it occurs…as with the Rodney King video. It would help if people like Prof. Gates would treat police with some respect, and if websites like Reason and others didn’t perpetuate the false notion that all cops are jack-booted thugs.
That’s why I like Youtube. Plenty of raw footage of police behaving badly that isn’t edited and you get to see the entirety of the encounter and the reprehensible behavior. There’s also plenty of shining star examples of great professional conduct.
Didn’t you just make exactly the opposite response up above? I’m certainly no fan of anonymous or OWS, but you just said “As I understand it, an amorphous group can deny responsibility for anything a member does that is illegal, embarrassing or stupid, but when it manages something coherent, that’s the “real’ group. Not in my book. An amorphous group is an irresponsibly managed group, and “Anonymous” is 100% accountable for everything done under their name, or by renegade members it fails to control.” I realize that the two situations are hardly identical, but I’m curious to know your take: Does one bad apple spoil the barrel?
No, but the barrel is usually responsible for its bad apples. In the police, non-amorphous organization case, I’d say any department where serious officer misconduct occurs is subject to legitimate scrutiny regarding its leadership, recruitment, training, culture and supervision–but I dispute the theory that one can make cross department generalizations—again, in non-amorphous organizations like the police. OWS adopted a remarkably successful (thanks to patsies in the news media) “No True Scotsman” defense (I can’t believe that with tgt AWOL, I’m talking like him)—if an OWS type engaged in violence, shat on a car or raped someone, they weren’t really part of the group.
DRONES USED ON AMERICAN CITIZENS? Regardless of the many issues involved, a helicopter with a sniper means a human killing another human — regardless of the circumstances — and I truly believe we are on a horrifying slippery slope wnenever law enforcement (of any ilk) can just use a computerized killer to take out a felon. Robocop is on the way.
Anonymous has some pretty smart and tech savvy members — I would not put it past either their skills or their agenda to come up with something that could pass for police radio broadcasts.