Peter Burnett

 

 

 

Welcome to the website of author

Peter Burnett

 

 

http://leamingtonbooks.com

Westboro

Christ knows what it's gunna be but there is something to be learned from our collective experience of the Westboro Baptist Church.  Armed with nothing other than hate and the masochistic desire to troll the fuck out of every living thing that ain't Westboro, they've achived global fame and the sort of Internet traffic most would be envious of.  Yep, for a group with only 40 members, Westboro has achieved a lot.

 

 

 

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Barrett Brown

 

Barrett Brown

 

Barrett Brown is an American activist, author, and freelance writer/journalist. His work has appeared in The Guardian, Vanity Fair, Huffington Post, Businessweek, and many other outlets. He has appeared as a guest on MSNBC, Fox News and Russia Today.

On September 12, 2012 Barrett Brown was raided and arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation while he was participating in a Tinychat session. He was subsequently denied bail and detained without charge and adequate medical treatment for over two weeks while in the custody of US Marshals.

Read a full description at freebarrettbrown.org

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Who is Topiary?

Who is Topiary? The exact identity of this mysterious figure from the darknet is unknown to all but the most hardcore of the popo who have been interrogating various teenagers and informants on the subject since 1971, when the internet began.

Still, with extreme hacking prowess, Topiary, or the many and various Topiaries, Topiarists, and other 30 year old virgins and unemployed neckbeards, managed to free the world from ignorance by introducing the concepts of zero punctuation and butthurt to social media, and sql injecting huge websites where they had no business. 

This is nothing to do with the #freetopiary book, but serves to illustrate how rumours can get out of control.

Read more: Who is Topiary?

Bill Clinton on Hackers, 1999

Following the ill fated horror of The Clipper Chip, and the Communications Decency Act, Bill Clinton remarked in 1999:

'We are alreday seeing the first wave of deliberate cyber attacks - hackers breaking into business and government computers, stealing and detroying information, raiding bank accounts, running up credit card charges, extorting monyer by threats to unleash computer viruses.'

This portrayal of hackers as sociopaths and criminals is excatly what the haxor disliked.  Even then and still today, hackers are linked to technological failures, and as long ago as that, hackers were portrayed as the enemy of society. 

For example, it doesn't take a hacker to gain access to emails or other documents, as more often than not it is employees of companies who abuse their access and violate privacy.  Disgruntled employess, organised criminals, industrial spies and foreign or domestic intelligence operatives are not hackers, but the 'lone hacker' is something of a myth. 

Hackers are not the miscreants we are now led to belive they are, but over the years we've come to see this portrayal that anyone creating havoc on a computer network - is a hacker.  This then leads to the situation inn which the guys that DO do this sort of thing calling themselves hackers.  We can't award any evildoer with an internet connection the title of hacker.  Wea lready have too much ill-thought out legislation and unwarranted fear.