No one who works for Stratfor has been arrested, jailed or executed. Nor have they been censored.
Yet here's what Stratfor CEO George Friedman says in a YouTube video posted Tuesday in conjunction with the company's relaunch of its website following a series of December hacker attacks that compromised personal information, including unencrypted credit card numbers, of thousands of the private intelligence company's subscribers:
"We are now in a world in which anonymous judges, jurors and executioners can silence whom they want. This is a new censorship that doesn't come openly from governments but from people hiding behind masks."
(2012's 25 Geekiest 25th Anniversaries)
Friedman has every right to complain about the attacks, but his rhetoric is all wrong. Call it hyperbole, if you prefer; I'm going with all wrong.
Stratfor and its customers were the victims of a crime, a serious one that I in no way intend to minimize. But we live in a world where political dissidents are literally arrested, jailed, and in some cases, executed.
Censorship is a powerful word because powerful entities -- governments and their surrogates -- use censorship as a weapon to silence, intimidate and control those with little or no power. Incur the wrath of government censors in some parts of the world and you might wind up behind bars ... or dead.
Hackers are not censors.
Welcome regulars and passersby. Here are a few more recent buzzblog items. And, if you’d like to receive Buzzblog via e-mail newsletter, here’s where to sign up. You can follow me on Twitter here and on Google+ here.
- “The Joy of Books” tap dances all over your Kindle.
- Who’s lying? The iPad owner or the border guard?
- Survey shows we need a better definition of paperless.
- “LAN-party house” guy spills important details.
- Follow the Mythbusters' bouncing cannonball.
- Steve Jobs and his gadgets … in LEGO.
- Maybe you can trash your boss online after all.
- Stallman parody site catches Stallman’s attention.
- PETMAN: a humanoid robot so real it’s spooky.
- Blue Screen of Death gets a new look in Windows 8.
- What Microsoft paid The Stones to help launch Windows 95.
- 2011’s 25 Geekiest 25th Anniversaries.