Here’s a new angle from animal liberation organisations; rather than using physical damage to people or property, a group calling themselves Hackers For Total Liberation have attacked a group of animal research scientists at Berkeley using a computer virus. From the group’s press release:

… all of the current lab members in Freeman’s Visual Neuroscience Lab were sent a trojan horse virus embedded into email. This virus is designed to completely wreck their computers while leeching all vital personal information they’ve ever entered into their systems.

How truly effective the virus is (or how many of the scientists were gullible enough to actually open it, or whether in fact the whole thing is a Jedi mind-trick media stunt) remains to be seen, but it’s interesting to see that hacking is becoming increasingly politicised.

Take, for example, the recent rainforest logging permits uproar: a field day for regular media to wheel out the hacker bogeyman, but also greatly offensive to those who cling to the original “white hat” definition of the term. The web is just another tool; the hand that wields it decides its morality.

[Just for complete clarity, I’d like to point out that posting the above item as news does not demonstrate support by Futurismic (or any of its writers and staff) for the use of illegal methods (or threats thereof) for the advancement of any cause, political or ethical or otherwise.]