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The Parler hack

TalYWaun

pfm Member
For those who haven’t heard of this, Parler was a web site being used by the extreme right in America. Amazon (AWS) announced it was going to shut the website down. A hacker called donk_enby, using government approved hacking tools discovered she could download almost the complete website including 150 million photos and more than 1 million videos. Each of these had embedded metadata like date, time and GPS coordinates. If that isn’t enough to keep law enforcement for a while it looks like those who took part in the Capitol takeover could be facing up to 10 years in prison for “injury of federal property," under the executive order signed by President Donald Trump during the Black Lives Matter anti-racism protests in July 2020.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7v...r-explains-how-she-did-it-and-what-comes-next
 
I’m hoping for a full list of Tory MPs, councillors, aids, advisers etc who had accounts on this far-right cess-pit. So far we know Ben Bradley, Steve Baker, Angela Richardson for sure (Independent), but my bet is there will be lots more.
 
Does anyone know if there were pm-style non-public communications via the site, or if it was all public?

If the latter, would it be possible (wayback machine?) to view retrospectively what was on individuals’ feeds (or whatever they’re called)?

I saw Steve Baker’s when I tried to check via Ecosia whether a couple of names had accounts - him, PP and so on. But his feed seemed to be fairly boring reposts of stuff like Twitter, rather than evidence of involvement in discussions with radical types or anything like that.
 
Before believing the entire story as it is, and judging its protagonists, I’d double-check it first.
 
But his feed seemed to be fairly boring reposts of stuff like Twitter, rather than evidence of involvement in discussions with radical types or anything like that.

It is the choice to use and effectively endorse/legitimise such a platform as much as what is written. No way in hell would I go and talk about vintage Tannoys, idler decks or whatever on a Britain First, EDL, UKIP or KKK site. I’d just not want to be there or be seen to be there.
 
Bringing out the libertarian in me to be honest. PArler wasn't illegal, or even non-legal, it was just awful. Seems weird to be celebrating someone doing a mass data scrape and handing everything over to the police. We've come a long way since the Edward Snowden affair I guess.
 
Apart from anything else, do we really think that Amazon doesn't already have a copy? Or that they wouldn't immediately hand it over to the cops if they were asked to? Or that the cops have any serious interest in investigating the right - as opposed to the left?

Really bizarre article!
 
It is the choice to use and effectively endorse/legitimise such a platform as much as what is written. No way in hell would I go and talk about vintage Tannoys, idler decks or whatever on a Britain First, EDL, UKIP or KKK site. I’d just not want to be there or be seen to be there.

No, nor would I. And I agree that even choosing to be on Parler at all is is deeply whiffy. But I do think that, unfortunate as it may seem, it’s at least somewhere near legitimate for (the staff of) an MP who thinks it is another way to reach the public to set up an account to repost their stuff from Twitter.

Knowing that it’s near-exclusively far-right and actively engaging in that aspect of it would be different. But AFAIK there’s no evidence of anything more than a reposting bot or something like that.

It’d be a significantly positive thing for Baker’s career to be damaged IMO - he’s awful. But I don’t see much mileage coming from Parler.
 
Apart from anything else, do we really think that Amazon doesn't already have a copy? Or that they wouldn't immediately hand it over to the cops if they were asked to? Or that the cops have any serious interest in investigating the right - as opposed to the left?

Really bizarre article!

For sure :)

I'd imagine there wouldn't be much need for complex cyber-hacking stuff - a simple demand by the authorities under various existing criminal or state-security/anti-terrorism statutes would give the Federal Authorities access to anything and everything they want from Amazon, or indeed any hosting service.
 
I do think that, unfortunate as it may seem, it’s at least somewhere near legitimate for (the staff of) an MP who thinks it is another way to reach the public to set up an account to repost their stuff from Twitter.

Nah. It was expressly set up as a 'free speech' alternative to Twitter. i.e. for people likely to be banned from Twitter for posting far right conspiracy bollox.
 
The whole thing is hysterical, it is just so utterly dumb. Oooh, so you are the white nationalist revolution, you big strong tattooed Nazis with your flags and big shiny guns, you believe in “free speech”, plan to overthrow the government, drain the swamp.... and you choose to do this on AWS and via apps in the Apple and Google App Stores. Bless. Now go tidy your room. Never overestimate the intelligence of these people. They are exactly the type who would live-stream themselves committing countless criminal acts, and they did just that!
 
@Tony L

good point nicely made,


& good grief the first obvs thing to do would be to use an alias on a webforum if you have something you feel righteous about, but wouldn't say to, well, just anyone...


oh.
 
The whole thing is hysterical, it is just so utterly dumb.

Coded by numbnuts too it seems.

By Monday, rumors were circulating on Reddit and across social media that the mass disemboweling of Parler's data had been carried out by exploiting a security vulnerability in the site's two-factor authentication that allowed hackers to create "millions of accounts" with administrator privileges. The truth was far simpler: Parler lacked the most basic security measures that would have prevented the automated scraping of the site's data. It even ordered its posts by number in the site's URLs, so that anyone could have easily, programmatically downloaded the site's millions of posts.
https://www.wired.com/story/parler-hack-data-public-posts-images-video/
 
Never overestimate the intelligence of these people. They are exactly the type who would live-stream themselves committing countless criminal acts, and they did just that!

The bit that really was under-looked, that really upset me - but needs highlighting - is the multiple reportage of the woman, shot, doubtless under the illusion of a greater purpose, trying to storming the wrong side of the door to the chamber protected by armed Security personnel, who no doubt acted in accordance with instruction and standing brief.

No, I definitely will not seek the resulting footage - but the ITV coverage linked earlier (amazing in its own right) and several other sources noted that what really happened in the moments after, is that those around her flipped their phones on to watch & film her bleed -out.

Not help.
Not help
Not help.

To film her die.

Scum.
 
No, I definitely will not seek the resulting footage - but the ITV coverage linked earlier (amazing in its own right) and several other sources noted that what really happened in the moments after, is that those around her flipped their phones on to watch & film her bleed -out.

Not help.
Not help
Not help.

To film her die.

Scum.

The f**kers had the video up on YouTube within the hour complete with a name and photograph of the police officer they allege shot her.
 
I...
words fail there.

No - I'm off to re-read Plato's Republic.
As far as I remember, from a long time ago, he had thoughts on the root of this sort of mob shit over 2K yrs ago.

That's no claim of anything on my part except I can read. And perhaps in response, do care to plumb thoughts other than my own.
 
The Guardian has a more complete list of Tories using this far-right-friendly platform.

Currently we have:

Steven Baker
Ben Bradley
James Cleverly
Nadine Dorries
Michael Gove
Darren Grimes
Ranil Jayawardena
Mark Jenkinson
Angela Richardson

The Guardian claims 14 of them, so there are plenty more to flush out as these are the only ones named in this article and the earlier Independent one. I firmly believe they deserve doxxing as these are public servants and we pay their wages. They work for us and in no way should they be promoting themselves on platforms so welcoming to the far-right, racists, terrorists etc. To do so endorses the platform and normalises the vile hate speech it carries.
 
Just a reminder that this wasn’t a dark web operation: when it was launched it was framed as just another “free speech” conservative platform like Quillette or Unherd or The Spectator : Twitter for c****, basically. It’s re-framing now by mainstream outlets as intrinsically transgressive is really weird, given that they’re still mainstreaming equivalent outfits like Guido and defending The Spectator’s god-given right to celebrate Nazism. I really don’t get it.
 


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