Condemn Anonymous, but thank them, too

As November 5 came and went, the online community was awash with a mixture of relief, ridicule, and even disappointment at how uneventful the day was despite the promise of action by Messiah of Anonymous.

Then Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong set the Twittersphere aflame once again by promising that the government is taking the cyberattacks “very seriously” and will hunt down the hackers by all means necessary.

When STOMP, a trashy ‘citizen journalism’ website, wrote about how a Straits Times blog was hacked (both are under the same parent company), almost 50 percent of readers rated the article ‘shiok’ — a local vernacular expressing glee.

While we hesitate to express it, this whole saga has become a blood sport. It’s an escape from the drudgery of daily life on this tiny island — a damn good movie. But unlike many hackneyed Hollywood films, this movie is far more complicated and interesting.

I’ll explain why in a moment, but let’s make something clear: Hacking (or to be more precise, cracking) is illegal, and I hesitate to condone the behavior. It’s a superpower-like skillset that can be abused for villainous purposes, even though hacktivists profess to use it for good.

Messiah’s conduct has also left much to be desired. It’s hard to see how his actions have helped him achieve the aim of fighting for “justice” for the oppressed. I don’t see how the government will do an about-face from implementing the internet licensing framework as a result of his actions. His bluster of threatening war has so far been empty talk.

If his goal was to rally Singaporeans to his side, he has failed.

Yet to condemn Messiah entirely as a irredeemable terrorist with no good intentions is taking it too far. Ditto for the act of cracking. Singaporeans have an unusual habit of conflating what is legal with what’s right, and vice versa.

“The rule of law must be upheld,” Singaporeans holler hypocritically as they litter, jaywalk, and pirate music and movies. At the same time, they’ve failed to realize that laws are defined so broadly that any critique of the government can be construed as seditious according to the whims of the day.

It’s not black and white

Truth of the matter is, Messiah and Anonymous have done Singaporeans a favor. Messiah’s threat caused the government to go into panic mode, resulting in an “urgent” maintenance spree that caused engineers from IDA to burn a weekend closing potential backdoors.

That is despite the fact that Anonymous Singapore’s actions are not even close to the legendary LulzSec in skill or ambition. While they made headlines by supposedly hacking into the website of the Prime Minister’s Office, what they actually did is simply inject HTML code into a web address to cause a web page to display some taunts.

To use an analogy, it’s like a burglar who, being unable to break into a house, decides to paint graffiti on the walls instead. Embarrassing but harmless.

Yet such defacements serve the useful purpose of vaccinating Singapore’s IT infrastructure and its data from attacks by foreign hackers with zero concern for Singaporeans.

Not your grandmother’s organization