14 DAY TRIAL // The notorious hacking outfit LulzSec has published an open letter addressed to the whole Internet in which it notes that those blaming them for exposing personal information are missing the fact that somewhere, some hacker is probably doing the same thing, but without advertising it.
"The main anti-LulzSec argument suggests that we're going to bring down more Internet laws by continuing our public shenanigans, and that our actions are causing clowns with pens to write new rules for you.
"But what if we just hadn't released anything? What if we were silent? That would mean we would be secretly inside FBI affiliates right now, inside PBS, inside Sony... watching... abusing," the group writes.
And why is that important? It is, because others are already doing it. Personal information is constantly stolen, accounts are constantly broken into, emails are watched, and most of these attacks go unreported, or worse, undiscovered.
LulzSec's message to Internet users is: "You are a peon to these people. A toy. A string of characters with a value." This is meant to encourage them to think less about who is right, those who leak or those who report responsibly, and more about the darker side of the picture, those who abuse silently.
As far as the group's reasons are concerned, LulzSec stresses again that it does this for "lulz," for entertainment, but points out that laughing about another's problems is in the human nature and most of us enjoy it.
"That's all there is to it, that's what appeals to our Internet generation. We're attracted to fast-changing scenarios, we can't stand repetitiveness, and we want our shot of entertainment or we just go and browse something else, like an unimpressed zombie," the group says.
LulzSec members note that at this point they don't even care if they get caught or not anymore and that if they do, people will forget about them and move on to the next shiny thing that captures their attention.
In the end, right or wrong, ethical or not, LulzSec's actions have probably made a lot of people realize what security folks have known for years, that the Internet is full of exploitable holes that no one is interested in fixing until they really have to.