# Al-Jazeera gets hacked! **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 27, 2003, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-jazeera-gets-hacked/164616 "2003-03-27T21:34:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![The\_Scrivener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@The\_Scrivener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Scrivener)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2003, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-jazeera-gets-hacked/164616/1 "2003-03-27T21:34:20Z")
Eat [this](http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/03/27/sprj.irq.aljazeera.hacked.ap/index.html), Al-Jazeera! I’d like to buy the “Cyber Freedom Force Militia” a round of beers. Bravo, hackers! ---
**Author:** ![Tars\_Tarkas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Tars\_Tarkas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tars_Tarkas)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2003, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-jazeera-gets-hacked/164616/2 "2003-03-27T21:37:20Z")
When did we declare war on Al-Jazeera??? ---
**Author:** ![Giraffe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giraffe/32/129_2.png) [@Giraffe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giraffe)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2003, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-jazeera-gets-hacked/164616/3 "2003-03-27T21:40:07Z")
Hopefully, hackers will soon replace all of Al-Jazeera’s broadcasts with footage of George Bush while the Star Spangled Banner plays in the background. Stupid freedom-haters. ---
**Author:** ![Tars\_Tarkas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Tars\_Tarkas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tars_Tarkas)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2003, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-jazeera-gets-hacked/164616/4 "2003-03-27T21:42:37Z")
I’m sure the hacking convinced all of the Middle East to love America, become Christians, and vote Republican. They were in “Shock and Awe” at our computer power, which must be a gift from Allah. They also said they’d give us free oil! ---
**Author:** ![Neurotik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/91b2a8/32.png) [@Neurotik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neurotik)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2003, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-jazeera-gets-hacked/164616/5 "2003-03-27T21:43:35Z")
Yeah, why are we glad al-Jazeera was hacked again? ---
**Author:** ![World\_Eater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f04885/32.png) [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2003, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-jazeera-gets-hacked/164616/6 "2003-03-27T21:43:58Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Tars Tarkas \* > \*\*I’m sure the hacking convinced all of the Middle East to love America, become Christians, and vote Republican. They were in “Shock and Awe” at our computer power, which must be a gift from Allah. They also said they’d give us free oil! \*\* \ ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2003, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-jazeera-gets-hacked/164616/7 "2003-03-27T21:44:16Z")
Cracked, actually. Hackers have better things to do than vandalize others’ property. Please use the correct term in the future. I do not like being called a criminal. [http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?cracker](http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?cracker) And it might have been taken down by its host, not attacked. > **[Al Jazeera's web site – DDoSed or unplugged?](https://www.theregister.com/2003/03/27/al_jazeeras_web_site_ddosed/)** > > Whatever - it's the coming back that might be trickier ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2003, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-jazeera-gets-hacked/164616/8 "2003-03-27T21:46:29Z")
You know, as contemptable as al-Jazeera is in some circumstances, it’s a lot better than a great deal of the state-run television that’s common in the Arabic-speaking world. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2003, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-jazeera-gets-hacked/164616/9 "2003-03-27T21:48:53Z")
Yeah, I was just about to start a thread on this, but I doubt I share the viewpoint of the OP. **Scrivener** , how about clueing us in on why you think supression of an independent press source by anonymous crackers is A Good Thing? ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2003, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-jazeera-gets-hacked/164616/10 "2003-03-27T21:51:25Z")
I can assure you that CNN, ABC, CBS, and Fox look as offensive to many people in Arabic countries as Al Jazeera looks to you. Even though their website is so technically awful that ‘cracking’ it ( **Derleth** you’re fighting a losing battle) seems like a mercy killing. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2003, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-jazeera-gets-hacked/164616/11 "2003-03-27T22:08:11Z")
I really like the name “Jihad Ali Ballout”. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Scrivener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@The\_Scrivener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Scrivener)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2003, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-jazeera-gets-hacked/164616/12 "2003-03-27T22:54:03Z")
I agree, **friedo** , and arguably that makes Al-Jazeera far more influential and dangerous as a shaper of opinion on “the Arab street” than the state-run organs elsewhere. As contrasted with, say, a Saudi network that has interpreted every news story for the past quarter-century through the same rosy filter of Zionist conspiracy theories – to the point where only an ignorant fool could believe them – Al-Jazeera conflates its position as an independently-owned-and-operated network with supposedly “objective” coverage. If only. My disdain for Al-Jazeera stems from its overtly biased news coverage as well as its leering complicity with Saddam Hussein’s barbarity. Al-Jazeera’s coverage of the current war is narrowly focused on the “innocent victims of American bombing”. This stance takes for granted the Ba’ath Party line on the conflict, without probing into the Iraqi forces’ own very questionable practices which may well account for most of these victims lying in hospital beds. The Ba’athist practices that pointedly endanger the health, welfare, and even the lives of Iraqi _civilians_ include the following: the sabotaging of oil wells; indiscriminate AA fire and missile launches; widespread abuse of civilian women and children as “human shields”; the hiding of soldiers, weapons, and various military equipment in hospitals, schools, mosques, and ancient archaelogical sites; the suspected cutoff of the water supply to Basrah; the planting of land mines; and most recently, the oft-reported rumors that Saddam’s enforcers are kidnapping and threatening the lives of the wives and children of men, in order to impress them immediately into the front lines. Moreover, Arab media largely refuse to acknowledge Saddam Hussein’s responsibility as the architect of his people’s misery under twelve years’ worth of U.N. sanctions (the penalty for his failure to disarm as he had promised to do so), preferring the “big lie” that this misery was arbitrarily inflicted, free of any legal context, on an Arab people by a heartless, imperialist, zionist United States. And as for my second accusation – that Al-Jazeera is guilty of a “leering complicity with Saddam Hussein’s barbarity” – I am of course referring to the network’s showing the notorious footage of American and British P.O.W.s executed while in Iraqi custody. The footage of the American dead was reportedly played frequently over a period of several hours, until official government protests prompted Al-Jazeera to make the editorial decision to cease playing it. [It is worth pointing out, however, that this newly-forged sensitivity did not prevent Al-Jazeera from playing the tape of the British P.O.W.s when that tape became available to them (in the past day or two).] Aside from the obvious Geneva Convention violations stemming from the torture and execution of the P.O.W.s, this _media exposure_ of the P.O.W.s is _itself_ a violation of the Convention, which specifically lists the “mockery” and publicizing of P.O.W.'s identities as violations of its charter. I remember the “60 Minutes” story a while back about the creation of a new, “independent,” “objective” Arab network – a network that could be the harbinger of a new-fangled embrace of modernity, cosmopolitanism, and ideological objectivity in the Arab world. Oh, it is to laugh. Well, to hell with Al-Jazeera! I hope that one of Saddam’s illegal missiles (the ones that travel farther than allowed under UN sanctions) goes astray and demolishes that network’s HQ in Qatar – that would be poetic justice at its most pointed. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Scrivener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@The\_Scrivener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Scrivener)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2003, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-jazeera-gets-hacked/164616/13 "2003-03-27T23:04:26Z")
One more thing. The “cracking” (not hacking; I’ll take your word for it) of Al-Jazeera’s web site is hardly “suppression”. It was only a temporary annoyance, more akin to a Bronx cheer than anything else. It’s not as if the crackers were putting up a subversively styled simulacrum of the original web site, after all. No one steered to the cracker’s site would mistake it for the real thing for even a minute. You’d think my offer to buy the guilty parties a round of beer would help to establish my original post as essentially lighthearted in tone, even if my fundamental objections to the network aren’t. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2003, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-jazeera-gets-hacked/164616/14 "2003-03-27T23:55:42Z")
> [@](#): > > My disdain for Al-Jazeera stems from…(lengthy screed denouncing presumed favoritism for Iraqi government) Well, I’d certainly like to visit the Al-Jazeera site to determine for myself whether that particular news agency is biased, but hey: turns out I can’t, because some doughholes cracked the site. Jeepers, guess I’ll just have to take your word that everything you say is true. Who are you again? > [@](#): > > The “cracking” (not hacking; I’ll take your word for it) of Al-Jazeera’s web site is hardly “suppression”. Horseshit. Doesn’t matter who did it (and I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if our very own government facilitated this), the site has been forced down repeatedly since it was launched Monday and that’s supression in my book. ---
**Author:** ![Angel\_of\_the\_Lord](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/angel_of_the_lord/32/2949_2.png) [@Angel\_of\_the\_Lord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Angel_of_the_Lord)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2003, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-jazeera-gets-hacked/164616/15 "2003-03-28T00:05:43Z")
::shrug:: Big whoop. It isn’t exactly some great, wonderful technical feat that’ll never be duplicated; it isn’t even overly hard. The message was totally uncreative–little time and effort was put into the design. Additionally, the attack is–for the most part–futile, as the network’s based in Qatar, which (I believe) _is_ supporting US troops by hosting them. Now, if someone were to do something creative, or something that had never been done before, then I’d be impressed. Otherwise, it’s the usual cracker BS. ---
**Author:** ![Tars\_Tarkas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Tars\_Tarkas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tars_Tarkas)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2003, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-jazeera-gets-hacked/164616/16 "2003-03-28T00:10:30Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by The Scrivener \* > \*\*You’d think my offer to buy the guilty parties a round of beer would help to establish my original post as essentially lighthearted in tone, even if my fundamental objections to the network aren’t. \*\* it comes of more of “Ha Ha you sand monkeys!” than lighthearted. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2003, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-jazeera-gets-hacked/164616/17 "2003-03-28T00:22:56Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by El\_Kabong \* > Yeah, I was just about to start a thread on this, but I doubt I share the viewpoint of the OP. **Scrivener** , how about clueing us in on why you think supression of an independent press source by anonymous crackers is A Good Thing? Because he’s a freedom-lovin’ America who believes in the widescpread dissemination of information and the tolerance of different points of view! (But only when he agrees with them, natch) :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![The\_Scrivener](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@The\_Scrivener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Scrivener)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2003, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-jazeera-gets-hacked/164616/18 "2003-03-28T00:25:11Z")
Indeed. Ba’athists are leading the camera crews from hospital ward to hospital ward. With the official standing there, the reporter asks the “victim of American bombing” “who did this to you?”. “The Americans”. Case closed? HORSESHIT!!! If the mother & child had been wounded while being forced to precede troops into the battlezone, or if they had simply been hit by the flak from the Iraqi’s own AA/missile barages, do you honestly think that the victims would: 1) necessarily be able to tell the difference between the ordinance of one side and the ordinance of the other; 2) expose the war crime that had been perpetrated to them by the Ba-athists _with the Ba’ath official standing right there_? FWIW, I’m sure that many innocent civilians have been hurt or killed by our incoming. Not even the Pentagon and Centcomm flak-catchers have denied the regretable toll upon civilians of bombing and shelling, even when we take the utmost precautions. But the fact remains, it is difficult to ascertain in any given case just whose fire was responsible – an uncertainty greatly exacerbated by the Ba’athist practices I listed in my screed above. Coalition leaders have warned Hussein & co. to end those practices and have given the Ba’athists due notice that the coalition will not necessarily withhold from targeting a military target just because it’s parked, say, near where civilians live and work. In war, civilians get hurt and killed under the best of circumstances. But in such a muddled theater of war, where the military of one side co-mingles with their civilians as much as possible, that risk will be multiplied. Yet it is precisely that sort of distinction and contextualization that Al-Jazeera, as far as I can tell from the way that network’s coverage is itself covered here, persistently elides. ---
**Author:** ![black\_rabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f19dbf/32.png) [@black\_rabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/black_rabbit)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2003, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-jazeera-gets-hacked/164616/19 "2003-03-28T00:31:58Z")
Why don’t you move the fuck to Iran or something? I hear they’re not too fond of divergent points of view, either. Asshole. ---
**Author:** ![Giraffe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giraffe/32/129_2.png) [@Giraffe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giraffe)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2003, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-jazeera-gets-hacked/164616/20 "2003-03-28T00:42:45Z")
Soooooo, your response to the observation that taking down Al-Jazeera’s website is tantamount to censoring viewpoints people like you find distasteful is to point out how distasteful their viewpoints are? Good one, champ. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/al-jazeera-gets-hacked/164616.md?page=2)