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Pink Power Ranger takes down white supremacist dating sites

thecanary.co

52 points by ZebusJesus a month ago · 62 comments

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q3k a month ago

What's missing from the article is that this was also done live on stage at 39C3. Great energy.

  • Insanity a month ago

    Link to video? Not sure what to search for lol

    • netsharc a month ago

      https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-the-heartbreak-machine-nazis-in-...

      The 40 minutes of the presentation before the hack gives a lot more context: there are 2 journalists in addition to this anonymous pink Power Ranger, and they investigated the Nazi network, which is international. And Martha Root (the pink power ranger) was trolling them by creating an account and using LLM. The LLM didn't work properly, the account was blocked for suspicions of being a bot (and maybe for having "= 1 OR 1" as eg. gender), she talked her way out of it, and incredibly the admin that unblocked her asked if she wanted to meet up with him, and the site's founder. She said yes, didn't show up, but used that opportunity to covertly follow them and uncover the founder's identity - the journalists found that it's a 57-year old lady who's never been known in the scene, who was married to a French banker whose parents survived the holocaust, but in the last decade fell into the rabbit hole of white-victimization-theory.

      • sparklysoup 14 days ago

        > the journalists found that it's a 57-year old lady who's never been known in the scene, who was married to a French banker whose parents survived the holocaust, but in the last decade fell into the rabbit hole of white-victimization-theory.

        Just to clarify, she fell into the rabbit hole, not him. He divorced her. Your comment can easily be read both ways.

      • Insanity a month ago

        Thank you! I only searched on YouTube and didn’t think to search on the actual c3 website…

ZebusJesusOP a month ago

This is how it is done, the hacker ‘Martha Root’ dressed as the pink power ranger and hacked white supremacist dating sites, stole their data, took down their sites and then proceeded to DOX members by making a map with members locations and information around the world.

  • thefz a month ago

    While no one likes racists:

    A crime against someone you disagree with is still a crime.

    A crime against someone you despise is still a crime.

    A crime against someone who commits a crime is still a crime.

    So good intent, very, very bad execution, IMO.

    • immibis a month ago

      Here we see an example of the law-and-order personality type, where the most important thing is to follow the law.

      • thefz a month ago

        That is kind of the point of a law, to be impartial. Without it we might as well go back to the stone age.

        • immibis a month ago

          Sometimes laws are bad - but people in Kohlberg stage 4 don't think so.

          There are many obvious historical counterexamples to laws being neutral, or good.

        • justacrow a month ago

          "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

      • ZebusJesusOP a month ago

        Yeah and DnD has lawful evil as an alignment for a reason!

    • tcfhgj a month ago

      A act against someone random may be a crime. The same against someone committing a crime, may not be a crime.

      • thefz a month ago

        Well, in your own personal version of justice

        • tcfhgj a month ago

          law in my country

          • dijit 25 days ago

            What country?

            In the UK Vigilante justice is punished extremely hard.

            If you commit a crime in the commission of preventing crime you will go to jail. There's a couple of things that are permitted and they're outlined as "detainment without excessive force" - for citizens arrest, and then it's only for the duration until a relevant authority can be called... with a maximum term of time that authority must be called.. It's extremely limited.

            And one of the offences specifically not permissible for citizens arrest is inciting racial hatred.

            https://www.westminstersecurity.co.uk/news/citizens-arrest-u...

            • tcfhgj 25 days ago

              Germany

              • dijit 25 days ago

                So, self-defence laws in Germany apply to property also.

                But it seems like they're also very restrictive on what you're permitted to do. Hacking has no justification in law.

                in 2021 there was new laws added to help security researchers, but that goes out of the window as soon as you release private information (which has no justification in German law and may get you 2 years of prison time).

                So, at least in the context of this thread; committing a crime in the comission of stopping a crime is not legal.

                Or were you referencing something else?

  • ThrowawayR2 a month ago

    You do understand that if their side does the same, you won't have any kind of moral high ground to stand on because you have already condoned stooping to their level?

    • King-Aaron a month ago

      "Their side" absolutely does this continuously, and is one of the reasons early facebook allowed people to use pseudonyms etc.

      Only one side of the political spectrum routinely resorts to malicious/vexatious behaviour as their modus operandi.

    • subdude a month ago

      I think the side that isn’t full of white supremacists would have the moral high ground by default.

      • tolleydbg a month ago

        I'm not sure how much that would mean swinging from the rafters of [insert intolerant country]. The white supremacists will maybe lose their jobs or reputation, but the consequences could be much more dire in retaliation.

    • ceejayoz a month ago

      Do you imagine white supremacists don't currently dox people?

      • bigyabai a month ago

        I can imagine that white supremacists do a great deal of things I would never condone.

    • mc3301 a month ago

      something something, "If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them," something something

    • Terr_ a month ago

      > won't have any kind of moral high ground

      You're exaggerating. Yes, it gives up the "doxxing not OK", but there will often remain a large moral difference between "Alice was accurately doxxed as KKK/Nazi" versus "Bob was accurately doxxed as $X."

      There are very few $X which are both worse, plausible, and "the other side."

      We also need to ask who is going to care or be convinced. Orwell's The Party does not care about ethical or moral consistency, only power.

    • vekntksijdhric a month ago

      right, because being a anti-white supremacists is the same as being a white supremacist....

    • clydethefrog a month ago
    • immibis a month ago

      When Batman corners the Joker it's good. When the Joker corners Batman it's bad.

    • croes a month ago

      Define doing the same?

      Exposing racism? Where is the moral problem?

      This isn’t exposing people for being white but for being supremacists.

      If they also expose something of the same kund of wrong I see no problem, everything I wouldn’t call doing the same.

      That’s like comparing police arresting people with criminals kidnapping people, both do kind of the same: imprison people.

    • protocolture a month ago

      Weird moral equivocation. Nazis declare themselves enemies of mankind. They otherise themselves with their beliefs. It should be legal to stone them in the streets as non humans.

      If "Their Side" did the same to innocent people who hadn't declared they are everyone's enemies its a completely different scenario.

    • BigTTYGothGF a month ago

      What do you mean "if"? I've had multiple friends driven off the internet by right-wing doxxers.

    • strbean a month ago

      How dare the US government, which executes people, tell me that I don't get to murder at will? Where is their moral high ground? /s

ChrisArchitect a month ago

Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46504804

xvxvx a month ago

Good choice, as the White Power Ranger has been a less-than-subtle character used by Nazis on Elon's X.

ls612 a month ago

Somehow I'm not holding my breath for this gal to be prosecuted under the CFAA. And then people wonder why the global right is rejecting the idea of the rule of law...

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