A Robin Hood we could do with more of

I saw an article in our local paper about an unknown hacker who is working in the spirit of Wikileaks. This is a link to the original news item, courtesy of the BBC.

Apparently this person, who calls himself Neo (and guess where he got that name from), is part of a group which call themselves The Fourth Awakening People’s Army. The group claim to have hacked into 1000 Latvian companies, including the banks, and downloaded seven million confidential documents from the tax authorities. Selected tidbits of this information have been sent to Latvian TV, and claim to expose bank and other directors who have received state support but nonetheless paid themselves bonuses in contradiction with claims made when the state aid was received.

Latvia, as you may know, is even further into its economic crisis than Iceland, and is under similar pressure to that being applied to Iceland to accept responsibility for the immense debt that principally Swedish banks have placed the country under. It occurs to me that we need more Neo’s working for a lot more countries. In fact Iceland would be a good place for a potential hacker community to test its skills. And a lot of Icelanders, including one of Iceland’s principal bloggers would like to hear from them.

Talking of Wikileaks, this site, which is the whistleblower’s safe haven and a mote in the eyes of many governments and companies with skeletons in their closets, is still more or less off-line. They’re trying to raise the money to keep running. I’ve paid my dues to them, and I encourage others to do likewise. It doesn’t have to be much. My contribution was only 250 Swedish crowns or, say, 40 US dollars. But Wikileaks needs a further 250 000 US dollars, and the world needs Wikileaks as much as Latvia needs Neo and his army.

© James Wilde 2015