A New Slope: Society Safe From Whom?

He also questioned the time and energy spent chasing teenage hackers.

"This is a slippery slope," said Healey.  "It's not what you should be doing.  It justifies [Anonymous].  Giving them this much attention justifies them and is demeaning to our side."

Our side?  Whose side?  Are young online activists on the other side?  Of what divide, exactly?

Despite being a condemnation of the soul-sucking, community-busting corruption of  organized crime, The Godfather movies were popular with gangsters; they saw them as a model of how to act.  By the same token, The Wolf of Wall Street has been celebrated by many of those who truly occupy Wall Street as the way to live.

I guess it should come as no surprise, then, that organizations like the NSA and GCHQ are apparently taking inspiration from V For Vendetta, completely missing the underlying lesson of what happens when you tighten your fingers.

Youth are finding it hard to get work, are being told their education is useless and that they simply have no value to add to the market and must expect to be treated as such.  Meanwhile, government isn't representing their interests (or, in the eyes of many young folk, anyone's interests), so what motivation do they have to engage?

What happens next is clear, as it will be the same thing that always happens when it comes time for societies to shed old skin; a lot of friction.  

It's a winter/spring thing, new growth, new faces embracing the social torch, so on and so forth.

But hey, there's a new Star Wars coming out - who's curious to see what that's about?