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Security personality Graham Cluley has become the target of a hate campaign after a "troll" criticising the British army posted a picture of the anti-virus expert in his Facebook profile. Graham Cassell started a Facebook group condoning recent attacks on British Army cadets wearing uniform in public. This stance predictably …
... this is part of a trolling attempt, which was started on the Get Huntley Off Facebook group. The idea was to provoke stupid people who join groups to write "ILL CUT TH PEDOS HEDZ OFF IF I HAD THE CHANCE" and suchlike, usually as a reaction to tripe tabloid stories, into realising that Ian Huntley isn't actually on Facebook.
Poor Cluley seems to be caught in the middle due to said thickies and their limitless happy fun tabloid rage.
You have to laugh, otherwise you'd cry. I wish Graham had used a picture of Steve Jobs instead.
If I'm a cadet and I want to wear my uniform, I fucking will. How DARE you try and tell me what to wear! This is not a direction we want the country to go in!
If I want to wear a spacesuit, painted with abusive slogans, a purple hat with green spots and PVC trousers on my way to work in the morning, I fucking will, that is why we say: This is a free country.
Every day we take more notes from the US, and our country gets less and less free.
But these idiots strike at anyone and 'Joe Jobbing' is just one of the weapons in their arsenal. If someone says something unpopular in a web forum or usenet they are likely to find themselves cyberstalked, stalked in real life, their family will receive threatening emails and phone calls, and employers or customers can also fidn themselves be targetted.
The ISPs, "social networking sites", news and webhosts involved largely don't care and will take no action unless the police are involved or the threats involve copyright breaches. A common stance taken is "we don't get involved in disputes between customers", which ignores the fact that this harassment isn't a dispute it's systematic abuse. Unfortunately the police are completely clueless about this, and don't even know where to begin with a complaint of this nature.
(whatever the hell that means).
I mean seriously, let me count the ways :
This "Cassel" bloke has a name, and presumably a facebook profile, so rather than spamming that, people take the time to hunt down a matching mugshot, associated with a very unlikely source of such commentary, and start on him instead, huh ?
And which genius comes up with a piece of logic like "Bloke condones violence! Violence bad! I know, send death threat to blokes wife! Good!". Clearly some retard having a day off from protesting for equal rights for guinea pigs and finding himself at a loose end, what with not having any grannies to exhume just now.
And as for tussling with squaddies, just how damned stupid can you get ? "Look, there's a trained killer! Get him! Oh noes! My teefsh!"
Still, perhaps there will be an upside, perhaps the riotous mob will learn the error of their ways and feel some shame, might stop them acting like such twats in the future. Unlikely, but we can always hope. And hey, for the first time ever I'm feeling some sympathy for Graham Cluley, that's new.
It's stories like this that reaffirm my belief that we must prevent the human species from reaching other planets. We, as a whole, should *NOT* survive. The best thing to happen to the universe will be the destruction of the human species. And looking at recent history, it won't take that long, either.
I was there! Booth F130. You should have dropped by and claimed your free t-shirt and blue slushie.
By the way, I'm grateful for John at The Register for writing up this story - it appears to have stirred Facebook into action zapping some of the other offending material about me and my family up there.