Pierluigi Paganini March 15, 2012

Everyone in Italy have read of the attacks made by Anonymous against the Vatican, but very few professionals have expressed a clear position on the incident. Everyone in Italy knows the risks and effects associated with exposure to radio waves emitted by the antennas of radio Vatican, but no one is really the opposite. Children and people get cancer, but the silence has to cover all. The Church in Italy is a taboo, a diktat to follow, no one can oppose it, especially among professionals.

The group in a first attack targeted the official website of the Holy See while a second attack was made fun of defense systems placed to protect the site of Vatican Radio. Anonymous has decided attack the web site in response to the doctrines, liturgies and the precepts considered by the hacktivist absurd and anachronistic and condemning the immoral and driven by an immoral pursuit of profit.

The second attack was carried to the Vatican to bring the media attention the issue of emissions from Vatican Radio antennas, let’s remind that in 2010 a court-ordered study has found that electromagnetic waves beamed by Vatican Radio leave residents living near the station’s antennas at a higher risk of cancer, Italian media said Wednesday.
“There has been an important, coherent and meaningful correlation between exposure to Vatican Radio’s structures and the risk of leukaemia and lymphoma in children,” the report said, according to the daily La Stampa.
The report also warned of “important risks” of dying of cancer for people who had resided at least 10 years within a nine-kilometre (5.5-mile) radius of the radio’s giant antenna towers near Cesano, some 20 kilometres north of Rome. The radio’s director, Federico Lombardi, disputed the report, saying: “Vatican Radio is astonished to hear the news on the results of the study.”
The transmitter site is the subject of a dispute between the station and some local residents who claim the non-ionising radiation from the site has affected their health and a study by cancer specialist Dr. Andrea Micheli has suggested that electromagnetic radiation from the antennas has caused excess risk of leukaemia and lymphomas in children. These claims are not accepted by the station meanwhile children continue to get sick.

The Church objected to the accusations, but any expert of you well know the real situation and the impact of this kind electromagnetic pollution on human health. We are facing against occult powers, political connivance, ecclesiastical, lodges ready to hide the most inconvenient truth.

The message left by the group reports:

It is now a renowned fact that you use equipment whose transmission strength exceeds legal limits by far, and the correlation between exposure to high-intensity electromagnetic emissions and serious illnesses such as leukemia, cancer and others is also a sad and proven fact. Many citizens unlucky enough to live within range of your repeaters have tried to undertake legal proceedings in light of their declining health conditions. 

Anonymous cannot tolerate these crimes, which continue to go unpunished, and would like to remind you that you are ‘guests’ on Italian soil.

Just the second strike poses in my opinion a very interesting question. How to judge the protest actions in situations where the damage is objectively reduced, like a defacing of a web site,  and the option of attack is the only way to show visible effects on very serious events?
If from a legal issue there is no doubt we are facing with a crime we can not ignore that the same law is helpless before a worrying truth. These forms of hacktivism have bombastic media effect. The social influence of these protests is a crucial factor in the development and analysis of some social matter. To condemn the phenomenon of hacktivism is wrong. Certainly there have been many operations ethically questionable, but reporting serious irregularities and offenses against the individual is a duty. Consider an hacktivist a criminal is an understatement, especially when you are questioning human rights and freedom of expression. Why do not start considering an open debate on many of the uncomfortable truths that animated many operations? At this rate will be impossible to arrest the growing power of group like Anonymous, we are too vulnerable to their attacks, and action after action they are able to increase the number of supporters, an incontrollable cyber army that could hit any structure. My main concern is that something may infiltrate the group distorting its ideology and hijacking the logic of operations in unpredictable and dangerous way.

What is the conceptual line that distinguishes an action of expressed cyber protest and a criminal act. A sit-in fact is an expression of dissent, may stop a service, but no protesters were banished as criminals. Not referring to Anonymous, what actions we consider tolerable expression of dissent? In the absence of frauds or the disclosure of information that could undermine national security, which are differences between criminal behavior and civilian cyber protest? A DDoS attack is really far from a manifestation? It is only for the anonymity of the participants but definitely much more should be taken into account.
Do not limit ourselves to label phenomena, we must understand them or we will suffer them.
At this point I leave to you the interpretation on the complaint of Anonymous group to attract attention to the problem. In a scenario such as that described what you think is the real crime? Those antennas are still causing cancer and killing people in the silence of istitutions. The case of Radio Vatican is an excuse to speak about an against defenseless populations.

Another example is the battle was announced by the group against the Great Firewall of China, the most powerful tool of censorship, a criminal system to control and suppress any voice contrary to the government in Beijing. People were tortured, murdered because contrary to the dictates of the regime and the international community cannot react because it is blinded by the business offered by the large Chinese market, rather they sell technologies and expertise to strengthen censorship. If one day succeed in sabotaging the censorship system called I don’t believe we will call Anonymous criminals.
I repeat, this article does not want to beatify the group in the eyes of a sympathizer reader, but wants to induce a serious reflection on a phenomenon that I believe is able to influence policies of entire nations. These groups often listen with the ears of the people, act according to the will of the masses, they are an expression of muffled voices … don’t forget that “vox populi, vox dei”.

Pierluigi Paganini