Monday, July 11, 2011

I am an innocent man...


Once upon a time, in the strange twilight LaLa world of Newham Toryland, there was an extremely unpleasant anonymous smear blog called Newhamtoryminitrue. Now, this horrid, horrid blog, apart from being typically Tory misogynic and homophobic, was also run by very incompetent Goblins called the cry-babies.

One night the cry-babies were up very late carrying out their evil works and were very, very tired. So tired and emotional, that they went to bed without remembering to back up their site properly. When they woke up the next morning, they realised that they had been really, really naughty and had lost for ever and ever a number of their very worse smear posts.

Fearing the wrath of their evil master, the skinhead Ogre, Big Bad Mikey, they pretended that some very wicked wizard called grayee had cast a magic spell on their blog and had set mystical “spammers to scrape IP addresses from our website and set up spiders to trawl it”!  Such was the power of this magical spell by grayee that they lost all their smear posts! Poor old Big Bad Mikey believes everything he is told and said to them not to worry. He will get his long lost cousin to write hundreds of mysterious letters to the local paper and FOI requests in pretend names exposing the wicked wizard grayee and all will be well.....  

(I think only 36 people in the entire world have a clue what I am going on about so apologies to everyone else.  Enjoy the video.  Great song.)

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am one of the 36 people in the world who knows what you're on about.

Sadly for you, those stories have not been lost.

The internet, eh, don't you just love it?

Gilberdyke said...

My favourite bit about the fairytale was the idea that if wicked wizard grayee were to exist (and obviously he doesn't) then he might have committed an offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990 and face up to 12 months in jail. See http://www.forestgate.net/hacking-the-opposition

But of course he didn't and he won't.

John Gray said...

Hi anon

Not sad for me in the slightest. The rubbish put out by that site reminds me why the opposition in Newham are so useless.

:)

Hi Gilbersyke

Why do some people believe such stuff and nonsense?

There is no evidence whatsoever that this "hack" ever happened. None. Typical Tory make believe.

Anonymous said...

John,

If the site wasn't hacked, why was a headline posted that said "You've been hacked" just as a bunch of stories disappeared?

Are you suggesting the people behind Newhamgrad faked the whole thing? That sounds a bit far-fetched to me. I've no idea who did it, but somebody did.

Gilberdyke,

Um, yes actually. Unless the whole thing was faked, whoever broke into the site and deleted material without the permission of the owners committed an offence, for which the penalty is up to 12 months in jail.

John Gray said...

Hi Anon

You tell me

How do you know a headline was posted saying "You have been hacked"? I've not seen it. Have you?

Of course they could have faked it. They have plenty of previous for this sort of thing. Perhaps they had cold feet over a possible libel campaign. I don't think that anyone should bother doing this but I have “some experience” of these things and IMO they risk losing their (his) homes over some of the stuff they (he)have published (and it can still happen within the next year).

If I was them (him), I would be worried by this.

The gobbly guk they put up about “IP scrappers and spiders” is nonsensical and was I think taken straight off a internet search for "hacking".

If they were hacked then of course that is illegal and wrong but also rather pointless. Who really cares what it publishes? As I said, it serves a great purpose as reminding everyone how useless the opposition is in Newham.

I think most likely it was a cock up and they deleted it in error or they let a virus in.

Anonymous said...

John,

Yes, I saw the "You've been hacked" headline that appeared on the site. I don't have a screen shot (not quite that sad), so you'll have to take my word for it.

Faking it would be a massive breach of trust with their readers, and I somehow doubt they'd do that - the risk massively outweighs any possible reward. If they were concerned about libel they could have just quietly removed the offending story.

John Gray said...

Hi Anon

What "readers"?

Does one man has his two dogs count?

You don't know what happened though do you? Surely someone must have a screen shot?

I suppose they could have faked that as well.

Gilberdyke said...

Since I'm kind of in on this "conversation" I feel I should confirm that I saw it too. But then what the reader sees means very little in evidential terms, does it? Still, if the whole shenanigans has been a publicity stunt to make the blog sound more worth reading then it may well have worked. Naturally I would not want to suggest that your own posting may have unwittingly contributed to that John

John Gray said...

Hi Gilberdyke

Yes, there might now be even 37 people in the World who know what we are on about?

:)

Gilberdyke said...

... but on balance I think you may be right about the potential libel issue since just a day after the press reported that a certain entity was to take legal action about claims of corruption, the site concerned posted an entry (which is still out there if you know where to look) using the c-word a little, shall we say, injudiciously. I would agree that shows a lack of nouse at least.

John Gray said...

Hi Gilberduke

Yes, they could be facing the 6 o'clock knock by a bailiff – such a shame :)

Anonymous said...

Out of the millions of blogs out there, hackers chose to attack the NewhamGrad site??? Come of it.

There must have been something on their blog or activities that must have alarmed people.

How did you know their PC was unlocked. Where you there??

How come your site has never been hacked? Both sites use the same Blogging company.

John Gray said...

Hi anon

We don’t know that the site was ever “hacked”. Only had their word that it was. Which is meaningless of course.

They may have taken down the blog because they are concerned that they will be sued for libel. I have no actual knowledge of this but they have published stuff which I thought at the time is clearly defamatory and to which they would have no legal defence. If so, they will have from now on, nearly 12 months of worry until the publication is “out of time” for libel action.

I don’t know if their PC was “unlocked” (whatever that means?) but I do know that bloggers have accidently deleted their blogs by messing about with templates without backing up etc.

I haven’t got a clue how to hack into a site (not that we know they were “hacked” in the first place) also remember that I wanted Newham Toryminiture to remain since it performed an important purpose of reminding everyone (well, all 36 viewers) how petty, ineffectual and useless the opposition is in Newham.

Trots and Tories.