Phacking gibberish

Why do the mainstream media reduce everything to meaningless buzzwords and phrases to try and permeate the zeitgeist? Recent events in the UK press have centred around a so-called phone hacking scandal. Hacking? Pffft, it’s not even close.

This is hacking phones ; guessing someone’s voicemail password or trying the default 1111 or 1234 password is not hacking, in the same way that having three goes at guessing a single person’s email password isn’t hacking. It’s fraud: pretending to be someone you’re not.

Pure semantics, you cry. Maybe. But in that case the title of this BBC article should be something like Mobile hacking invades privacy and not the positively-spun “Riots thwarted by Blackberry and Twitter chat”.

It appears hacking is OK if it’s done by the authorities, and the media wholeheartedly support this outlook. But if you’re a rebel or not on the Goodies List, you don’t stand a chance.