Let me put that number into perspective: We could buy a replacement fleet of Trident submarines from the NHS IT budget alone...
Rats do leave a sinking ship, as they say.
[Edit: I am actually fairly left of center politically, but this does not mean that I am completely uncritical of what a government does with taxpayers money - and the last Labour government went insane with so many stupid projects and initiatives that we will have to live with for decades.]
No one knows who's behind it, so no one will stand up for them, no one will complain if they get harassed and all the blaim for everything that goes wrong in the future goes to Anon/hackers. It's the perfect scapegoat for incompetence.
Anonymous doesn't change anything as far as excuses. If they're looking for an excuse to crack down, they can always make up an Emmanuel Goldstein.
Both Anon and arab terrorists have carried out numerous attacks...
Or like "save the children" isn't the political slogan which always has been, and always will be, used to justify anything.
I am not sure if LuLzSec is good or bad, or a wash, in terms of how politician will use them. It does not really matter, politicians will use anything and nothing to get what they want.
But this BBC coverage is surprisingly fair. And if coverage like this becomes the norm, who knows LulzSec might actually be good for the public image of what anonymous hackers on the internet are.
And that may be even worse when it comes to a potential "crackdown": if it is just one group of hackers running amok, putting them down solves the problem, or at least the public discourse can pretend so. But if we come to have two, three, four, or even more groups on the loose, then there is an "epidemic" that will "require" a broader, more draconian response.
The incessant misuse of the word literally, literally makes my blood boil.
(See what I did there?)
You've already lost them :| apathy is a bigger enemy than anything. As long as people have access to their netflix or amazon or whatever, they'll be ok with internet crackdowns.
Big business and government have been winning for a long time and the hackers aren't really doing enough.
https://erecruitment.nhsponline.nhs.uk/Portal/LoginForm.aspx
So all you need is the DoB, email address and postcode of someone, and you can view their private information. Genius.
