Taking a Digg at Scientology

Scientology has become a hot topic on the news-site Digg.com, mainly because a group of hackers calling themselves “Anonymous” has been using what are called “distributed denial of service” attacks on Scientology websites. DDoS attacks involve continuously bombarding web servers with requests for information, to the point where the web servers are overwhelmed. Diggers love this kind of “hacktivist” vigilantism, and so numerous stories about Anonymous and Scientiology have been appearing in the “most popular” lists on Digg.

I just finished reading a particularly interesting one, a cover story from Time magazine in 1991. It’s a long article but well worth a read to get a sense of the sheer criminality of the Scientology movement. Sure, there’s the routine scamming of individuals, fraud, and tax evasion, but there’s also infiltration of political parties, the theft of government documents, and an astonishingly effective intelligence-gathering operation:

“In my opinion the church has one of the most effective intelligence operations in the U.S., rivaling even that of the FBI,” says Ted Gunderson, a former head of the FBI’s Los Angeles office.

Individuals and private organizations that have challenged Scientology have been harassed and even sued into non-existence. Even government agencies are nervous about taking them on. The article concludes:

As long as the organization’s opponents and victims are successfully squelched, Scientology’s managers and lawyers will keep pocketing millions of dollars by helping it achieve its ends.

The Church of Scientology is, of course, very much still with us. But a sign of Digg’s power is that four hours after the link to the Times article became popular, the 1991 cover story was the fourth most-read story on the Times website.

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