The problem is many people who want to justify their actions are trying to do so by saying that just because an otherwise private business has some connection to the government, they are not private at all and are the same as the govt. They're the ones taking the binary category approach. Just because I have principles that doesn't mean I'm dumb or simple.
Except that most of the people who support these attacks are
not employing the binary approach. The argument is that while it may be "immoral" to violate the private property of a private person, these
corporations, aside from not being people (and thus having no rights to begin with), are not private due to their substantial connections with the state. Therefore, the theoretical categorical prohibition on affecting the property controlled by these corporations is not applicable to this situation.
I don't think it is unreasonable to call paypal or amazon a private business, but some people, in their blind hatred, only need to see a tiny tendril of connection to the government before they throw morality out the window. They're not being thoughtful or taking a moment to put things in perspective, they're just trying to rationalize in any way possible so they can fuck shit up.
That's a strawman. No one is arguing that morality should be thrown out the window. To the contrary, those that support the attacks are arguing that the the attacks are
in accordance with the appropriate moral bounds of the situation. That's why, for example, no one is arguing that employees of Mastercard should be physically attacked (or targeted as individuals at all, except for perhaps some of the top leaders, for whom some level of public harassment is probably justified). A denial of service attack inflicts a fairly low level of "harm" to the company, and is therefore perfectly proportional to the harm these companies have inflicted upon society at large by cooperating with the government's efforts to shut down wikileaks.
I have registered my business as a corporation with the state in order to pay less taxes. You might say I'm "taking advantage of what govt has offered me". You might even say that I "colluded" with them by taking certain tax deductions. I don't want to be a corp, I don't want to pay taxes or deal with the govt at all, but they threatened me and I complied. I hope you will see the situation for what it is and still think of me as a private individual/company and respect what is left of my freedom. I'd hate to think I need to start carrying a gun to protect myself against other members of the freedom movement because they think it is their job to destroy me.
Stop being so paranoid, and don't make this unnecessarily personal. If you buy a warehouse and lease it to the state so that the state can round up protesters and temporarily incarcerate them in it - you can sure as hell bet I'm not going to give a damn about your "private property" to the extent that breaking into the warehouse will free the protesters. Does that mean I would consider it justifiable for someone to attack your person or your home? Of course not. Until then, let's leave the argument to case at hand.
It's about being proportional and reasonable. It's a complex judgment call in every case, and everyone is going to have a different answer. Personally, I don't find violence against the body of another individual justifiable in all but the most extreme of cases. That's not just because I find physical violence distasteful, but also because it rarely accomplishes much aside from the escalation of irrationality and conflict. But when it comes to small-scale property vandalism against large corporations who are, as much as the state, the enemies of a free society and beneficiaries of tyranny, to the extent that such vandalism and digital guerrilla warfare is effective as a strategy and does not significantly harm innocent parties, I support it from a moral perspective.
