Re: Anon

On Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 5:21 PM, Timothy A Ellis <Timothy.Ellis@sutherlandglobal.com> wrote:

Heres what Ive got let me know your thoughts.

There is no more fundamental assault on human liberties than seeking to control the very thoughts which define us as individuals and as a species. Despite this, attempts to do so are so commonplace as to be almost unremarkable.

It is, perhaps, this ubiquity which blinds us to the ongoing struggles of places like Tunisia. In a tragically familiar story, the government of Tunisia has made a mockery of democracy, gripped with corruption and political repression. As reported by <a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/01/201113102452251132.html" target="_hplink">Al-Jazeera,</a> "[a]ny criticism of the President can lead to persecution and imprisonment, torture is routine and opposition parties are almost nonexistent. Not a single human rights monitoring group is allowed to operate legally and freely in the country."

Tunisia has additionally sought to control access to Wikileaks cables referencing the African nation, going so far as to <a href="http://thenextweb.com/me/2010/12/07/tunisia-blocks-wikileaks-everyone-referencing-it/" target="_hplink">block access to any source </a>even referencing the information distribution site. These events have not happened in isolation - the citizenry of the nation have <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gly3tXD8WF5737WC-Kl19E58ux1w?docId=bd0bae9167b1412abc7f50296e89b12f" target="_hplink">been up in arms</a> about dire economic conditions, corruption, and police brutality in the service of state repression.

Enter Anonymous. This loosely-organized band of defenders of the free flow of information took this assault on Wikileaks and informational freedom personally, and - as is their wont - decided to act. Tunisian government websites have been under attack since Sunday (1/2/2011), either taken over to display messages from Anonymous or shut down entirely.

It is telling that these partisans of informational freedom have chosen to fight fire with fire - they would deny access to the free flow of information to those who have sought to do the same. This puts Anonymous in the enviable position of having an unassailable moral high ground. Accept that the free flow of information is an essential right, and Anonymous is standing up for that right by turning its denial back on those who first violated it. Or, believe that the free flow of information is not an inherent right - in which case Anonymous has done no wrong.

What is perhaps the most important point to take from this episode, however, is simply that organizations such as Anonymous and Wikileaks exist with the power and capacity they have. There have always been groups willing to take on the state's attempts to monopolize the flow of information - now, they are increasingly able. For anyone with an interest in the preservation of genuine democracy - a form of government by consent which depends on accurate and freely-accessible information - there can be no more reassuring thought.

From: Barrett Brown [mailto:barriticus@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, January 02, 2011 9:19 PM
To: Timothy A Ellis
Subject: Anon

Never in human history has there been a period that compares to our own in the degree to which the terminology employed at the end of a twenty-year period would have been entirely incomprehensible at its beginning. This is, or should be, the first sign that something is afoot. All significant human activity is the result of human collaboration, and over this same period the potential for human collaboration has exploded in a manner that has never before been seen. This is the second sign, and the fact that these developments and their implications have been greeted with the usual mix of silly and inane commentary for which our career media personnel have become known even to themselves is in turn a perfect indication of why this period has been so necessary, and why many of us are working to ensure that the dynamics now in play continue to accelerate.

Wikileaks, a force that was ignored by a news media incapable of identifying important trends until such time as it became impossible to disregard, has ushered in a new period of human history in which state actors have lost the privacy that they never deserved in the first place. Anonymous, a similarly misunderstood harbinger of the coming age, has taken a series of actions to defend that organization, including information campaigns and DDOS attacks on national governments - including Tunisia, as of this writing - that have welcomed the new age with tighter controls on what their citizens are allowed to see. As someone who has worked with and promoted certain factions of Anonymous for a number of years, I would like to explain what it is that is happening and why it will continue until such time as individual liberty escapes its controversial status.

Throughout history, the majority has been consistently wrong and consistently willing to initiate violence in service to the local flavor of foolishness. Not long ago, many took for granted the divine right of kings - and some still do, of course. Today, many in the West believe that anything is moral just so long as it is done in some accordance with the will of the voting population of a particular nation-state; to some, even a kings intent will suffice. Actions of extraordinarily lesser negative impact on the innocent, taken by any organization that lacks the arbitrary status of a state, are meanwhile denounced with a fervor that the more fair-minded might reserve for those who routinely cause the deaths of women and children - for instance, the large majority of American voters who have exercised their rights to topple one dictator while propping up others, and who pat themselves on the back for their participation in a civic entity that has made such a mockery of the rule of law that those of us who were born too late to see the America that once existed no longer feel any loyalty to its government whatsoever.

This is the context that has turned Anonymous from a Dadaist cultural phenomenon into a geopolitical harbinger. Its first notable target was the violent white supremacist and FBI informant Hal Turner; its second was the Church of Scientology and the degenerate manner in which it deals with critics and apostates; its third was the government of Australia on the occasion of a proposed internet censorship policy that would have opened the door for further state control of expression, as such policies always do.

Over time, Anonymous has changed. Some of us are no longer anonymous, for one thing; my associate Gregg Housh was outed by the Church of Scientology after they discovered he was one of the five participants who launched the Chanology raids via a YouTube proclamation, and thus now gives interviews to those outlets that care to know more; my associate Sean Carasov killed himself last month after a great deal of legal harassment from the Church that helped to ensure that his career would never see a revival. Others have been arrested as well, and more will be arrested in the future. This will stop nothing. And the typically flawed reception that the movement has received from those who will justify most any government action will not change the fact that we have entered a new age in which individuals around the world can form their own entities to counter those that now exist, and will do so increasingly as the implications of our time become more widely understood. And they will indeed be made understood, soon and forever after, to all who choose to listen.

--
Regards,

Barrett Brown
512-560-2302

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