I have been asked by the hosts to put together a bit about the situation:
So last fall I figured I would put together a little group about gardening and the means to self liberation. I admit to intentionally trying to program a psychological factor into the wording... an experiment in memetic engineering. Almost immediately it started growing by itself without much help from me. I was delighted as that was my intent.
One of the first things that happened when the group got over 400 was a hijacking/disruption attempt in the form of a racism flame war. I have seen this specific subject used to destroy groups before, and had to ban the first two people as a result, and make the subject of racism 'that thing we don't talk about'. I strongly suspect that one of the people involved in that was FBI, because they acted like it, and waved their credentials as an 'indymedia journalist'. Must be nice to get two paychecks.
It served as a staging platform for various causes... the 'poster child of the week'. First was the whole thing about Assange being wanted etc. Although not really related to the stated goals, I let people have their run to use it as an open space, and encouraged them to organised themselves into more topic-specific groups. The same happened with Egypt and the rest of north African situations. As a result the groups growth accelerated again. This is all very interesting to watch because you come across things like people wanting to join the group that have things like 'kill all muslims' on their profile.
This drew a large amount of attention and on feb. 5 it was revealed that not all of it was good. I got a strange message from some guy begging me to 'stop the attacks'. Huh? What attacks? That story is here http://www.itworld.com/internet/137231/who-anonymous-commander-x-not-guy So whoever this 'anonymous' is that was visiting the group had hacked into some private security firm call 'HBGary federal' and dumped their emails and documents. In these documents it specifically mentions me as the 'leader of anonymous' (Huh?) and that it was the intent of Aaron Barr and Greg Hoglund to turn me in to the FBI for 'cyberterrorism'. I need help converting PDF files. I am no hacker. Can we go back to talking about gardening and permaculture?
Worried that I had only the wrong exposure (FBI agents? Other people sent?) and not enough of the right exposure (press) I decided to make sure I stayed alive and free until I could put the pieces together to BEGIN to defend myself from these allegations. This was MOST inconvenient, but as a professional adventurer it was not that hard to accomplish... I pity someone not able to make sudden moves in this situation... it would be like being a target nailed to a wall. This article contains a pic of the initial conversation between Barr and myself, at 'Barr reveals himself' no doubt OBTAINED from Barr. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/02/anonymous/all/1 . That's me, the pic with the red mohawk (you'd think this guy would have more sense...).
So I ran until I figured that the genius dept. at the FBI had figured out that these guys were idiots. I feel better now... especially when I went to their website looking at wanted terrorists and saw most had been being sought for 10 years or more. That too made me feel much better. And that I couldn't find me. What also made me feel better was the request for a senate investigation into the matter; http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/03/congress-and-hbgary/ see 'pentagon stonewalls corporate spy probe' to see what happened back east. http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/04/while-justice-department-opposes-digital-privacy-for-americans-pentagon-stonewalls-corporate-spy-probe/ about 2/3s down. There is also a video of the senator requesting the hearing, but no one from any of the senate investigation committee or the senator's office who had voiced this returned my calls.
The most amazing thing about the whole situation I think was the resistance I got from all the places that are supposed to help with this kind of situation. No help from the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the berkeley campus Cyber Law Institute didn't even return my calls. OK all 3. And the press. With the exception of Dan's article above, NO luck there either. Not the Bay Guardian, defender of the left and freedom, not WIRED, who subsequently DID do a hard copy published article, but didn't bother to mention my little inconvenience of possibly spending 10 years in the fed pen on false charges of data disruption. Even Matt Gonzalez, whose campaign I had volunteered on, didn't respond to my request for legal referral. I mean, I try not to bother people so if I get to three with nothing I figure you don't want to play and that's that. Some reputation the bay area has for being the 'base of the left' etc. and they can't even return a phone call.
Well, the ice on this has finally broken, and there is FINALLY some movement. I got referred to a pretty radical lawyer in NYC who is giving me a break on what he wants to do this... after calling lawyers for weeks and the MINIMUM retainer I was quoted was $20K US. Nah, no class problem in the justice system.
So now we are in the stage of reorganization for a push. The solid people are coming out, more plaintiffs are lining up, and the action is beginning to take shape. This brings us up to the present.
-- -- Ben de Vries http://worknets.org/wiki.cgi?GrowersResources Certified Permaculture Designer
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