- How did you became the "spokesman" of Anonymous? And isn't it impossible in their anti-leader-ethic to have one? What was the reason they choose you anyway?
I was never the spokesman of Anonymous; there are no titles. I had begun writing about Anonymous again in early 2010 when a group of Anons launched attacks against the Australian government, which I considered to be a significant turning point. I was approached by Gregg Housh, who had helped launch Operation Chanology and had otherwise been involved in organizing some operations in the past, and the two of us discussed these dynamics via e-mail for the next year; I had founded Project PM a few months before in hopes of developing new ways to use the internet for positive ends. In early January, he notified me that people working out of the Anonops IRC server had launched OpTunisia in order to support the Tunisian protests and suggested I join them. I did so, and brought along some of my Project PM people to assist as well.
Later that month, 40 U.S. citizens were raided by the FBI for allegedly participating in DDOS attacks against Visa, Mastercard, and Paypal as part of an Anonymous operation in defense of Wikileaks, and The Guardian, for which I had just started writing, asked me to do a column on it (
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jan/27/anonymous-internet). Wikileaks, meanwhile, had already been under general assault. Things had obviously gotten serious, and thus I wanted to make the case for Anonymous to the public, but it would have been extremely unethical for me to write about Anonymous without acknowledging my involvement, so I did so. Meanwhile, I was able to arrange for free legal aid to some of those in the U.S. who had been raided through my existing contacts in the activist community, and this was noted in the New York Times, so reporters started coming to me to ask about Anonymous. They began referring to me as a spokesman, and thus I was now considered as such by the media.
The majority of Anons are indeed opposed to anyone "leading" anything, but then the majority of Anons aren't aware that Operation Chanology was led and organized behind the scenes by a small group of people who in turn delegated leadership to others by city and region. And at Anonops, there are obviously people who control the channels and the server, who can and did close channels and ban people and make rules and run the DDOS apparatus and all that. There have always been leaders, even if they aren't called that.
- How would you describe the community? Once you said: "a process more than a thing"?
It's an ebb and flow of relationships, really. The thing is that many of the people who consider themselves Anons will tell you that Anonymous can't be defined, that it's everyone and no one. That's fine, but it's a demonstrable fact that there are venues such as the Anonops server where the majority of those things that make Anonymous important are launched and organized, and there are people who do a great deal of the work. When one says "Anonymous hacked HBGary," it was not everyone and no one who hacked them; it was five people associated with Anonops, and then a few dozen others who were directly involved in the aftermath. When federal contractors like HBGary and Endgame Systems spy on Anonymous and write up reports on them, they're not looking at everyone and no one; they're mostly looking at the people who use the Anonops server. When the authorities start going after Anonymous, they're not going after everyone and no one; they're going after people who were active in certain projects. There are other important nodes of Anonymous, like
whyweprotest.net and others that are involved in doing the actual work of Anonymous. Beyond that, anyone can call themselves Anonymous without actually doing any of the work of Anonymous or even knowing more about Anonymous than anyone else.
It's also important to remember that years ago, when Chanology started, the people who originally called themselves Anonymous at 4chan and such places didn't consider people who protested to be real Anonymous. There's always been a great deal of argument over what Anonymous means.
- What is a force of Anonymous and where you see faintnesses?wit
Anonymous' greatest strength is its ability to bring together a great deal of people with varying skills and put them on a common task. The greatest weakness is quality control; a number of people who join the IRC servers aren't interested in the hard work that's necessary to get things done, but are instead there to chat and engage in drama.
- What was your task in operations like Tunesia and Lybia?
At the time there was almost no coverage of the protests, and of course
protests are most effective in the context of the media, so I wrote a
number of posts for Daily Kos by which to bring attention to what was
happening and also began alerting some of my colleagues in the media,
such as Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone, in order to encourage more
outlets to cover it, which they did. My status as a journalist and
activist was obviously helpful in bringing this attention to the matter
as well as recruiting people, and at any rate I ran Project PM under my
own name, although the press releases I began writing for Anonymous were
unsigned and so was the al-Jazeera piece I wrote a bit later:
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/02/201121321487750509.html. As that piece explains, we worked with North Africans to produce and distribute some helpful guides on street fighting, first aid, and the like, as well as software by which to prevent security forces from conducting surveillance on protest leaders.
- After all you quit the job a few days ago. What was the reason?
My purpose in getting involved with Anonymous was to do as much as possible to promote liberty and transparency, and it's become harder to do that due to the various distractions that keep occurring. And the work I'm now interested in, particularly our investigation into the intelligence contracting industry via OpMetalGear, requires people with a certain level of knowledge and discipline. So I've assembled about two of the more capable Anons as well as some other individuals I've recruited over the last year or two for various things, and now we're running the investigation out of our own venues under Project PM.
- Who now took it for you?
I never held any official position. I'm still helping to arrange legal defense for those who have already faced problems from the authorities and will continue to do so as no one else seems to be doing that sort of thing.
I hope you could answer my questions till tomorrow?
Thanks a lot and kind regards,
Britta Weddeling
From: Barrett Brown [mailto:barriticus@gmail.com]
To: Britta Weddeling [mailto:b.weddeling@focus-magazin.de]
Sent: Tue, 24 May 2011 22:46:42 +0200
Subject: Re: Urgent/Press request
Sure, send me any questions you like.
On Tue, May 24, 2011 at 6:37 AM, Britta Weddeling
<b.weddeling@focus-magazin.de> wrote:
Hi Mr Brown,
I'm a German journalist and on a story about Anonymous.
This week, you probably got this information, some Anons attacked the Website of the German police. Background: German police sabotaged the PC-system of the German "Piratenpartei". This party stands for freedom of information and more liberty in the web.
I read about your reasons to quit the job as the Anon-spokesman, but I hope we could have a short chat about it this or I could send you some questions via mail?
As a journalist you know about storydeadline – I got mine on thursday evening. I hope we could manage it till then?
Thanks a lot and – with greetings,
Britta Weddeling
Britta Weddeling
Focus Magazin Verlag GmbH
Arabellastr. 23
81925 München
Tel.: 089-9250-1136
E-Mail:
b.weddeling@focus-magazin.de
Geschäftsführer: Burkhard Graßmann, Andreas Mayer
Handelsregister: Amtsgericht München HRB 97887
--
Regards,
Barrett Brown
512-560-2302
Geschäftsführer: Burkhard Graßmann, Andreas Mayer
Handelsregister: Amtsgericht München HRB 97887