Anonymous

New “SecureDrop” is a game changer

Guardian Launches SecureDrop System for Whistleblowers to Share Files

We took to Facebook the other day, so thrilled to see that The Guardian has just launched something called SecureDrop for use by anonymous whistleblowers to securely submit documents and data. Our first reaction?

This . . . will be a real game-changer.

Flickr/creative commons

Flickr/creative commons

Game-changer really understates the significance of this matriculation from grassroots efforts such as Anonymous, a loose, silent brotherhood of freedom fighters, and WikiLeaks, a bold and successful effort to organize these nascent efforts. Now the Pulitzer-winning Guardian, a 200-year-old news organization with a growing international media presence, and important progressive voice, has stepped up to formalize the very first secure drop that whistleblowers anywhere can safely bring material directly to the public.

This makes a huge, planet-wide, progressive stride towards our better future, a world free from nationalism and war and the racism on which they are based.

The Guardian’s SecureDrop will be managed by Freedom of the Press Foundation and Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg was a hero of my generation of anti-war activists, bringing us the secret Pentagon Papers when we needed it the most, and helped hasten the end the Vietnam War. (The Foundation accepts tax-deductible donations, if you can help that way.)

“A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know.”  —Judge Murray Gurfein, Pentagon Papers case, June 17, 1971

Any new material received through SecureDrop will be professionally evaluated, corroborated, and then carefully time-released to the public, protecting the sources to the full extent of the law, while arming ordinary citizens with the information they deserve to know about world governments. Lawyer, author, and international columnist Glenn Greenwald was the Guardian journalist who took receipt of Edward Snowden‘s waterfall of government surveillance secrets, and won his own Pulitzer Prize (and George Polk Award) for doing it. (In 2014, Greenwald went on to found First Look Media and its first online publication, The Intercept.)

Too many people have wrongly labeled whistleblowers outright traitors (Chelsea Manning, for now still incarcerated, and Edward Snowden, in temporary exile, and even Greenwald, and just as they once did Daniel Ellsberg), but all of these accusers are misinformed luddites, failing, tragically, to see that there will be no peace in our collective future unless we live in a world where there are no secrets, no necessity for them under any circumstances.

Manning, Snowden, and Greenwald rightly, and now the Guardian news organization, know with certainty that they have made giant steps toward releasing humankind from the enslavement imposed upon us by a consortium of fear-driven, power-drunk oligarchs who occupy themselves, not with the health or well-being of the all people, but willing do absolutely anything and go to any lengths necessary to control anyone they possibly can in order to protect their selfish special interests, whatever they might be.

We have brave hearts in our midsts, again when we need it the most. We need more of it.

Never fear and never stop exposing the truth and disinformation around you, starting at the grassroots upwards, even to SecureDrop yourself. You can do you part, so what’s stopping you?.

For more about the progressive transference from old and coercive systems to new, and completely voluntary associations, check out our Manifesto for the New Age of Sexual Freedom.

Related: Internet Giants Erect Barriers to Spy Agencies 

The FBI in the Palm of Your Hands

With the release of iPhone 5 and its clear success, Apple is making great strides to entrench itself as the most widely used smartphone. What is surprising is that iPhone sales have been strong since release despite the fact that a few weeks prior, it was reported that the FBI may be tracking iPhone users.

According to various news outlets, 12 million iPhone and iPad device identifiers were swiped from an FBI computer by hackers associating themselves with the group Anonymous. Luckily for consumers the hack was meant to expose the tracking that was going on and not to compromise any individual accounts. To further credit this attack, the hackers posted one million unique identification numbers that were verified by a third party.

This begs the question, why is the FBI monitoring and tracking people via their iPhones? On what grounds is this legal? What starts to make things even stranger is the fact that almost a month after this story broke the FBI stated that Android phones, iPhone’s competition, are prone to malware and viruses. Why did the FBI specifically single out Android phones? This statement does give more credibility to the claims made by Anonymous. If the FBI had managed to hack iPhones or make a deal with Apple, it would be in their best interest to get everyone using an iPhone.

This doesn’t mean that people should rid themselves of their iPhones, but it does mean that a critical eye must be placed on the FBI and their actions. Monitoring what people spend their time doing is a step in the wrong direction; a step further from freedom. How can a person be free when their every move is scrutinized? How can someone express themselves when there is the possibility that every word they say, every action the take, can be twisted and used against them? The very technology that is suppose to allow us a new degree of freedom, bring us all closer together, can end up destroying the very foundations of liberty.

One can expect that the reasoning behind this blatant breach of constitutional rights will be to protect the country from terrorists or any other vague evil out there. How much more freedom will be lost to ensure our safety? The FBI has stayed quiet about this hack and the public seems to have grown apathetic. Benjamin Franklin said it best “they who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Anonymous hacks Chinese websites

(También en Español)


News of Note: Anonymous hacks Chinese websites

Messages by the international hacking group Anonymous went up on a number of Chinese government websites on Thursday to protest internet restrictions.

On a Twitter account established in late March, Anonymous China listed the websites it said it had hacked over the last several days. They included government bureaus in several Chinese cities, including in Chengdu, a provincial capital in southwest China.

Some of the sites were still blocked on Thursday, with English-language messages shown on how to circumvent government restrictions. In a message left on one of the hacked Chinese sites, cdcbd.gov.cn, a home page for Chengdu’s business district, the hackers expressed anger with the Chinese government for restrictions placed on the internet.

“Dear Chinese government, you are not infallible, today websites are hacked, tomorrow it will be your vile regime that will fall,” the message read. “So expect us because we do not forgive, never. What you are doing today to your Great People, tomorrow will be inflicted to you,” one of the messages read.

Fighting government censorship by telling the Chinese public how to circumvent their internet firewall, well done Anonymous! It’s worth mentioning that while the article says the hacks were only done in English, that isn’t completely the case. As you can see here, the messages were also displayed in Chinese.

With governments and copyright holders struggling to prolong their grasp on public information, we must continue to fight an endless stream of SOPA-esque (Stop Online Piracy Act) bills. This is just another example of how connectivity and access to information is gradually moving our whole planet towards a more liberated and honest future. Are you ready for a world without barriers?

25 Anonymous Arrested, Infiltrated, and the Fallout

(También en Español)

News of Note: “Interpol: Suspected Anonymous Hackers Arrested

“February 28, 2012

Interpol said Tuesday that 25 suspected members of the loose-knit Anonymous hacker movement have been arrested in a sweep across Europe and South America.

The international police agency said in a statement that the arrests in Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Spain were carried out by national law enforcement officers working under the support of Interpol’s Latin American Working Group of Experts on Information Technology Crime.

The suspects, aged between 17 and 40, are suspected of planning coordinated cyberattacks against institutions including Colombia’s defense ministry and presidential websites, Chile’s Endesa electricity company and national library, as well as other targets.”

While these arrests do not appear directly related to the Stratfor hack last December, their proximity to the recent Wikileaks release is quite advantageous for all entities that oppose Anonymous. Was it law enforcement’s technical prowess that resulted in these Anons getting caught?

Anonymous hackers claim they were infiltrated

“The GREAT majority of those implicated were people inhabiting the servers of anonworld.info, something that disconcerts us,” said the activist “Skao,” who identified herself as a law student.

In the communique released on its blog, Anonymous Iberoamerica said the 25 were snared not through “inteligence work or informatics strategy” but rather through “the use of spies and informants within the movement.”

As participation within Anonymous is accessible to just about anyone, anticipating their next move and even compromising those involved may have been quite easy for an informant.

How does Anonymous respond?

Anonymous Retaliates For Interpol Arrests

Anonymous launched a sustained distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that knocked Interpol’s public-facing website offline for several hours Tuesday.

Members of the hacktivist group Anonymous apparently took credit for the attacks via the AnonOps Twitter channel, which has served as a reliable source of Anonymous information. “Tango Down >> Free International Anons!” read one tweet, while another said, “Tango Down II 404 Interpol, #Anonymous is not a criminal organization.”

While taking down one website for a few hours is nothing compared to locking up 25 people for many years, I’m happy to see Anonymous maintaining its presence and an unstoppable attitude.

Will there be more arrests directly in response to the Stratfor hack? Again, I find myself cheering for the Internet hivemind, eager to see what happens next.

Creative Commons image: Source

Wikileaks Releasing 5+ Million Emails From Intelligence Company Stratfor

(También en Español)

On Monday Wikileaks began releasing the beginning of over 5 million emails taken from the Global Intelligence Company Stratfor. The information is believed to have been given to Wikileaks by Anonymous, who hacked Stratfor’s servers in December 2011.

According to Wikileaks:

On Monday February 27th, 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files, over five million e-mails from the Texas headquartered “global intelligence” company Stratfor. The e-mails date between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal’s Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defence Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor’s web of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering techniques and psychological methods.

What has been revealed so far?

As journalists continue to dredge through the leaked emails and more juicy details surface, we’re going to see Wikileaks, yet again, demonized as anti-American terrorists. People are fine with secretive intelligence companies selling US Intel to the highest bidder, but when Wikileaks reveals it for free, they’re terrorists. With only a few hundred emails revealed everyday, there is much more to come. I’m eager to see what gets revealed and beyond that, if anyone is going to be prosecuted over it. More to come.

Anonymous takes down Government and Recording Industry sites in largest attack ever

(También en Español)

News of Note: Anonymous takes down government, recording industry websites in retaliation for bust

Anonymous says it is in the process of staging its “largest attack ever” — more than 5,000 loosely associated hackers taking down websites belonging to government and recording industry organizations in response to Thursday’s shutdown of the file-sharing site Megaupload.com.

The Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against Megaupload.com on Thursday, arresting its founder — Kim Dotcom, formerly known as Kim Schmitz — in New Zealand and charging him and at least five other company executives with violating privacy laws.

In response, the hacker collective known as Anonymous announced a collaborative attack against government and recording industry websites, successfully taking down the site of the Department of Justice — which coordinated the case against Megaupload — and the Recording Industry Association of America. As of 4 p.m. Pacific time, Justice.gov and RIAA.org were failing to load, along with other stated targets such as UniversalMusic.com.

Anonymous said on a Twitter account it has used regularly — @YourAnonNews — that the assault is “The Largest Attack Ever by Anonymous — 5,635 People Confirmed Using #LOIC to Bring Down Sites!” In other messages, the group said it was aiming to take down more sites throughout the night.

One day after SOPA and PIPA are stifled by the black out, the US Government takes down one of the most well known sites for piracy, Megaupload (a place for uploading and sharing files, it was only inadvertently used for piracy.) So far, we have yet to see the fallout from these hacks. The Feds haven’t had trouble finding and prosecuting “Anonymous” participants in the past and I’m left wondering who will end up benefiting from these hacks. Some websites go down for a bit on Thursday, life goes on; yet thousands of “Anonymous” activists may have walked into a tremendous trap. Who do you think has more carefully calculated plans, the US government, or the decentralized hivemind of the internet? I don’t want to see more kind-hearted activists given steep jail time, nor do I want the government to make examples of these “hackers” in order to destroy the Anonymous movement with fear. Who do you think will come out on top this time? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Creative Commons image: source

Who Are You Calling an Anarchist?

For more on Transhuman Erotic Freedom…

También en español “I heartily accept the motto, ‘That government is best which governs least’; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe– ‘That government is best which governs not at all’; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which we will have.”

—Henry David Thoreau, American Anarchist

Gunpowder Plot Conspirators

Remember, remember the 5th of November…an appropriate date to consider current events in the Occupy movement in relation to traditional concepts of minimalist governance. Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators, though opposed to the reigning government, were not anarchists. They were terrorists, who would have created chaos had they succeeded in blowing up Parliament and killing King James I in 1605. Those who benefit from the status quo encourage public fear of true anarchy by calling it “chaos,” a concept quite opposed to anarchy.

Anarchy is an approach to the organization of society without permanently established titular leadership. Mon-archy is rule by one person. Tetr-archy is rule by a group of four. An-archy is rule by no person. Many political philosophers, acting as water-carriers for depraved elites, have pretended that social chaos will be the final result of anarchic government; however, history shows that anarchy can be highly effective and anything but chaotic. Unfortunately, such successes are never celebrated by the established elites, including those who report and write history, because they disprove the fallacious principles on which command-oriented society is based. Invariably some conspiracy of challenged elites steps in and violates all principles of human decency and constitutional law to suppress such groups, as we see now happening in many Occupy locations.

Guy Fawkes was no anarchist. The purpose of the Gunpowder Plot was to bring the Roman Catholic church back into control of the English monarchy. That would have been a step backwards into rigid and brutally authoritarian control of every element of English society. Guy Fawkes is more akin to today’s false religionists of fundamentalism who today work to make the United States into a mock-christian theocracy. Fawkes was a simple terrorist, bent on creating as much chaos as possible without rational purpose or valued outcome.

How times and popular images have changed. Once a kind of post-Halloween bogeyman to be hanged and burned in effigy on the fifth night after All Hallows’ Eve, “the old guy” gradually became a more popular and sympathetic image in the public mind. Children’s books were written. The Fawkes legend grew in the direction of his being a positive rebel against the ruling elites, and now the Occupy movement uses a modern caricature of his image to represent the 99%.

At the same time the idea of social chaos was conflated in the public mind with social organization based on anarchist principles—the most basic of which is that government is precluded from using violence against its own citizens. Such would surely be a far cry from the massive ongoing, and allegedly Federally facilitated, conspiracy of urban police to terrorize citizens exercizing their right of protest.

Anarchists, not Terrorists

Anarchy is a viable and effective form of government to the extent that citizens freely embrace principles of mutual respect, freedom of expression, and social equality. Not all people are equal in intellect, knowledge, social capacity, and leadership ability. Anarchy does not attempt to suppress the contributions of such people, but integrates them into the larger fabric of society, helping good ideas succeed. But this will not work well in a world where people refuse to work together across class and social lines to address real challenges and refuse to acknowledge a social duty to provide protection to the most vulnerable.

The problem is basically lack of love between people—of mutual trust. When people refuse to love others, but mistrust them or even abuse them for personal gain or for the egotistical satisfaction of a failed self-image, there must be some means of conflict resolution. Conventionally this is done by appeal to a higher authority. Some may appeal to their idea of god; however, those who seek a defined and prompt material or legal remedy will probably appeal to human governmental power. In a functional anarchy, this appeal would come before the local, voluntary, communal “administration” governed by group wisdom. There is no need for oppressive human governmental power in a society founded on love and mutual trust as opposed to greed and mutual fear. Government as it exists today promotes government interference, itself producing litigatable or regulatable conflicts, and creating more job opportunities for those who relish imposing arbitrary groupthink nonsense on their fellow humans.

The ideal state, in which the collective community is dynamically self-governing, does not require rigid administrative, judicial, or legislative compartments. When the collective is required to react it develops any governmental structures needed using methods appropriate to specific situations. Such structures persist only until task is done. They work to find as complete as possible solutions to real problems and shun cowardly incrementalism when larger change is required. They are the antithesis in organization and function of the myriad agencies of traditional human governments, including many of the United States.

A Vision of New Harmony

This vision of a perfected human society is what is actually meant by anarchy. Anarchy has long been viewed as the ideal form of government by those who oppose coercive aspects of social regulation. Although a few anarchist societies have flourished, they have invariably been violently suppressed by all other political groups—capitalist, fascist, catholic, communist, protestant, socialist, christianist, republican, islamist, democratic, imperialist, etc., all of which depend on physical and psychological violence directed against their own constituents to maintain their power and privilege.

There is no component of our society that does not fear the rise of successful anarchy. And this is the cause of the systematic suppression of erotic freedom by elites, for erotic freedom is the key to the final expression and realization of a truly anarchic society.

In our next post, we will explore in depth how sexual freedom is becoming the true foundation of a new social system based on liberty, justice, freedom, and equality for all who will embrace love, live truth, do good, and make beauty.