Barrett Brown: Anonymous and Their Alleged Propagandist

DALLAS — A leader of the computer hackers group known as Anonymous is threatening new attacks on major U.S. corporations and government officials as part of at an escalating “cyberwar” against the citadels of American power.

“It’s a guerrilla cyberwar — that’s  what I call it,” said Barrett Brown, 29,  who calls himself a senior strategist and “propagandist” for Anonymous. He added: “It’s sort of an unconventional, asymmetrical act of warfare that we’ve involved in. And we didn’t necessarily start it. I mean, this fire has been burning.”

A defiant and cocky 29-year-old college dropout, Brown was cavalier about accusations that the group is violating federal laws. He insisted that Anonymous members are only policing corporate and governmental wrongdoing — as its members define it.

Breaking laws, but ‘ethically’
“Our people break laws, just like all people break laws,” he added. “When we break laws, we do it in the service of civil disobedience. We do so ethically. We do it against targets that have asked for it.”

And those targets are apparently only growing in number. Angered over the treatment of Bradley Manning, the Army private who is accused of leaking classified U.S. government documents to WikiLeaks and who is currently being held in solitary confinement at a military brig in Quantico, Va., Brown says the group is planning new computer attacks targeting government officials involved in his case.

The rest HERE

Barrett, really? You are really going to be the next person to take the penis out and put it in the hornets nest as Colbert put it? Boy, you must be one big dumbass. Here is what I think you are about to do.. Wait, no what you already DID to yourself here.

1. You just popped your head up for all federal agencies around the world to say Hi! I am ANONYMOUS! To which they will begin to take aim at said head.
2. Anonymous will in fact just use you to their ends. You are now chaff to the heat seeker that is the US Government.
3. Guarantee that if you do anything with anonymous as a hive minder, you are about to be the poster boy for what not to do with a computer. Expect a warrant to be issued soon to be executed wherever you live.
4. Breaking laws ethically… Hmmm.. I have yet to see anywhere where hacking was considered civil disobedience by the legal system…
5. PSSST you have a phone call from Joe Goebels on the white courtesy phone and he is PISSED!
   

What made you say this? I mean, other than being a giant attention seeker that is? You will go down in the annals of hacker/computer security history along side the likes of Project Viglio.

Duh.

Meanwhile, taking a peek at the anonnews.org site we can see just how many folks there think highly of you… Well.. none really, with -46 comments. Though, this whole thing does bring up some interesting issues that I have been writing about lately. Here is one comment that stuck with me.

moot- CEO, canv.as – 2011-03-09 00:55:54 repost-

It is time to instate a form of puppet government, and also wear more then just the Fawkes mask.

It will soon become very risky to carry out Op’s under the guise of Anon. We need to take it one step further, by decenteralizing and assuming the identities of others. Remember the blame ebaumsworld standard of the past? That shit worked, it caused confusion amongst those not in the know and kept the heat level minimal.

We need to create leaders within that do not really exist outside of word of mouth. Reference their handles often, integrate them into our culture and Op plans. Place them at the top of our imaginary “ranks”. Give the vans targets to aim for, that will simply vanish when the sheet is pulled off from over them.

Instead of Anon carrying out the B. Manning OPs, make it known that it is in fact a rogue group of protesters originating from knowyourmeme.com that are coordinating the raid. The BMI DDoS is being carried out through mass chain PM’s amongst tumblr users, fed up with big brother.

We operate very publicly and therefore are left wide open to LE infiltration, the least we can do is keep them on their toes and tie them up with false leads, while also keeping mainstream media in the dark.

Interesting… So, is this one too;

Sage – 2011-03-09 02:12:12

If the ops were viewed as discreet groups that many anonymous people joined, but that was a split group from Anonymous, and that was emphasised to the media like Chanology, being a scifag breaking group but that being all they do, and that it was remphasised that anonymous is no single website, place or action, it would probably be more effective than blinding the majority of people from our actions, which would only increase the percieved level of illegality with our actions, as well as the publics paranoia, instead of being seen as the end of the world, and a bunch of sociopathic “hackers”, we should be seen as our centuries incarnation of we the people [from an american perspective] as this is probably closer.

Yes we should aim to be more covert within the individual operations, people doing things that are counted illegal need to be untraceable or want to be caught, same with the people organising these groups, but to bring this level of paranoia to the rest of our actions that are in general legal, would probably be counter productive.

Instead of closing the trench coat and heading back to the shadows, we are better off at this point leaving it open and getting some puppetry action going on to keep the crowd laughing with us.

tl;dr being a puppeteer of the penis is better than being called a flasher and taken to jail.

Interesting indeed. The ideas are beginning to swirl and it would seem from implication here, that some may be worried about operations and cells being caught. This would be only natural as I have been trying to point out, that any time you have a group of entities together, there will be de-facto leaders, there will be troops, and there will always be the possibility of making mistakes that will lead to capture. It’s just the nature of the beast.

I think that all involved really have to take that into account. There is always the chance they will be caught.

Looking at the responses however is begging a question and perhaps a little thought project. What is the median age of the anonymous crowd?

Ponder ponder….

Things are about to get interesting.

K.