If this isn't a hoax (and it smells like one), then I expect some folks to learn an interesting lesson.
I'm not sure if these folks understand the definition of the word 'sedition' or not but they should at least look up the legal consequences of being convicted of treason. It is one thing to joke about wishing harm to a government, but once you step outside the established process for instituting change legally in the government to one where you seek to force change you will find that the 'rules of engagement' with respect to the Government's response have changed in favor of the Government.
Many of those new rules have specific exemptions carved out so that the folks in charge no longer are bound by protecting your 'rights' as specified by the Constitution.
From the form [1] the Justice department fills out with respect to people it is trying for treason, reasons to ask for the death penalty include:
Grave risk to national security -- In the commission of the offense, the defendant knowingly created a grave risk of substantial danger to national security.
And we have the Pentagon recently saying that by policy a 'cyber attack' will be considered an act of war.
Grave risk of death -- In the commission of the offense, the defendant knowingly created a grave risk of death to another person.
And since the military depends on its network systems to prosecute warfare they will argue an attack on these systems puts warfighters (their word for soldiers) into grave risk of death.
There are even this 'bonus' modifiers for treason like:
Obstruction of justice. The victim was killed in an effort by the defendant to obstruct justice, tamper with a witness or juror, or in retaliation for cooperating with authorities.
Where they will argue that if some punks DDoS DoD contractor's computers in retaliation, it might result in disrupting the computers that fly the predators over a battlefield for example.
However, I suspect it's a hoax. Nobody would be so stupid as to set them selves up for the kind of response this would get if it was for 'real.'
I'm not sure about this, but is it possible for something attributed to Anonymous to be a "hoax"?
Since I thought Anonymous supposed to represent whoever calls themselves Anonymous, I didn't think there was a way for someone to "fake" that: by publishing this as Anonymous, they now are Anonymous?
One of these days I'm gonna start sending out Anonymous declarations of war on entirely random people, objects and concepts, and see how much media time I can get and/or how many followers I can acquire.
Nope, nowadays everything Anonymous has to originate from AnonOps and the rest of the whiteknights who've been huddling around them since Chanology. If you're not in with the <100 LOIC crew, you're not true kvlt^H^H^H^H^HAnonymous.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
I have always found those words inspiring. They guy who wrote them, Thomas Jefferson, made sure that the government institutions that he and the other founders created to replace the English law would not require the folks who felt oppressed to resort to violence.
If you look at the US Constitution as an act of social programming you may, like me, discover a deep respect for the programmers.
A huge part of the Govt's tactics around this (for now at least) seem to be based around opinion control and PsyOps type stuff. There's obviously a burgeoning worldwide movement of people hoping to remove tribalistic boundaries (nation, religion, etc) and at the same time flatten the castelike hierarchy that Power has stratified itself into.
To openly attack Anonymous is to claim openly that Anonymous is a worthy adversary, which is maybe the first step in making it so, because people who are adversarial to the entrenched structures the politically leaning Anonymi (can i do that?) go after will flock to it as a worldwide rallying point for organizing a resistance if it is acknowledged as such. My feeling is direct government pressure will make it gain momentum.
I definitely think eventually the fist will come down one way or another though. It isn't just a government that's coming under scrutiny but the whole networked power structure that shadily controls our world. The most stupid, dictatorial luddite leaders were the ones to be subsumed by this force first and we see how each dictator learned from the last and upped the violence against the people. I can't even imagine if the governments of China and the US see this as becoming a real threat and act decisively against it.
I'm pretty sure we're entering the very beginning of a(nother) period of great upheaval, but for now I don't think it's in the Govt's best interest to actively pursue Anonymous, or at least it's not in their best interest to make a big deal of it if they do.
I'm not sure I understand what it would mean for this to be "a hoax". Someone made and released it, right? I thought the point of Anonymous is that it is not a specific organization or group. Whoever made this video could claim to speak for Anonymous as much as the guys that hacked HB Gary, right?
Is it widely known/suspected that the various hacks and messages that have been attributed to Anonymous are from the same group of people?
EDIT: Ha. Great minds think alike. I see Xuzz was posting precisely the same idea as I was typing this.
There are less than 20 people active in the hacking escapades that get attributed to Anonymous. There are less than 100 people who actively engage in DDoS and the few fools who join in straight from home have mostly been arrested.
The fairy-dream of an anonymous active online collective with no discernible membership is simply a joke. The lengths AnonOps goes to keep up the image is pretty hilarious. Crafting figures like Kayla, a cyberpunk teen hacker chic (actually Xyrix, who's been forced to remake himself after getting owned by zf0 in 2008[1]. they're lucky zf0 were merciful and did not dox them). Creating new group names with new narratives like Lulzsec with theme songs and such.
Let me save the typing for those who will argue "but n0ez, Anonymous is Legion and every1!!11!". Anonymous was everyone. Now the name has been hijacked by a small group that uses tools online from places like Reddit to cheer them on but not actually do anything. Hijacked similar to the way the Tea Party was hijacked by the current crop that show up Tea Party rallies.
"And we have the Pentagon recently saying that by policy a 'cyber attack' will be considered an act of war."
I've been wondering about the insanity of this declaration. Surely the Pentagon hasn't the slightest intention of picking a meat war with China over industrial espionage.
Maybe they had Wikileaks and Anonymous in mind. That would make Go To Jail, Do Not Pass Go much more straightforward, and scary.
Google 'CND Response Action' or 'CND-RA'.
'cyber attack' also has a specific meaning, and the Law of War dictates a like for like retaliation.
The Pentagon can't nuke somebody for a cyber attack that causes some emails to be leaked, or some secrets to be stolen.
They can use physical response force in the event that a cyber attack can/will cause actual physical harm, such as disabling a power grid, etc. There is actually a very heated debate about what specifics actions will evoke a physical retaliation to a 'cyber' attack.
If the US or Israel is responsible for Stuxnet, would that be considered an act of war towards Iran? I'm sadly not well-read in either stuxnet or the requirements for it to be considered a cyber-attack.
Not technically - international law today "allows only three situations as legal cause to go to war: out of self-defense, defense of an ally under a mutual defense pact, or sanctioned by the UN" [1].
Iranians may construe stuxnet as an attack that they are hoping to prevent from reoccuring, and thus use the self-defense justification, but 'casus belli' must be the absolute last resort of a nation. Assuming they follow international law that is.
Another important aspect to remember is that retaliation and the use of force does not mean 'war' in and of itself.
I don't think anyone involved (on the Gov't side) would plan things that poorly. Once the actions of any individual or group of individuals become a threat to the national security of the US they become 'enemy combatants' by the current definition and can (and have) been simply picked up and sent 'elsewhere.'
So if you noticed that some guy you used to chat with on IRC isn't around any more what's it to you? How do you know they are dead? You don't. The tribunals for folks in Guantanamo have been classified. Its not about publicity for them, its about eliminating threats to this nation both foreign and domestic.
Want to create a constitional amendment ala the first which says "Congress shall make no law to abridge the freedom of the people to use the Internet." ? You can be as noisy and active as you want, there is actually a path there for making it happen.
But clandestinely attempt to 'punish' the Government for what you consider to be abuse of its power over what we know of as the Internet, to the extent that you disrupt its operation, and you might as well just walk into the Congressional Rotunda with a couple of M16's and open fire.
In both cases the government has reserved the right to simply shoot you and move on, and frankly there probably won't be a lot of outcry one way or the other, teenager or not.
It is pretty clear that nothing in the Constitution matters to these people. Even when laws are stretched to an absurd degree to accommodate them, they still ignore and break these laws with impunity.
You can't beat corrupt governments inside their own institutions. In our system, the legislative branch is not actually a tool of democratic participation, it is a tool of placation. It has no effective control over the security apparatus. It's Democracy Theater.
It's a sad fact that we won't get our freedom unless we fight for it. No government gives up its power willingly. We see the terror and bloodshed of the Arab Spring and recoil, but that's what it takes to bring real change. Should Syrian protesters stay home because they may be shot or tortured? It depends on your perspective, but telling them to stay home because the government has machine guns and tanks is completely missing the point. Ignoring the law and going to the street is the only way they can win, even if it comes at a tremendous cost.
We used to sanction treating people as property. We don't now.
We used to sanction discrimination. We don't now.
We used to draft people into the military. We don't now.
It did come to violence once in our history, and I like to believe we learned from that, we've not had another civil war since.
We voted a bunch of folks who were trouncing on the Constitution out of office. The process takes time, the time is built into the system to prevent wild oscillations.
At least in the US, the government's "power" springs very directly from the people, its not up to the Government to 'give it up' or not.
People who cannot convince the electorate that their cause is just will seek to take power by deception, do not be fooled.
"We used to sanction treating people as property. We don't now.
We used to sanction discrimination. We don't now."
You aren't much of a 'student of history' if you think either of these was achieved by people following the rules. Countless people broke laws and were killed and jailed for those rights.
"We used to draft people into the military. We don't now."
The draft is still legal, so not sure what your point is here. Should we be celebrating that our benevolent leaders haven't deemed it necessary to use us as cannon fodder in the last few decades, though they reserve the right to?
"At least in the US, the government's "power" springs very directly from the people, its not up to the Government to 'give it up' or not."
If power 'sprang up from the people' in America, we would not have the patriot act or wars in several countries or foreign aid to despotic regimes or Wall Street bailouts or the war on drugs or TSA gate rape at airports or any number of extremely unpopular policies. America is an oligarchy, not a democracy. Power only springs up from the people to the extent that the people are willing to fight and die and go to jail for their rights, just like the subjects of any other corrupt regime.
We used to sanction treating people as property.
We don't now.
It took a hell of a lot of violence to make that happen.
We used to sanction discrimination. We don't now.
The water cannon, FBI raids, Klan intimidation, police dogs, and assassinations of civil rights leaders don't count as violence?
We used to draft people into the military. We don't now.
We stopped after thousands of disaffected youths much like the ones you're deriding right now stood up, burned their draft cards, and took a stand.
We voted a bunch of folks who were trouncing on the
Constitution out of office. The process takes time, the
time is built into the system to prevent wild
oscillations.
We voted a bunch of folks who were trouncing the Constitution out of office and replaced them with people who've continued treating the founding document of the United States of America as toilet paper. Name one way that Obama's policies have differed from Bush in the field of civil liberties or due process. In every case, from the closing of Guantanamo to the continuation of warrantless wiretaps and national security letters, the incoming Obama administration dovetailed perfectly with the outgoing Bush administration. Obama has talked a good game, but has done absolutely nothing, even when opportunities to stand up for citizens' rights were presented to him on a silver platter.
At least in the US, the government's "power" springs very
directly from the people, its not up to the Government to
'give it up' or not.
When the government can manipulate its power base as easily as our government is doing right now, the check of the people's will just another loophole to be exploited.
All of those "We used to sanction…" bullet points are not the government giving up its power. If anything, the government is now asserting more power to block things that used to be permitted. Similarly, if a collector stops sanctioning late payments and takes a baseball bat to delinquent debtors, nobody would say, "Wow, just look at how much he's given up his power over these people." (I'm not saying the laws in question are bad, but they aren't examples of the government giving up power.)
Abolishing the draft actually is an example of the government giving up power — or would be, if it had actually happened. Which it hasn't. All American men are required by law to sign up for Selective Service (i.e. the draft). The reason people aren't being actively drafted is because those in charge believe a draft at this time would be more trouble than it is worth, not because the government has relinquished the power.
What on earth are you talking about? Every one of those cases was changed through violence. Stop treating people as property? The civil war. No more discrimination? You think that was all done by speeches? What was MLK Jr. talking about when he mentioned "the blast heard 'round the world"?
Powerful people never give up power without violence or obvious threat of violence. You're seeing things how you wish they were.
Actually, I'm not sure how they could be convicted of treason in the US if they didn't cooperate.
As I recall, the formula went no one can be convicted of treason save "on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."
True. If a 'member' of Anonymous was convicted and sentenced to death for vandalizing a website, I can see a lot of public outcry. Especially if it is a teenager.
He wouldn't be sentenced to anything in an open court. He'd be shipped off to Guantanamo (or wherever the current CIA prisons are), waterboarded until he confessed to collaborating with Al Qaeda, tried in a secret military tribunal, then sentenced to either death or life imprisonment in closed court. At the end of the process the Executive Branch would be lauded for successfully capturing and prosecuting a dangerous terrorist, rather than being excoriated for defacating all over our civil liberties.
I can't believe the Government is actually trying to defend HBGary after all that has been revealed about them. Are they doing it because they hired them to do all that? I suppose it wouldn't be much different than how they reacted in the Wikileaks case then. They'd do anything to protect themselves regardless of how ethical or unethical it is.
EDIT: I also wonder if the way our democracy currently works has become obsolete. We vote for some people every 4 years and then they can basically do whatever they want, with the only repercussion being that their actions might be revealed to the press, and in some cases some scandals will be created, though rarely. If they're unlucky the people will vote for the other party on the next election. But does that truly matter if basically the parties are pretty much one and the same?
I think we'll eventually need a "Liquid Democracy" (perhaps sooner than expected). A democracy where decisions can be influenced by the people a lot more often than they are now, and the people can have a much more immediate impact on a politician's career or a Government if they screw up.
The problem really is procurement. If there's any thing I wish this community would understand, it's that.
See -- big government contractors have things locked up. They make campaign contributions to members of congress who create regulations that make it so that they're the only ones who can compete in an open competition. At the same time, Government has effectively replaced a substantial portion of its operational employees with contractors. I've met tech teams, for instance, for all major agencies, and have yet to meet an actual programmer that works for the government, with the exception of some but very few, in the defense community. Heck, even the armed guards who control access to our federal buildings are contractors rather than civil servants.
A lot of our issues revolve around procurement. Why did whitehouse.gov cost 12 Million dollars when BarackObama cost $1.2? Procurement. Recovery.gov? 18Million. Why? Only a handful giant companies were allowed to bid.
Why isn't congress talking about procurement reform when they're all about budget cuts?
It's a messed up system that makes it so that government has to spend $93 Million Dollars a year on SharePoint when, for let's say 10% of those cases, they could be spending $200/mo on BaseCamp.
The present whitehouse.gov contract was signed in 2008, on November 4th. Recovery.gov went on in 2009. A new whitehouse.gov will likely get purchased in 2012 when the 2008 contract expires. It will likely cost more than 12 million.
However one of the challenges here is that the information that is available to someone 'in' the office and someone 'seeking' the office is often very different. As an exemplar Obama promised to 'shut down Guantanamo' but once in office he was no doubt made aware of what that would entail and perhaps agreements that were already in place with other countries with respect to people being held there which made 'keeping' his promise impossible. (or at least keeping it would do more harm than not keeping it)
There is really only one solution, and most people give up on it before trying, that is an informed electorate. A good hacktivist system for informing the electorate would be to distill the gigabytes of data that is available in the public record for easy consumption.
For example create a database of every single non-classified vote in congress and the senate, for each representative maintain how they voted and links to the bills as presented. Cross connect to every admendment they have offered or voted on, every committee vote they have participated in. Every person who has ever given them or their campaign money, every organization that has ever created an advertisement for them and where they got their money. Make location based connections between visitors and their representatives.
There are lots and lots of databases which are now loosely connected and hard to search and manipulate. There is a UX problem as well since most of the data bases are weird or hard to talk to.
Imagine if you could go to this website, enter your zip code, and get a summary of everything your representative or senator or county supervisor or mayor or school district board member has been involved in since they were elected. You could pull out a document, and pick out the top three, five, ten or twenty questions you would need to know answers to in order to decide if you felt they were 'good' at their job. If you wanted to run against them you would have a good start at understanding their positions and you could go out and talk to the voters and ask if they agreed or disagreed with that.
You don't need 'term limits' you don't need 'manifestos' you just need people to vote and to care about what their vote means. Then you will get the government you deserve (and some of us will still want to relocate to the lunar base when it opens but that is a different rant)
A system like this of sorts is already in place in the UK at theyworkforyou.com. Each MP has a page like this http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/edward_balls/morley_and_out... - which shows their voting record, most recent appearances in public, donors, committees and so on.
->However one of the challenges here is that the information that is available to someone 'in' the office and someone 'seeking' the office is often very different
I haven't read the wikipedia entry yet, but thinking about that, if they don't have sufficient information while seeking the office, then they should only promise what they know can achieve. It would make things easier and more transparent, in my opinion.
You're right. But I would rather know what it is a candidate knows what he can accomplish plus the things he wants to. I could vote knowing that some things will get fixed (from my POV, of course) and some might get fixed.
Oh god no! Politicians get elected by pandering, but once they get elected they can be held responsible for the consequences of their actions. There are a lots of policies that make good sound bites but which would be horrible as actual policies. Better to try to raise the quality of the people we vote for.
What happens in the current situation (i.e. divided government)? The "people" have elected an executive branch that promises to do one thing and a legislative that promises to do exactly the opposite.
That's not to say I totally disagree with the concept. I just think it would be more applicable to other forms of government, such as parliamentary democracies. In those, the party in power gets a much more control over the government, and there are fewer rights reserved for the minority party. In such a situation, I can envision a scenario where campaign promises could be made legally binding.
This is bad argument. What if neither candidate is remotely fit for your vote? What if due to a very ancient but rather simple system, third party candidates don't stand a chance? What if it would be far more effective to lobby than to vote if you want change?
I could just as easily argue that voting legitimizes a broken system in need of radical reform.
I don't know how it works in the USA, but in France, you can vote "blank". This is what you do when no candidate fits your view. It's better than abstention because it still counts in the stats (and might prevent a candidate from gaining absolute majority)
Actually, in France, in most elections if you vote 'blank' (leaving the envelopp empty in the ballot), it will be considered the same as abstention (not showing up at all for the vote). There is a recurring debate about whether the two things should be counted differently (and if so - how). This is the kind of 'recurring debates' that we French people love - at least when discussing that we're not talking about serious issues :P
1) The neither candidate is remotely fit for your vote argument is valid but should be only be used on a rare instance. For example, in the last presidential election, the 2 final candidates may have not been perfect but it's hard to claim they were both not fit to be presidents, especially given they were both chosen among many others during the primaries, which brings me to my second point.
2) At least here in the US, there are the primaries. Usually the 2 candidates are the products of early voting. If you don't vote, they don't have to appeal to you. If you vote, they have to appeal to you. Over time, the political "market" steers towards those who vote. "People get the government they deserve" - Alexis de Toqueville
A friend gave me a decent example/analogy to illustrate my point:
Let's say you're on the Supreme Court and a case is brought before you that is very hairy and frankly, you don't think a clear guilty or not guilty judgement would be right since there is so much gray area to it so you decide, you're not going to give a verdict. You're one of 9 justices and 3 others decide to do exactly what you're doing: absence from providing their vote on guilty or not guilty.
Do you really think that the 4 justices who didn't cast their verdict didn't affect the results?
"I don’t vote. On Election Day, I stay home. I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. Now, some people like to twist that around. They say, “If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain”, but where’s the logic in that? If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and they get into office and screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You voted them in. You caused the problem. You have no right to complain.
I, on the other hand, who did not vote — who did not even leave the house on Election Day — am in no way responsible for that these politicians have done and have every right to complain about the mess that you created."
I know what you mean, but what if you hate both (all) choices? I really think people should have a "I don't want any of the above" option. At least that way they and everyone else will be able to see how many people are not happy about the current leading parties, or about what the parties are currently trying to do.
There were 4 third-party tickets in 2008 which were on the ballot in enough states to theoretically win the presidency, and about a dozen more that appeared on the ballot in at least a few states. If you really don't like any of those either, perhaps you should get involved in helping a candidate you do support get on the ballot in your state.
There are plenty of other ways to become involved and have an influence, however small. Not liking the choices is not a good excuse for not participating.
One is the encumbant, vote against that one.
One is the opponent, vote for that one.
Here's the deal, politicians that aren't in office have no power, no fun, and no reason to live. So they desparately seek "being in office." (often times by making silly promises but that is another comment)
Now if you have a choice between a giant douche (GD) and a turd sandwich (TS) and you always vote against the incumbent. Then one of them (and often both of them) will start changing their behavior so that if they get into office they would stay there. You have the power to modify their behavior, use it.
Many elections are won by a difference of less than 10%. So if the 10% of the electorate can choose to play this game (is there 1 in 10 intelligent people in your district?) they will create a better government for everyone.
They use a simple rule:
1) Person in office is doing a 'good' job? Vote for him
2) Person in office is doing a 'bad' job? Vote against him
It doesn't matter who is running against them or their qualifications. Because, like evolution, this system has its own fitness function (the 10% group think they are doing a 'good' job) which anyone running will quickly come to realize determines if they stay in office.
You can even start a campaign "I'm one of the 10% making a better government for you." And when you talk to your elected officials, and candidates for office, let them know the criteria you are using to determine 'good' and what it will take to stay in office.
The only way to defeat this system is with outright vote fraud which, as intelligent people, you should be able to help the election commission detect. No amount of special interests, no amount of campaign money, no amount of lying to the stupid people will work.
So use this system and always vote. It always matters.
The myth that the system works and that votes "always" (so much so that it deserves emphasis!) count is perpetuated by the people it is said to control. It doesn't matter if one candidate stays in office or if he is replaced by his twin brother, the system as a whole remains homogeneous and constant.
Give me a vote of no confidence and then I will vote. Otherwise the only thing your vote means is that you have faith in the system. Exactly what they want.
Many elections are won by a difference of less than 10%.
So if the 10% of the electorate can choose to play this
game (is there 1 in 10 intelligent people in your
district?) they will create a better government for
everyone.
It depends on the type of elections and the type of government. Yes, if you have a parliamentary government with proportional representation, this could work. However, if you relax either of those two constraints, the theory falls apart. For example, what if your country uses first-past-the-post voting? Now, its not 10% of voters deciding, but 10% of the districts. In order to influence the elect, you have first live in a "swing district". Given the level of gerrymandering here in the US, the chances of you living in such a district are very small indeed.
For example, lets take Minnesota's 6th District. Even an absolute loon like Bachmann can get elected there because the district is so heavily weighted towards Republicans, the Republican primary serves as a stand-in for the general election.
I'd like to see spoiled ballots counted in elections. That way those that want to vote - but don't believe in their candidates - could be heard in some fashion.
We do this in Australia. The Electoral Commission and its state-level equivalents publish "Informal votes" as part of the results. They are counted as part of the total turnout, but obviously do not go to a particular candidate.
In practice many Australians use these to lodge none-of-the-above votes.
Everyone should vote and participate. It's our nation's low political participation that allows politicians to be so unaccountable. If more people were politically active, involved, and educating themselves, we'd have much better politicians and laws. I blame our education system for not teaching people how important voting is.
I think the problems you cite are made much worse by our weak political participation. When people participate, they're forced to be somewhat aware of what's going on. By not participating they allow themselves to disconnect, which let's politicians get away with more and more.
The root cause is education, if people were more educated they'd feel more empowered and more informed and be more likely to participate--with better results. I think the two party system allows people to be uninformed and just vote on a reflect.
Or maybe it's politicians' tendency toward accountability to the highest bidders' interests instead of constituents' that leads to low participation and feelings of disenfranchisement?
Christ, I remember reading that when I was really young, and getting told off for it. I think my dad must've just read the first few lines and freaked out. Thanks for the flashbulb memory there.
I'm tired of corruption... no, I'm sick to the back teeth of it, and I'm angry.
I wish Anonymous every success because if it were left to me, If I were the one to choose what sort of justice was to be portioned out to the people abusing the privileges we the public bestow on them, it would look an awful lot like a stick with a nail in it.
They should be thankful they're going up against Anonymous, because it's understudy looks a lot more violent.
You would've thought they could've pirated a better voice synth.
TBH their video editing and their propagandizing are both weak when compared to the awesomeness of the Telecomix Crypto Munitions Bureau: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UNe6U9iFXI
In that video they specifically call out Iran, China and France. "States will fall, undermined by cipherspace... the laws of mathematics always prevail... the oppressive laws will be destroyed..." etc etc. Jokers. This one is fun too, and a bit more specific: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1e_FYy1qMc
And they're nice people as well, who actually know what they're doing. Go and hit up their IRC.
Unfortunately, the military and NATO play a crucial role in protecting the freedoms Anonymous waxes poetic about them usurping.
Really? No seriously, really? Is the USSR still a threat to democracy? Or do you consider the handful of terrorist a serious threat to the very nature of our democratic society?
Frankly, I don't think the terrorists have a snowball's chance in hell against us. They may occasionally launch a successful attack, but so what? Did each bombing of London bring the IRA closer defeating the British? Nope! Terrorists can't win, they can only terrorize.
I think our willingness to be terrorized, and curb our freedoms in the name of safety, is the real threat to democracy.
Right at this very moment, and rather atypically, the military and NATO are playing a crucial role in fighting for Libyan democracy.
This would be great if they weren't simultaneously providing Bahrain with tacit approval of the incredibly brutal and bloody crushing of their democratic movement.
The world's a complicated place these days and the US military and NATO have not had a real enemy since the USSR collapsed.
>Did each bombing of London bring the IRA closer defeating the British?
The IRA's goal was never to "defeat the British", it was to force them out of Northern Ireland and unite the island of Ireland in one nation. After the Good Friday Agreement, the British withdrew troops, gave up many governing powers in Northern Ireland, and laid the constitutional framework for a potential future referendum to unite Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in a single nation. In short, the PIRA got most of what they wanted. The Good Friday Agreement was an (largely successful) attempt by both sides to end The Troubles, so to claim that the PIRA was unsuccessful is a bit disingenuous.
You should also note that if the majority of people in Northern Ireland wanted to be part of the Republic they would actually vote that way at any of the relevant elections.
Having said that, the minority community in NI had been treated pretty awfully over the years so I think the current situation is a pretty decent compromise.
The IRA bombings in London were 100% successful in the sense that those who planned it are now sharing political power in Stormount. Something unthinkable a mere 20 years ago. Terrible analogy.
Much with the workers' unions, once the ultimate goal has been accomplished these groups tend to keep finding ways (however strained) to justify their continued existence rather than just disbanding.
Last time I checked, the AT&T long-lines in the Bay Area are guarded by the US military.
My point is that we need the people Anonymous is declaring as their enemy, and waging "cyber-war" against them isn't going to do anything to prevent situations like the HB Gary/Chamber of Commerce fiasco.
You can't champion Anonymous for the same tactics you condemn HB Gary for...
I think you miss the entire problem and have bought into the propaganga of world governments. The threat is the individual against the systems of government control, power and those who leach off their positions of power.
You, the consumer, are the asset of the corporations - both as an employee of them (where you productivity is measured and your demands for opportunity is resisted) and as a consumer of their goods.
The governments are in a state of transition, where forever the goods which the economic system is based on were almost all physical - the next 1000 years will have most all value in data. The physical is sunsetting.
There is no threat to you, the citizen, that governments are concerned with - there is threat to which faction hopds the most economic power in the world.
Countries dont matter - they are consolidating down to 5 economic centers - ultimately all reporting to one central system of financial regulation.
The wars are all about which faction will control. It will be china, russia and a split middle-east against the us, EU and japan.
The plays in iraq, afganistan and iran are because the US cant depend on the house of saud.
That's not NATO and the Army, that's DHS/ICE. It is entirely possible for portions of the "government" (that mythical monolithic entity) to protect the internet while other portions attempt to destroy it.
Anonymous is composed to various factions, many of which are probably at cross purposes of each other. I can't see them putting as much enthusiasm at challenging NATO as they did attacking Westboro or even Libya; the risks and difficulty are probably exponentially higher.
That said, LulzSec is attacking the FBI now, so I suppose for all of their hacktivism, these anarchists aren't known for their reason.
The original report was not from NATO, it was from the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. It's basically a place where lawmakers from NATO countries can go pontificate and bloviate over things. If I recall correctly, it's not a consensus body and it makes no decisions for the alliance. It doesn't even have a formal tie to the North Atlantic Council.
It's not the North Atlantic Council, it's not the Military Committee, it's not even the Civil Communications Planning Committee. If the suggested report were from one of those committees, then I'd be just as concerned as Anonymous.
I'm all for their movement, but that signature is like...pathethic. Feels very immature, like they had to base the movement on a statement from a Hollywood movie (...that was lame too). I hope they can focus on cause instead of appearing as products of Hollywood.
It's ironic and a great pity that an "organisation" which demands transparency and accountability is completely lacking in both. The most respected revolutionaries walk the walk and lead from the front.
The video and the text are not fully the same content. I do not understand why someone would make it look like they typed up the voice over but changed the words.
Cyberattacks have been defined as an act of war.
Are the cyber-fat-pizza-eating-slobs who populate Anonymous prepared for the results of declaring war against sovereign states ?
ITT: more over-eager moralfags pumping out more MS Sam voiced vids to NATO draft paper. Slactivists everywhere rejoice and begin rehashing usual pedantic arguments.
I'm not sure if these folks understand the definition of the word 'sedition' or not but they should at least look up the legal consequences of being convicted of treason. It is one thing to joke about wishing harm to a government, but once you step outside the established process for instituting change legally in the government to one where you seek to force change you will find that the 'rules of engagement' with respect to the Government's response have changed in favor of the Government.
Many of those new rules have specific exemptions carved out so that the folks in charge no longer are bound by protecting your 'rights' as specified by the Constitution.
From the form [1] the Justice department fills out with respect to people it is trying for treason, reasons to ask for the death penalty include:
Grave risk to national security -- In the commission of the offense, the defendant knowingly created a grave risk of substantial danger to national security.
And we have the Pentagon recently saying that by policy a 'cyber attack' will be considered an act of war.
Grave risk of death -- In the commission of the offense, the defendant knowingly created a grave risk of death to another person.
And since the military depends on its network systems to prosecute warfare they will argue an attack on these systems puts warfighters (their word for soldiers) into grave risk of death.
There are even this 'bonus' modifiers for treason like:
Obstruction of justice. The victim was killed in an effort by the defendant to obstruct justice, tamper with a witness or juror, or in retaliation for cooperating with authorities.
Where they will argue that if some punks DDoS DoD contractor's computers in retaliation, it might result in disrupting the computers that fly the predators over a battlefield for example.
However, I suspect it's a hoax. Nobody would be so stupid as to set them selves up for the kind of response this would get if it was for 'real.'
[1] http://www.justice.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/tit...