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Julian Assange weighs in as Anonymous lashes out at leadership within U.S. Department of Justice

Many anons did not intend to attack the Department of Justice, but did anyway.

Anonymous has long been “infiltrated” by the Department of Homeland Security, whose job it is to instigate irrational, retaliatory actions within the Anonymous collective; however, the cyberwar took a giant leap forward Friday during #OPMegaUpload when Anonymous attacked the Department of Justice website, turning on what many believe to be its own leadership. Also amid the attacks are Universal Music, who once encouraged the very same file sharing tactics they now wish to charge people with using.

The root of Friday night’s story is the person(s) in control of the LOIC botnet effectively betrayed all politically active anons involved in deliberations and general IRC channels, handing their identities directly over to the federal government. In a long campaign against online anonymity, attacking the Department of Justice website “as a means of protest” is a strategic political move (on behalf of the United States Government) which appears on the surface to protest SOPA while in fact falling in line with larger plan to constrict freedom of the Internet on the whole.

When Rolling Stone magazine questioned Julian Assange about Anonymous, possibly his largest group of supporters, he said,We were involved with Anonymous from 2008. They were providing us with material related to our investigations into abuses by the Church of Scientology. It was a young pranksterish Internet culture, not something at all to be taken seriously.”

How a conspiracy theory became reality

Among anons, the rationale is as follows: (1) a major part of the collective implicates you in a LOIC attack on the DoJ website using malicious software inadvertently downloaded by a relatively large group of anons who were, unfortunately, tricked into visiting an unsafe web address address, automatically linking them into the botnet. (2) The botnet strikes, leaving your IP address on the long list of attackers involved, which, (3) signals your involvement with anonymous collectives to the authorities who simply go down the list subpoenaing the corresponding ISPs for later prosecution “at-will.”

In almost all previous cases – the LOIC attacks on PayPal and Mastercard, for example – your identity was handed over for prosecution to authorities if you were in the top 1,000 participants of the DDoS attack on their website, since government resources are not unlimited. But in this case, the identities of anons were handed directly to the government, logged by government machines for safekeeping and a few thousand anons’ names just got added to an already long list of domestic surveillance subjects. Worse yet, these are innocent bystanders who did not volunteer to participate in a DDoS attack, but were implemented anyway.

You hear that? Shh. They’re listening in now. On you, this time.

Julian Assange is waiting for the freedom to operate which may never come back in his lifetime, because “In relation to the United States, we’ll have to wait for the revolution.” Inside Anonymous, an all-too familiar feeling is sinking in as hundreds, if not thousands, of people sit at home waiting to be arrested. DDoS attacks, while somewhat useful for sending a message, are becoming widely recognized as the blunted tool of their own eventual demise.

Advice from Assange

“I have a lot of sympathy for journalists who are trying to protect their sources. [ Remaining anonymous is ] very hard now. Unless you’re an electronic-surveillance expert or you have frequent contact with one, you must stay off the Net and mobile phones. You really have to just use the old techniques, paper and whispering in people’s ears. Leave your mobile phones behind. Don’t turn them off, but tell your source to leave electronic devices in their offices. We are now in a situation where countries are recording billions of hours of conversations, and proudly proclaiming that you don’t have to select which telephone call you’re intercepting, because you intercept every telephone call.”

Julian Assange

16 replies on “Julian Assange weighs in as Anonymous lashes out at leadership within U.S. Department of Justice”

Thats bullshit, anon didnt trick anyone because everyone has the ability to make there own choices. If a person chose to follow the anon’s ddos attack then that was the choice they made and vice versa… I support was they are doing and will continue to support the acts of anonymous…

Ordinarily I agree with you but that is not relevant, really, to the instance referred to by my article, in which people’s PCs were incorporated into the LOIC attacks WITHOUT their consent, by way of a malicious website anonymous IRC users directed them to visit.

Just sayin’

It is always a small minority that leads the path towards better future and it has to drag the unwilling along its way. As those latter later are grateful to the former for their courage actions. And that’s what happened in our countries in the middle-east, they now thanks us and make profit out of the revolutions (they have always formerly opposed).

Now looking at this from another point of view, the govt. having known there lists comprised of a LOT of False-Positive identities but cannot pinpoint them (i.e. innocent attackers), then no one should be prosecuted (that would be illegal) as you never know for sure, merely consider this a tactic from anon to preserve their anonymity.

It works, but it gives the government an excuse to survey the general population. Implicating people against their will is no more respectable when you do it than when the government violates their rights on the government’s behalf. On top of that, I’m willing to bet your vision of a better tomorrow is nothing similar to that of the people whose computers you hijacked. I can say that with confidence because there are very few who would say, “Oh yeah, run malicious scripts that cause my computer to commit crimes without me knowing about it. Please be sure that when you commit crimes using my identity you are attacking the federal government!”

What a great future that would be. If only we could just WRAP OUR MINDS AROUND IT BRO

As a global collective, and subsequent aggregative planning and execution, anon normally doesn’t conduct a successful action unless it concurs with general ethics of its global community members.

Frank Mason, you are also part of anonymous.
You don’t seem to understand what is anonymous.

__Hello Citizens of the world, we are Anonymous.‬
__‪”When injustice becomes law, rebellion becomes duty.” Thomas __Jefferson.‬
__
__Above ALL. Do your own research, and PLEASE keep yourselves __informed.
__*CENSORED*
__*CENSORED*

It ain’t the government’s problem. It’s the fuckin politicians. What’s hard to understand about that? You keep blaming the government, why shouldn’t government fuck you up? You hate government, so government is gonna hate you right back. It ain’t the government. It’s the POLITICIANS. It’s the people. Just like religion. It ain’t the religion that’s the problem. It’s the fuckin douche bags who want to run religion and use it to exploit other people. Don’t be afraid of government. Be afraid of people like Mitt Romney and all the other capitalist conservative cocksuckers who make millions of dollars by buying up everything, copyrighting everything, patenting everything. It’s the rich assholes who run the government.

Remember government could be the same goddamn entity that saves you when the corporations come to shut you the fuck down.

DOWN WITH CORP.

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