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Aaron Swartz was Murdered

Aaron Swartz killed himself after the sudden realization he was a "macfag."
Murderers of Aaron Swartz tried to disguise his death as a suicide.

NEW YORK — After reports of Aaron Swartz’s apparent suicide circulated around the Internet this weekend, investigators found evidence of foul play. A former architect of Reddit, the online forum scandalized earlier this year by child pornography and “creepshots,” Aaron Swartz was widely known for his contributions to anti-copyright activism after stealing millions of files from MIT.

Hackers from Anonymous released a statement on Sunday, “Heavy-handed prosecutors raped the beautiful mind of Aaron Swartz. He later ‘killed himself.’ Are the draconian copyright laws selectively applied to those who threaten the inertia of entrenched power? Certainly. Will they use their sockpuppets and judicial torture system to make YOU kill yourself too? Of course. Will they kill you if you go too far?”

Chronicle Reporters also questioned Julian Assange, sick from months of exile in the Ecuadorean embassy, about the death of Aaron Swartz. “I am not convinced that Aaron Swartz was such a coward he committed suicide due to fear of prison,” said Mr. Assange. “Read his words, and decide for yourself, but I believe Swartz was murdered by a team of copyright assassins who made it all look like a simple suicide. Watch what you say, or you may end up like Aaron Swartz.”

Swartz gave a talk in 2008, mentioning his intention to ” download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks.”

Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You’ll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.

There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it. But even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future. Everything up until now will have been lost.

That is too high a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them? Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to children in the Global South? It’s outrageous and unacceptable.

“I agree,” many say, “but what can we do? The companies hold the copyrights, they make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and it’s perfectly legal — there’s nothing we can do to stop them.” But there is something we can, something that’s already being done: we can fight back.

Those with access to these resources — students, librarians, scientists — you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not — indeed, morally, you cannot — keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords with colleagues, filling download requests for friends.

Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have been sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the information locked up by the publishers and sharing them with your friends.

But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It’s called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn’t immoral — it’s a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.

Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate require it — their shareholders would revolt at anything less. And the politicians they have bought off back them, passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who can make copies.

There is no justice in following unjust laws. It’s time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture.

We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that’s out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access.

With enough of us, around the world, we’ll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge — we’ll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?

Aaron Swartz
July 2008, Eremo, Italy

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News

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

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

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News новости

ANONNEWS.ORG RUN BY UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT

anonymous

Washington, D.C.–Anonymous Internet users discovered Thursday that the United States Government plays a major role in the day-to-day operations of the most popular Internet news source used by internet activists, or “hacktivists.”

Anonnews.org claims to serve decentralized hacker group Anonymous as its central source of information, including targets and Anonymous press releases, which anyone can submit.

A number of Internet users frequenting both the chronicle.SU and anonnews.org websites discovered that the website selectively runs articles that only fall in line with the agenda of the U.S. Government, and brought this to the attention of chronicle.SU senior executives.

[Editor's note: Due to the close-hitting nature of this piece,
subjective articles such as "we," "us" and "I" will be found
in the following paragraphs.]

As perhaps only a handful of our readers know, anonnews.org, whose slogan is Everything Anonymous, actively deletes any and all content submissions originating from chronicle.SU. We have fought this for a long time, out of fairness to Anonymous and outside objectors, but we too have come to realize anonnews.org is either owned by, or in collusion with, various government agencies.

This clampdown on information is akin to what many of us learn in college courses, or from history itself, to expect from oppressive regimes, and compares in no small way to the aggressive reaction from the USG when news hit of daily-leaking diplomatic cables.

It is worth noting that anonnews.org no longer accepts press releases relating to Wikileaks.

Anonymous purports to expose and crush oppressive regimes, and even went on the record with Al Jazeera Saturday morning to take credit for the unprecedented attacks on websites owned by Mastercard, PayPal, Amazon, and outside governments. Anonymous’ spokesperson, which could literally be anyone in the world (but is actually Barrett Brown, according to Brown), compared their actions with those of protesters in the streets of Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.[pullquote]Anonymous [is] by far the most aesthetically-pleasing instrument of sociopolitical subversion ever employed by the United States Government.[/pullquote]

Anonnews.org lets certain past inflammatory posts slide, including a couple from chronicle.SU, to present an image of “anything goes,” while moderators for the site now allow only positive stories to run that portray Anonymous as the “Great Equalizer” (or “white knight”) of the Internet. The anonymous person speaking to Al Jazeera compared the Anonymous hacker group to Libyan rebels in the street currently taking mortar fire. Anonnews.org now plays up this footage, making Anonymous by far the most aesthetically-pleasing instrument of sociopolitical subversion ever employed by the United States Government.

But from a perspective of objective critical analysis, Anonymous looks unfortunately stupid. This is because the USG knows better than to let them run totally wild, making too much change too fast – or worse yet, making their own changes. So the powers that be hired online personalities to infiltrate IRC discussions and /i/nvasion channels in order to redirect the hacktivist userbase toward what are better known in war terms as “soft targets.” NYPA, or ‘not your personal army’ just took on a whole new meaning.

When Anonymous attacked Westboro Baptist Church, they didn’t attack the Westboro Baptist mentality of hate. They attacked their website. Just like Anonymous didn’t really protest in the streets with Egyptians for freedom. They attacked Libya’s website, and Egypt’s website (even though for a period of time Egypt had no Internet.) This is tantamount to when Jon Stewart appeared on Hannity & Colmes (FOX News). He didn’t cripple their agenda; he attacked their image. Even though he appeared to “pwn” them on live TV, it proved to be a giant ratings circlejerk for everyone, where voter ideology cowered slimy in the middle of an entertainment-value bukkake. When I watched Anonymous take down WBC’s website from my toilet, I noticed it was just a PR game, as I suspected all along, and that Anonymous is just as likely to do something stupid as it is to do something meaningful.

‘But who benefits from this PR?’ I thought.

During that poop is when I realized Anonymous, in its current form, will never do anything meaningful, such as the Paypal/Amazon attacks, again – or at least, not while anonnews.org is recognized collectively as an unbiased, trustworthy portal for equal access to information. Anonnews, like FOX News, pushes a narrative in which there is no place for the voice of reason or questioning. We have fought Anonnews.org in the past, for selectively censoring submissions, and only obtained temporary, diplomatic posting privileges following huge public outcry. When that outcry died back down, so did our posting privileges. They don’t want you reading dissent, because anonnews.org is controlled by the U.S. Government, who censors dissent, tortures its own citizens, and sends Anons to waste their time, energy, and image on “targets” like WBC and Glenn Beck (thereby legitimizing the voices of both). Who “spreads democracy” abroad, and destroys it at home.

It is my belief and that of the chronicle.SU, attacking Amazon.com in the name of Wikileaks is beautiful and righteous on all counts. Paypal deserved it too, and even reinstated PFC Bradley Manning’s support group – a move clearly designed to cover their sorry asses by saying it was a glitch, or somebody sat on the remote control, or some bullshit like that. Paypal still deserves it. They’re scum. Anonnews.org would hate them more if they knew they were Jewish, because like WBC, they hate fags and jews, but I doubt they’ll read this or inform themselves otherwise.

Wikileaks’ behavior constitutes the backbone of actual journalism, and is not illegal in a free and democratic society. Right now the only thing preventing humanity as we know it from being subject to totalitarian world government is investigative journalism, which Paypal went out of their way to prove they hate; as did Amazon. Internet users all across the world recognized evil at work and carved out a warpath alongside Anonymous that even chronicle.SU cut into. But no more quickly did Anonymous cast its hat into the political arena did government agencies drop hired geeks into the flock to take control of what they could and report back what they could not.

This was a real job position within the USG until Tyler Bass reported its existence last week. It was called “undercover online personality,” and the description explicitly stated the applicant’s duties include infiltration of online political groups for the purposes of spying and manipulation. It was removed for one of two reasons: either because the position was filled, or because exposure caused officials to decide not to publicly advertise a legion of hired spies. Attacks against anti-freedom-of-speech targets ceased as immediately as they had begun, and when anonops came “back online,” the IRC stunk like government spooks.

When the USG saw the power of the hivemind at work, they knew instantly to harness it as best they could and make it their own. The right thing can be done for the wrong reasons, and the wrong thing done for the right reasons – any combination of which are taking place as I type this, and all of which are allowed to happen because anonnews.org is  influenced and operated by the actions and interests of police state sympathizers and employees hired by the United States Government.

If knowledge is power, take it back. Inform yourself.

“Read widely.” ~ Noam Chomsky