Anonymous' Target Planned to "Take Down" WikiLeaks

[infernovolver]

It's just a gigantic dickfest! Dicks! Dicks everywhere!

If we had signatures mine would change to this right now. Maybe I'll use it on another forum where it's less relevant.

 

[Starke]

In general, when it isn't your area of expertise then that's a good idea, don't. But, as it is my area of expertise, I feel a little more qualified to make that assessment.

Aaron Barr is a security expert that investigated anonymous and he still made that assumption. What expertise do yo have, that you think allows you to make such an arrogant assumption?

A professional understanding of politics, and a functional understanding of revolutionary theory. In other words, I actually understand what I'm talking about.

You also are bringing up the claim that some of the cables caused the deaths of people. This is a claim made by the pentagon that was likely made to try influence public opinion. There is no evidence that any of the cables caused someone to come to harm. Needless to say, they are trying their best to find evidence of this to try make wikileaks look reckless.

It is information coming from soldiers who have posted places including on this forum.

I'm noticing a disturbing pattern here, however. If it doesn't benefit anonymous, you deny it. "Oh, that wasn't us" you claim, when you posted the same thing on an earlier post. "I've never heard of any declaration of war" you claim, while posting information from the same source to the site minutes later. "We're a peaceful group" you claim while Aaron Barr's family receives death threats. "Oh god, anonymous is being harassed by the FBI" you claim right before denying all knowledge in the very same post.

In short, I'm starting to have serious doubts about your veracity. You say what you want when you want without regard for what happened fifteen seconds ago. You say it's the pentagon that's leaking these stories of people being hunted, and yet, actual soldiers who knew these people are coming forward. You claim the FBI was in bed with HB Gary Federal in spite of the fact that you are the only ones claiming this. Including the media who is combing through the data cache your organization released. You claim the FBI is harassing your members in spite of no evidence to support such claims.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Anonymous taking on a major Bank..Yeah, this is Shadowrun-esque...Why do I get the feeling that I'm actually the pre-Awakening version of Captain Chaos?

Shit, it could still happen too. I'm the right age, the right mindset, and in the right profession.

 

[AnonOperations]

I'm noticing a disturbing pattern here, however. If it doesn't benefit anonymous, you deny it. "Oh, that wasn't us" you claim, when you posted the same thing on an earlier post. "I've never heard of any declaration of war" you claim, while posting information from the same source to the site minutes later. "We're a peaceful group" you claim while Aaron Barr's family receives death threats. "Oh god, anonymous is being harassed by the FBI" you claim right before denying all knowledge in the very same post..

I'm only repeating what was said in an interview with Assange. The declaration you mentioned was misinterpreted.

 

[Starke]

I'm noticing a disturbing pattern here, however. If it doesn't benefit anonymous, you deny it. "Oh, that wasn't us" you claim, when you posted the same thing on an earlier post. "I've never heard of any declaration of war" you claim, while posting information from the same source to the site minutes later. "We're a peaceful group" you claim while Aaron Barr's family receives death threats. "Oh god, anonymous is being harassed by the FBI" you claim right before denying all knowledge in the very same post..

I'm only repeating what was said in an interview with Assange. The declaration you mentioned was misinterpreted.

...we also take this [the arrest of five members] as a serious declaration of war >from yourself, the UK government, to us, Anonymous, the people.

Like I said, a disturbing ability to say whatever you think benefits you the most at the moment without regard to anything that has come before.

EDIT: You still haven't answered my question though. Are you willing to go to prison for your convictions?

 

[Starke]

Anonymous taking on a major Bank..Yeah, this is Shadowrun-esque...Why do I get the feeling that I'm actually the pre-Awakening version of Captain Chaos?

Shit, it could still happen too. I'm the right age, the right mindset, and in the right profession.

Because you're using 12 d6 to test any action before you do it?

 

[Atmos Duality]

Anonymous taking on a major Bank..Yeah, this is Shadowrun-esque...Why do I get the feeling that I'm actually the pre-Awakening version of Captain Chaos?

Shit, it could still happen too. I'm the right age, the right mindset, and in the right profession.

Because you're using 12 d6 to test any action before you do it?

Yup! And that's just my Hacking pool; you aint seen nothing until you've seen my Karma pool.
Oooh yeah baby, gonna get my ASIST signal on in...20 years?
Damn.

 

[FluxCapacitor]

A history lesson on the shah of Iran.

See, to me this is the most sense you've made all day. I absolutely agree that American jingoism isn't what Iran needs. They need homegrown Iranian jingoism - and they get it from their own youth movements and student activists. There is a younger generation morew connected to the outside world than these regimes would like, and they can see that there are better lives out there already. This is what we saw in Egypt and Tunisia, a popular overthrow by peaceful protest - and all the 'old guard' intelligence community worldwide have been shitting kittens because they'd all written off the people as irrelevant sheep.

The people need to take part in their own liberation, or else 'western democracy' is just another kind of oppression put on them by forces they can't control or really trust. And America's track record of realpolitik in the Mid-East is appalling. The Shah, Mubarak, Arafat, Ben Ali, Saddam in the 80's, the House of Saud, the list of despots supported by the States for the sake of 'stability' goes on and on. I can see why the local populace are deeply mistrustful of American jingoism.

But it seems to me that the Anon efforts in Iran are aimed at supporting grassroots activism to the best of their abilities by trying to give them access to external media so the world knows about them. It's Bush's failed wars of liberation that smack of American jingoism to me, with names like Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. I think that freedom in the Middle East won't come down the barrel of US guns. (Actually it probably will in some places, but that's just because of the ubiquity of US-made weapons in the world today - a rant for another day... jeez I'm really getting off topic here...)

And I read the statute you've cited, and I'm also only an armchair lawyer but it seems to me that the crucial phrase is "with intent or reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation". This seems like a tough sell to me, since he hasn't sold information to any other country. There is no advantage for any other nation, so the US must prove that Assange personally meant ot injure the United States. This leaves Assange 2 defences - that he was reporting a leak as a function of a constitutionally guaranteed free press, or that he was not damaging the US but trying to restore it to the prinicples of the founding fathers. Both of these defences could get appealed all the way to the Supremes, and the intel community don't want that level of exposure.

 

[Starke]

In general, when it isn't your area of expertise then that's a good idea, don't. But, as it is my area of expertise, I feel a little more qualified to make that assessment.

Aaron Barr is a security expert that investigated anonymous and he still made that assumption. What expertise do yo have, that you think allows you to make such an arrogant assumption?

You also are bringing up the claim that some of the cables caused the deaths of people. This is a claim made by the pentagon that was likely made to try influence public opinion. There is no evidence that any of the cables caused someone to come to harm. Needless to say, they are trying their best to find evidence of this to try make wikileaks look reckless.

It seems your opinion is strong in that wikileaks is causing damage. Well my opinion is strong in that any bad is far outweighed by the good.

And there's no "theoretically" in danger--my old Iraqi platoon has about half of them living inside the wire on their FOB since their names were made public, and a couple have had to move their families out of the city in the middle of the night. You simply don't know the truth on the ground in Iraq, which is understandable but also means you have zero standing to analyze the situation there.

Hmm, someone who knows what they're talking about or someone from Anon with a long track record of making shit up on the spot with no regard to what he or anyone else has said on the subject, who do you think is more credible here?

 

[Danpascooch]

Anonymous doesn't always do the right thing, but shit like this? I can get behind.

Antagonizing a government that came to power by overthrowing an oppressive American backed regime and is currently holding some of our citizens prisoner? With the very real possibility that they (Anonymous) will get said prisoners executed for espionage by pissing all over the country... so you're in favor of the execution of Americans or just antagonizing states that fought their way free of American backed dictatorships?

I'm in favor of the right to free speech.

Whether or not you think free speech is worth the death of prisoners is up to you, but my opinion is that if people roll over and let an oppressive government do whatever the fuck they want because of those prisoners it allows said regime to stay in power. Whether or not that causes more deaths in the future I can't say, but it sure as hell isn't good for human rights.

I am also in favor of free speech, but I also know a few things about Iran that you don't. In 1952 the CIA overthrew the Iranian President Mohammad Mossadeq and installed Shah Pahlavi. The reason for this was fears that Mossadeq's cabinent had communists, but Mossadeq himself was a strong advocate of a democratic state, so when the Iranian communist party had been able to win some ground during the election, he attached them to his cabinet. He also nationalized Iran's oil industry.

In 1940's and 50's Iran's oil industry was an exploitative contract with BP. BP had negotiated the contract while Iran was a British protectorate under the League of Nations Mandate.[footnote]I think, I'm a little fuzzy on this bit of the history.[/footnote] So BP was negotiating with other Brits for the rights to Iran's oil, not Iranians. BP was regularly under-reporting to the Iranian government how much their equipment was worth, how much they were exporting, and how much the oil was selling for. Mossadeq paid them for their equipment and concessions based on their under-reported numbers and told them to get out.

BP went to someone in the British Government and complained. Whoever it was in the British Government went to MI6 and told them to "fix this". MI6 went to the CIA and pointed and said "communists". The CIA sent an individual with the highly unfortunate name of Kermit Roosevelt jr. Roosevelt set up and executed a coup which removed Mossadeq from power, and instituting Shah Pahlavi.

Shah Pahlavi, and his son, were, by all accounts oppressive dictators, who were far more interested in having power and wealth than in ruling. The Iranian revolution in 1979 was initially a fairly broad spectrum uprising, the Islamic faction that ended up taking control after the revolution is a separate (and for the moment irrelevant) story.

The point is this, I like free speech, you like free speech, and so do the people in Iran. But, what the people in Iran don't share with you or I is a perception that America is a state that does not care about the ideals we preach, and believes (or understands) that this is simply the rhetoric we use to subjugate others.

To insert American Jingoism into Iran blithely believing it will make a difference is naive, and is entirely likely to cause more harm than good.

So, is free speech worth a couple of lives? Yes, if that is what they're dying for. If they're dying because someone who doesn't understand the political and historic environment is off there blundering around then it is a tragedy, they aren't dying for free speech, they're dying as a monument to incompetence blinded by jingoism.

They're human, how could they not understand the difference between being executed for saying something the government doesn't like, and being allowed to say things the government doesn't like?

 

[Danpascooch]

In general, when it isn't your area of expertise then that's a good idea, don't. But, as it is my area of expertise, I feel a little more qualified to make that assessment.

Aaron Barr is a security expert that investigated anonymous and he still made that assumption. What expertise do yo have, that you think allows you to make such an arrogant assumption?

You also are bringing up the claim that some of the cables caused the deaths of people. This is a claim made by the pentagon that was likely made to try influence public opinion. There is no evidence that any of the cables caused someone to come to harm. Needless to say, they are trying their best to find evidence of this to try make wikileaks look reckless.

It seems your opinion is strong in that wikileaks is causing damage. Well my opinion is strong in that any bad is far outweighed by the good.

And there's no "theoretically" in danger--my old Iraqi platoon has about half of them living inside the wire on their FOB since their names were made public, and a couple have had to move their families out of the city in the middle of the night. You simply don't know the truth on the ground in Iraq, which is understandable but also means you have zero standing to analyze the situation there.

Hmm, someone who knows what they're talking about or someone from Anon with a long track record of making shit up on the spot with no regard to what he or anyone else has said on the subject, who do you think is more credible here?

That's hardly fair, judge him on what he says and does, not from your preconceived notions of the group (hardly even a group really) that he comes from

 

[Starke]

See, to me this is the most sense you've made all day.

Yeah, my brain's been kinda gummy all day, and I had about 30 things going on at once around me, so yeah, my apologies, I'll come back to this when my brain is working again.

 

[Starke]

They're human, how could they not understand the difference between being executed for saying something the government doesn't like, and being allowed to say things the government doesn't like?

Who's being executed? The American hikers? Because they aren't being arrested over freedom of speech. The Iranian people? Because that isn't what's happening there either.

You can have a cookie for completely missing the point on that whole post though. Congrats, that takes true dedication.

That's hardly fair, judge him on what he says and does, not from your preconceived notions of the group (hardly even a group really) that he comes from

Even what he's saying is incoherent and inconsistent, combining it with reality completely tanks his credibility into the range of a little kid spouting off "let's say that..." repeatedly to change the rules with no regard to what came before.

 

[AnonOperations]

Yes I am willing to go to prison, as I said - It will only serve to draw more attention to what these groups are fighting for. More specifically, I believe that a free press, a just society and a transparent Government are ideas worth fighting and dying for.

Click the spoiler for a recent explanation on Anonymity and who we are:

Spoiler

Even what he's saying is incoherent and inconsistent, combining it with reality completely tanks his credibility into the range of a little kid spouting off "let's say that..." repeatedly to change the rules with no regard to what came before.

What are you having trouble understanding? Resorting to ad hominem attacks and twisting my words just makes you look weak. I was in a rush to go to a meeting but I should have added this to my previous post. Wikileaks has potentially released information (names) that could cause harm to come to informants. I believe this is a mistake that should not have happened. Wikileaks has now taken up measures so this does not happen again.

I have already addressed the other points that you brought up earlier.

 

[FluxCapacitor]

They're human, how could they not understand the difference between being executed for saying something the government doesn't like, and being allowed to say things the government doesn't like?

Now there's a striking oversimplification. That may be how you see the issue, but let's look at American democracy from the position of the average Iranian in the street, shall we? They see American politicians talking about freedom and liberty, but also invading other countries. Many of them are old enough to remember the Iranian Revolution, they know that the Shah was installed and that America stood by while he oppressed them. They saw America doing the same damn thing in Egypt until this month. Then they saw America's lukewarm support of the Egyptian revolution, and it doesn't seem like America is practising what they preach. Iranians already have a govt that does that - the Ayatollahs will and have justified anything they want with scripture, and scripture cannot be disputed. What's more, they have seen in Iraq how American involvement in the regime change leads to chaos, bloodshed and profiteering. From where they sit, western democracy as offered and exemplified by the U.S. seems a bit like rearranging the rhetoric of power rather than freeing the people.

To bring us vaguely back on topic, aren't American politicians calling on the extrajudicial assassination of Assange because he has given out information they didn't like? Aren't American predator drones currently roving over Afghanistan and Pakistan, executing people in foreign lands without any process or oversight? The US military tells us they are terrorists, and some probably are, but we only have their word on that - no trials, no evidence made public. I would trust their word if they could point to a long history of integrity and honesty in respecting people everywhere, and perhaps the Middle-East would too. But they can't, so claims that the US is there to help the people are viewed with skepticism.

They're people, and they can tell the difference between being allowed to say what they want and not having that freedom, but they just don't see that as the choice offered to them by the West.

 

[AnonOperations]

Leaked e-mails reveal plans for dirty-tricks campaign against U.S. Chamber foes
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/14/AR2011021406281.html

 

[HyenaThePirate]

Yes I am willing to go to prison, as I said - It will only serve to draw more attention to what these groups are fighting for. More specifically, I believe that a free press, a just society and a transparent Government are ideas worth fighting and dying for.

You THINK you are.

No offense, but I think THIS post shows a certain amount of immaturity, and possibly something worse.
PRISON is no cakewalk. Especially if you go to prison under the conviction as a TRAITOR or threat to national security. And at the age that I suspect you are, prison is going to be the worst experience you've ever had.
I seriously doubt you grew up on some collective in a war torn nation. While your ideological convictions are commendable, I suspect that in the back of your mind you don't truly believe it'll ever get to that point or that you are somehow above reproach.

The truth is, even though I consider myself something of a walking bad ass, I can honestly admit that even if I am 100% committed to a cause, the idea of ANY length of time in an American prison is something I would not trivialize. In fact, what I know of prison has been a VERY good deterrent from me doing things I'd otherwise consider doing.

And the final bit of irony? This nonsense about it drawing attention to the cause.
All the arrests that have been made so far... outside of a very limited subset of the internet, how has it drawn attention to the cause? You don't think that those doing the arresting won't spin things the way they want? You already claim that the governments and corporations have the media in their pocket, so how is it you figure you'll become some sort of martyr to anyone else but the few remaining die-hard members of Anonymous? Heck, Anonymous isn't even an organization, so who will you be drawing attention to?

The reality is, in all likelihood, YOU would go to jail charged with any number of crimes whether they be trumped up or not, YOU will be in prison in a cell with real HARDENED criminals whose crimes don't involve typing rhetoric at people from behind a monitor, dealing with the daily struggle of survival and avoiding beatings that prison life has become, and NO ONE will know or care outside of your immediate circle of family and friends. You will not be remembered as a revolutionary who made a sacrifice for a cause or a martyr... chances are even your friends within Anon will not be too affected by your loss. And all the while, you'll be sitting in that cell wondering if it was all really worth it now that judgment day has come.

 

[AnonOperations]

Prison is scary

You're assuming I live in America. If I was arrested in my country, it is more likely to cause attention. These personal life speculations are tedious and irrelevant. Can we please stick to the topic here?