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Public Face of Anonymous Leaves Group
Gunkerty Jeb writes "Barrett Brown, the reporter who became a media-friendly spokesperson for the shadowy hacking group Anonymous, says that he is quitting the group in the wake of a public feud that has broken out between different hacker factions within the loosely organized collective."
Pardon me as I break my tin-foil hat out here. But there are a lot of government agencies and companies who have a vested interest in seeing Anon fall to pieces. The timing on this is almost as convenient as Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Julian Assange being arrested for sexual assault (the former right after he pulled decisively ahead of pro-American Nicolas Sarkozy in the polls and the later just weeks after he released a series of secret documents that embarrassed the U.S.). But then, I've always said that pedophilia and sexual assault charges are the quickest way to discredit someone publicly--way better than anything as crude as assassination.
Don't get me wrong, here. I'm not the kind of guy who thinks the moon landings were faked or that the U.S. planned 9-11 or any of that horseshit. But sometimes the timing on certain events just strikes me as a little too convenient for mere coincidence. And as was done with Wikileaks, the first step in a descrediting campaign is to encourage dissension from within and to get some internal plants/buy-offs to publicly bad-mouth the leadership (Daniel Domscheit-Berg, I'm looking in your direction, little plant). Just don't be suprised to see some Anon leaders suddenly facing rape/pedophilia/sexual assault charges in the near future. You'll know for sure if beautiful women suddenly start throwing themselves at 4channers in public.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
drama from something that doesn't even exist, ladies and gentlemen we have hit web 3.0
I'm so sick of Anonymous taking itself so seriously. It used to be about raiding barbie message boards, annoying habbo hotel players, and prank calling Tom Green. Even the recent project forever alone, getting guys on okcupid to unsuspectingly meet at a pay phone in times square is what Anonymous was always about. Not this stupid hacker / legion bullshit. It's stupid.
Barrett Brown can't Triforce.
Good job, you managed to get "public face" and "group" in the same headline. Who the hell is this guy?
...an oxymoron?
Maybe Anonymous will go back to it's roots instead of having "leaders" and "spokespeople".
Hmm, maybe I should have posted anonymously. :)
...a Guido 'Guy' Fawkes mask?
I didn't know that something called 'Anonymous' could have something called 'public' - seems nonsensical.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
It seems to me like in this kind of post-group, Mr. Brown could come back when ever he wanted.
I would have chosen "Poorly Unorganized".
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Yeah! Back to its roots, before all these NEWFAGS turned up. Remember when /b/ was good?
No.
Just kidding, but point taken. There's a lot less of that indefinable bastardness that reminded me of Alt.Tasteless and a lot more copypasta nowadays.
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
Barret Brown if he was every really in this group will find out soon that quitting isn't as easy as making a public declaration.
That is perhaps the main reason not to join this sort of group, when you join they own you and you cannot quit.
As far as Barret Brown being the public face, that was a stupid idea in the first place which smelled like a setup. The guy also released a crappy manual on opsec on pastebin. Couldn't he have made a PDF? A website? It didn't have much substance either.
Let's face it, a group like Anonymous was never supposed to have a Public Face. It's a vigilante group. If Mr. Brown has quit the group it's possible he quit because he's been turned informant for the FBI. It's also possible he quit because he's been discovered. It's also possible he quit because of a legitimate dispute. But we cannot just take his word on it.
We need to hear what Anonymous has to say about him.
... is that anybody can be a member. This isn't a borg collective with a unified vision.
As an outsider, the first sign that Anonymous has gone off the tracks is when they poked the WBC. While the WBC are a vile group of human beings, it seemed odd that Anonymous would even bother with them. After that, they started to attack the Koch Brothers. I can't remember a few of their other more recent operations, but the term "jumping the shark" comes to mind.
As an outsider, Anonymous seems to have two major issues: 1) it is spreading itself too thin with a plethora of weak objectives and 2) it has started to take itself too seriously
"public face of anonymous". No need to read the rest of an article when it starts with that line.
And it should be obvious to anyone why. Mr. Brown is focused on the sort of activities designed to elicit the maximum response by the most powerful military and government in the world. He is focusing on finding corruption in the US government, in the US military.
This is either a tactical error of epic proportions, or it's part of a deliberate design by his FBI handlers to turn him into the ultimate informant. I'm not accusing or saying with any degree of certainty that Mr. Brown is an informant. I'm saying that when people deliberately provoke the government, or talk about revolution in the USA, usually the loudest public speaker talking about it is the biggest informant.
I believe Anonymous cut him out of the picture because Anonymous does not trust him anymore. He isn't a hacker, he's a journalist. He came into Anonymous from the perspective of an observer/journalist. If he isn't participating in the ops and does not have a reputation as being an actor, it makes a lot of sense for them to push him out. The attention of the media usually brings the attention of the feds.
First of all, if there is such a thing as "Anonymous" then this guy left it the minute he identified himself. Second, 10 minutes on 4chan should be enough to convince anyone that /b/tards can't organize their way out of a paper bag.
Third, ponies.
OVER NINE THOUSAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://www.google.com/search?q=nine+thousand
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Isn't someone claiming to be the public face of Anonymous by definition doing it wrong?
Barrett Brown was NEVER a member of Anoymous.
We know who he is.
Therefore, by definition, he is not part of Anonymous.
I thought Anonymous' spokesman was David Mudkips anyway. H sure got his name in the papers a few times when the scientology protests were kicking off.
Those of us who have know of 4chan for 10+ years can't help but be a little perplexed at this transformation of Anonymous into "Hacking Heroes of the People". For as long as I remember, Anonymous, or as they used to call themselves, "/b/tards", were more known for pulling elaborate Internet trolls, vandalizing web pages, and basically creating chaos just "for the lulz". Far from being heroic, these people could be a nightmare. Get the wrong kind of attention from the Anonymous horde, and find your personal information posted all over the web.
Then they chose a few targets who everybody agreed deserved it: white supremacists, Scientology, arrogant corporations. Suddenly the media decides they're heroes and everyone just eats it up.
Sorry, I don't buy it. This is the same group that popularized the phrase "TITS OR GTFO", who created Pedobear. I don't buy that these people have suddenly grown Hearts of Pure Good. In their heart, they still get off on creating chaos for fun, and eventually they'll go back to it. Some 4channers will web-harass some teenage girl who made an ass of herself on the Internet (as already happened once), or do something else morally reprehensible, and will use the Anonymous banner because why not? Then the media's collective head will explode as they try to understand why their wonderful Internet Bandit Heroes have turned bad.
------RM
The mob claims not to exist. They claim to be legitimate businessmen. They claim to have no hierarchy, structure, or internal planning.
Those are all lies.
Anonymous is an on-line gang. It has leaders, structure, goals. It denies them all because if it didn't, it would be obvious it was a gang and it would be subject to increased scrutiny and prosecution under RICO statutes.
As the on-line world becomes darker and darker, people who use the Internet will flock to gangs, just as minority children do in inner cities. Gangs offer them protection and meaning in a chaotic, dangerous world. Gangs lure them in with women, drugs, and attention. Anonymous lures them in with pornography and jokes and gives them a place where they can be as racist and sexist as they want to be.
However, like everything else in the world, ultimately it comes down to money. Someone is funding Anonymous. Someone is protecting them from the government (really, if a Japanese gang attacked one of America's biggest corporations, do you think the US might press Japan to go after them?).
Who? Why, the US government, of course. Anonymous is a government-funded, government-protected para-cyber-military organization for engaging in false flag attacks against foreign corporations and foreign governments. Because of the outrageous behavior of Anonymous, the government has plausible deniability regarding their connection; in fact, the mere idea of the US utilizing anime and meme-obsessed "newfags" for false flag hacking operations against, say, Iran, sounds ludicrous. And indeed it should, because members who are attacking Iran are not posting memes and child pornography. They have very little to do with those members. Those members are the smokescreen. Their attacks against, for example, Second Life, were merely screening exercises afforded to a group of malcontent white metrosexual men to build an army of followers.
You might respond "What about Scientology?" Do you think the US government cares about Scientologists? That was a clear effort to define Anonymous as "outlaws."
And "What about Wikileaks?" Yes, what about Wikileaks? After all, do you think the US government is really scared of Wikileaks? Aside from Manning, who clearly violated his responsibilities in the military, has the US targeted any members of Wikileaks? The database Manning "compromised" was likely compromised dozens of times by foreign powers. No effort was made to keep it secure. And the data released by Manning? It merely supports the notion that the US did not attack civilians in Iraq. Almost all of the embarrassing information "leaked" by Wikileaks was detrimental to other powers, not the US. The US came off as, mostly, clean.
The US isn't afraid of Wikileaks. Why should it? Do you think Wikileaks has the power of the Soviet Union's intelligence agencies at the height of the Cold War? Chinese intelligence agencies? British? Japanese? German?
If the US is prepared to defend its intelligence against those powers, Wikileaks can pose no threat. Period. "But what about all the people in the US government calling for Assange's head?" Like, who? Palin? She's a private citizen. Huckabee? Another private citizen. There have been no attempts by the US to even charge Assange for conspiracy in the Manning leak. Zero. Why? Wikileaks is absolutely no threat.
And since Wikileaks is absolutely no threat to US businesses or government interests, it can be seen as an asset. Yet another para-cyber-military organization for the sole purpose of revealing "leaked" information regarding powers that we want denigrated.
Wikileaks + Anonymous = the perfect tool for going after weaker regimes and organizations with absolutely no egg on the face of the United States government.
No, this isn't a conspiracy theory. I don't claim the government started either organization, but only that they found them useful and likely have moles inside them helping steer them the way they want.
i wrote "conspiracy theory" in a bunch of places i should have written "conspiracy". i made it confusing. sorry
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'd be more apt to agree with your positions if you didn't say 4chan was 10+ years old.
It was made in 2003.
Really, which is more likely? 1) there's a giant world-government conspiracy to discredit Anonymous (which, in the grand scheme of things, is pretty small potatoes)? or 2) a group of semi-antisocial types turned their anti-sociability on each other?
I know which one I find easier to believe.
it's called puberty.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Yes it is. You are making a claims that the US Government secretly supports Wikileaks and Anonymous (which would be a conspiracy), but your claim is wholly unsubstantiated by any sort of evidence (thus it is a theory*).
A theory about a conspiracy.
Conspiracy theory.
And until you provide some hard evidence, it will remain a conspiracy theory and will be rightfully regarded as one.
*Theory, of course, in the everyday sense, not the scientific one
O_O Okay.
Well, it's like this. I didn't remember when 4chan was founded, just that it seemed like "a long time ago". I knew it was at least 2004, because I remember reading /b/ before I moved to my current home. And seemed a while before that. Guess I should've Googled.
2003? Really? That means I was reading 4chan back when it just started! I'm never cool enough to get in on the ground floor of anything.
And because of this stupid mistake, everyone will ignore my points. Fine. I'll just post them again in the next thread about "Anonymous the Hacking Robin Hoods".
------RM
Let them fall apart and feed on each other like the animals they are. Offer up some of them incentive to turn on each other, and lets make a horror story/cautionary tale out of all of them. Decent people don't operate from veiled threats like punks. They screwed with ME when they hacked Sony. Before I didn't give a fuck about them or their baby games, but now, FUCK THEM. We need to lock down this wild west show known as the Internet. Its full of criminals that we can't find or track down. The music industry, and movie industry are about toast from all the thieves. The game industry is in shambles from trying to cope with thieves and asshats that hack their games then flood the cheat/hacks out to every jackassed punk.
It needs to be a global, multinational effort, with no place to run or hide. And cocksmoke countries like China that encourage it's people to constantly probe our cyber defense, we lob thermal nukes at them until either they get the picture or they are all dead. BTW, here is a genius idea a friend of mine had for dealing with these Chinese hackers trying to probe your system/network. You let them in a port with some stupidly simple permutation that only a moron would put on. When they get in, they get the "welcome file" that is chocked full of western propaganda, thus flagging themselves via their own "great fire wall of china". If it doesn't flag them, we have really great propaganda, it might screw them up..lol.
It's time for the anonymity to stop all around. It will help save the children. (lol) I am more interested in stopping the "Internet Douchbag" effect, where people hide behind their computer and say the most fucked up shit they would NEVER dream of saying to anyone in real life without getting throttled to death with their own shoes. If you are an asshole to someone on the Internet, they should know who you are immediately. I think after about a year or so of the mayhem that would occur, people would settle down and act like civilized human beings. It's like my driving axiom "Unleashed Road Rage Cures Road Asshole-ishness". Perhaps after Mom and Dad watch in the news were a couple got throttled along with their punk kid for basically letting their punk kid run their mouth to the wrong people, they will get off their ass and check out what their heathen hellspawn punk kids are doing online.
Or one would know where that red neck retard lives at, the one that screams shit on voice chat, loves Fox News and Bush. The one that drawls out that Southern accent so bad that God curb stomps 12 kittens every time he hears it. I know it would raise a conundrum of choosing between tasking an Air Group to carpet bomb the entire area code for the sake of the gene pool, or surgical strike armed with a wooden spoon. (Slow death via wooden spoon is the gist)
Of course, my ways might be considered a bit harsh by some. Nobody seems to like my ideas for getting our prison population under control. I say to save money, promote obedience and fear in the public, and reduce the size of all of our prisons down to only ONE that we do this: we feed prisoners other prisoners. Just put guards on the wall, open the cells and let them decide democratically who gets ate. We could sell this on Pay-Per-View and generate revenue.
Take the Red Pill.
His post ended in quads, he was defeated by Taxmaster and was thereby forced to leave 4chan forever. At least he is a man with convictions.
Don't blame me, I voted for Cthulhu.
The moment that they started getting better organized is when they actually formed a small, internal group. I am sure that people will be pissed and tell me I am wrong, but think about it. They have spokespeople saying they did not do the PSN attack and they even posted something on their FaceBook page that was a video that stated it while they showed their logo. Think about that sentence for a little bit. Really, seriously think about it. The PSN attack is a perfect example of what Anon truly is, compared to what people think they are. According to the rules and way Anon works, if even one single person does something in the name of Anon, Anon did it. The other people who do stuff with this every once in awhile will just simply not partake, like how Anon works, but that does not mean that since many people did not participate, that it was not the hand of Anon doing it. It is impossible to say that Anon did not do something when there is even a slight bit of proof that they did. Who is to say they did not do it? According to what Anon is, you can't say Anon was not involved. If Anon was not involved even though there is proof, even if minimal, that Anon was involved and they were "framed", that means that Anon can decide who is working for Anon. If you know who is working for Anon, then it turns into less of a collective, and more of a group of people who will bring in a bunch of people to do stuff. Also, who are the ops in the IRC channel of AnonOps (one of the meeting points for Anon)? Who decides who is an op there? Why are there even ops in AnonOps? According to what Anon is, there are no ops. There are no leaders. Groups are formed per scenario. That would mean no spokesperson, no catchphrases, no logos, no way of knowing if Anon is behind something or not. What I can see happening is that the base group of Anon is starting to feel heat under them, so they are trying to get away. A place like AnonOps, which is supposed to be a huge meeting place for Anon is just a small subsection of Anon. A smaller group of people that go there, even if alot of people go there. The people that started this idea probably forgot about the fact that if you get thousands of people together in a crowded area, a few of them are not going to go along with the "collective" and do what they want even if everybody else does not approve. They still do it though. Hop onto the web and see some of the attacks Anon has done to see that not every attack has been "for justice and good" or something like that
The world is how you make it