
Anonymous message to NATO - d0ne
http://circleof13.blogspot.com/2011/06/anonymous-message-to-nato.html
======
ChuckMcM
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.'

[1]
[http://www.justice.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/tit...](http://www.justice.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/title9/crm00076.htm)

~~~
Xuzz
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?

~~~
shii
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.

------
nextparadigms
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.

~~~
nodata
Mark Thomas' book "The People's Manifesto"* suggests making political promises
prior to entering elected office legally binding.

* <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_People%27s_Manifesto>

~~~
ChuckMcM
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)

~~~
yeahsure
->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.

~~~
paragraft
But that requires you to know what it is you don't know. Cue Rumsfeld's piece
about known unknowns and unknown unknowns.

~~~
yeahsure
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.

------
fredoliveira
I'm quite sure I'm not the only one seeing traces of The Mentor's manifesto
[1] here. _"Damn kids. They're all alike"_.

[1]
[http://www.phrack.org/issues.html?issue=7&id=3&mode=...](http://www.phrack.org/issues.html?issue=7&id=3&mode=txt)

~~~
JonnieCache
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.

------
tomelders
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.

------
JonnieCache
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.

<http://telecomix.org/> <http://werebuild.eu/>

------
dreamdu5t
NATO and the US military are the ones protecting the Internet's vital
infrastructure.

Unfortunately, the military and NATO play a crucial role in protecting the
freedoms Anonymous waxes poetic about them usurping.

~~~
bh42222
_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.

~~~
redthrowaway
>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.

~~~
arethuza
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.

~~~
redthrowaway
Those favouring reunification are a minority, but a growing one since the
paramilitary disarmament in 2005:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_and_politics_of_Nort...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_and_politics_of_Northern_Ireland#Views_on_the_Union)

------
Apocryphon
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.

------
sliverstorm
Declaring they are not a threat to NATO and throwing down the gauntlet to NATO
in the same message?

I am more confused than anything else.

------
Roritharr
The best comment i would be able to write was already written below the
article itself:

" "a campaign of misinformation against Wikileaks and it’s supporters"

No apostrophe in possessive "its".

We are English teachers. We are reading what you write. Expect us.2
Proofread."

------
officemonkey
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.

------
marcamillion
I love their signature:

We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect
us.

~~~
grimen
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.

------
usedtolurk
TLDR: You can't be above the law, but we can.

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.

------
3pt14159
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.

------
nodata
I can't see an awful lot to argue with there. Unless you disagree with
universality.

------
msie

      ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE.

------
donohoe

      So come at me bro
    

Oh dear, Anonymous needs a copyeditor

~~~
lwat
<http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/come-at-me-bro>

~~~
donohoe
I know the source. Its still a lame phrase that knocks away at their
credibility

------
sadfdsdfsds
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 ?

------
shii
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.

