For those interested —

A timeline of events on drama related to Stratfor, Anonymous, and LulzSec:

I moved to New York City in January 2007, initially living in Crown Heights in Brooklyn, then near the vague border between Washington Heights and Harlem in Manhattan. During this time period, I met Vivian Shaw, with whom I would enter into a relationship that lasted four years. Around a month into the relationship, she asked me to move into her apartment with her in the East Village.

In late 2008, I practiced some involvement in and association with the hacking-related subculture described by media as “Anonymous,” although in general I had engaged in related activities going back numerous years (even into the mid 90s when I was a teenager). I lack advanced hacking skills (and have not had great interest in gaining those) and so my involvement was primarily on the “lulz” side of things (one shouldn’t underestimate the cultural importance thereof, especially in setting the tone and tenor of the space that defines hacking operations). (My association with this aspect of the internet subculture greatly predated the actual coining of the terms “lulz” or “Anonymous,” and I was regarded as the single most prolific and talented Wikipedia vandal of the early 2000s.)

At an early point I had skepticisms about Anonymous particularly for its early role in promoting US foreign policy objectives (ie, “color revolutions” of the Soros/State Dept model, with Iran being only the most blatant such case) — I sought to steer Anonymous more solidly in an anti-Zionist direction (and found ample ground to work on given remarkable already-existing aspects of the trolling subculture), against forces that actually qualify as the worst human rights abusers in the world: US militarism and Israeli Apartheid, and their associated intelligence structures.

In summer of 2010, Vivian and I moved to Austin together after she was accepted into a PhD program at the University of Texas.

Within the first month we were living there, we experienced an act of vandalism (or mild “sabotage” if I wanted to be dramatic about it) — suddenly one night we lost internet access. After attempting to resolve the issue for several hours, I called the ISP that night, and the person I spoke with on the phone expressed confusion given that ours was the single only account which lost access in that area, which apparently would generally be unusual. Soon thereafter, I found a cut and frayed cable directly outside our apartment unit door, but was unsure regarding a connection. It took around four days for someone to come to repair the problem. What we were told was that someone had illegally cut our cable in whatever place within our apartment complex where all individual unit cables are located — he said it was definitely cut illegally, as it was left frayed, and without an identifying tag which the ISP used when cutting cables (he initially thought there was a possibility that someone at the ISP had merely cut the wrong cable incorrectly).

When I told the repairman about the cut cable placed outside our door, he actually became startled. What he told me was that, whoever cut the cable, there was no identifying information on the cables themselves which would be understandable in order to match it to any specific account or, especially, a specific apartment unit associated with that account. He indicated that whoever did it would necessarily have needed to access the ISP’s own databases, and had no possible explanation as to how it could have occurred.

Around this time, I met someone named Ori Swed, who was also a PhD student at the University of Texas. His background in the Israeli military was as an intelligence officer overseeing the occupation of Palestine, and he had the sort of right-wing views on the conflict one would expect. (His actual scholarship seems remarkably poor, badly-written, and unoriginal.) A strange period of “probing” occurred in which, essentially, in any social situation in which I was around either Ori, or his wife Rachel Levi, both of them spent nearly their entire time speaking only to me, and asking me my views on nearly any and all events occurring in the Middle East region, very particularly making a point of asking me which specific news sources I was reading.

In autumn of 2010, there was a brief attempt by Ori to recruit me to the private intelligence company Stratfor. I knew what Stratfor was and had no interest.

During this time period, I did (and still do) suffer from cluster headaches, which at points in my life have been remarkably severe. (One learns to handle pain.) Over a period of several months, Ori, Rachel, and my ex-girlfriend Vivian attempted to convince me to allow Rachel to perform acupuncture on me. She claimed to have cured someone’s blindness through acupuncture in Israel, and she was described as “maybe the best acupuncturist in the world.” I was initially wary, but out of a profound sense of trust in perceived social peers, agreed to undergo the procedures.

The acupuncture resulted in an immediate nervous breakdown. My relationship with Vivian cracked under that stress. I will explicitly note that I sent multiple very politely-worded emails to Rachel Levi detailing my reaction, which received no responses at all. I will also explicitly note that Rachel Levi was not licensed to perform acupuncture in Texas (she did not appear in official registries and in any event had not been inside the US long enough to have attained proper certification), which actually made her actions felonies (compare with, for instance, someone performing dentistry without a license). To date, I am not certain what occurred regarding the acupuncture, or whether I was poisoned, drugged, inflicted with deliberate damage to nerve endings, or some combination of those.

My association with Anonymous continued.

Charting that a bit more — the main forum of Anonymous is the wiki Encyclopedia Dramatica, with its associated IRC channel. Discussing subcultural aspects of Encyclopedia Dramatica is beyond the scope of this specific blog post. However, the leading personality on ED for some time had been the hacker/troll known as weev. In the months following his arrest, the site first experienced waves of incremental censorship (the first article to go, deleted entirely, was one that I had primarily written) before eventually closing down at its original location entirely.

AnonOps (a faction at that moment effectively led by Barrett Brown and Ryan Cleary, associated with the anonnews.org site) launched an operation to “save ED”, and nearly all data was recovered and restored to new servers owned by Cleary. Cleary was then subsequently almost immediately arrested in association with attacks by LulzSec. At that time, there were already whispers in IRC channels that the closure of ED (and the strikingly uneven form of censorship on the site that preceded its closure), the arrest of weev, and the arrest of Ryan Cleary were related events.

I spent the summer of 2011 in New York City where friends of mine attempted to film a documentary about internet vandalism in which I was to be the main subject. A trailer was created, but the film has to date not been completed (the producers were not able to raise appropriate funds).

In September 2011 I moved back to Austin. I quickly found myself associated with Occupy Austin and spent some time there, eventually finding employment with an attorney who also was representing Occupy.

I met with Ori again at the end of September 2011 to discuss events. Regarding my experience from the acupuncture and general discussion that Rachel Levi’s techniques seemed unusual, he specifically told me that she practiced an arcane form of acupuncture handed down secretly, and the only books that describe such methods deliberately contain mistakes, but that otherwise he was just “very sorry” about my reaction. He explicitly asked me to promise that I would never mention Rachel Levi’s name in any legal proceedings, stating, strangely, “she can’t be compromised.” I refused, and he pointed his finger in my face (it was shaking, which indicated he was scared) and began threatening me on the basis of purported powerful connections he had. I asked him about Stratfor and the prior probing, and he merely answered that he was studying geopolitics as a student, and so was interested in those issues as a response. When I asked him about the internet cable being cut, he initially feigned non-comprehension, which I immediately saw through as I recalled Vivian describing to me in-depth conversations she had had with him on that specific subject. When I mentioned this, he then asked if I was accusing him of being the one who cut the cable, which I denied — however, by this point, he was standing up and leaving, feigning “offense.”

In the immediate period after this, I began checking into the IRC channel associated with Encyclopedia Dramatica again. I finally related my story to others, highlighting the role of Stratfor in those events. (From the stalker-blog of Daniel Brandt, who I ordinarily sort of respect, and have been dwelling in the same small internet circles as for a decade now, a partial list of regular ED IRC users. I do not appear on that list, but you can see Anarchaos. I could easily call myself one of the leading contributors to ED, but usually spent little time frequenting the IRC channel.)

I absolutely assert that I in no way violated any law in merely discussing the shadiness of Stratfor around these circles, and never insinuated to anyone that Stratfor should be a “target” for hacking operations. (But of course I knew what was happening in the ED IRC channel.) I do think that what Jeremy Hammond did was heroic, however, and that in exposing that level of fascistic corporate-government corruption, including up to involvement in crimes against humanity, that he rendered a service to his nation and to humanity which a decent society would applaud. Instead, he’s faced the same treatment as Bradley Manning. (In Manning’s case, we can at least note the severity of treatment, while unacceptable, might have something to do with his status in the military, handling by the military justice system which differs from the civilian justice system, and the actual plausible, if incorrect, framing of matters as that he committed the crime of treason in his actions; in the case of Hammond, as a private citizen he broke into the servers of a powerful private corporation but is being treated identically to Manning.)

(More recently, in San Francisco I went on two dates with a girl who, I found out on the second date, was Jeremy Hammond’s long-time best friend in Chicago. In probabilistic terms this seems confoundingly absurd to me, but I’m not specifically accusing anyone of being a police informant at this point.)

I feel my experiences with Stratfor and its associates in Texas, along with my involvement in internet activist circles immediately overlapping with Jeremy Hammond, gives me unique insight into this case. I’m posting this all publicly in public interest in hopes that the unique and scary travesties of justice involved in Jeremy Hammond’s case, in the greater reality of human rights abuses committed by or facilitated by private spy agencies like Stratfor (which have only been partially revealed by Wikileaks to this point), and in the particulars of my own personal situation (which I’ve also, for sake of my own privacy, not discussed the full personal emotional weight from) can be resolved through more open discourse.

Fact: Stratfor was hacked because I talked about how Israeli military intelligence associated with Stratfor attacked me in Austin and fucked up my shit, in the ED IRC channel when Anarchaos was there.

The person who attempted to recruit me to Stratfor was Ori Swed, a Captain in the IDF (intelligence officer and war criminal).

Julian Assange is scared about releasing all of the Stratfor emails.

Victims of sexual assault in US military are mostly male

Too big to fail is bigger than ever

In the past quarter century, some financial institutions have become huge, qualifying as TBTF. The top ten banks in the world have assets close to one-third of global GDP. It is unthinkable that any of the top banks would go bankrupt. If one is allowed to fail, the global economy would go into recession. Indeed, if any one of the top 100 fails, it would take down a country or two. It is difficult to see that any government or governments would tolerate that.

The shadow banking system may be more dangerous. A hedge fund can leverage up ten to twenty times through derivative instruments. Hence, a fund with US$ 10 billion could rival the impact of one of the top 100 banks in the world. There are numerous hedge funds with over US$ 10 billion.

The shadow banking system (hedge funds) should be analyzed as absolutely including major university endowments. UTIMCO (personally dominated by leading oil and real estate interests of Texas) invests in near-identical patterns as leading hedge funds — the University of Texas should be thought of, at this point, as a hedge fund that has a football team and builds unsustainably expensive buildings (COLA=$100 million, this raised when the state of Texas is gutting public health and education at lower levels) for grad students in sociology to organize their queer sex parties in or whatever — and is worth more than $20 billion. (UTIMCO only publicly discloses around half of its investments.)

The accepted remedy for TBTF is to increase regulations, sort of turning big banks into semi state-owned banks. China is already there. If the government takes on the downside, why not become the owner to get the upside too.

Discussion on US surveillance state, December 2012

So there is a direct relationship between surveillance and support of straight up murder. … when you assist the surveillance state, you literally are helping to kill fucking children.

US authoritarian capitalism appears to have recently surpassed Stalinism in terms of vastness, depth, and intensity of normalized pervasive hierarchical surveillance over civilians.

The Public/Private Surveillance Partnership

It’s no secret that we’re monitored continuously on the Internet. Some of the company names you know, such as Google and Facebook. Others hide in the background as you move about the Internet. There are browser plugins that show you who is tracking you. One Atlantic editor found 105 companies tracking him during one 36-hour period. Add data from your cell phone (who you talk to, your location), your credit cards (what you buy, from whom you buy it), and the dozens of other times you interact with a computer daily, we live in a surveillance state beyond the dreams of Orwell.

It’s all corporate data, compiled and correlated, bought and sold. And increasingly, the government is doing the buying. Some of this is collected using National Security Letters (NSLs). These give the government the ability to demand an enormous amount of personal data about people for very speculative reasons, with neither probable cause nor judicial oversight. Data on these secretive orders is obviously scant, but we know that the FBI has issued hundreds of thousands of them in the past decade — for reasons that go far beyond terrorism.

ACLU files suit on behalf of Antiwar.com after FBI secret surveillance

I’ve read Antiwar.com since the late 1990s (circa Kosovo War) and have found it as an ongoing project compiling news articles on current events to be one of the most valuable resources on the internet. The site is associated with and some of the columnists write from a right-libertarian “capitalist” perspective but the site overall is usually correct in essence on issues concerning militarism; the arcane right “pro-market” perspective (aligned with Ron Paul) isn’t noticeable if one only follows the news aggregation function of the site. That is, I don’t agree with their economic views (and rarely read the on-site columns) but from the left think they’re doing tremendous work on behalf of the anti-militarist cause, and so hearing about these troubles doesn’t surprise me.

Is the US government spying on journalists more often than we think?

Federal regulations require that the attorney general personally approve such a move, ensure the request is narrow and necessary, and notify the news organization about the request—in advance whenever possible. In this case, however, the Justice Department seems to have used an indiscriminate approach seeking information (from phone companies) about a wide range of phone numbers used by AP reporters—and it only notified AP after the fact.

It wouldn’t be surprising if there were more cases like this we’ve never heard about. Here’s why: The Justice Department’s rules only say the media must be informed about “subpoenas” for “telephone toll records.” The interprets those rules quite literally, making clear the requirement “concerns only grand jury subpoenas.” That is, these rules don’t apply to National Security Letters, which are secret demands for information used by the FBI that don’t require judicial approval. The narrow FBI interpretation also doesn’t cover administrative subpoenas, which are issued by federal agencies without prior judicial review. Last year, the FBI issued NSLs for the communications and financial records of more than 6,000 Americans—and the number has been far higher in previous years. The procedures that do apply to those tools have been redacted from publicly available versions of the FBI guidelines. Thus, it’s no shocker the AP seizure would seem like an “unprecedented intrusion” if the government doesn’t think it has to tell us about the precedents. And there’s no telling if the Justice Department rules (and the FBI’s interpretation) allow the feds to seize without warning other types of electronic communications records that could reveal a journalist’s e-mail, chat, or Web browsing activity.

Palestinian children caught up in wave of Israeli arrests — children as young as 8 are imprisoned in violation of international law for throwing stones at Israeli military vehicles

Palestinian activists demolish part of Apartheid Wall

Israel is largest drone exporter in the world — France seeks drones from Israel

Iraqi authorities find three mass graves in Fallujah with 1000 corpses; remains are believed to be from victims killed by US forces during 2004-2005.

(Also reported by Al-Sumaria.)

Even though the press began projecting me as a ‘Black Power leader’ and all that kind of mess, I knew that it didn’t matter what position a dude had, it didn’t mean he was a leader, even if he had the title of Chairman or President. The leader might be a dude in the organization who ain’t got no title, no office.

— H. Rap Brown

Fun data graphic from a 2011 Guardian article attempting to socially chart the internal dynamics of LulzSec from interactions in their IRC channel during a specific timeframe. (The Guaradian reprinted this image from the nonyNews blog.)

The hub is joepie91 (Sven Slootweg) who did not directly participate in any of LulzSec’s illegal hacking operations.

(Keep in mind: discussion in media about who were “core members” of LulzSec is largely bullshit and/or irrelevant.)

Ryan Cleary was the first to be arrested, and to date has faced the most severe hacking-related sentence in connection to LulzSec. Also, media reports suggest that he was the hacker most responsible for “arming” the others with tools used in implementing operations. Ryan hosted the resurrected Encyclopedia Dramatica after the initial site was closed by its original founder, Sherrod DeGrippo. (I have vast observations to chart on the specific issue of ED’s closure and resurrection.) After Ryan’s arrest, the site’s caretakers became Garrett Moore (not a LulzSec member, but a long-time associate of Kayla; Kayla is lol in the above chart) and joepie91.

Without spending a lot of time talking about irrelevant or boring things like Tflow’s edits on ED, I’d like to just publicly post something that has puzzled me for some time — https://encyclopediadramatica.se/User:Anarchaos

Anarchaos is Jeremy Hammond. Hammond hacked Stratfor. The Anarchaos account only made edits on the ED wiki to his own userpage (although he appeared to be in the IRC channel relatively often for a period), and it’s not entirely clear whether the account actually belonged to Hammond or to someone impersonating him. The cryptic message on the userpage — “I am really bad at computer.” — originally contained a link leading to an image of someone wearing a ski-mask, holding a gun in one hand and a laptop in the other, and pointing the gun at the screen of the laptop. Given that these edits came not long before Hammond’s arrest, I’ve not been able to determine whether this was just a strange message by Hammond himself, or whether perhaps authorities were taunting him ahead of time.

Why the AP phone records seizure and the LulzSec sentences are related

The AP probe and LulzSec punishments may not, on the surface, appear linked. But they are, especially when one considers the case of Jeremy Hammond, the accused Anonymous and LulzSec-linked hacktivist who is charged with looting the computer systems belonging to the Arizona Department of Public Safey (allegedly done to protest tough immigration laws) and at HBGary Federal and global intelligence firm Stratfor (allegedly done to expose the inner workings of the so-called intelligence industrial complex). …

But unlike his counterparts in the U.K., Hammond has been handled far more aggressively here in the United States, having been held in prison in New York without bail since last March, often in solitary confinement, while being denied visitors as he awaits trial. A judge has determined him a flight risk.

It’s clear that the United States wants to make an example of Hammond, and by throwing the proverbial book at him and essentially declaring him an enemy of the state, even before he stands trial, federal prosecutors are fully aware that this will discourage other people from engaging in similar acts that seek to expose government or corporate corruption and impropriety. The same applies to what the DoJ has done to the AP. In many ways, Hammond really is no different than the person or persons who tipped off the news agency about the counter-terrorism operation in Yemen. Or any whistleblower or press leaker for that matter. Hence, they all face similar treatment.

Although President Obama pledged to maintain the “most transparent administration” in history, his actions have proven otherwise. The events of this week is further proof that the U.S government — and the corporations for which it looks out — is more interested than ever in preserving its cloak of national security secrecy. And if that means instituting press or source intimidation, or waging aggressive prosecutions against activists…well, you might want to get used to it.