Follow on TwitterWatch: First Interview With Mastermind Of ‘Anonymous’ Hacker Group
RT just released an exclusive interview with the mastermind of the ‘Anonymous’ hacker group. The group has for some time been conducting something of a cyber war using distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against anti-piracy groups — including Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). They refer to their organized efforts as Operation:Payback, since the anti-piracy groups are themselves using software security companies to launch DDoS attacks against file-sharing sites.
‘Anonymous’ has most recently been in the spotlight for targeting corporations that have been complicit in trying — albeit unsuccessfully — to sabotage the unaffiliated whistleblower group, WikiLeaks.
Anonymous’s mastermind reveals how the group operates and how they coordinate their activities. He states that the group uses volunteers, comprised of thousands of anonymous people from all over the world. These volunteers are the ones who actually participate in the DDoS attacks:
The chances of getting caught in this are basically zero, I mean there are thousands and thousands of computers attacking at once, and there’s no way to distinguish them, and they’re voluntary attacks. The administration isn’t directly attacking. We simply coordinate them and direct the attacks.
Like I said the computers actually doing the attacking — the DDoSing — are volunteers who actually offer up their bandwidth to our cause. This could be anyone, this could be people listening now, this could be you, it could be anyone. We simply offer the means of doing it. Everyone involved is aware of the risks.
Twitter and Facebook recently took down the accounts for ‘Anonymous’. The RT interviewer asks the ‘Anonymous’ mastermind if that has in any way disrupted the groups’ ability to communicate with people and to garner more support:
[Laughing] Not really. None whatsoever, basically. Those Facebook and Twitter accounts were made for updates and support rather than the coordination of the attacks.
We made them to update, and if they take them down we’ll put ten more up, and if they take ten down, then we’ll put one hundred more up. I don’t think they feel like playing whack-a-mole with us. They’re not going to stop the Facebook and Twitter accounts.
He goes on to discusses whether the term ‘Cyber War’ fairly represents the description of the group’s activities:
Figuratively, at worst. Or it could be considered between two states. Anonymous is not a state. It would be expressed as more of a revolution or protest, as it is the public standing against agencies that would silence them. But war does sound a bit better in the media, so I guess you could push war, but it’s more a protest or even a revolution.
On whether Anonymous attacked Sara Palin’s site:
We don’t really care about Sara Palin that much, to be honest. I don’t really know what she’s trying to accomplish, or what attention she’s trying to gain, but we personally don’t really care about Sara Palin. It might have been a member, or a group of members that have tried to do this, but not a major attack that was planned, not a major movement that was planned. No.
WATCH the full interview:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl2_-NYm6yA[/youtube]
MUST WATCH: Sarah Palin Supporters Reveal Their Ignorance On Every Issue
For those of you who — like me — have been mystified by the huge crowds flocking to tea parties, anti-health care reform rallies, nut-job Sarah Palin events, etc. this video will shed some light on things. On November 20th, Chase Whiteside and Erick Stoll attended a Sarah Palin book signing event at Borders bookstore in Columbus, Ohio. They interviewed the people in line, asking them very politely to speak about their favorite politician, and to explain which policies of hers appeal to them most. The responses are shocking!
This footage exposes this so-called ‘conservative’ movement in America (Tea Parties, anti-health-care-reform protests, Sarah Palin rallies, etc) for what it is: a group of the most misinformed, uneducated, fearful, faith-based, Fox News zombies you’ve ever seen. This video is humorous, shocking, and yes, frightening — it makes you lose every bit of confidence in our country’s ability to function as a democracy.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKKKgua7wQk[/youtube]
Paul Krugman Warns About The Right-Wing’s Hold On GOP
Krugman makes some interesting points in his NY Times column about the Right-Wing’s new hold over the GOP.
First, he addresses the anti-health care reform rally last week in front of our nation’s capitol, and some of the now-all-too-common ‘grotesque’ visuals and rhetoric (i.e. “large signs showing piles of bodies at Dachau with the caption ‘National Socialist Healthcare.'”):
The key thing to understand about that rally is that it wasn’t a fringe event. It was sponsored by the House Republican leadership — in fact, it was officially billed as a G.O.P. press conference. Senior lawmakers were in attendance, and apparently had no problem with the tone of the proceedings. […]
What all this shows is that the G.O.P. has been taken over by the people it used to exploit.
He gives some historic background on the GOP’s courtship of the far-right:
With the rise of Ronald Reagan: Republican politicians began to win elections in part by catering to the passions of the angry right.
Until recently, however, that catering mostly took the form of empty symbolism. Once elections were won, the issues that fired up the base almost always took a back seat to the economic concerns of the elite.
But something snapped last year. Conservatives had long believed that history was on their side, so the G.O.P. establishment could, in effect, urge hard-right activists to wait just a little longer: once the party consolidated its hold on power, they’d get what they wanted. After the Democratic sweep, however, extremists could no longer be fobbed off with promises of future glory.
Furthermore, the loss of both Congress and the White House left a power vacuum in a party accustomed to top-down management. At this point Newt Gingrich is what passes for a sober, reasonable elder statesman of the G.O.P. And he has no authority: Republican voters ignored his call to support a relatively moderate, electable candidate in New York’s special Congressional election.
Real power in the party rests, instead, with the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin (who at this point is more a media figure than a conventional politician). Because these people aren’t interested in actually governing, they feed the base’s frenzy instead of trying to curb or channel it. So all the old restraints are gone.
Krugman warns that the party of Beck and Limbaugh could make some serious gains in the midterm election, if only because Obama has been unable to stop the country’s economic bleeding (unemployment has now reached a 26-year high of 10.2%). He cautions what this could mean:
if Tea Party Republicans do win big next year, what has already happened in California could happen at the national level. In California, the G.O.P. has essentially shrunk down to a rump party with no interest in actually governing — but that rump remains big enough to prevent anyone else from dealing with the state’s fiscal crisis. If this happens to America as a whole, as it all too easily could, the country could become effectively ungovernable in the midst of an ongoing economic disaster.
It sort of goes without saying, that if an ideological group as evil as the Nazis could come into power during extremely adverse economic times, who’s to say we won’t end up with an ever-increasing number of scary, fear mongering, destructive politicians of our own during this economic slide? Probably a good rule-of-thumb is to never take the far-right lightly …
Follow AlterPolitics on Twitter
