So, those days two events where directly directed toward people who wants to enforce and protect their privacy, or toward the ones that would maybe participate in an Anonymous group. One here, in France, another in the US.
The blowing of EDF
The first affair, that everyone’s discussing about, is a thing that started 6 months ago. When the landing page of EDF (The main company that’s selling electricity in France, public business but in a market open to concurrency) was hit by a DDoS. That was in June, and the thing hits the news[FR]. It was not that long after the serious problem in Fukushima, and there was a lot of pressure around nuclear power at this time. The DCRI (French secret police), following the leads they had, found that people was using a public pad hosted by piratendpad.de, the German Pirate Party, to synchronise the attack. They asked for an access to the logs to their cross borders colleagues, and then the police raided the server, just some days before an important local election for the German Pirate Party (where they made a big score by the way). The story was covered in the press, particularly on Ars Technica.
Last week, they finally went after two guys linked to Anonymous (but who does not?) and put at least one of them in custody for 60 hours in a row (the interview of the guy is at owni[FR]). The police said 45h and that he waited for 15h in a cell. That still 60h of custody. That’s more than the legal limit of 48h, so it’s a special exception for fighting terrorism (yeah, US got Patriot Act, we got at least 2 LOPPSI, and 2 other National Security Law during the last ten years). Oh, and the goal of the DCRI is to catch terrorist (and to put everyone under a CCTV cam). The evidence was that the guy IP was found in the webserver logs (so, he just visited the website of the company that sold him electricity, probably to pay his bill for instance… Surely, he is a terrorist).
The thing that worries me here, besides the fact that they do not understand the internet, is that they used terrorism allegation. terrorism is destroying critical infrastructure and killing people to spread terror in a part of the world. A DDoS on a public website (even if I disapprove it) must not be a threat to a power plant. Especially if it’s a nuclear one. So, there was no risk at all of destroying critical infrastructure to spread terror, so not terrorism. If their was a risk (meaning, a computer of the plant LAN connected to the internet), first a DDoS on the public (and non-related) website would not have destroyed the plant, but that’ will be the evidence that those people are idiot and incompetent and dangerous, they should do jail time.
The FBI poster about terrorism
Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt
The governments are doing this because they’re afraid. They’re panicking, they do not understand what’s slipping between their hands. They’re loosing the battle, so they’re panicking. What they want, besides controlling everything and everyone, is killing Anonymous and other hackers movement. One efficient way to do it, is to use the Fear of the people, by using Uncertainty of facts (there’s a possible terrorism risk) and by disseminate Doubt in the people minds (are hackers good or evil?). That’s why they want to control the information, and the media. It’s so bad for them that a lot of media do like us since the Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement all over the world.
They want to makes us terrorists, because everyone have an unrational fear of terrorism. Terrorism is perceived as a high profile threat, with an extremely high probability for terrorism event to occur, while it’s not. I mean, there’s more people killed on the road each year in France (about 6 000), that by a terrorism act since the last ten years. But it’s a risk a government can pretend to fight by chowing things like policeman equipped with shotgun and assault rifle, servicemen in public space, invasion of privacy for a greater good. That’s why they want us to be terrorists, it’s because they need it to control the cyberspace and they want to kick us out their world.
The thing they did not get is what we are already out of their world. John Perry Barlow wrote some time ago the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, and that have never been so true. We fight government and corporations. We stand for people when all of you have fled from the battle. We will be the last line between them and our privacy, and that will be an epic battle. Not using guns and spilling bloods, but using speech to spill words, laws and regulations, computer and internet to spill data all over the place. This is the real cyberwar people told it exists. People, host, bots and cats from the internet, versus the control freak of the nation states and corporation.
I will fight for my freedom. And you should od the same. They called us terrorists so you are not at threat, we will takes the pressure, we can manage stress and staying awake for nights, you should join us and make your voice heard because you have something to say. The crypto ammunition box is now full open, come and get some. If you still need to know why and how, read the Cyphernomicon.