Friday, July 4, 2014

Anonymous, Lulz, and the Politics of Hacktivism

Why am I writing about th3j35t3r in a blog which focuses on cyberharassment and cyberbullies?

I’ve been monitoring his Twitter feed for a long time now and frankly I can’t think of anyone online right now that is more targeted by Tards than this guy/gal/group.

The biggest irony of all is that the people who are targeting him/her/them most frequently call themselves Anonymous.

Now I’m not going to get into the whole issue of who is or isn’t a ‘real Anon’ or who does or doesn’t reflect the concept, etc. It just gets complicated because pretty much anyone can declare themselves Anonymous irrespective of the core ideal which Anonymous represents and irrespective of whether they actually follow that core ideal or not. Although they all claim to and no doubt genuinely believe that they do follow it.

Either that or I’m sadly mistaken about what the core ideal is. No doubt that is possible and if I am I’d like to be corrected because that means that I should reconsider my support.

Based on what I believe the core ideals of Anonymous are, there is no-one who represents the Anonymous ideal more than th3j35t3r including those Tards who keep targeting him with their numerous and ongoing FailDoxes and cyberharassment campaigns.

The exception to that would be those real hacking groups (not the skids who all claim to be hackers and create their little drama whore ‘sects’) which have managed to maintain complete secrecy and are generally unknown. The other exception to that are those groups that are open and known but manage to maintain complete secrecy about what it is they actually do. 

I’m not going to draw attention to them by naming them and anyone who is serious or interested knows who the real ones are with the really serious people who are really good at what they do, anyway.

So, to me, and of course, this is just my personal opinion, they and th3j35t3r represent the real Anonymous not a bunch of loud mouthed egofag skids and n00bs who run around doxing people like th3j35t3r and other legitimate social activists/hacktivists, for no reason, or for completely idiotic reasons that they, more often than not, just fabricate, or by taking a minor ‘transgression’ and exaggerating the issue beyond recognition to rationalize their behavior.

That said, it’s important to note that I’m not a member of the Anonymous Collective, have never been and am speaking as an outsider. So, my opinion on this has as much value as those who read this choose to give it and no more.

I do, however, openly and publicly support what Anonymous does by writing about the Ops I support on my main blog and promoting the videos that I agree with. That is my contribution to the cause and I believe that it’s just as important as the actions that the hacktivists and social activists engage in because if people don’t know what they’re doing because people like me aren’t promoting their causes and advocating on their behalf, all their actions don’t mean very much. You need both. It isn’t a case of one vs the other.

Now, let’s look at the facts and from this point on I’m going to refer to th3j35t3r as a ‘he’ simply out of convenience. I have no idea who he/she/they are nor do I want to know and if I did ever stumble across that information I wouldn’t share it. You’d have to waterboard me to get it out of me.

Th3J35t3r Facts:

He has been online for 5 years now or is beginning his 5th year as of November 9th, 2013 when he celebrated his anniversary.

During this time, he has managed to remain completely anonymous despite:

1. Thousands of attempts to dox him.

2. At least some of the attempts were made by people who claim to have expertise in the InfoSec field.

3. Numerous people have attempted to befriend him and women have attempted to seduce him in order to extract personal identifying information from him. Some self-identified as social engineers.

All without success.

So I have to wonder why there is such an obsession with doxing th3j35t3r and why is it coming mostly from people who claim to be Anonymous?

Well, first of all, the only elements of Anonymous who appear to be obsessed with th3j35t3r are the skids and the n00bs. The serious Anon hacktivists and social activists don’t appear to be concerned about him at all.

In my opinion, the skids and n00bs do it because of:

1. Their own egofaggotry, that is, they think they know-it-all, they think they’re the best, and they want to prove it by taking on the ‘fastest gun in the west’ much like the gun slingers in those old westerns who couldn’t get out of town without having a shoot out because someone wanted to prove they were faster on the draw.

2. This delusion they hold about themselves is an indication of their own anti-social personality disorders and need to cyberharass people.

3.  They may or may not also engage in the odd bit of social activism or at least try to present themselves in that light in order to establish some credibility for themselves before starting a cyberharassment campaign against someone. Now, it’s always possible that the intent was genuine but their personality disorder just took hold. Either way the end result is the same and the cause is the same. That said, most of those with anti-social personality disorders simply use things like social activism both as a means of covering up their anti-social personality disorder by making themselves appear to be caring people as well as a means to their end of rationalizing cyberharassment against people.

That is, those same people who want to be ‘epic’ and take on th3j35t3r will also likely be the same ones on Facebook and other sites, leading theRIP Tards and other Tards in various cyberharassment campaigns.

Their psychology is really no different. As I pointed out in one of my previous blog posts, normal, sane, rational people don’t go around destroying other people without serious cause. These habitual doxers usually make it crystal clear that their intent is to destroy the person and there is usually little or no real cause for them to do so.

I can perfectly understand and sympathize with the person who kills the pedophile who raped their child. It may not be the right thing to do but it’s understandable and I may or may not be above such an act myself.

I don’t understand or sympathize with those who want to destroy a person because they don’t agree with them on some issue or because they say something they don’t like or do something they don’t like or associate with someone they don’t like.

It’s called Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Association and both are constitutionally protected civil rights. Cyberharassing people on any of those grounds means that the Tards are violating their targets civil rights.

Civil Rights are something which I thought was supposed to be a core ideal of Anonymous. So, frankly, who do these Tards think they are when they attack th3j35t3r or those who associate with him because they don’t like his opinion on something or the fact that some support him?

Isn’t Anonymous all about Civil Rights? Am I wrong?

That’s not to say there isn’t some actual social activist opposition to th3j35t3r. There is no doubt that there is. He makes no secret out of the fact that he doesn’t agree with WikiLeaks and brought their site down and he’s not shy about expressing his political opinion where Assange is concerned.

Is this personal? Is he threatening to ‘destroy Assange and his family’? No. I’ve never seen him take that approach.

He keeps it all in the political domain and he has a right to do that.

disagree with him and support both Assange and WikiLeaks and consider what they do extremely important. So what? We disagree on something. That’s no reason to hate him.

I respect him for the things he does that I agree with just like I support the Anon Ops that I agree with and ignore the one’s that I don’t agree with.

However, the self-righteous Tards who hate him because he doesn’t agree with them on some issue seem to think they have the right to impose their views on everyone and no-one can possibly be moral or ethical unless they follow their deemed politically correct party line. 

They also seem to think they have the right to destroy anyone’s life who dares to disagree with them or associates with those who disagree with them.

Freedom of speech gives th3j35t3r just as much right to his opinion as it does you or I. I agree with some things he does and disagree with some things. 

I see no reason to hate him or anyone else because he or they don’t agree with me on everything or something. It’s a good reason to get into an interesting discussion if both parties can handle that or simply to agree to disagree.

One of the actions on Twitter that brought a smile to my face was when th3j35t3r decided to throw down the gauntlet to Kevin Mitnick because of his position supporting Snowden. 

He was going to protest Mitnick’s support by having a political virtual sit-in by dDosing and bringing down Mitnicks web site. 

He initiated things like a gentleman with Mitnick by letting him know that he was going to target his site and why. 

Although I don’t think he gave him the technical details of what he was planning. The irony was perfect. He used an Android to bring down Mitnick’s security business site. How did Mitnick react? Like a true gentleman in return. They shook hands and moved on. It was a pleasure to behold.

That is how normal, sane, rational people who don’t have anti-social personality disorders handle these things.

When it comes to the 99%, the reality is that we are NOT going to agree on MOST things. Everyone comes from different ideologies and backgrounds and represents different social and political views.

I’m a Freethinker and don’t accept any ideology. I determine my position on issues based on logic, reason and empirical evidence.

However, we can ALL agree on SOME things like the importance of protecting our Civil Rights. And even on that issue some might not believe that our Civil Rights are in danger. They would wrong in my opinion but they’re allowed to hold that belief whether I agree with it or not.

In the end, Anonymous and Occupy can only be successful if they recognize that fact, don’t try to push sectarian positions and stick to the general issues that matter to most of us irrespective of whether we agree with any particular ideology or not.

The Tards are incapable of recognizing this or the importance of this concept so we will likely forever be dealing with their Tard ways. 

Since they’re now getting together in Tard groups to do Tard things en masse we all need to be aware of this phenomenon that’s occurring and have good strategies to deal with it.

From what I’ve seen, th3j35t3r handles all of this quite well. He will only retaliate to the degree necessary to get them off his back which is exactly what needs to be done.

Unfortunately for the Tards and because of their own stupidity, it sometimes means that you have to do quite a lot of damage before they’ll move on. 

The benefit of that is that since they tend to be cowards as well, it makes them think twice before they’ll do it again. 

They might try to repeat the behavior using other strategies but they’ll always find themselves in the same position again if enough people continue to stand up to them.

Th3j35t3r, on the other hand, and those following him, might miss it if all the drama stopped completely. It’s almost always entertaining to watch these Tards make fools of themselves over and over again. 

They may be doing it for the lulz but the one’s that are actually having the lulz are those of us watching th3j35t3r’s feed and watching him pwn them over and over again.

If anyone were to actually dox th3j35t3r, given the support he has on Twitter, that someone could find themselves in more trouble than they can handle. I’m pretty sure I won’t be only one ticked off if that were to happen. Just saying….

I think that every person who has been doxed by these Tards as th3j35t3r should automatically get a free J T-Shirt which says th3j35t3r-2, the3j35t3r-3, etc. on it and a membership card to a club called ‘Doxed as th3j35t3r’.


I’d dox myself as th3j35t3r for that :-D.

Stay Frosty ;-D