<nettime> Anonymous Surpasses Wikileaks

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

The exploits of Anonymous to hack the systems of firms
providing spying services to governments and corporations
suggest that the WikiLeaks mini-era has been surpassed.

Much of WikiLeaks promise to protect sources is useless 
if the sources are not whistleblowers needing a forum for 
publication. Instead publishers of secret information grab it 
directly for posting to Torrent for anybody to access
without mediation and mark-up by self-esteemed peddlers 
of protection, interpretationa and authentication, including 
media cum scholars.

Arstechnica descriptions of the how the Anonymous hack
are the best reading of Internet derring-do yet and far exceeds 
the much simpler version of WikiLeaks carefully bruited 
as if precious but is not according to Daniel Domscheit-Berg's 
revelations.

AnonLeaks.ru is a remarkable advance of WikiLeaks. And
promises much more by the same means and methods most
associated with official spies -- NSA and CIA run the Special 
Collections Service to do exactly that kind of criminal 
aggression, along with black bag burglaries, surveillance 
and bugging. Contractors hiring ex-spies do much of this 
highly classified work as well and invent and supply the 
gadgets and front organizations required.

Not least of importance of the Anonymous hack and the many
preceding it is the revelation of how commercial firms have 
been exploiting public ignorance of their spying capacity. 
That they are themselves vulnerable is a surprise to them, 
as it must  be to those who hire them and, in the case of 
governments, provide legal cover for criminal actions.

This is not news, to be sure, for it has been alleged and
reported on for decades but mostly in technical journals
and conferences where offerers strut their malwares to
buyers of perfidium.

Imagine that instead of the many iterations of Wikileaks
now appearing to receive and publish documents, that 
more of the Anonymous-type hacks simply steal the family 
jewels of the spies, officials, lobbyists and corporations 
believing they own the territory in order to show the 
extent of their secret predations on the public.

The digitization of vast archives of government, commercial
and non-governmental organizations to facilitate their
hegemony provides a bounty to be hacked repeatedly
despite attempts to prevent it by vainly inept cybersecurity
agencies and firms.

The cyber officials yell, hit the Internet Switch. Too late, too 
late. Anonymous controls the switch.  Sure, Anonymous
can be compromised with sufficient hostile and friendly
inducements, but so can the predators, perhaps moreso
the latter.

I like that venerable Anonymous and the promise it offers 
as the Nymous authoritatives of secrecy frantically attempt 
to ban its privilege. 

For the WL era dutifully enshrine Julian Assange and Bradley
Manning, give them Medals of Freedom as icons of what led 
to the rise of Unnamables worldwide.

I commend Ketih for that unbreakable domain name.


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