Calling all cars! Be on the lookout for “Anonymous”!

After all, who knows what he might do?

A “loose coalition of Internet denizens,” Anonymous consists largely of users from multiple internet sites such as 4chan, 711chan, 420chan, Something Awful, Fark, Encyclopedia Dramatica, Slashdot, IRC channels, and YouTube. Other social networking sites are also utilized to mobilize physical protests. ... Anonymous is of interest not only because of the sentiments expressed by affiliates and their potential for physical protest, but because they have innovated the use of e-protests and mobilization. Given the lack of a unifying creed, this movement has the potential to inspire lone wolf behavior in the cyber realms.

The quote, extracted by Slashdot, is from a 215-page “Terrorism Threat Assessment” prepared for the state of Virginia by a State Police subdivision called the Virginia Fusion center.  (Ace of Spades, Little Green Footballs, Daily Pundit, Tim Blair, and Protein Wisdom will be disappointed.)

Now I admit that I’ve not bothered to download and read the whole thing, but if this is typical of its contents, I wonder how much Virginia paid for it.

Needless to say, the Slashdot commenters have offered a whole host of additional suspects:

Re:A.C. • (Score:5, Funny)
by apostrophesemicolon (816454) on Friday April 10, @10:54AM (#27531705)

in related news,
a coalition of persons of interest is growing at an exponential rate on the Internets. Members of the group, posting in various websites under the handle, Guest, often post provocative and sometimes unlawful comments. By using the handle name "Guest", they were afforded anonymity.

Several related groups are Anonymous, Anonymous Coward, Public, Guest, and Unregistered.

Re:A.C. • (Score:5, Funny)
by cayenne8 (626475) on Friday April 10, @01:23PM (#27533777)

Not only that...but, I hear there are people who actually register accounts with FALSE or misleading information as to their true identity. Pseudonyms and the like.

What the hell is this country coming to?

Re:A.C. • (Score:5, Insightful)
by Assmasher (456699) on Friday April 10, @10:30AM (#27531317)

Genius. How great would it be if Slashdot changed 'Anonymous Coward' to "Lone Wolf" for a few weeks?

Message to Virginia Fusion Center, from Anonymous • (Score:4, Funny)
by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 10, @09:23AM (#27530323)

All your base are belong to us.

Oh yes... “Anonymous” also communicates through “Unaccredited Grassroots Web Sites.”

Elsewhere:

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Some press-related linkage

Weekend reading on the Establishment Media and its relationship to the web...

Via NoWhitewash, via Michael Silence, Business Week’s Sarah Lacy offers an apology to the Internet:

...on behalf of reasonable members of the traditional media.

It is not your fault that our business models are slowly dying, that we resisted the Web for so long, and that we then did a mediocre job of adapting our products to it.  Your large portals and search engines..., aggregation services..., and your countless blogs have been very kind in sending us so much traffic at no charge over the years.  We know well that traffic is currency online.  That's why we spend so much time squeezing any remotely relevant ticker into a story, appending “Digg this” buttons to pages, and doing whatever we can to optimize our stories to get the most search traffic possible.

You've done your part to help save us, Internet, and we appreciate it...  It’s not your fault we haven't yet found a way to monetize it or the gumption to cut our costly print operations sufficiently to make new business models viable... - “AP and News Corp.: Wrong About Google”

Online journalist Danny Sullivan (found by following a link in Sarah’s column... amazing how that works, innit?) is a bit more confrontational:  After calling out the Wall Street Journal’s Robert Thomson over Thomson’s contention that the web is an echo chamber,^[1] lacks original content and “exploits” traditional media...

Robert, I’ve been creating original content on the internet for about 12 years longer than you've been editor of the WSJ.  Shut up.  Seriously, shut up.  To say something like that simply indicates you really do not understand that all blogs are not echo chambers.

I mean echo chamber?  Sorry, that’s the mainstream media, too.^{[1 (yes, that’s a duplicate, also snark!]}  I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen stories emerge on the internet only to later appear in a mainstream publication.  The mainstream papers read what the web publishes, then write their own stories, then all the mainstream pubs do their own versions of echoing each other.

...he plays “Call My Bluff” with Rupert Murdoch over Murdoch’s claim that Google “steals” copyright material by indexing it:

Let me help you with that, Rupert.  I’m going to save you all those potential legal fees plus needing to even speak further about the evil of the Big G with two simple lines.  Get your tech person to change your robots.txt file to say this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Done.  Do that, you’re outta Google.  All your pages will be removed, and you needn’t worry about Google listing the Wall Street Journal at all. - “Google’s Love for Newspapers, and How Little They Appreciate It”

In one of the comments to Sullivan’s post, “Anders” makes the conventional argument:

What’s that?  Oh, the local alderman in your town was busted for taking kickbacks from a paving company in his district, because of a reporter from your local paper sifting through the state sales taxes and incorporation papers and happened to notice a link?

Awesome.  Now when that newspaper folds because of twits like you who receive that content for free off of some fucking google twit feed, and when that alderman’s son comes to power in five years and loots the shit out of your town’s tax coffers for him and his buddies, don't come whining to me.

To which I’ll say, “Yeah, right- you wish!”  (For example, I wish my local newspaper had bothered to tell me that my city’s Capital Improvements Board was signing stadium contracts that would make it lose $42 million a year- before they were finalized.  But never let a Discouraging Word be heard about keeping the football team in town, and, oh, look, diversity!)

Which sort of leads to this (week old, but still worth it!) post, by Joanna:

Objectivity: Fail

It says something about the state of the newspaper industry that when I read about allegations that the most respected newspaper in the world spiked a story because it screwed with their candidate's chances, it doesn’t surprise me at all...

Pour yourself a cup of coffee, and read ’em all.

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Bring back Horatio Hornblower

Bill Quick:

Here’s what they aren’t reporting.

The Navy was right next to this lifeboat.  If it wasn’t prepared to blow that boat out of the water on an instant’s notice, it was criminally lacking in readiness.

But I believe it was.  I believe that the hostage captain was in the water and away from that boat for a few minutes at least.  But the warship did not blow the pirates out of the water and rescue the captain because they had to phone home to the political and legal lackeys of our Transnazi President, who is determined not to wield violence on behalf of America or her citizens under any circumstances, ever.

Perhaps an example of why instantaneous communication with the lords and masters back home isn’t always a good thing.

Of course, if we had a sensible policy about piracy...

Oh, snap!  What was I thinking...

Elsewhere:

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Conservation? Not for the political class.

The Wall Street Journal:

Take the climate bill just offered by House powers Henry Waxman of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts....

New homes “with slanted roofs,” for instance, will be required to meet a “solar reflectance” standard if they use “fiberglass asphalt-shingle roofing.”  We’re not sure what that means either, but we do know that everything in homes will also face new efficiency regulations -- including furnaces, laundry machines, dishwashers, “showerheads, faucets, water closets, and urinals,” even (or especially?) jacuzzis.

One of the more revealing sections focuses on products “intended for a general service or general illumination application” -- i.e., lights.  This isn’t surprising coming from the politicians who decided in 2007 that the public must be protected from the incandescent lightbulb, but it is excruciatingly detailed.  By 2020, “the manufacture of any general service lamp that does not meet a minimum efficacy standard” will be prohibited.  That includes fixtures “designed only to be mounted directly to an art work and for the purpose of illuminating that art work.”  But not “decorative lighting strings,” so Christmas trees will escape the lamp police. For now...

The Daily Mail:

When you're the president of the United States, only the best pizza will do - even if that means flying a chef 860 miles.

Chris Sommers, 33, jetted into Washington from St Louis, Missouri, on Thursday with a suitcase of dough, cheese and pans to to prepare food for the Obamas and their staff.

He had apparently been handpicked after the President had tasted his pizzas on the campaign trail last autumn.

That last via Ace, where “Jack M.” says

Hey, you guys know what says you are really sincere about this whole Global Warming thing that you want to use to justify an economy crushing cap and trade program?  Jetting a dude across the country to make you a freaking pie.

Silly rabbit, sacrifice is for peasants!

UPDATE 090413 (21:53):
ANOTHER UPDATE 090425 (20:13):

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Next time, carry a folder labeled “End of World Tomorrow - DON’T TELL ANYONE”

The Times:

...Bob Quick, who resigned this morning as Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, inadvertently revealed details of the operation to photographers in Downing Steet. The notes were typed on a clearly visible document that he was carrying under his arm as he went in to see Mr Brown and Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary.

As soon as the photograph was published, Scotland Yard and MI5 moved to quash its publication by issuing a rare D-notice to media organisations. Recognising, however, that the operation had already been compromised, they decided to carry out the raids in broad daylight.

Seems like they shouldn’t have made all the fuss.  By doing so they destroyed a wonderful channel for disinformation.

Or just sending somebody a message.


Via: The Register

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Bait?

Just days after declaring that they were mad as hell^[1] and weren’t going to take any more websites and aggregators quoting or linking their stories without paying for them (and one day after issuing a takedown to one of their own affiliates over linking to a YouTube service it didn’t even know it was running),^[2] the Associated Press (well, actually, Yahoo!) puts up this article debunking the conventional wisdom about smokers’ health care costs.

Now why do you suppose the AP would suddenly publish such an atypical-MSM story, one almost guaranteed to provoke comment, especially in the rightosphere?

Hmmm...?


Related:

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Pro-“Cybergrab” bill propaganda begins

On Sunday I wrote about the S.773/S.778 “Cybergrab” bills being perpetrated in the name of “security” by Senators John Rockefeller (D-WV) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME).  Today the Wall Street Journal chimes in with a mostly-content-free front-page article which attempts to stoke the paranoia up another notch by using generalities, innuendo, irrelevant examples, confusion, and off-the-record sources.  Lots of propaganda, little substance.

Deconstruction proceeds below the break...

more...

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You too can reside on Treacle Mine Road

The Register:

Sir Terry Pratchett yesterday dropped in on a new Somerset housing estate where two roads have been named in honour of his Discworld novels.

Some 30 residents of the Kingwell Rise development in Wincanton will in future be able to boast they live on either Peach Pie Street or Treacle Mine Road - an agreeable result of the town's official twinning in 2002 with the fictional city of Ankh-Morpork.

Developer George Wimpey presented Wincanton residents with a list of 14 possible names chosen by Sir Terry, and over 1,000 voted online for their pair of faves.

Elsewhere:

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Snowpening day

ESPN:

The Red Sox postponed their home opener against the Tampa Bay Rays because of the prospect of heavy rain and high winds.

And the season opener between the Kansas City Royals and White Sox scheduled for Monday has been postponed because snow is in the forecast.

Down in Cincinnati, they have this to contend with:

Probably a good thing the Reds aren’t playing tomorrow... with that snow accumulation and colder temps.

Remember when they played baseball in the spring?
 

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Rockefeller wants massive Presidential cyber-grab, Snowe signs on

Spotted by Joanna:

Should President Obama have the power to shut down domestic Internet traffic during a state of emergency?

Senators John Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) think so.  On Wednesday they introduced a bill to establish the Office of the National Cybersecurity Advisor—an arm of the executive branch that would have vast power to monitor and control Internet traffic to protect against threats to critical cyber infrastructure...

The Cybersecurity Act of 2009 [SEE NOTE* - o.g.] gives the president the ability to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” and shut down or limit Internet traffic in any “critical” information network “in the interest of national security.”  The bill does not define a critical information network or a cybersecurity emergency.  That definition would be left to the president.

The bill does not only add to the power of the president.  It also grants the Secretary of Commerce “access to all relevant data concerning [critical] networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access.”  This means he or she can monitor or access any data on private or public networks without regard to privacy laws. - Steve Aquino, “Should Obama Control the Internet,” Mother Jones, April 2, 2009

Gee, seems like only yesterday that all those lefties (and a number of righties, to give them credit) were fulminating about Bush’s post-9/11 power grabs!  This looks pretty grabby to me, and whaddaya know, a Democrat wrote it:

“...from our water to our electricity, to banking, traffic lights and electronic health records—the list goes on,” Rockefeller said in a statement.

Not much limit there.  (Traffic lights?)  Dear Senator Rockefeller:  A “network” isn’t necessarily “the internet,” and good administrators already know enough to keep the “critical stuff” separate.  A law that required such separation might be a good idea (just to help the smart people keep the bean counters and suits under control), but your bill ain’t it.

Instead you wrote yet another bad bill which massively- and unnecessarily-  extends executive power, and here comes Snowe, eager to sign on as a co-sponsor.

Snowe echoed her colleague, saying, “if we fail to take swift action, we, regrettably, risk a cyber-Katrina.”

Ooooh, rhetorical overload!  If it happens (as Joanna asks) do we get FEMA to sort things out?  Give me a f*ckin break!

Oh, and if you work in IT, you’ll find this little provision (which the MJ article missed) quite “interesting,” too:

SEC.7:  LICENSING AND CERTIFICATION OF CYBERSECURITY PROFESSIONALS.

(a) IN GENERAL.— Within 1 year after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Commerce shall develop or coordinate and integrate a national licensing, certification, and periodic recertification program for cybersecurity professionals.

(b) MANDATORY LICENSING.— Beginning 3 years after the date of enactment of this Act, it shall be unlawful for any individual to engage in business in the United States, or to be employed in the United States, as a provider of cybersecurity services to any Federal agency or an information system or network designated by the President, or the President’s designee, as a critical infrastructure information system or network, who is not licensed and certified under the program.

Looks like a whole bunch of techies are going to have to get certified.  Makes you wonder which “education” lobbyist bought Senator Rockefeller, doesn’t it?

I won’t go further at enumerating the problems with this bill.  For public reaction, the Mother Jones comment thread is a good place to start.  (I imagine there will shortly be some technically interesting comments at Slashdot, Ars Technica, and the Register.)

Anyway, I believe this one qualifies Olympia for another point.  Done!

Elsewhere:

Previously:

Related, in a “more bad legislation” way:

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