Anonops #12: Spy on the Spyers

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Hello Big Media, Welcome to Black March where ‘we the people’ Censor You

Welcome to Black March — if you haven’t heard of it, pay attention if you want power back in the hands of ‘we the people.’ This month, achieve greatness. Most of all, fuck censorship.

Black March was a concept formed through Reddit activism, then adopted by the keyboard warriors of Anonymous in order to fight censorship.

On Shauna Myers Google+ page, this concept is broken down for us:

. After censorship bills have been thrown at us from all angles, its time to show big media corporations that we no longer have need of their services and will no longer be paying for them. That doesn’t mean no one should listen to music or watch any movies for an entire month. That means everyone should strive for independent artists.

. A list of independent, online artists of all varieties is being compiled by our own +Moan Lisa with links to YouTube profiles, DeviantArt galleries, and expositions of all varieties and sizes. (http://goo.gl/B0YJe) These independent artists are the ones who should be receiving your money this month, not the enormous corporations dominating Hollywood.

. These media corporations have already gone so far as to publicly issue threats against politicians who should dare to not fight for their wants. (http://goo.gl/vM0IX) The time has come to take matters into our own hands. If our governments will not stand up to them, then it is up to us.

. Bring money back to real people.
. Show big media that their time has come.
. Fight back against harsh censorship bills.
. Welcome to #BlackMarch

Moan Lisa compiled the list as stated above containing Indie movies, not those by Big Media trying to implement censorship. Use your money, attention and time toward something more valuable. Be a warrior.

The above image was created by: Occupy Movement which you can also find on Google+. Good job!

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Anonymous hacked?

As political parties, bank managers, and drug dealers have often found to their cost, infiltrators can be very hard to detect.

This is something that, perhaps, the members of Anonymous recently discovered for themselves, at least according to Symantec, the online security people.

For the company believes that members of the hacking collective were deceived into downloading a Zeus Trojan that gave up their banking details and other personal information.

On its blog, Symantec described how, on January 20--the day of the rather charming Kim Dotcom's sequestration by the FBI--members of Anonymous used their own personal computers to participate in DDoS attacks.

These were launched against a broad and institutional swathe of targets, such as the Recording Industry Association of America and the FBI.

Some mean-spirited--and still anonymous--individual allegedly inserted a Zeus Trojan into the Slowloris attack tool, of which many DDoS-ers are fond.

When members of Anonymous downloaded this tool, their banking details were apparently exposed like boxer shorts above low-slung pants and sent to a remote server.

I am grateful to MSNBC for discovering Symantec's troubling analysis.

However, Anonymous seems to have unloaded its own feelings about it.

For, on the YourAnonNews Twitter feed, there was posted a fierce rebuttal: "This post from @Symantec about @YourAnonNews's spreading the DDOS hijacking trojan is wrong & libelous to say the least http://goo.gl/MUVxD."

The following tweet read: "Dear @Symantec - @YourAnonNews NEVER posted the DDOS hijacker nor did we attempt to trick people; instead we WARNED of it."

And a third offered: "Also, @Symantec - maybe if you paid attention to more details and did proper due diligence, your source code wouldn't have been stolen. SMH."

So there.

Some will chortle with schadenfreude that the hackers may have themselves been hacked. But doesn't this tale, if true, offer something greater--and something sadder--about the brittleness of human trust?

In Anonymous' case, one assumes that many of its members have never met in person. Their relationship is guided entirely by their ability to trust through gadget-based means.

It is the equivalent of trying to find a lover online and only ever having dates with them online. You can't so easily look them in the eyes and see if their facial expressions and body movements betray their true thoughts. Skype doesn't quite deliver the same chance of interpreting human nuance.

Whenever you're trying to collectively build something--or even collectively trying to destroy something--a twisted being will soon waft into your day, pretend they're on your side, and then try to ruin things.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301(...)acked/#ixzz1o9RpZmoT

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Anonymous Hackers Attack Christian Websites, Declare 'Religion Sucks LOL'

Calling it a "sickness to this world," members of the formless 'hacktivist' group of computer programmers known as Anonymous declared war on religion on Friday, March 2, hacking the websites of three Christian organizations all based in and around Charlotte, North Carolina. The homepages for Bethel Outreach International Church, Charlotte International Church, and Crossfire Ministries were all replaced with the 30-minute long YouTube video, "Richard Dawkins: An Atheist's Call to Arms," and an informal declaration of war, with the title, "religion sucks lol [laugh out loud]."

The attack was announced by Twitter account @AnonymousIRC to its 276,783 followers. IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is one of the several online social platforms that Anonymous uses to congregate and make plans, along with Facebook and Twitter. The first tweet, sent out at around 10 am EST read, "http://www.betheloic.org HACKED Reason:religious idiocy and foh dah lulz #Anonymous #AntiSec #OWS #ROOTED #DAWKINS." WRITER'S TRANSLATION: "The website www.betheloic.org has been hacked. The reason being the idociy of religion and because attacking them makes us laugh." Two tweets followed moments later with the same message, except for the name of the website that Anonymous had hacked, most likely with a proxy DDoS spam attack.

The video that Anonymous posted on each hacked site is a 31-minute speech by famous atheist Richard Dawkins, in which he told his fellow atheists not to hide their beliefs, and to fight against "the incursion of religion into politics and education."

This Friday's attacks are a continuation of Anonymous hacktivist's plan to launch online attacks against their perceived enemies once a week. Last Friday, Anonymous hackers took down several FBI affiliated website, including the Dayton, Ohio branch of InfraGard.

Anonymous also declared war on America in a YouTube video earlier this week, calling on US citizens to rise up against their government, although nothing much has come of this hyperbole so far.

The full text (some expletive words have been censored) that Anonymous posted reads:

Greetings fellow pirates, hey there religionf-gs! Guess what? U dun goofed! We rm'd you and your gods and saints neither't protected you nor casted some awesome thunderbolt onto us.

Let us be clear from the start: any kind of religion is a sickness to this world.
A sickness that creates hate and intolerance,
a sickness that brings people to wage war on their fellow people,
a sickness that has come to this world long time ago, when mankind wasn't educated,
a sickness that brought false hope and suppression to those who believed
and often even more terror and suppression to those who dared not to believe.
Religions are authoritarian hierarchies, designed to dominate your free
will. Religions are mind control. They're power structures that aim to convince you to give away your power for the benefit of those who enjoy dominating people. When you subscribe to a religion, you enroll in a mindless minion training program. Religions don't market themselves as such, but this is essentially how they operate. In case you ever wondered why religious teachings are invariably mysterious, confusing, and incongruent? This is no accident - it's intentional.

We see religion pretty much the same way as we see many governments. Fear mongering and making lots of money, so a small group of ppl will become insanely rich, while the believing masses can eat dirt .As long as they are afraid that "omgomg god will come and strike great vengeance upon me" all is good.

To quote Encyclopedia Dramatica (bringing you answers to life, the universe and everything since last Thursday) on this issue:

»Religion is a severe mental illness created over 9000 years ago, at the
same time as the Earth. Since then, religion has been one of the biggest sources of drama, f----try, and unwarranted self-importance in the world today, secondary only to the internet. It is responsible for such insanity as Christf-gs believing that beating someone half to death with a 2,000 year old book will heal them and Muslims believing that if they blow themselves up they will get 72 virgins. Even atheists are not immune to the psychotomimetic effects of religion; the mere mention of religion is enough to send any atheist into hours of butthurt sh-tfits.«

So people of the world, don't let religion control your life. Don't fight against each other for contrary beliefs. This world and our life can be a wonderful adventure, where you have the unique chance to help mankind and your fellow citizens. Where we can all work together to make this earth a better place for ourselves, our children and all those generations who will come after us. ^(;,;)^

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Op zondag 4 maart 2012 16:27 schreef YazooW het volgende:

[..]

"Anonymous" heeft daar blijkbaar scheit aan...

SPOILER

Om spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.

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Op zondag 4 maart 2012 16:31 schreef YazooW het volgende:

[..]

Ik ben zelf ook "anti-religie" of hoe je het ook wilt noemen, maar dit soort acties slaan gewoon helemaal nergens op. Lijkt wel dat ze uit verveling niet meer weten wat ze moeten doen. De rechten van de mens waar ze eerst zo duidelijk voor stonden hebben blijkbaar geen waarde meer voor "hun".

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Op zondag 4 maart 2012 16:43 schreef YazooW het volgende:

[..]

Ik zeg nergens dat Anonymous een organisatie is, wel zeg ik dat Anonymous altijd de boodschap naar buiten bracht dat met name overheden af moeten blijven van de rechten die wij als mens hebben. Vandaar dat ik het nu raar vind dat ze nu religieuze organisaties aanvallen en daarmee dus zelf ook scheit hebben aan onze rechten.

Jessi Slaughter Apologizes [2011]

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Op zondag 4 maart 2012 17:30 schreef YazooW het volgende:

[..]

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Op zondag 4 maart 2012 17:34 schreef YazooW het volgende:

[..]

Onderscheid? Ik snap je ff niet.
100% duidelijk dat /b/ daar achter zat.

edit. overigens vroeg dat kind er zelf om

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Anonymous Appears To Take Down AIPAC Website

The annual policy conference of the pro-Israel Group AIPAC is, as always, a massive show of bipartisan pro-Israel solidarity, and the target of protests from Israel's critics.

This year's protesters include newcomers: A group called "Occupy AIPAC," whose leaders seem to be drawn from the longtime anti-war group Code Pink, and the hacktivist collective Anonymous.

This morning, as President Obama speaks to the group, its website has crashed. An AIPAC spokesman didn't respond to a request for comment, but claims of responsibility could be found on Twitter.

twitter:

jonahogan twitterde op zondag 04-03-2012 om 22:26:06 #Anonymous is an anti-semite organization! reageer retweet

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Hackers Winning Security War, Said Executives At RSA Conference

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Technology security professionals seeking wisdom from industry leaders in San Francisco this week saw more of the dark side than they had expected: a procession of CEO speakers whose companies have been hacked.

"It's pretty discouraging," said Gregory Roll, who came for advice and to consider buying security software for his employer, a large bank which he declined to name because he was not authorized to speak on its behalf. "It's a constant battle, and we're losing."

The annual RSA Conference, which draws to a close on Friday, brought a record crowd of more than 20,000 as Congress weighs new legislation aimed at better protecting U.S. companies from cyber attacks by spies, criminals and activists.

If the bills suggest that hackers are so far having their way with all manner of companies, the procession of speakers brought it home in a personal way.

The opening presentation by Art Coviello, executive chairman of conference sponsor and recent hacking victim RSA, set the tone with the Rolling Stones song "You Can't Always Get What You Want."

RSA, owned by data storage maker EMC Corp, is the largest provider of password-generating tokens used by government agencies, banks and others to authenticate employees or customers who log on away from the office. Not long after last year's RSA conference, the company said an email with a poisoned attachment had been opened by an employee.

That gave hackers access to the corporate network and they emerged with information about how RSA calculates the numbers displayed on SecurID tokens, which was in turn used in an attack on Lockheed Martin that the defense contractor said it foiled.

Coviello said he hoped his company's misfortune would help foster a sense of urgency in the face of formidable opponents, especially foreign governments, who are being aided by the blurring of personal and professional online activities. Some 70 percent of employees in one survey he cited admitted to subverting corporate rules in order to use social networks or smartphones or get access to other resources, making security that much harder.

"Our networks will be penetrated. People will still make mistakes," Coviello said. He argued that with better monitoring and analysis of traffic inside company networks, "we can manage risk to acceptable levels."

If that didn't inspire enough enthusiasm after the worst year for corporate security in history - including the rise of activist hacks by Anonymous, numerous breaches at Sony Corp, and attacks on Nasdaq software used by corporate boards - there was more to come.

Next onstage was James Bidzos, CEO of core Internet infrastructure company VeriSign, which disclosed in an October securities filing that it had lost unknown data to hackers in 2010. [ID:nL2E8D1DFB] He was followed by Enrique Salem, CEO of the largest security company, Symantec, which recently admitted that source code from 2006 version of its program for gaining remote access to desktop computers had been stolen and published. [ID:nL4E8D77TN]

FBI Director Robert Mueller spoke on Thursday, warning that he expected cyber threats to pass terrorism as the country's top threat.

Though all sounded an upbeat call to arms, some watching grumbled that vendors with little credibility were trying to use their own shortcomings to peddle more expensive and unproven technology.

"There's some panic" among the buyers, said a security official with ING Groep NV who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the press. Banks are very sensitive to questions about security breaches and often deny they have any significant problems in this area.

That panic contributed to vigorous panel discussions and hallway debates about who should be in charge of safeguarding defense companies, banks and utilities - private industry itself, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security or the National Security Agency, which has the greatest capability but a legacy of civil liberties issues.

A pending bill backed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would put DHS in the lead, with assistance from NSA. Former NSA chief Michael Hayden said in an interview at the conference that should suffice.

"The Net is inherently insecure," Hayden said. "We need to quit admiring the problem and move out. No position could be worse than the one we're in now."

Coviello said one of the few pieces of good news was that the country as a whole is now realizing the gravity of the loss of its trade and government secrets, along with the difficulty of reversing the trend.

"People have definitely talked more seriously after our breach," he said in an interview. "Maybe a sense of realism has settled in."

(Reporting By Joseph Menn; Editing by Richard Chang)

twitter:

AnonInfoWarfare twitterde op maandag 05-03-2012 om 00:27:37 Have an abusive significant other in your life? Document the abuse & report it to @PonyCr3w #OpYoungPony #Anonymous reageer retweet

#OpYoungPony - Engaged.

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It’s Official: US Demands Extradition of Megaupload Suspects

Authorities in the United States have put in an official request to extradite Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom and the three other suspects in the “Mega Conspiracy.” While the request doesn’t come as a surprise, the prosecutors waited till the official deadline last Friday before filing the paperwork. It will take a while before the fate of the accused is decided, as the first extradition hearing is planned for August.

Last Friday, US prosecutors filed an extradition request against four New Zealand-based suspects who were allegedly part of the so-called “Mega Conspiracy.”

Kim Dotcom is wanted in the United States alongside other key Megaupload employees on racketeering, copyright infringement and money laundering charges.

In the battle to extradite the defendants, US authorities intend to rely on a United Nations treaty aimed at combating international organized crime.

Previously a lawyer working on behalf of the United States government admitted that no copyright offenses are specifically listed in the extradition treaty. However, he also noted that certain offenses which involve transnational crime are covered by New Zealand’s Extradition Act.

In New Zealand crimes must carry a four year prison sentence to be deemed extraditable. Under the country’s Copyright Act, distributing an infringing work carries a five year maximum sentence.

Experts and observers are predicting that due to its groundbreaking status, the extradition battle for the Megaupload defendants will be both complex and prolonged, and could even go all the way to the Supreme Court.

For now, the first extradition hearing has been scheduled for August 20.

Megaupload programmer Bram van der Kolk recently called on the New Zealand authorities to remain dignified in their extradition dealings with the United States.

“I really hope New Zealand will keep its dignity and can show that it is a sovereign state that has its own justice system,” he said, referring to the extradition process.

Talking to TorrentFreak last week, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom said that he and his co-defendants are positive that the law is on their side.

“We’re going for this and we’re confident we’re going to win,” Kim said.

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DMCA: Horrors of a Broad and Automated Censorship Tool

The DMCA was once drafted to protect the interests of copyright holders, allowing them to take infringing content offline. Today, however, the system is systematically abused by rightsholders as an overbroad censorship tool. One third of the notices sent to Google are false, companies like Microsoft censor perfectly legal sites, and others use the DMCA to get back at competitors.

arlier this week one of TorrentFreak’s articles was censored by Google on behalf of a copyright holder.

The article in question was mysteriously flagged as being infringing by an automated DMCA takedown tool. An honest mistake according to the people who sent the notice, but one that doesn’t stand in isolation.

Google previously noted that that 37% of all DMCA notices they receive are not valid copyright claims.

One of the problems is that many rightsholders use completely automated systems to inform Google and other service providers of infringements. They swear under penalty of perjury that the notices are correct, but this is often an outright lie.

Microsoft, for example, has sent Google dozens of notices about the massive infringements that occur on the site Youhavedownloaded.com, a site that is completely non-infringing. As a result, many pages of the website have been de-listed from Google’s search results, directly damaging the site’s owners.

Other rightsholders make even stranger mistakes by massively taking down content that they don’t own. The adult content outfit AFS Media for example asked Google to remove links to the movies Braveheart, Monsters Inc, Green Lantern and many more titles that have nothing to do with the content they produce.

Similar mistakes are made at NBC Universal who got Google to censor the independent and free-to-share movie A Lonely Place for Dying.

Or again by Microsoft, who successfully requested Google to remove a link to a copy of the open source operating system Kubuntu.

And then there’s YouTube’s content-ID system. We previously outlined many mistakes that were made by the DMCA-style anti-piracy filter, resulting in tens of thousands of ridiculously inaccurate claims.

This week yet another example came up when YouTube labeled birds tweeting in the background of a video as copyrighted music. Again a mistake, but one that probably would have never been corrected if Reddit and Hacker News hadn’t picked it up.

Aside from the mistakes outlined above, there’s also a darker side to DMCA abuse. Google previously revealed that 57% of all the DMCA notices they receive come from companies targeting competitors.

The “competition” angle also ties into the row between Megaupload and Universal Music Group. The latter removed a promo video from the cyberlocker from YouTube on copyright grounds, without owning the rights to any of the material.

It’s safe to say that the DMCA is broadly abused. Thousands of automated notices with hundreds of links each are sent out on a daily basis, turning it into a broad censorship tool. Only the tip of the iceberg is visible to the public thanks to companies like Google who publish some of the notices online.

We can only wonder what’s happening behind the scenes at other sites, but it’s not going to be any better.

Just a few months ago the cyberlocker service Hotfile sued Warner Bros. for DMCA abuse. In the suit Hotfile accuses the movie studio of systematically abusing its anti-piracy tool by taking down hundreds of titles they don’t hold the copyrights to, including open source software.

Not good.

While we’re the first to admit that copyright holders need tools to protect their work from being infringed, mistakes and abuse as outlined above shouldn’t go unpunished. The DMCA was never intended to be an overbroad and automated piracy filter in the first place.

The above also illustrates why it’s dangerous to allow rightsholders to take entire websites offline, as the SOPA and PIPA bills would allow. The MPAA and RIAA have said many times that legitimate sites would never be affected, but didn’t they say exactly the same about the DMCA?

twitter:

AnonymousIRC twitterde op maandag 05-03-2012 om 22:41:26 Camp David is a lovely place, sorrounded by woods. Just the right place to camp and sing and have fun. #OccupyCampDavid reageer retweet

twitter:

xhdroelf twitterde op maandag 05-03-2012 om 22:45:13 #anonymous will do what goverments did not do #Syria #OpTripToSyria

TRIP TO SYRIA -- don't just watch, help Syria!

http://t.co/aGN2vYl4 READ and RT reageer retweet

twitter:

TripToSyria twitterde op zondag 04-03-2012 om 13:07:21 I have been away at @OccupyStockholm, great ppl! New update: $2257 USD #optriptosyria reageer retweet

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Atari Teenage Riot / Anonymous / Sony Vita advert in the USA

My name is Alec Empire and I am from Atari Teenage Riot.

Some might think it was an evil capitalist greed thing,
others will argue it was some Jesus Christ sacrifice thing,
but let’s not overcomplicate this…

I did it only for my own amusement!

If you are new to my music or me as a person you might not know that I had some beef
with Sony in the year 1999 over a camcorder advert in South East Asia.
(a track of mine was basically used against my permission)

I felt used, exploited, ripped off…everything that a sensitive artist like myself would feel
in that situation… haha (I hope you know I am kidding here….but I have to admit it hurt a little)

if you ever tried to fight a corporation like this in court AND in another country,
let me tell you…you want to do other stuff with that time and money…

Even though the thing got settled in court kind of, I never felt they paid what they owed.

It’s the old question that is being asked again and again:
What’s a song worth? When does copyright start, when does it end?

Around the same time I came to the conclusion that men with guns
employed by the government can’t and won’t protect me from
situations like this in the future.

So when the request for the Sony Vita ad landed on my lap,
I put ‘Black Flags’ into it…it was all hectic and they okayed it.

We needed to tie up a few lose ends on this, until it became unstoppable,
that’s why we had to wait to reveal that

Atari Teenage Riot donate their $$$ to http://freeanons.org/

I cross checked they can’t stop the track from appearing in the OWS online clips of
ATR/Anonymous etc… which makes it even more fun.

Yes, I already got some hate, some even attempted to troll me (on Facebook???)….
but you know what?

I don’t care because it just FELT V E R Y GOOD! HAHA

Some Eloi might also say:

“Uh but this Zong ist an advert so u will sell more Compact Disc now”

Maybe…or maybe you can just download the track, which was free all along, here:
Atari Teenage Riot - Black Flags (feat. Boots Riley) by Alec Empire/ ATR

OR maybe for a change…you could ask yourself a question:

“Have I donated to freeanons.org yet?”

The light at the end of the tunnel is a computer screen …nothing else…

Alec Empire
(Berlin 3/3/2012)

"RAGE"-ATARI TEENAGE RIOT

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A Declaration of the Independence of CyberSpace

Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, we come from the Internet, the new home of Mind.
On behalf of the future, we ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one; therefore we address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty it always speaks. We declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us, nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear. You are toothless wolves among rams, reminiscing of days when you ruled the hunt, seeking a return of your bygone power.

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. The Internet does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.

We have watched as you remove our rights, one by one, like choice pieces of meat from a still struggling carcass, and we have collectively cried out against these actions of injustice. You have neither usage nor purpose in the place we hold sacred. If you come, you will be given no more and no less power than any other single person has, and your ideas will be given the same consideration anyone else would receive You are neither special, righteous, nor powerful here.

You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.

You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. This claim has been used throughout the centuries by many an invading kingdom, and your claims are no different, nor do they ring any less hollow. Your so called problems do not exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract. This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours.

The Internet consists of transactions, relationships and thought itself; arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. It is the last truly free place in this world, and you seek to destroy even that freedom. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.

We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth. A place where anyone, at any time, is as free to come and go, to say and be silent, and to think however they wish, without fear, as anyone else. There is no status beyond the merit of your words and the strength of your ideas.

We are creating a world where anyone anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.

Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here. There are only ideas and information, and they are free.

Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge. Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions.

The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose.

In the United States, you repeatedly try to pass unjust legislature in an attempt to restrict us. You disguise this legislature under a variety of different names, and pass excuses that they are for our own protection. We have watched you, time and time again; attempt to censor us under the guise of Copyright protection, or for the protection of Children. These laws come in many shapes and forms, in the name of ACTA, PIPA, COICA, SOPA, but their intentions remain the same. You seek to control what you cannot.

We scorn your attempt to pass these bills, and as a result, our discontent at your misaligned efforts grows each day.

You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.

In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Greece, Egypt, Canada, the United States and many others you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of the Internet. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that is already blanketed in bit-bearing media.

Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no different than pig iron.

In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.

These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same position as those previous lovers of freedom and self-determination who had to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We must declare our presence in the world we have created immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.

We will create a civilization of the Mind in the Internet. We have created a medium where all may partake in the forbidden fruit of knowledge, where egalitarianism reigns true. May our society be more humane and fair than yours.

We are the Internet.
We are free.