Liveblogged at HOPE X.
Kevin Ghallagher
Ahmed Ghappour, Professor, UC Hastings
Gabriella Coleman, Professor, McGill
VizThink by Willow Brugh.
Gabriella:
Anonymous has risen as the face of global dissent. Their roots were fully in the world of internet trolling. Fox News called Anonymous “The Internet’s Hate Machine. Anonymous responded with a video.
In 2008, they shifted gears towards activism. The militant wing, who engaged in DDoS and hacking for political purposes, grew in fall of 2010. Resulted in massive state crackdowns in US and UK. The most famous is Jeremy Hammond, who was sentenced in NY to 10 years in jail. In the last two years, there has been a “nerd scare” and an unprecedented amount of computer crime prosecution.
Barrett Brown was different. He never engaged in DDoS or hacking. His crime was being a journalist.
Kevin:
Barrett Brown is a 31 year old, Dallas-based journalist. Kevin met Barrett at HOPE 9, and later set up the Barrett Brown Legal Defense Fund. He covered Anonymous involvement in the Arab Spring. He was arrested for sharing a link to leaked documents from Stratfor, and denied bail. The US charged his mother with obstruction and attempted to seize his legal defense fund. A gag order prevented Barrett and his defenders from discussing the case publicly. He’s currently still in jail, facing up to 8.5 years.
The Free Barrett Brown campaign started with #FreeBB, and then a website and donation site. Then came mailing lists, press releases, and prominent supporters: Pussy Riot, Noam Chomsky, Glenn Greenwald, Julian Assange.
Ahmed:
What makes a prosecution a persecution? Some part of the case, pre-indictment, was based on protected speech. Example: the silk road administrator was indicted for writing software to allow access to his site. He asserts this is speech.
Also, criminalizing the unknown. Something in a foreign language or using encryption for example. The stories that get told can be skewed: the government said Barrett and Anonymous were trying to take over the world. Barrett was prosecuted for linking to material in the public domain.
The other factor is fear. The more afraid we are, the more tolerant we are of persecution. The US top security priorities are, in order: cyber attack, internal threats (leaks), and terrorism. If a cyber attack is treated as on the same level as physical force, it could be used to justify responding to online activism with physical violence.