A long­time FtR lis­ten­er, I was a bit miffed by this arti­cle when it quot­ed Anony­mous as say­ing:
“The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood start­ed as a benev­o­lent group of peo­ple with fair and just inten­tions. How­ev­er, as decades went by, cor­rup­tion seized its mis­sion of good and turned it into a pow­er-hun­gry orga­ni­za­tion bent on tak­ing over soverign arab states in its quest to seize pow­er from them,” con­tin­ued the state­ment.
My per­cep­tion of them is that they came right out of the WWII Axis, as per Dav­e’s many good pro­grams on the sub­ject, and that their recent image of high­ly-sought Mod­er­ate Good­ness is but a charm offen­sive. Per­haps some FtR sides ought be sent out to the aspir­ing reporter.

ps. here is a hack­ers’ radio show which has run per­haps even longer than Mr. Emory’s, dis­cussing such top­ics as Anony­mous and Wik­ileaks and des­per­ate­ly need­ing qual­i­ty callers such as Spit­firelist read­ers:
http://archive.wbai.org/AllShows.php (search down the page for Off the Hook (and while there, don’t miss Law and Dis­or­der along with Expert Wit­ness Radio!)) BTW, OtH also offers its entire his­to­ry of shows free in mp3 for­mat via http://www.2600.com

@dave
not see­ing it in the feeds
http://twitter.com/#!/anonops
http://anonops.blogspot.com/
http://youranonnews.tumblr.com/

This is total­ly unexpected.I used to think that these guys at Anony­mous were some­how part of the Under­ground Reich or of one of their pha­langes, or of the Extreme-Left or of anoth­er sim­i­lar group. Was I wrong or they just made a 180 degree turn in the oth­er direc­tion? That’s both incred­i­ble and spec­tac­u­lar. Any­way, I guess that we will take all the help we can get. I am eager to see the devel­op­ments of this. Con­sid­er­ing the con­sid­er­able dam­age that the Broth­er­hood can do to west­ern civ­i­liza­tion and lib­er­al democ­ra­cy through their P‑Tech firm and oth­er stuff, it’s def­i­nite­ly some­thing that hap­pens at the right time. What do you think Dave? Is the Broth­er­hood begin­ning to faint in the eyes of the pow­er elite? Have the Broth­er­hood gone way beyond what they were asked and per­mit­ted to do?

Is this one intel group vs anoth­er? The good guys’ intel tak­ing on the bad guys? The mes­sage to take out the brown shirts? Noticed that the arti­cle was post­ed on Nov 9th (a sig­nal?) but the YouTube on Nov 7th (no sig­nal?). Hope­ful­ly its legit and action against the Broth­er­hoods’ US bud­dies too.

too many ‘ifs and buts’ full of innu­en­does and maybes...unbelievable

@LarryFW: There are some good Intel peo­ple still out there, and a few of them may be assist­ing Anony­mous.

@Claude: There are some pret­ty crooked peo­ple in Anony­mous still, but this arti­cle clear­ly shows that there are also some good guys in there too. Hope­ful­ly, Wik­ileaks can make a sim­i­lar turn as well.

As for the Broth­er­hood? I think they’ve done exact­ly as they’ve been told, and that this is a gen­uine back­lash against the world crime net­work. Hope­ful­ly, it will suc­ceed quite well in crip­pling the Islam­ic-Fas­cists. =)

@Bakunin: I feel it was like­ly a gen­uine mis­take on their part. Still, though, I feel they’d be QUITE inter­est­ed to hear Dav­e’s research. =)

I think the most impor­tant line in the post is Mr. Emory’s:
“An edu­cated guess is that the Broth­er­hood may well blame any dif­fi­cul­ties they expe­ri­ence on Israel/Mossad/“the Jews”.”

The inter­nal Anony­mous rea­sons are mixed I’m sure but that is a red her­ring. What mat­ters is that cre­at­ing more anar­chy in the region and rea­sons to point fin­gers is clear­ly in the Riech’s inter­est.

@Paul: Hope­ful­ly things do even­tu­al­ly turn out in favor of those who tru­ly do believe in democ­ra­cy.

I think this is the first instance of Freudi­an flag wav­ing I’ve heard of:

...
Many Islamist polit­i­cal par­ties— from the giant Free­dom and Jus­tice Par­ty found­ed by the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, to the small­er par­ties found­ed by ultra­con­ser­v­a­tives known as Salafis and the real­tive­ly lib­er­al Cen­ter Par­ty— put up cam­paign ban­ners and deliv­ered speech­es in the Fri­day demon­stra­tion, giv­ing it the feel of a polit­i­cal ral­ly. Some demon­stra­tors waved Sau­di Ara­bi­an flags, but a few said they were car­ry­ing them only for their Islam­ic slo­gans even though they object­ed to Sau­di Arabia’s unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic rule. A ven­dor said he stocked the flags because he could not find flags of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and had got­ten requests for Sau­di flags, but he added that he was going to dis­con­tin­ue the prac­tice because he had got­ten com­plaints as well.

Woah, Anony­mous just picked one hel­lu­va rock to look under!:

‘Anony­mous’ declares ‘Blitzkrieg’ on neo-Nazis

Pub­lished: 2 Jan 12 12:46 CET

“Anony­mous” hack­ers have declared “Blitzkrieg” on neo-Nazis for the New Year, dis­abling a num­ber of their web­sites and pub­lish­ing lists of extreme-right sup­port­ers.

A “Nazi-Leaks” por­tal has appeared on the inter­net list­ing hun­dreds of names of peo­ple sub­scribed to var­i­ous shops sell­ing far-right cloth­ing, as well as writ­ers for the Junge Frei­heit news­pa­per which car­ries con­tri­bu­tions from far-right com­men­ta­tors.

The hack­ers say they have man­aged to close down 15 web­sites asso­ci­at­ed with the neo-Nazi Nation­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (NPD), the Frank­furter Rund­schau report­ed on Mon­day. They have report­ed­ly called their cam­paign “Oper­a­tion Blitzkrieg”.

...

Long lists of names, some with address­es, pur­port­ing to be cus­tomer reg­is­ters of firms such as the infa­mous Thor Steinar cloth­ing firm were post­ed on the “Nazi-Leaks” por­tal.

Peo­ple list­ed on the por­tal as hav­ing writ­ten for the Junge Frei­heit news­pa­per includ­ed Peter Scholl-Latour, accord­ing to the Frank­furter Rund­schau. He is a respect­ed jour­nal­ist and Afghanistan expert who has writ­ten for, among oth­er pub­li­ca­tions, the Stern mag­a­zines.

The Local/hc

@Pterrafractyl: There is still hope yet! Def­i­nite­ly have hopes for Anony­mous now that I KNOW there’s def­i­nite­ly still some good and hon­est peo­ple left in there. =)

I also think the bit about the flag was rather iron­ic indeed. I believe this was a sin­cere mis­take on the pro­test­ers’ part, but why could­n’t they make up their own sym­bols?

Here’s some­thing to note regard­ing any activ­i­ties by Anony­mous off­shoot LulzSec. In August 2011, the LulzSec leader was flipped and work­ing with inves­ti­ga­tors so any LulzSec lat­er LulzSec oper­a­tions raise the ques­tion of ordered them.

I strong­ly sus­pect that the ’Anony­mous’ imprompter has been com­plete­ly co-opt­ed. I have seen some ‘Anony­mous’ videos pro­mot­ing Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion type BS.

Any­one can post a video claim­ing to be ‘Anony­mous’, and they are anony­mous.

@Vanfield: Frankly, I’ve been pret­ty con­cerned about just such a pos­si­bil­i­ty myself, Vanfield(the same thing hap­pened with Wik­iLeaks and the W.C.N. tried to destroy O.W.S., too, although the lat­ter had suc­cess in repelling infil­tra­tors). Hope­ful­ly peo­ple can start telling the dif­fer­ence between crim­i­nal impos­tors and the real deal, and I’m afraid this will be rather dif­fi­cult at first.

There are still some good peo­ple in Anony­mous and I do hope the anti-crime net­work fac­tions will one day win out. Because if they don’t, we will have lost an impor­tant poten­tial ally.

@Pterrafractyl: Thanks for the info. =)

There’s new group going after Anony­mous: head-hunters:

US urged to recruit mas­ter hack­ers to wage cyber war on Amer­i­ca’s foes

Top defence expert says the US should avoid ‘ridicu­lous’ pros­e­cu­tions and use hack­ers’ skills to detect and track ene­mies

Rory Car­roll in Mon­terey
guardian.co.uk, Tues­day 10 July 2012 10.00 EDT

Instead of pros­e­cut­ing elite com­put­er hack­ers, the US gov­ern­ment should recruit them to launch cyber-attacks against Islamist ter­ror­ists and oth­er foes, accord­ing to a lead­ing mil­i­tary thinker and gov­ern­ment advis­er.

The bril­liance of hack­ing experts could be put to use on behalf of the US in the same way as Ger­man rock­et sci­en­tists were enlist­ed after the sec­ond world war, said John Arquil­la, a pro­fes­sor of defence analy­sis at the US Naval Post­grad­u­ate School in Mon­terey, Cal­i­for­nia, in an inter­view with the Guardian.

He said that the US had fall­en behind in the cyber race and need­ed to set up a “new Bletch­ley Park” of com­put­er whizzes and code­crack­ers to detect, track and dis­rupt ene­my net­works. “If this was being done, the war on ter­ror would be over,” he said.

Arquil­la, who invent­ed the term cyber­war­fare two decades ago, said a few mas­ter hack­ers had already been recruit­ed but more were need­ed.

“Let’s just say that in some places you find guys with body pierc­ings and non-reg­u­la­tion hair­cuts. But most of these sorts of guys can’t be vet­ted in the tra­di­tion­al way. We need a new insti­tu­tion­al cul­ture that allows us to reach out to them.”

Many dab­bled in ille­gal or ques­tion­able acts but the US, he not­ed, had turned Wern­her von Braun, Hitler’s top sci­en­tist, into an Amer­i­can hero after putting him to work on US rock­ets and space pro­grammes.

Arquil­la lam­bast­ed lengthy jail terms for hack­ing, say­ing it “poi­soned” rela­tions between both sides. “It’s very, very trou­bling.” He dis­agreed with the attempt to extra­dite Gary McK­in­non, a British sys­tem admin­is­tra­tor who has been accused by one US pros­e­cu­tor of the “biggest mil­i­tary hack of all time” using the code name Solo.

“I think it’s ridicu­lous. They’re try­ing to use deter­rences that won’t work.”

Arquil­la, who advised Gen­er­al Nor­man Schwarzkopf dur­ing the first gulf war and sec­re­tary of defence Don­ald Rums­feld dur­ing the sec­ond, esti­mat­ed there were around 100 mas­ter hack­ers in the world, with many, if not most, in Asia and Rus­sia.

He had estab­lished con­tact with sev­er­al in the US — “they are like shy wood­land ani­mals” — and even brought one to meet the CEO of a major com­pa­ny to alert him to his infor­ma­tion sys­tem’s vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties. The exec­u­tive, scorn­ful at first, was stunned when the hack­er broke into the sys­tem with a hand­held device in just a few min­utes. “All hell broke loose,” said Arquil­la, who declined to iden­ti­fy the com­pa­ny.

The Pen­ta­gon and oth­er secu­ri­ty agen­cies must exploit that sort of abil­i­ty, he said. “This is huge human cap­i­tal. They are the rangers of the cyber sphere. Most of them are drawn to it for its beau­ty and com­plex­i­ty.” Few had overt polit­i­cal agen­das, but they could be turned into patri­ots. “Most of the hack­ers I have known would love to destroy al-Qai­da.”

...

The vet­er­an ana­lyst said al-Qaida’s loose, decen­tralised organ­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture had flum­moxed the US a decade ago, and that under strate­gist Abu Musab al-Suri it would become even flat­ter and loos­er, imped­ing tra­di­tion­al counter-ter­ror efforts. The move­ment, how­ev­er, was vul­ner­a­ble. “This glob­al net­work sim­ply can’t thrive with­out the world wide web and inter­net. It can’t oper­ate with­out it, or if it does, at a great­ly reduced lev­el.”

...

Hack­ing, he said, was most effec­tive when incor­po­rat­ed into wider mil­i­tary strat­e­gy. The Rus­sians, he said, pio­neered this dur­ing the August 2008 con­flict with Geor­gia when cyber-attacks sliced through US-designed tech­nol­o­gy “like a knife through but­ter”, dis­rupt­ing Geor­gian forces and paving Rus­si­a’s quick vic­to­ry.

Moscow denied mount­ing cyber oper­a­tions, and their prove­nance was nev­er dis­cov­ered. But Arquil­la said “Russ­ian-aligned inter­ests” suc­cess­ful­ly attacked Esto­ni­a’s net­works dur­ing a diplo­mat­ic row in 2007. “It’s all veiled, but the real lead­ers in the field are the Rus­sians.” Chi­na and North Korea were also high­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed. “They under­stand the strate­gic uses.”

Arquil­la com­pared com­put­er fire­walls to the Mag­inot line — France’s failed defence against Ger­many — and urged US state agen­cies and com­pa­nies to use strong encryp­tion and cloud com­put­ing to keep data on the move. “The lev­el of inse­cu­ri­ty is huge. The aver­age indi­vid­ual is a zom­bie in some hack­er’s bot­net with­in half an hour of going online.”

...

Holy crap, the aver­age indi­vid­ual is a zom­bie in a bot­net with­in a half-hour going on line?! And here I thought my sud­den crav­ing for brains was due to low blood sug­ar.

Note that the Russ­ian cyber attacks that appar­ent­ly “sliced through US-designed tech­nol­o­gy” in 2008, should not be seen as par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­pris­ing. One has to won­der how effec­tive al-Qae­da-affil­i­at­ed hack­ers would be at that task.

Anony­mous esca­lates cyber­war against Israel-
http://www.timesofisrael.com/anonymous-escalates-cyber-war-against-israel-and-pro-israel-groups/