Dave Emory’s entire lifetime of work is available on a flash drive that can be obtained here. (The flash drive includes the anti-fascist books available on this site.)
COMMENT: During the recent cyberattack on the internet, we wondered idly if the “Anonymous/Pirate Bay/Pirate Party” milieu might have been involved.
The investigation has highlighted an eccentric, brilliant programmer named Sven Olaf Kamphuis, a citizen of the Netherlands. Kamphuis emphatically denies that he was in any way involved in the attacks and no charges have been filed.
What interests us are some aspects of Mr. Kamphuis’s outlook that suggest the possibility that he might be what we have termed “Cyber-Wandervogel.”
Described as right-wing hippies in Weimar Germany, many of the wandervogel (literally “wandering birds”) eventually became Nazis.
With a fascination for German heavy metal music and a dislike for “Jews,” Mr. Kamphuis is indeed a fan of the Pirate Party. His CyberBunker hosting service has served both WikiLeaks and the Pirate Bay in the past. Mr. Kamphuis also has an affinity for the Chaos Computer Club, also part of the WikiLeaks milieu.
Obviously, this is nowhere near enough information with which to draw any conclusions about Mr. Kamphuis. One does wonder, however, what direction the “hacktivists” with their remarkable computer skills are going to take.
Will they be seduced by the far-right, as the WikiLeaks and Pirate Bay milieux have been (in spite of their anarcho/Utopian” philosophy)? Will they ultimately metamorphose into fascists, as did so many of the wandervogel?
Stay tuned.
Before we skip to the text of the New York Times article about Mr. Kamphuis, we note in passing that Mr. Emory epitomizes the libertarian, “everything should be free” philosophy of the Anonymous/Chaos Computer Club/Pirate Party milieu.
Dave has made his entire life’s work available for free. He has paid dearly for that.
EXCERPT: . . . . Mr. Kamphuis, who is actually Dutch, is at the heart of an international investigation into one of the biggest cyberattacks identified by authorities. He has not been charged with any crime and he denies direct involvement. But because of his outspoken position in a loose federation of hackers, authorities in the Netherlands and several other countries are examining what role he or the Internet companies he runs played in snarling traffic on the Web this week. . . . .
. . . . He describes himself in his own Web postings as an Internet freedom fighter, along the lines of Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, with political views that range from eccentric to offensive. His likes: German heavy metal music, “Beavis and Butt-head” and the campaign to legalize medicinal marijuana. His dislikes: Jews, Luddites and authority. . . .
. . . . Associates say Mr. Kamphuis moved to Berlin in about 2006, and his Facebook page displays photos indicating his interest in the Pirate Party, a small political movement focusing on Internet issues that holds some opposition seats in Berlin’s city-state government assembly, and in the Chaos Computer Club, a group that discusses computer issues.
For a time, CyberBunker’s clients included WikiLeaks and The Pirate Bay, a Web site whose founders were convicted by a Swedish court in 2009 of abetting movie and music piracy. In May 2010, six American entertainment companies obtained a preliminary injunction in a German court ordering CB3ROB and CyberBunker to stop providing bandwidth to The Pirate Bay. . . .
@Dave:
Related to your noting that making information free is at the center of your life’s work and an example of true Libertarian ideas, one of the most interesting debates we’re probably going to see in the next few decades is the “free information” vs “free markets” divide in the Libertarian movement because they’re sort of mutually exclusive propositions. How can you have the free flow of information coupled to the freedom to make the most exclusive economic/legal contracts one can devise? And how can the “free market” work without free information if informed individuals are considered a vital component to any functional “free market”. It’s sort of the Aaron Swartz vs David Koch debate and it’s a debate that could have repercussions far outside the Libertarian community. It’s one of those debates that forces us to reexamine a lot of old, erroneous assumptions about what it actually takes to make a market function when you’re dealing with non-omniscient critters like human beings.