Anonymous Statement On Wikileaks (October 15 - 2012 )

We would have preferred to have let this topic rest as we think it is distracting from more important issues. However, some allegations in Julian's statement [1] should be addressed to avoid certain misunderstandings. First off, thank you for making this statement, Julian. At least we are communicating again. Secondly, please note that this response was written collaboratively; this is not one voice but many.

Moving on to your statement:

> "Because Anonymous is anonymous, those who obtain this or other forms of
> leadership influence can be secretly decapitated and replaced by other
> interests."

We're a bit amazed how you, of all people, talk about leadership in Anonymous. We would have thought you understood us a little better. You seem to refer to Sabu, but you should realize he was never a leader of Anonymous. While he did have some influence over a handful of people who chose to work with him, he wasn't even a leader among this small and secluded group. Among those, he was one of the most vocal and thus it comes as no surprise that the media and public mistook him as a "leader" - the world is always easier to understand if you put labels on things.

We shouldn't forget though, that even during the LulzSec era there were quite a number of Anons who neither liked nor trusted Sabu, let alone accepted him as any kind of leader.

Anonymous is a very complex and versatile entity and there will never be any leader that will speak for them all. We would not want it that way. Of course, there are some channels (like the big twitter accounts) that have more reach than others and thus it can be argued that they have more influence. But that doesn't make us leaders. It does however leave us with a certain amount of responsibility, which is why we take the time to write this down. But in the end we always urged everyone to make up their own mind, to validate facts and not jump to conclusions based on assumptions.

Which brings us to the following statement:

> "According to FBI indictments the FBI has at various times
>  controlled Anonymous servers. We must assume that currently
>  a substantial number of Anonymous severs and "leadership"
>  figures are compromised."

Checking the facts, we find exactly one case where the FBI actually controlled "Anonymous' servers". This is referenced in Jeremy Hammond's complaint file, page 13, bullet point j: "...[Sabu], at the direction of the FBI, provided to HAMMOND and his co-conspirators a computer server in New York, New York, which could be used to store the data [...]."**[2]. This incident is well documented and occurred in an ongoing investigation where one of the key figures was actively working for the FBI.

We know of no other situation in which anything even remotely similar has happened. If you have evidence to show otherwise please do so,  as we would be most interested. Either way, there is nothing that allows the conclusion "a substantial number of Anonymous severs and leadership figures are compromised"; this is merely an assumption with no facts to back it.

> This doesn't mean Anonymous should be paralyzed by paranoia.
> But it must recognize the reality of infiltration. The promotion
> of "anonhosting.biz" and similar assets which are indistinguishable
> from an entrapment operations must not be tolerated.

It's quite ironic how you mention paranoia when it is you who is accusing, more or less, random people of working with law enforcement and "promoting insecure servers".

But thank you for finally letting us know what server you were referring to this whole time. It does surprise us, however, as anonhosting.biz was never considered for leaked materials or any other kind of sensitive information. It was a fun site which contained an image board and some platforms on which to share pictures and videos. It hardly matters as the site only existed for a few weeks and was never even finished, before the person running it decided to discontinue it.

@AnonymousIRC distributes a lot of links from the Anonymous community, and that is quite different from promoting "assets for entrapment operations"; this is a ridiculous notion and it makes us wonder who is becoming paralyzed by paranoia.

Finally, some words about solidarity and support. Those who have read our initial statement carefully will have seen that we are, by no means, calling for actions against Wikileaks or Julian Assange, nor do we condone such actions. We do, however, feel that Wikileaks has strayed from its original mission. While it is not our intention to throw dirt at each other we should state our reservations against Wikileaks clearly, because these are not based on assumptions but on past experiences and facts.

We should not need to remind you how closely we have cooperated with each other on occasion; nor do we need to explain what kind of personal risk many of our people took upon themselves while enabling you to make those last leaks available. But maybe we should for those who are not aware of the full history.

Two years ago Anonymous declared solidarity with you, bringing to attention that a financial boycott of Wikileaks is unrightful and unacceptable. Websites have been brought down - not really to sabotage their business but simply to bring attention to the fact of the boycott. Anons are facing criminal charges and upto 20 years in jail for that.

One year ago, in the shadow of the "Sabu incident", Stratfor was compromised, revealing their entire email spool that ultimatively ended up on Wikileaks. Where it was released as a trickle of information, much the same as it was with the diplomatic cables before the whole stash got oopsed.

In all cases, Wikleaks was handed the leaks they published because the sources trusted them to be the best possible option. But we do not think that is true anymore. To be honest, we had better reasons to cut ties with you before, especially when you blindsided us with the aforementioned statements regarding Anonymous servers and leadership being compromised, and the implication that we would promote assets to entrap fellow Anons. But we always held back because we believed in the mission.

We understand that Wikileaks is run on donations but we fail to understand where it is spending the amounts of money it receives. We fail to see how Wikileaks needs hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to operate, when we obeserve other platforms that can provide the same service for a fraction of that. Again, we remained silent, because we believed in the mission. But then you show the audacity to barricade the content with a Javascript banner, forcing the majority of visitors to either donate or spam via facebook or twitter. This is a blatant violation of what Wikileaks should stand for. We will not stand up for this anymore. Instead we will let leaks speak.

That being said, it is time that we move forward. All of us. There is far too much at stake for these folly disagreements and we do not want to see some feel torn between Wikileaks and Anonymous. That is not fair to those people. Anyone has the choice to support Anonymous, Wikileaks, neither or both. Any division is meaningless as we are divided by zero.-

~~Anonymous

[1] http://www.twitlonger.com/show/jl9vdt
[2] http://wiki.par-anoia.net/w/images/0/0f/Hammond-Jeremy-Complaint.pdf


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Mon Oct 15 04:19:15 UTC 2012

Basic solidarity in WikiLeaks & Anonymous.

By Julian Assange

Freedom isn't free, justice isn't free and solidarity isn't
 free. They all require generosity, self-discipline, courage and a sense of perspective.

Groups with unity flourish and those without unity are
 destroyed and replaced by those who have it.

Traditional armies gain unity through isolation, ritualized
 obedience, and through coercive measures applied to
 dissenters up to and including death.

Groups who do not have techniques of unity derived from
 solidarity and common cause will be dominated by groups with coercive unity.

In the end it is the techniques of unity that dominate our
 civilization. Unified groups grow and multiply. Groups which lack unity imperil themselves and their allies.

It doesn't matter what principles a group espouses. If it
 is not able to demonstrate basic unity it will be dominated
 by alliances that do.

When a group grows large the public press becomes a medium through which the group talks to itself. This gives the public press influence over the groups self-awareness. The public press has its agendas. So do insiders who speak to it.

For large groups, group insiders who interface with the public press are able to lever themselves into a position of
 internal influence via press influence.

Because Anonymous is anonymous, those who obtain this or other forms of leadership influence can be secretly decapitated and replaced by other interests.

This is exactly what happened in the Sabu affair. An
 important part of Anonymous ended up being controlled by the FBI. The cooption of its most visible figure, Sabu, was then used to entrap others.

FBI agents or informers have subsequently run entrapment
 operations against WikiLeaks presenting as figures from
 Anonymous.

According to FBI indictments the FBI has at various times
 controlled Anonymous servers. We must assume that currently
 a substantial number of Anonymous severs and "leadership"
 figures are compromised. This doesn't mean Anonymous
 should be paralyzed by paranoia. But it must recognize the
 reality of infiltration. The promotion of "anonhosting.biz"
 and similar assets which are indistinguishable from an
 entrapment operations must not be tolerated.

The strength of Anonymous was not having leadership or
 other targetable assets. When each person has little
 influence over the whole, and no assets have special
 significance, compromise operations are expensive
 and ineffective. The cryptography used in Friends of
 WikiLeaks is based on this principle while WikiLeaks as
 an organization has a well tested public leadership cohort
 inorder to prevent covert leadership replacement.

Assets create patronage and conflict around asset
 control. This includes virtual assets such as servers,
 Twitter accounts and IRC channels.

The question Anonymous must ask is does it want to be
 a mere gang ("expect us") or a movement of solidarity. A
 movement of solidaarity obtains its unity through common value and through the symbolic celebration of individuals whose actions strive towards common virtues.


Assessing the statement by "@AnonymousIRC".

In relation to alleged associates of WikiLeaks. It is
 rarely in an alleged associates interest, especially
 early in a case, for us to be seen to be helping them
 or endorsing them. Such actions can be used as evidence
 against them. It raises the prestige stakes for prosecutors
 who are likely to use these alleged associates in a public
 proxy war against WikiLeaks. We do not publicly campaign
 for alleged associates until we know their legal team
 approves and our private actions must remain private. This calculous should be obvious.

Several weeks ago, WikiLeaks began a US election related
 donations campaign which expires on election day, Nov 6.

The WikiLeaks campaign pop-up, which, was activated weeks
 ago, requires tweeting, sharing, waiting or donating once
 per day.

Torrents, unaffected even by this pop-up remain available
 from the front page.

These details should have been clearer but were available
 to anyone who cared to read. The exact logic and number of
 seconds are in the page source. We are time and resource
 constrained. We have many battles to deal with. Other than
 adding a line of clarification, we have not changed the
 campaign and nor do we intend to.

We know it is annoying. It is meant to be annoying. It is
 there to remind you that the prospective destruction of
 WikiLeaks by an unlawful financial blockade and an array
 of military, intelligence, DoJ and FBI investigations,
 and associated court cases is a serious business.

WikiLeaks faces unprecedented costs due to involvement
 in over 12 concurrent legal matters around the world,
 including our litigation of the US military in the Bradley
 Manning case. Our FBI file as of the start of the year
 had grown to 42,135 pages.

US officials stated to Australian diplomats the the
 investigation into WikiLeaks is of "unprecedented scale
 and nature". Our people are routinely detained. Our editor
 was imprisoned, placed under house arrest for 18 months,
 and is now encircled in an embassy in London where he has
 been formally granted political asylum. Our people and
 associates are routinely pressured by the FBI to become
 informers against our leadership.

Since late 2010 we have been under an unlawful financial
 blockade. The blockade was found to be unlawful in the
 Icelandic courts, but the credit companies have appealed
 to the Supreme Court. Actions in other jurisdictions are
 in progress, including a European Commission investigation
 which has been going for over a year.

Despite this we have won every publishing battle and
 prevailed over every threat. Last month the Pentagon
 reissued its demands for us to cease publication of
 military materials and to cease "soliciting" US military
 sources. We will prevail there also, not because we are
 adept, although we are, but because to do so is a virtue
 that creates common cause.

Solidarity.

Julian Assange
 Embassy of Ecuador
 London