Article contains blatantly false statements that Swartz "released" JSTOR documents. He did not. Claims that he did are pervading the media and all are false. TechCrunch and other sites making such false claims can not be considered reputable news sources because of their propensity to intentionally misrepresent such matters.
Well, I can't think of anything which will convince people to moderate their opinions about computer "hackers" better than website defacements and threats.
Agreed. They're not needed here. We don't need a legitimate grass roots movement dragged through the mud by having Anonymous involved.
The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that the Anonymous brand is so tainted and awful that subversive forces might be using it to undermine legitimate protest by associating it with a hostile, criminal group.
Anonymous means well, maybe, but they drag Aaron's legitimate causes so far down into their muck. We have a chance to have some good come from this, but not with wankers in it for the lulz.
From the video, the thing I found oddest is that they say they will not unlock the contents of the file made available to download unless their demands are met. I found this odd because their demands to reform the DoJ is unlikely to occur except via an act of Congress, something I see as unlikely since it means getting a couple of hundred people on both sides of the aisle to agree to do this.
I would imagine that it'd be far more effective to release two files, one with information/dirt on as many members of the house of representatives and the senate and put that in one file. Then put all the dirt on the DoJ in another file. With files on Congress, they could force Congress' hand in investigating the DoJ and reforming it.
Encrypted messages sent via Tor is reasonable. Also reasonable is posting encrypted messages to alt.anonymous.messages via some anonymity system (like remailers, or Tor again).
Unfortunately, many journalists still think that we are living in the 1970s, and don't understand what secure communication means in this day and age.
Forced transparency. It becomes much more difficult to collude if you can't trust your communications to keep your corruptions a secret long enough to establish an entire career upon those corruptions and keeping them a secret.
I imagine corruption plays out across a social network of people in power. If it becomes more difficult to collude because of the risk of being found out, you've created a legitimate moral hazard governing the behavior of those doing the governing.
