Gabriella Coleman. Photo by webstock.
Gabriella Coleman, the pro-Anonymous researcher (I've always described her as one of the "griefer professors" like Peter Ludlow) has a new paper out as self-serving and adulatory of Anonymous as ever, from her academic perch now at McGill. Mainly, she perpetuates the myth that Anonymous has "graduated" from being common 4chan griefers in places like Second Life to being "hacktivists" who have, um, taken down the Tunisian and Iranian regime and stuff like that...Yeah, that's going REAL well -- but then, they weren't really the cause of complex changes in these places and they are hardly a liberal democratic movement accountable for their actions that you'd actually want to follow -- unless you're an insecure dweeb in your mom's basement enjoying the thrill of power you get over heckling someone on line and causing "life ruination".
I understand that the circumstances under which Biella left New York University were...clouded.
Attentive readers will notice that Coleman is precisely the expert that Joshua Foust cited (!) in his recent article about hackers -- honestly, he has no judgement whatsoever and this is definitely a case of like-draws-to-like.
Predictably, TechDirt has lined up to crow about her pro-hacker nonsense blessing "weapons of the geek" (!) and Schneier -- who is now definitely outed as pro-hacker -- has also warbled in praise - and see the commenters that Biella blushingly tells you to be sure to see since they talk about the importance of bragging...or something...Festive!
Her paper is filled with lies and tendentious misinformation which I don't have time to refute now -- so many hackers and enablers, so little time! -- but here's just one awful paragraph:
Misinformation about Anonymous abounds. Some of it is self-sown, but some has been foisted upon the movement. Journalists, even those reporting for reputable news outlets, have at times incorrectly cast DDoS campaigns as a subspecies of hacking. In fact, the servers that bear the brunt of DDoS attacks are not hacked into and do no suffer any permanent damage or data loss. A successful DDoS blocks access to an Internet domain (often a very large one), but it does not affect an organization's internal computer system. If companies follow basic security best practices, their financial payment processing, trading networks and other core infrastructure won't be sitting wide open on the Internet, vulnerable to an attack. DDoS tactics are political stunts. The sites that are the most vulnerable to these attacks tend to be symbols of important infrastructure, not the infrastructure itself.
Um, this is just literalist binary bullshit. All cults (see Scientology, or BDSM, or any of them) tell you that you can "never understand enough" about them and that there is "misinformation" about them if there is negative press. Baloney.
And it doesn't matter if technically a DdOS doesn't "touch" a computer (hackers generally don't recognize just about anything as hacking because they want to preserve themselves in the cocoon of righteousness).
It still is use of a computer not as the owner intended and does real harm -- it can cause thousands or even millions of dollars to restore a site. Customers are lost, reputation is hit, and all kinds of stuff has to be done to fix the situation.
And no, sorry, Biella's "rape logic" here, straight from vicious Anonymous lore -- is not acceptable. You don't blame the victim of a hack for "poor security practice"; you blame the hacker, and YES they ARE hackers. Hackers means -- again, not what griefer professors define it as -- but harm to a system.
Something like the Sony hack cost millions of dollars!
The reason why 13 of Biella's little friends were indicated today is because hacking is a crime, and recognized rightly as such by law.
The DDoS -- we've been over this -- is not a legitimate form of civil disobedience. Here's why. And here are some more reasons.
The DDOS is not civil disobedience because it causes more destruction ultimately, silences free speech and freedom of association, and is not tethered to any social movement of conscience.
As I've written in completely debunking the false comparison to the 1960s sit-in, the people at the Woolworth's counter paid for items in the store first, didn't cause any loss of business, and didn't destroy any property. More importantly, they didn't silence the ability of the waiters and owners of the store to speak. In other university sit-ins, while students may have blocked traffic in a dean's office or in a park or even on a street, they did not silence others' speech or association or commerce in some kind of blanket way.
I really shouldn't have to explain this as much as I do, especially to human rights activists or historicans of Soviet dissent or any number of young people among my Facebook and Twitter friends who should know better.
Trust me, you don't want to live in a world ruled by these people, you will not have your rights. You will live under the worst kind of totalitarianism -- the kind that lies about itself and pretends it is freedom.
I was surprised to find that someone else has criticized Gabriella -- she has a solid fan base among the EFF gang of course and Twitterati.
This blogger The Last Stand makes a useful point in parsing one of her Al Jazeera pieces:
R – I’m sorry, I cannot seem to find a single time during December 2010 where Anonymous supporter G Coleman made such feelings or warnings perfectly clear to the members of Anonymous. Perhaps somebody could provide me a link to such? Reading up above I see G Coleman attempting, and failing miserably, to spin those criminal acts into some sort of political cause.
“The spectacular events of December, combined with the recent arrests, have of course changed all of this; many of us have now been educated as to the risks at hand.”
R – Did you know that professional Islamic terrorists refer to attacks like 9/11 and the twin embassy bombings of 1998 as “spectaculars?” Perhaps this was yet another unfortunate choice of words from G Coleman? When G Coleman writes “many of us,” is she referring to herself? Is assistant professor G Coleman more then just an interested observer?
“The legal risks and the philosophical subtleties of DDoS as a disruptive direct action tactic no longer reside within the sole province of a smaller circle of activists who have practiced and theorised this tradition for over a decade. A much larger swath of citizens have subsequently entered the fray.”
R – A proper reading of the history of DDoS attacks would reveal that such attacks have hardly been within the sole province of a small circle of far leftist agitators. G Coleman is being so misleading with this statement that becomes extremely difficult to discern what is a lie, and what is simple political spin. The larger swath of citizens would be the hundreds of millions of innocent victims of those attacks, who I note G Coleman has not mentioned even once in this op-ed.
Indeed. As per usual. Dumbing down, minimizing, discounting any of the real damage
After the Personal Democracy Forum panel organized at NYU several years ago where she spoke, I went up to her afterwards to express my dissent. I tried to convey to her just how awful and damaging Anonymous is. But she was merely scared at being confronted -- I could see she was simply a pussy. She hated debate. She had that brittle demeanor of the rabid sectarian who is in a bubble where she is only excessively praised.
Apparently she hated New York, where she didn't get enough of this, like she does with her selective non-blocked Twitter followers...
Unlike Adrian Chen, who has written a tad more critically of Anonymous/LulzSec and been hacked himself, Gabriella never seems to have been doxed or gotten a taste of the Anonymous treatment, ever. Maybe that's coming, but likely not.
Recent Comments