The Jester (@th3j35t3r), who is a kind of modern Lone Ranger Internet character on the electronic frontier, has an interesting interview posted in Homeland Security Today. Here's the summary, here's the whole thing.
This article which appeared before the full publication led some people to get the impression that the Jester actually hacked Snowden recently, as he did WikiLeaks in the past, but he didn't claim that; he's just criticizing him. He has a number of useful and interesting things to say, like this:
Much like Bradley "Chelsea" Maninng, or whatever he's calling himself today, Edward Snowden was a person desperate to be somebody, they were both in trusted positions and both had an online presence (as most young people do) except these were guys in positions to provide information to WikiLeaks. I believe, that much like pedophiles groom vulnerable or susceptible children online, so Assange grooms US personnel.
This article claims that the Jester is "former US military"; that's in contradiction to another interview the Jester did (willingly, at least at first) with Rachel Marsden -- which led to more scandal later -- in which he characterized himself as British military with an Anglo-Irish accent. And there's yet another interview where an official claims he was part of Special Forces in Afghanistan. Maybe all these roles are not mutually exclusive.
Certain people have spent a lot of time trying to find the real identity of the Jester, who is a cult hero of sorts, or at least, a contrived cult hero that certain forces want to make into a cult hero (an Army guy has even written a paper on him).
There are three hypotheses for what the Jester is:
o a lone, non-state actor, i.e. a hacker, possibly really former military, who might interact informally from time to time with some elements of military or law-enforcement
o a group of non-state actors taking turns creating the composite character, possibly some who are real past military or law-enforcement
o a group of state actors creating a persona to appear as if a lone or group set of hackers are making progress against our enemies.
Whatever he/they are, the problem with them isn't their views -- which I share nearly identically -- on Snowden, jihadists, and other criminals -- but their methods, some of which are illegal and could be prosecuted under the CFAA -- and rightly so.
I believe serious hacking tools should only be in the hands of the government. And for the literalist script kiddies that harass me by the dozen for this view on Twitter -- does that mean that I believe the government should get to do the "criminal acts" outlined in the CFAA? Yes, I do, because the key is authorized versus unauthorized; it is not criminal then. If it is the democratically-elected government making the call to pursue a suspect using hacking, then that is authorized by definition. And given the real checks and balances we really do have in government, and the separations of power, this really does matter and isn't trivial or contrived.
People don't like that; too bad. The nature of government and authority matter. I'm for picking a liberal democratic government under the rule of law to make authorized "unauthorized" intrusions, i.e. hacking, not bands of ethics-free anarchist hackers trying to overthrow the state making the judgement calls on things like whether they "might" reveal agents' names or not (see Jacob Appelbaum, 30c3).
I don't notice Google or Cisco suing the NSA for "unauthorized access" to their systems using the CFAA, do you? Alright then.
That's not a popular view. I don't care. Grow up and deal with it; this is the crucial issue of our age. Um, no, that doesn't mean that pen testers that a corporation puts in the hands of their white-hat consultant should be banned; it means the weaponized, warrior, serious hacker tools that cause real damage should be treated as the weapons they are and regulated Again, this isn't a popular view really with anyone. Hackers in government don't like it because they defend their tribe's right to have anything they want, in and out of government. Hackers out of government hate it because they want to hack. Some ordinary people who haven't thoughout about this still think there's something thrilling about hacking. As a civilian, I don't think they should just get to do what they want, any more than people should get to do what they want with knives and guns, and they should be regulated. A longer discussion.
The nature of the Jester matters only in terms of this issue: if he is a non-state actor, then his hacking isn't in the hands of the government, and might pose a problem even if he is "on our side". Will he always be? Will he turn his powerful tools not on jihadists or Snowdens, but on people who complain about his use of these tools? That's my concern. Not to mention collateral damage.
Such as to freedom of speech. No liberal likes Westboro; unfortunately, Westboro is lawful under the First Amendment. Nobody has been able to make stalking or harassment challenges stick; only "time, place, and manner" challenges work, and badly. The Jester fills that gap with his own brand of "free expression" and Tango-downs their servers. I'm not for downing servers. The DDoS is not "like" a sit-in. I'm for mounting other civic challenges to the problems of Westboro -- criticial journalism, investigative journalism on their finances, etc. Taking down anyone's servers, even those who seem to deserve it, means all of us have less secure freedom to use our servers for protected free speech.
If the Jester is a state actor, then his persona as a non-state actor continues to blur a distinction that I'd prefer to be made, i.e. I believe serious hacking tools should be in the hands of intelligence and law-enforcement for the purpose of fighting crime and terror, not in the hands of the crypto kids.
But here's the thing.
These agencies, especially in the Obama Administration, have not done their job.
That's why the Jester exists; you have to hand him that.
Obama may have finally caught Bin Ladn, but he let Snowden happen on his watch. Not to mention Manning. Among the many factors that there are to blame for this is the attitude, promoted by Gen. Hayden and others, that the government "has" to hire hackers in order to be "cutting edge". I think that's a terrible idea and keeps leading to cases like Manning and Snowden who turn on the system -- and are heavily recruited by people like Jacob Appelbaum and Julian Assange to do just that (and on that the Jester and I agree fully). How many more of these will it take before they get the idea that they need to have more quality control and need to stop glorifying hackers and need to build in more protections to these blatant recruitments from the bad guys?
There just isn't enough day-to-day starch on fighting jihadists and Kremlin stooges with proper counterintelligence -- and it's part of Obama's flawed notion that you have to quietly pursue terrorists only with policing methods, and not "declare war" or "glorify them as warriors". That they glorify themselves and declar war on us blatantly never matters for those with this perspective. Ditto the Kremlin ideological gravy train.
But...The entire project of the Jester is meant to glorify hacking as a crusade. If it is just a lone ranger, understood. If it is a group of state actors, then it is problematic. But frankly, it's problematic even if he is only a lone actor given the tacit endorsement he gets from military and law-enforcement.
Here's the problem: neither the Jester, or his fans, or his golf-clappers in government, are interested in having this debate about the legitimacy of the means of struggle against our enemy, or who should possess these means. See above for their policy of glorifying hackers.
I don't think the government can expect to go on having it both ways, i.e. glorifying hackers and then trying to fight the results -- it's called "blow-back."
But -- because there isn't even an indictment for Snowden, or for that matter WikiLeaks, despite crimes obviously committed, that's how you get vigilantes like the Jester. They fill a gap. In fact, one can understand why many men in blue think "thank God for the Jester, he does what we can't get away with in the Obama Administration."
I personally don't care for swinging dicks among former law-enforcement or military in particular (they seem to be the most macho) who act as if civilians cannot understand what they do, or can't have a say in what they do. You find a lot of that on Twitter and places like Second Life. It's a certain type -- often not terribly educated or thoughtful. Perhaps they are men of action who cannot become bogged down in intellectual musings. Understood. But the reason we have civilian oversight of the military is because otherwise, we have juntas and police states.
The insiders' critique of the Jester from former or current hackers is that he doesn't really hack. This is an exotic critique that has to do with hackers' own notion of what they'll accept as "hacking" which is overly narrow and tends to exonerate their tribe. Or they say that he hasn't really done the damage he claims. I'm not in a position to judge, except to say that if the Jester's hacking isn't really all that, in a certain way, so much the better, because otherwise, fighting terror and espionage with serious weaponry has moved to an anarchic non-state sector and is no longer under control of the state, and we already have enough of that. Perhaps this is the ideal state; that the lone ranger Jester is able to hack just a little and just enough to prove a deterrent to our enemies, and a prod on our law-enforcement that can't seem to get it together to fight our enemies.
Vigilantes bore me quickly with their machismo and brittle personalities refusing to debate or accept criticism -- and it's mutual, which is why Jester blocked me nearly instantly after I began to ask a series of hard questions about what he was claiming during the Boston bombing. (He had a claim about a shooter within 6 minutes of the first eye-witness tweet; he had predicted Anonymous would move to bombing the day before the attack.)
He seemed to find out about it awfully quick, which points to sources in law-enforcement, or even actual law-enforcement status -- but he may only be a guy with a police radio tuned in and the time to keep listening -- any of us can and did do this during the Boston terrorism crisis. Recently, the Jester seemed to have early or exclusive news about airports and airplanes -- again, it's a police radio dial most likely. The Jester is the Drudge Report of such things -- some people follow him just for that.
My own guess is that the Jester is just one person, and not a group, or at least, not a very well organized group, because he doesn't post that frequently, given his following and mission and the crucial gap he is filling, and there are long pauses -- as there would be with a real person who had real-life intrusions (a group, especially a government groups, would keep the posts going).
The question of "who is the Jester" and "why he does what he does" and "what he has done" are all uninteresting to me, and unfortunately, take up a lot of an interview where many more interesting questions could have been asked and maybe answered, for example whether he thinks Snowden really has the hacking chops to have hacked what he did, or whether he had help, and whether that help was non-state or state.
All of this hyping of the legend of Jester distracts also from the question of whether we should have such people or not. That's the debate I'm interested in having, not "where/who they are". Of course, we don't get a choice in it. Such people already exist, and function, and the Army writes papers on them. They play catch-up and try to hire and co-opt them; they are them then.
So I'm interested in the higher meta discussion of whether we as a civil society should be pushing back more on this uncivil use of the Internet, and how, and whether ethical coders can be bred outside of the hacker milieu to have ethics and really serve a liberal democratic government and not merely their own tribe.
What I'm most interested is that a figure like the Jester or his avid backers not be able to stop that debate or force it to occur only on his own terms. That he would do if he harasses people who question his methods as distinct from looking for him.
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