The winds are a changin'

As some of you are aware, I did some research on the Anonymous vs. Scientology event that happened during the first part of the year.

The conclusion of the research didn't have an opinion on Anonymous or Scientology, per se, but focused more on this unique experiment of 'online to offline crossover influence'; the fact that an anonymous group of so-called 'hackers' could mobilize a physical demonstration against an organization.

We are now seeing a secondary experiment with the mobilization of demonstrators intended to protest the torch run of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

In both cases, a very large proportion of the demonstrators were not personally involved with the organizations, in these cases, Scientology or Tibet. Most demonstrators have rather illogical reasons for participating ... but here they are .. in large numbers.

Why?

Is Scientology the most pressing 'religious' issue that the world is facing? Is Tibet the most important 'political' issue? Of course not - they are mere distractions and are, at most, emotionally charged. Perhaps that's the key - emotionally charged or better yet, mass irrationality.

Sound like a Freudian conspiracy?

I have also been watching the RSA conference closely as well. In addition to the usual suspects - botnets, infrastructure security and greynet activities, there is an unusual amount of 'channel' security in discussion. Channel security? Read: monitoring your online activity.

A few quotes from US homeland security chief Michael Chertoff:

'We take threats to the cyber world as seriously as we take threats to the material world. Please send some of your brightest and best to do service in the government. It is the best thing you can do for your country' ... and then he talked about the federal government’s new cyber security 'Manhattan Project', an ambitious and expensive initiative to, in part, monitor the complex computer networks of all federally funded agencies.

Federally funded agencies? Do a search on this - you'll find university programs, NGO programs, corporate programs and ALL government websites.

And in the spirit of 'Minority Reportitis', my favorite quote, 'The best way to deal with an attack is before it happens rather than after it has occurred'.

Speaks for itself.

At the same time, we have the Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell stating in an interview that the Intelligence Community, 'must have access to Google [and presumably all other search engine’s] search histories, private emails, and file transfers in order to identify cyberterrorists – and terrorists.'

You can draw your own conclusions but it seems that these virtually initiated demonstrations are starting to get the attention of the darkhats.

Conspiracy theory?

Probably - but remember, 80% of all propaganda is 'disinformation'.