How Jeremy Hammond Missed the Bigger Picture on Cyberterrorism
by Carla, therightsideoftruth.com
For years, cyberterrorism has been on the periphery of our vision. While most know what the phrase means, the alarm surrounding the issue is minimal. On the other hand, freedom of speech and the right to an uncensored internet has become an increasingly common rhetoric in most alternative media channels.
Guardian writer, Jeremy Hammond, spearheaded this exact opinion in an article last year. After Sony had fallen victim to North Korea-based hackers, he presented a view that shunned any repercussive fear. His theory: government officials are exaggerating the threat for their own financial gain.
As is common in the MSM, his article grossly oversimplifies the topic.
Cyberterrorism vs. Cybercrime
Before even discussing the potential threat, it’s important to correctly identify what we mean by cyberterrorism, as opposed to cybercrime. Hammond, clearly unable to make the distinction, stated:
Despite the apocalyptic hype, the Sony hack was not fundamentally different from any other high-profile breach in recent years.”
While it is true the Sony hack presented itself like many other well-known infiltrations, the essential difference is in intention. Most cybercriminals breach organizations to farm personal data for monetary gain, but the Sony attack was supposedly a political reaction from North Korea protesting the release of a new satirical film about the country.
While there is truth in the fact the government manipulated the situation to their advantage, Hammond’s article completely misses the point. The threat of cyberterrorism is an international issue covering both foreign intruders and our government. Framing the concept as a mere pretext for a responsive US-driven hack fails to hold the government accountable for its own cyberterrorist actions.
The Real Threat
We have already seen glimpses of the true power hacking may have in warfare. In May 2017, the UK’s National Health Service was brought to a standstill by a ransomware attack. It shut down websites, phone lines and all IT services. Patients were unable to book appointments, and valuable online information—such as treatment histories—became inaccessible, putting many hospital patients at risk.
Fortunately, these hackers were only looking for money. However, let’s consider the power of an attack of this nature for political reasons. The ability to shut down vital government services is a vicious weapon—one that can be used by two opposing governments, rebel groups, dictators or even by the US government for their own gain. Considering this fact, the following statement is rendered utterly redundant:
That’s what this hype of “cyber-terrorism” is all about: establishing pretexts for our ongoing offensive hacking operations.”
Cyberterrorism is definitely deserved of the hype, but this is no ‘good guy/bad guy’ situation. In reality, it’s much more complex.
Government Involvement
Our government rhetoric on cyberterrorism—which assumedly is what Hammond refers to as ‘hype’—depends on the general public viewing the attackers as the terrorists and the repercussive US action as a security retaliation. While viewing the government as the problem and the concept as a devious political tactic may seem an obvious opposition, we have to stop looking at the issue as a one-sided problem.
The reality is that the US government engages in cyberterrorism every day. The NSA illegally enters citizen’s private web space and accesses their data to shut down certain minority groups and viewpoints. Other countries see similar domestic cyberterrorism in the form of heavy online censorship. On the flip side, the terrorist group ISIS is known for having hacking departments. ISIS cybercriminals will spread propaganda via malware and are even said to have intercepted the personal information of prominent American citizens for potential attacks.
The stark reality is that cyberwarfare and terrorism are going to become an increasing problem as our society continues to depend on technology for almost every element of our lives. Pointing fingers has become irrelevant; instead, we need to focus on understanding the threat and finding solutions.
Finding Actual Solutions
The internet is a place of no nations. Although geo-blocking may restrict specific access, we’re all essentially existing on the same grid. Considering this, truly tackling the threat of cyberterrorism is a two-fold endeavor.
Firstly, we need to address government legislation. It is here where Hammond’s article provides some relevant thought. Currently, US law continues to tighten its hold on our online freedoms in the name of cybersecurity, while simultaneously allowing government departments to work outside of the legislation. Instead of a call for silence regarding cyberterrorism, we need a greater focus on accountability for all who abuse the freedom of the internet for political gain.
Unfortunately, this suggestion is far from realistic. With the political elite continuing to protect their own institutions and journalists hiding the true nature of government actions in shoddy reporting, it’s down to the everyman to protect themselves. The era of the proxy service is nearing, as more and more progressive thinkers hide their IP addresses and encrypt their online data from governments worldwide. Remote servers allow internet users to scramble their identity and remain anonymous, whenever they browse online. If an era of cyberterrorism continues, these online safe-zones could become standard procedure.
If the US truly wanted to stop the proliferation of nation-state hacking, they would push for UN conferences to establish guidelines defining and prohibiting “cyber-warfare”
Hammond’s Guardian post exposed a harrowing truth: the US Government does not genuinely care about the cessation of cyberterrorism. However, this case is not as reductive as a mere political scheme to increase security revenue. Rather, it is because we are in an age where the power of the cyberattack is starting to be fully comprehended, and no government is willing to give up one of greatest potential weapons of the technological age.
About the Author: Carla is an alternative news blogger who was motivated to write after years of trolling through bad journalism. She has developed a growing frustration with the constant contradictions and lies in the MSM and now aims to tackle these problems with her keyboard.
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Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
Do we? The term has been so misused and abused that it is rendered almost meaningless. The OED defines ‘terrorism’ as (from memory) an attack on civilians or infrastructure undertaken with the aim of furthering a political ideology.
The motive of the attacker(s) is crucial, if we are going by the dictionary definition.
When politicians or the media use it, it means something akin to a group we have designated as our enemy, or a person associated with said group, who have participated in one or more violent attacks against groups, people or infrastructure we associate with “our side” whether on the battlefield, in civilian areas, against occupying armies, nightclubs, anywhere really. Motive is irrelevant and “our guys” are never terrorists regardless of motive or circumstances. Oh and it helps is the perps are Muslims or we say they are. And doing hacking-type stuff on the internet is terrorism too, of course, if our foes do it.
A HANDY PRIMER ON TERRORISM IN 2017 By The Free and Open Media
Iran = TERRORISTS, STATE SPONSORS OF TERRORISM Why? Because we say so. Phfft evidence, logic, facts …please. Israel and the Zionists hate them so that settles that.
ISIS = TERRORISTS and biggest threat the West has faced since ww2. Well until 2016 anyway , when some of us realized they really hate Iran and Israel likes them so now it is acceptable to call them “militants”
Hezbollah =über TERRORISTS. Their anti-Semitic sympathizers say they are fighting against an illegal occupying army that we love and helping a sovereign state we loathe destroy moderate Sunni supremacists, er, rebels so yeah TERRORISTS. No matter that they do not engage in suicde attacks or target civilians they are TERRORISTS, ok?
That nightclub shooter kid in Florida = TERRORIST Apologists say his connection to Islam was tenuous to non-existant and he displayed violent and homophobic tendencies (maybe a closet case) was obsessed with guns and fit the profile of the all- American lone spree killer. Phhht he yelled something about ISIS whilst slaughtering quee-, er, homosexuals so TERRORIST. Oh, and his name was OMAR so that settles it.
Islamist fighters including al Qaeda and ISIS running slave markets, battling with mercenaries and bandits in Libya after we humanely pulverized it to free its people from living prosperous, safe, secure…but boring lives = NOT terrorists. Armed groups is the correct term, TYVM
Moamar al-Gaddafi = sponsor of state TERRORISM and TERRORIST He fought al Qaeda long before the West pretended to and warned about their threat to US/Europe? Fake news.
Reagan and various US regimes had been trying to kill him and overthrow his government for decades? He’s a mad dog TERRORIST who blahblah his own people! Denied blowing up PanAm 103 but made payments to victims anyway? TERRORIST Wanted friendly relations with the West while retaining sovereignty? TERRORIST Sponsored Islamic Call Society and built mosques to counter nefarious Saudi and AQ Wahhabism? Publicly condemned the Saudis and Israel? Worked hard to make Africa self-sufficient and free of petrodollar and Western imperialism? TERRORIST TERRORIST TERRORIST x1000
al Qaeda/Nusra/HTS and friends terrori-, er, liberating Syria on our behalf? = NOT terrorists. Rebels, moderate rebels or opposition groups if you please. Beheading a kid for being an “Assadist”, shooting a teenager in the face for not going to Friday prayers, shooting another kid for making a tame joke about the Prophet and, get this, SELLING COFFEE on the street…eating the heart of an executed SAA soldier, summarily executiing dozens of SAA prisoners? NOT TERRORISTS Come on that is all Assad and Iran’s fault. Our guys simply cannot be terrorists. New law of physics we discovered.
Make sense?
That still leaves “cyberterrorism”
Cyberterrorissm = When “state actors”, usually North Korea, Russia, China “do stuff” on the internet (or we say they do) that “threatens our security” (or we say it does). If a script kiddie or a socially retarded 4Chan reject does the same thing it is “hacking” or just a DDOS attack or not even reported. Ditto when the CIA does a false flag vault 7 thing…NEVER HAPPENED Ok? Ok. Okaay!
The media and politicians (and the Internet) are choking the life out of the English language. It is being rendered meaningless one phrase, one word at a time. This is making coherent communication increasingly difficult.
When people can no longer ageee on what the words they use mean they end up talking (or SHOUTING) past each other.
The Internet plays a role here too. A friend is not always a friend or even a real person. Memories are determined by what I have stored in my “phone’s” “Camera Roll” (Right now it says I have NO MEMORIES). Well that’s just lovely and — what do you know I forgot what I was about to say.
Cruising on intoxicating substances, thinking, walking and writing whilst sitting or standing on buses and trains while talking to fellow space travellers all at the same time is very challenging so please no snide remarks about coherence and grammar please. Many thanks!
Anyway, Orwell’s concept of plain English is worth looking up. As language gets ever more mangled instead of using heuristic shortcuts like terrorism, freedom, democracy, aggression, fascist, feminist, the right/the left etc etc etc that have multiple ambiguous meanings it is better to clearly say what you mean and AVOID buzzwords and mediaisms if possible. Oh and READ POSTS COMMENTS EMAILS & ARTICLES BEFORE REPLYING.
AND STOP SHOUTING FFS! Ok just calm down please. I AM VERY CALM M8, VERY VERY CALM. HAVE A PROBLEM WITH MY CALMNESS M8? WHY SO QUIET M8? WORRED I’LL HIT YA, ARE YA?
ok now this is becoming silly
If you’ve read this far, really it wasn’t necessary. I wouldn’t have. But TYVM!
Every facet of life is abused by those with criminal tendencies, the internet is no exception. Safe, respectful places just don’t exist. The current illusion of regulation is probably more dangerous than the subject of the article. Technical connectivity was borne of deceit, it’s current status has assumed a position in our lives by force rather than consent. Self value, self respect and an understanding that who we are and what we do is not by the grace of anyone a possible way forward. Technology is being used to undermine our self worth.
If you live and give a true word – you wont be suckered by the false – and will re-educate yourself when a ‘back-door’ is uncovered or persist under the false as if it is true.
So I see – perhaps with you – that idols and ideas of power and protection are personal and collective illusions over fear of pain and loss of self – but I also hold that what we give is the measure of our receiving – and so if you play out a cover story for your own narrative control – your will meet that ‘world’ by using such thought to tune into it. I don’t ask you to believe in the reality of shared purpose but I do ask you to pause from believing against it. Shared purpose is alignment in being – but joining in hate is no real sharing at all – for every mind thinks apart and for ‘itself’.
If I meet someone engaged in cover story – do I respond to its framing or to the presence beneath the appearance?
Why do people defend in mask but because they feel judged, demanded of and unseen. That the mask ‘possesses’ the mind is called believing our own spin – and reacting as if it is true.
The defences are easily triggered as a complex entanglement of personae – and while they run – everything else is suppressed. So wholeness is paused by a persistent partiality of a masquerade.
Safety is an inside job.
Reblogged this on | truthaholics and commented:
“Hammond’s Guardian post exposed a harrowing truth: the US Government does not genuinely care about the cessation of cyberterrorism. However, this case is not as reductive as a mere political scheme to increase security revenue. Rather, it is because we are in an age where the power of the cyberattack is starting to be fully comprehended, and no government is willing to give up one of greatest potential weapons of the technological age.”
“Remote servers allow internet users to scramble their identity and remain anonymous, whenever they browse online.” Really? Does one have to possess special computer and internet smarts to be anonymous? Because as often as I try to employ simple solutions, I’m thwarted. I try to employ simple solutions because I don’t understand the tech and geeks, whether progressives or not, NEVER explain them properly. And I’m willing to bet I’m in the majority.
I tried HMA (which means Hide My Ass), which hides the fact that it’s owned by AVG. I read around and so I happened to stumble upon the information about HMA telling me who owned it and telling me that HMA gave up a user to the government. I will never use HMA or AVG again.
I tried a few VPNs, but in every instance, it was a waste of time. And, when all them are plagued with the problem of sudden stoppages, How is that protection? If you’ve got a killer drone, let’s say, searching for you and you have a tech that allows you to be invisible to it, but every now and then the cloaking simple quits, leaving you visible to that drone for a short spell, which is all that the drone needs to get to you, then How is that protection? I’ve asked. No one has ever bothered to answer. Even if the vpn can just be turned back on, How does that help if you’ve been spotted.
And then there’s all the stuff you can’t do while using a vpn. Maybe geeks know how to use VPNs ‘and’ still do things like file share, but if they do, none of them have told me how to do it. I hate geeks. I have a paid warranty here in Toronto on a Dell XPS 13 (a dyamite machine by the way) and so I stopped into a Best Buy because I was suddenly plagued with leftover ini files that would pop up on my desktop and not go away. These were being generated by malware scanners I was using (many of which need malware scanners to remove!) that I was using to clean and speed up my 2 laptops. The Geek Squawd guy at Best Buy took a long time to fake fix my problem. In fact, I was impressed with how he could trick me (unintentionally) with a temporary fix that made me think it was problem solved, because later, after the first reboot I did of the machine he looked at, the problem was back. I continued to fool around with settings. It was all I could do. I then tried a simple search of what starts up, found the files, deleted them and fixed the problem on my own.
I’m using Tunnel Bear (Toronto based) right now after reading that Craig Murray uses it. I figured maybe I hadn’t found the right vpn. I figured that the other ones I tried were just fakers and surely Craig Murray wouldn’t use a fake product. Wrong. I pay for Tunnel Bear, but it makes no difference. Also, It seems that when an ISP doesn’t like you using a vpn, it simply cripples you. I just stopped using them altogether.
Otherwise, above article does address the issue, which should be of concern to all real progressives (who are trying to communicate with each other and those who they are reaching out to), namely the simply effort, kicking into gear, by the 1% and its tools to kill all communication but their own. The surveillance, as Julian Assange ruefully notes, is here to say. I don’t know how much more they can surveil us, but the depth of the surveillance is probably deep enough now for their purposes. The police legislation (C51 here in Canada) is fairly advanced and police forces are being sufficiently militarized, from the 1%’s standpoint, from a securocratic warfare standpoint, enabling the (profitable, to some) global pacification of the people, as Jeffrey Halper points out in his book “War Against The People.” (See my post titled “A Loud Whoompfing Sound” dealing with the subject of the beginning of the attack on communication itself, underwaym, in earnest, since 2016: http://tinyurl.com/y727ohbr)
Jeremy Hammond was charged for hacking of servers of Stratfor, an Austin-based intelligence firm owned by Hungary-American Jew millionaire, and sharing the information with the Wikileaks. Hammond was arrested in March 2012.
On November 14, Hammond gave an interview to British daily Guardian, in which he claimed that the US government is setting him as an example to “put a chill on political hacking”.
Christopher Hedges, former Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, in an interview with The Real News Network on November 16, 2013, called Hammond a follower of the Black Bloc. In 2013, Hedges, in an article called Black Bloc, “The Cancer in the Occupy“. David Graeber, in an open letter to Hedges, called him a liar….
https://rehmat1.com/2013/11/17/ten-years-for-hacking-jewish-intelligence-files/
The false flag as well as the planting of false evidence and disinformation is part of narrative control.
Who gets to define what happened and who accepts such a narrative?
William Binney pointed out that the surveilers were unwilling to themselves be accountable. What is insider information and what is it worth to know of everyone else’s secrets and lies, be they personal, industrial or political?
I heard that when Nat Rothschild managed to get false info of the battle of Trafalgar back first – it crashed the markets so that he could buy up very cheapl y- and when the true result came in they surged back higher.
Or J Hoover, hoovered up all the dirty or compromising secrets of anyone of influence so as to have undue influence over them – pre internet.
‘Power’ cannot resist the technology to extend its reach. True power is of a different order than coercive deceit.
Unaccountable power operates in the dark. A mind in the dark becomes fitted to protect the darkness rather than have its sense of the right to power held in check – especially once clandestine operations and cover ups make such dirty washing as to be held a matter of national security to keep hidden.
The corporate-state and privatized ‘security’ of the tech-millitary-industrial cartel is an insanity masked by bought PR among establishment personnel – and naive useful idiots.
Perhaps it is not so much we are evil – as captured within our own precedents of self-definition and protocol.
In one way or another it is as if truly addressing anything would uncover a mess that cannot be addressed because it claims ‘too big to fail’.
So the perceived lesser evil is to be delivered unto evil under the anaesthesia of a set of fairy stories – and a range of ‘medications’.
Oh they can manipulate any website, any webshop, manage them so you see them yourself online, people you are in contact with see them online, but no body else, feed you fake website/webshop statistics, they must have a sentient central computer for that, can hack and take over any system, sentient computer can clone it self infinitely, one clone on every website, facebook account, twitter account …
Reblogged this on Worldtruth and commented:
If a greedy hacker can put the NHS into a near total collapse for money and a US government employed hacker can bring down the Chinese Stock Exchange, why would the US want to bring in legislation that deems it a terrorist act?
Simple answer: They don’t fear laws which they will break as easily as you and I breathe. They will carve out an exemption or some such thing and carry on with the behavior they condemn, as they do with terrorism already. The laws, like so many (free trade for example) are for the people and the weak. They don’t do law and order on principle, as Zinn explains (repeatedly) in his book “A People’s History Of The United States.” Law, for our “Benefactors” in power is all about control of the people.
On the Law (not a specifically personal response to Arrby)
The idea of ‘The Law’ is a reflection of inner recognitions as to holding the balance points and channels of communication open for a just relationship/society – as a the conditions in which dissonance, chaos, and disorder do not take root and multiply destructively – and as the remedy or correction for breakdown of communication through the process of facilitating a true hearing.
That this idea has never been fully embodied is in part because the psychic-emotional communication breakdown of humanity is already so deeply polarised in divisive, systemic and pervasive corruption of law, justice, judgement and given word or witness. Those who sought to ‘improve or repair’ this human condition without truly addressing its underlying conditioning become subtler agents of deceit – or gatekeepers to the very thing they supposedly set out to correct.
The Law of the heart is not coercive upon us – but is accepted willingly and as a recognition of true in desire for truth that rises from self-sickness in deceit or madness in powerless and futility of implicit defeat. Because we (our minds) do not make true or establish and determine truth – and the wish-belief that we can and HAVE is running with the bait of a self-deceit – as if to express power while in truth being ‘Realed’ in, because denial sets the terms of the need for true acceptance’.
The law of Caesar is a masking corruption of Law or the Template of self-definition by which to set deceit and coercion on the throne as power over life. It is the law of terror – that mitigates or gives favour by supplying the sense of self-specialness in power over others as an agency of a hidden hate driven personal lust – because joy in being is the fruit of unselfconscious spontaneity that substitutions of personal gratification in fantasy object associations cannot be – no matter what Life is sacrificed to give them temporary ascendence in private passing experience.
The uncovering, recognition and acceptance of true worth is the basis from which to live to the same in all – because in such awareness it is obviously not any mark of self-special destiny, or personal accomplishment or superiority – though it is the temporary ability to serve the wholeness of any situation rather than operating divisively – and experience the world of relations through growing and sharing in a different consciousness than ‘divide and rule out’.
So I write here to witness to the Idea of Law that has its root in Consciousness itself – for as you sow, so shall you reap, or in the measure of your giving (your word or embodiment of self-defining focus and acceptance), is your receiving. But Consciousness itself can be hidden and masked over by the phishing of identity theft – so as to defend the lie against the true – unknowing of the ruse.
Power is who gets to define the reality of any given situation – AND who gets to accept it. Be aware that anti-definitions share the same root. ‘Resisting evil’ is like focussing in what you do NOT want – as if to become its denial and rejection is itself a positive creation or redeeming and self-validating status.
Aligning and abiding in true witness is vigilant against taking the bait of reaction in like kind. For you become what you hate by the nature of your persistent focus in its qualities and terms. Yet where you choose to focus is always up to you – regardless the urge of compulsions to escape or evade a sense of disturbance that is never healed by projecting to get rid of and deny. ‘There must be another way of looking at this’ is the opening willingness to SEE past fear’s rigidly fixed dictate.
What are the issues of the Internet but of both Society AND of our own Consciousness?
Integrity and trust.
Systemic breakdown is a loss of integrity and trust and the ruling out of the basis of integral worth is a dis-integrity or self-attack by which to limit, divide and deny Consciousness that is Life’s recognition for a fear-driven control of life lived in reversal – as suffering the threats and attacks of an evil projected out onto ‘other’ as if to get rid of it.
A mind in deceit can only go forth and multiply deceit – and thereby substitute false currency for true – such that we have a ‘system of law’ that is no longer more than a pretence of fakery over fear of loss ensuring the fulfilment of its own feared outcomes. Yet believes itself ‘power’ and enacts sacrifice to false with-ness in its worth-ship.
When the mind of fear hacks in – force quit to release the narrative and log-in directly to the Source code. Reboot from a fresh take. You cannot run reliably on a corrupted system – for its job is to pass off as running reliably.
Just because ‘power in the world’ operates according to (and thus witnessing the fruit of) its principles does not mean it is true in the framing of its own terms – but the feedback is true. Discerning the roots from a true appreciation of the fruits is not analysis – but intuitive recognition. If it comes from guilt and fear – its fruits will be of like kind – regardless any seeming kindness in its packaging and presentation. Yet to a false sense of power fear and guilt is held as the basis or nature of existence and as the means of ‘control’ over its effects – which are seen externally as independent ’causes’ to be used to maintain the narrative identity as power and protector against ‘evils’ or hated fears and feared hates.
Narrative control operates ‘mind capture’ under the mask at cost of sacrifice of Life to its dictates. But the story of the re-awakening of humanity from the spell of a false mind is a worthy replacement – and yes that includes awareness of the nature and device of deceits such as masking in guise of protection that runs as a racketeering corruption of the thing it presents and asserts to be.
‘Pluck it out’ from myself first or else I throw the stone to hide my own hate hurt and fear by vengeance upon its scapegoat. But I do not have to use the denial of another life to save my own and seal it in hate by so doing.
And to those who parse this for ammunition… it is a matter of where we are coming from that embodies presence or masking presentation in everything we do. Force may be kind but firm to restrain harm. But knowing what you do is knowing the true movement of being that you are the doing of. This is where a mind of deceit can interject in fear-formed thinking – that then rules out true feeling and knowing as ‘weak’, dangerous, threat, and uncontrollable – and that last is true for when you feel the situation as a whole there is no longer any call or need for the interjection and imposition of coercive ‘control’.
Such is the alignment in the Law of the Heart – that is hidden from the use of the law as a weapon of mind-control. So ‘put down thy sword’ is not the invalidation or demonisation of a tool – but the pausing in which to align in true being – lest you use it to invalidate and demonise yourself in another.
Life/You are not a system – but a living will under the a tempt of a mind to crystallize in form – but form follows function to support and embody Meaning. Everything is backwards when form is assigned private or separated and conflicting ‘meanings’ and used or masked in to ‘validate’ them at cost of Meaning.
What does it profit to gain a world and lose (awareness of) Soul – that is the feeling and knowing Itself in ALL that it extends as a multidimensional (many mansioned) focus. Diversity and richness of perspective and relation is the Embrace of a truly open Consciousness and its reflection as our world is each our unique gift and yet also our collective participance in a greater giving and receiving.
False power paints its adherence into a corner where war, calamity of death and denial re-enacts a false escape into a reset – perhaps to a deeper level in the ‘game’ of relational evasion. But while we do believe false currency true – we cannot pretend we do not and find rest, connectedness and renewal in true appreciations.