Forum Post: Being more careful about operational security - especially at easily corruptible points like who runs this website
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 25, 2011, 1:04 a.m. EST by Fredone
(234)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Okay, you have to ask yourself who runs this website, for instance. For all anyone knows, the 1%ers registered the domain name way back in august and have hired people to run this website.
Consider: a failed movement is possibly worse than none at all. Start a movement, have your moles positioned in critical places like the people running this website, in order to cripple it and cause it to fail at crucial points, while keeping the mole's cover during normal everyday points by having them apparently support the movement..
The recent blog article about the drummers, for instance, makes the whole movement look a bunch of tokesters, that they cannot figure out this trivial issue.
Maybe that's why it was posted. Maybe the best or most interesting forum posts are not being made visible to people. From a technical standpoint, it is trivial to make the posts visible to some people but not others, based on IP address.
I know something about security, and basically it comes down to having trusted people in the crucial roles. The supporters have to be in control here. Utimately it comes down to the people on site making sure that any moles are weeded out, there is only so much we can do over the internet.
So people make sure you take this seriously, because I don't thing you are. There is evidence of corruption in the moderators of the irc channels, the streaming media channels, the various websites etc., one example that just happens to be on the tip of my tounge is occupycanada.ca for example, which has apparently been squatted on by 1%ers to prevent the legit people from using it.
The person that runs the multitude.org forum also needs to be watched closely too, for example. If you wanted to gain influence over the movement, what better way than to set up a nice forum, temp everyone over there, so you can have all the discussion under your thumb in case there is anything you feel is particularly important to censor.
ADDENDUM: A good place to start is to make sure you have hackers or other people who understand security in general. There are many good resources out there too, Bruce schneier has some good books for laypeople that help to educate people on the general principles of security, for instance, and he has some buddies that also write good stuff.
Some people in this comment thread are taking about anonymity being a problem for instance. Not necessarily. Even if people had to reveal their IDs it's not like th 1%ers don't have the resources to make fake ids. Secondly requiring people in key positions to reveal their IDs can drive legit people away if they fear retaliation. Although on the balance of things it may be useful idea nonetheless, that is something for people on the ground to figure out given the specifics of the situation (which only they know really), I'm not gonna try to drive from the backseat.
People are on Facebook discussing this, attached to their real identities, that is what freaks me out more than anything else.
Why does it freak you out?
Good point. I was thinking about making a donation, but it was this very thought that held me back. I would still like to, but I think I need to see some evidence that this site's legit first.
It shouldn't hold you back from donating. If the site was actually diverting significant amounts of funds then someone would certainly have noticed, and that is not such a big deal anyway ultimately. The bigger concern is other types of corruption.
I think the anonymous nature of this site makes it questionable, do what you say, say what you do,
I see your point here, and while I don't take crap like that seriously I can see how others would if they don't know better. So far theMultitude has shown no signs of being hijacked, co-opted, etc. and there's no real pressure by mods or others to tilt the discussion in any particular direction. I also feel like there needs to be some better-designed forum for OWS if they want people to use it, and something does need to be done about the trolls, the neo-Nazis, and the tinfoil-hat people.
"no real pressure" how do you know that? Are you sure someone who had been censored would say so, and if they did that you would hear about it? Or that they would even know? For example, you could easily rig things so that someone who posts on the forum can see their own post, but no one else can, as a result they might not even know they were being censored.
Secondly, there may be no pressure now, but it could easily pop up at more crucial junctions. Suppose the cops use a surprise attack to go clear zuccotti park for instance, and the call for help is suppressed, to greatly reduce the number of people who come down to add their numbers to the park.
Oops, just having some technical issues with the server, sorry. Just a glitch say the people running this or some other website which people would have gotten the news from. There should be trusted people at these points of communication. Using twitter and email and phone more than depending on single points of failure helps, but twitter is itself run by the 1% so it can fail too... We'll see how things go, I am not advocating for paranoia, but we do need to be cognizant of these issues and do things in a way that is reasonably resistant to corruption.