SEVEN
Operation Ferguson
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“This ain't your Daddy's civil rights movement. We ain't ashamed to be angry because we're supposed to be angry. They're killing us, and that's the bottom line.”
~~ Tef Poe
Sunday - August 9, 2014 approx. 1:00 PM ET - Starbucks Montreal, Quebec - CANADA
It was a lazy summer Sunday in Montreal, which means for me and my lifestyle, as close to paradise as you get. Posted up in a wonderful Starbucks.... oh and that brings up something I wanted to go over with the reader. You may have noticed I spend a lot of time posted up in Starbucks during the stories told in my books. Well, this is true. But for all of 2014 and 2015, I survived entirely off a 0-day hack of Starbucks gift cards that I came across, that allowed the endless refill of cash onto the gift cards. So, fuck Starbucks.
At the same moment that I was smoking my second pipe of weed and enjoying a latte in the late morning sun, a young black man by the name of Michael Brown was a thousand miles away walking down his residential street in a little city called Ferguson in the State of Missouri. He was confronted walking down the middle of his own trafficless residential street by Darren Wilson, who was driving a marked SUV and was an officer in the Ferguson Police Department. He was also white, and he didn't like Mike Brown. Not one bit. He slammed on his brakes approximately seventy-five feet from where Michael and a companion were strolling down their own street on a lazy summer morning, and he began to yell and shout at Mike to get the fuck out of the street and walk on the sidewalk.
What happened next takes a hundred times longer to tell than it did to happen. Michael Brown tossed Officer Darren Wilson the bird and just kept right on strolling home. Which is pretty much what any of us would have done, really. Darren Wilson flew into a rage, threw his vehicle into drive, and tore up next to Mike Brown - so close that when he threw open the door to his SUV to confront Mike, he slammed the door into Mike's shoulder....hard. Without thinking, Mike Brown spun around and slammed the door straight back shut, right in Darren Wilson's face - so hard he probably hurt him.
In a flash so fast it caught Mike totally by surprise, Darren Wilson drew his service weapon while still sitting in his cruiser, and pumped off two quick rounds, one of which missed and the other grazed Mike Brown in the shoulder. Mike managed to push Darren Wilson's wrist away, which is what prevented the second shot from taking his head off.
Then Mike Brown did the only sensible thing at that point. He ran....like hell. Officer Darren Wilson then exited his vehicle shouting and cussing and fired off another cluster of rounds at the back of a fleeing Michael Brown. At least two of the shots managed to strike Mike in the back. At this point, having been shot three times by an enraged Darren Wilson, Michael Brown knew he was finished no matter what. Standing now some 50 feet away from a steadily approaching Darren Wilson, Mike turned to face him, fell to his knees, and attempted to raise his hands in surrender. He was unable to fully lift one arm due to the injury to his shoulder.
Darren Wilson continued to stride towards a surrendering Mike Brown, calmly took aim, and proceeded to unload the rest of his clip into Michael Brown. He was nineteen, had just graduated high school, and was due to begin his first semester in college the following month. Now he was about to lay dead in the streets, bleed out in the blistering Missouri heat, in his own neighborhood for all to see, including his family who lived across the street - for four fucking hours.
As the entire community began to gather and make noise at the police tape surrounding Michael Brown's dead body, and the police responded to this modest gathering, not even a protest yet really, forty or so people, with five armoured vehicles and riot cops, and I ordered my second latte of the day, a locally popular rapper from St. Louis who went by the name Tef Poe - was making his way to the nearby city of Ferguson from his home in St. Louis. When he got there, he took in the scene, snapped a picture of Michael Brown's dead body, covered, with a river of blood pouring out of him and down the street, and attached it to what I feel is one of the most historic tweets in history.
@TefPoe: We need international help, please! This is happening now!!
This is the moment where the magic of the Internet kicks in. I have no idea, I've never investigated, the exact chain of events that led to this young rapper's tweet to end up flashing down my Twitter time line, with its grizzly attachment, but it did. In seconds that plea for help flashed a thousand miles north and I saw it sitting in the Starbucks that sunny morning in Montreal. Now, I see a lot of grizzly pictures in my human rights work. So mind you there was nothing that initially caught my eye or made me pause. But as it scrolled by, it dawned on me, this wasn't the Middle East, this was from some bum-fuck city in Missouri called Ferguson! I paused over the picture. In retrospect, that was probably the exact moment that fate decreed the existence of Anonymous Operation Ferguson.
I flipped open a tab and attempted to chat with this Tef Poe, who was still there at the police tape tweeting in real-time about poor Michael Brown laying in the streets. I got through to him right away.
@CommanderXanon: Hello. I saw your message about wanting international help. You have perhaps heard of Anonymous?
@TefPoe: Everyone has heard of Anonymous!
@CommanderXanon: And you would be comfortable with a bunch of creepy hackers in Mask getting mixed up in this?
@TefPoe: Of course, absolutely. We have no one here. To be honest, this isn't really a protest, it's a grieving community. Yet they already have military grade force out. These people will go home and forget, it's all they can do, unless we get some help.
@CommanderXanon: Tell me why I should care. Not to be callous, but this shit goes down every day, and a lot of people need our help. What makes this kid, Mike Brown, any different?
There was a long pause, and I actually thought I had offended this rapper from St. Louis and this was where it was going to end. Then the reply came through.
@TefPoe: He was unarmed, on his knees, with his hands in the air, and the cop lit him up and emptied his clip into him.
He attached a picture that will live in infamy, of Michael Brown's step dad standing by the police tape in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, with the very first protest sign of what would become the Ferguson Uprising:
"The Ferguson Police Just Killed My Unarmed Son"
That's what was scrawled on a piece of torn cardboard with magic marker.
@CommanderXanon: Yeah....ok, I'm in. Let's do this. You'll need to have our back with a lot of Black folk, we are after all creepy hackers with Masks, they might not even know who we are at first. But I'll deliver the Global Collective of Anonymous to you by nightfall.
And from those humble beginnings the current iteration of Black Lives Matter and the Black Civil Rights movement in the USA began, on that fateful summer day back in August 2014 - with a conversation between a hacker and a rapper. And before they even came to collect Michael Brown's body from the street that afternoon, I had registered an Anonymous Operation Ferguson Twitter account, Top level Domain name, set up the website, and I was working on the Press Release and video with my Crew and a handful of Anons who learned I was launching something big and wanted in.
That night saw chaos in the streets of Ferguson the likes of which the USA has rarely witnessed. And the next thirty days would see some of the most frantic hacktivism of my career. Desperately multi-tasking that first night, I ran the Op Ferguson Twitter account to two effects, pushing out media reports from the ground, and pushing back to the activists on the ground good intelligence that could help them in the running street battles with the police. In addition, I rushed to finish the Anonymous Operation Ferguson official Press Release, while other Anons simultaneously worked to complete the accompanying video. When it was completed, I flipped open my Jabber with OTR and shot the PR and video to Gabriella Coleman for her take.
Anonymous Operation Ferguson - Press Release
Sunday - August 10, 2014 1:30 PM CST USA
A little over 24 hours ago in Ferguson, Missouri - USA the Ferguson Police Department shot an unarmed teen 6 times and killed him. His body was left to lie in a pool of blood in the sweltering heat for four hours while the police militarized the area against protesters and attempted to concoct a reasonable story as to why they snatched this innocent student's life for no reason.
The St. Louis County Sheriff Department even sealed the roads leading to Ferguson in a vain attempt to prevent protesters from reaching the city. His name was Mike Brown, he was 17 - and he would have started college next week. Instead, his family is struggling to come up with funeral costs.
The entire global collective of Anonymous is outraged at this cold-blooded murder of a young teen. Not a week goes by that some young person, usually of minority ethnicity - is slaughtered by murderous police in the USA. For this reason Anonymous will not be satisfied this time, as we have in the past - with simply obtaining justice for this young man and his family. Anonymous demands that the Congressional Representatives and Senators from Missouri introduce legislation entitled "Mike Brown's Law" that will set strict national standards for police conduct in the USA. We further demand that this new law include specific language to grant the victims of police violence the same rights and prerogatives that are already enjoyed nationwide by the victims of other violent criminals. The Equal Protection clause of the US Constitution demands nothing less.
To the good people of Ferguson, take heart - and take your streets. You are not alone, we will support you in every way possible. Occupy every square inch of your city. Open your homes and help in any way you can the protesters who will come to your city from every part of Missouri and the USA. Businesses and householders that are near protest rallies, open your WiFi routers so that live streamers and other independent journalists can use the Internet connections. Feed each other, keep each other safe - and stay in the streets until we are totally victorious in all our demands.
To the Ferguson Police Department and any other jurisdictions who are deployed to the protests: we are watching you very closely. If you abuse, harass - or harm in any way the protesters in Ferguson we will take every web based asset of your departments and governments off line. That is not a threat, it is a promise. If you attack the protesters, we will attack every server and computer you have. We will dox and release the personal information on every single member of the Ferguson Police Department, as well as any other jurisdiction that participates in the abuse. We will seize all your databases and E-Mail spools and dump them on the Internet. This is your only warning.
The time has come for more than simple justice for these atrocities. The time has come to draw a line in the sand and say "no more dead kids", no more police killings and beatings. Anonymous is drawing a line in the sand, and that line runs right down the middle of Main Street Ferguson, Missouri. Police impunity ends with the barbaric death of Mike Brown.
We Are Anonymous - We Are Legion - We Will Not Forgive - We Will Not Forget
EXPECT JUSTICE - DEMAND CHANGE
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Web Site - www.OperationFerguson.cf
Twitter - twitter.com/OpFerguson2015
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biella: Wow.
Commander X: Someone just told me we may be starting the next civil rights movement in the USA tonight.
biella: I think they may be right!
Before midnight, the Anonymous Operation Ferguson Twitter account had eight thousand followers. And that's the true story of how the Ferguson Uprising began.
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Monday - August 10, 2014 approx. 7:00 AM ET - Starbucks Montreal, Quebec - CANADA
Day two of the Ferguson Uprising and Anonymous Operation Ferguson began with brush fires everywhere. Our Twitter, which had gained another two thousand followers while I slept a bit, topping out at over ten thousand followers - had been briefly suspended by Twitter. After reaching out to technical support, I got the first of many shocks in the weeks to come. The founder of Twitter, @jack, followed us and had intervened to restore and protect our account. Later that day he would fly to Ferguson, and over the next two days he marched in the streets and live tweeted like a pro. We could do no wrong from here on out, we were protected by the boss.
While I struggled to give a half dozen media interviews simultaneously, I was being introduced by Tef Poe to his room mate, Bassem Masri. Bassem Masri was a Palestinian. Which was an interesting coincidence, because the vast majority of the hackers who answered my original call to arms in Ferguson lived in Gaza. Bassem had tried his hand at livestreaming the previous night, and had taken a liking to it. Bassem was adamant that I understand one thing, that what I thought was a random and frantic attempt to push information back to and amongst the protesters had worked the night before. As it turned out, the Op Ferguson Twitter account, which I only hoped may be mildly useful to the protesters on the ground in Ferguson, had in fact been indispensable. I spent several hours that morning working with Bassem to understand exactly how we were useful on social media to the protesters, and brainstorming ways that we could enhance that for tonight's action. Then the hacks began....
The first sign that a cyber strike was underway was the entire St. Louis County government cyber presence simply....disappeared. For several hours. Then a series of crippling E-Mail Bombs were detonated on their servers, as well as those belonging to the City of Ferguson, effectively shutting down E-Mail service countywide for five days. By that point there was really nothing left of either government entity, at least not on the Internet. They had been turned into smoking craters in cyber space. As these events were happening and being reported on in the media, something truly historic was unfolding in the streets of the tiny city of Ferguson. Tens of thousands of people were pouring into the streets, and being met by a truly dystopian vision. Huge armored vehicles with giant sniper rifles (manned) on top, and hundreds of fully armored and armed riot police. Since last night, the slogan "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" in honor of Michael Brown had been chanted. It was surreal to watch thousands of protesters, all with their hands in the air, facing off with what was essentially an occupying army of militarized "police".
As we all watched on the livestreams, the lines slowly formed up. There was a long moment of hushed silence as the protesters, hands in the air - stared sullenly at the snipers atop the armored vehicles, and the riot police lined up before them. Then one lady stepped forward with a bullhorn and what looked like it might be an actual soap box. She stood up on the box, and stopping to consult her mobile phone, she began to speak. She spoke about Michael Brown, and his family. She spoke about the police, just feet away. Then out of the blue, she addresses Anonymous. So quickly I almost spilled my coffee, I flipped open the tab and tweeted back on the now iconic Anonymous Operation Ferguson Twitter account:
@OpFreguson2015: We can hear you! We are watching you now on the livestreams!
As I watched on the livestreams. the lady looked at her mobile, then looked up at the crowd and read out my tweet to them! I was a thousand miles away, and behind the Mask of Anonymous, and I was talking to these people via social media in real-time as they faced down the police! The lady raised her bullhorn, and asked the crowd: "do you love Anonymous?". They shouted affirmative in unison. "Then let's let them hear our gratitude!" and she began a chant of "We Love Anonymous". She consulted her phone again. My god, she was actually waiting for me to tweet at her again on the Anonymous Operation Ferguson account!
@OpFerguson2015: We love you too! We are snoo honored to stand with you, to stand for Mike Brown and with his family. We will never leave you!
There was a pause as everything streamed through buffers on the Internet, then the world and myself watched as the lady read my words on behalf of Anonymous to the people assembled. The people cheered. The cops looked more nervous than ever. It was a moment in cyber activism I will never forget.
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Monday - August 11, 2014 approx. 6:30 AM ET - Starbucks Montreal, Quebec - CANADA
Day three of the Ferguson Revolution. By now we had over fifteen thousand followers on Twitter, with no end in sight. I was feeling a bit like the original Freedom Operations, where I only got an hour or two of sleep a day for weeks on end. I would work all day, maybe 15 hours or so, until whatever coffee house I was in closed and threw me out. I would then sit down on the sidewalk and work another two and half hours off my battery power and their WiFi. After dark, it became a mad scramble to push out the protesters' reports and media links, and to push to them info useful in dealing with the fluid situation on the ground. I was literally tweeting so furiously I gave myself carpel tunnel syndrome, and my hands were almost paralyzed.
Days were spent dealing with a voracious media, networking with hackers from around the world, and giving organizing advice and knowledge to protesters on the ground. My day was to begin with a terribly important Skype call with a representative from Anonymous Palestine. He and his Cell had contacted me to ask if they could assist Anonymous Operation Ferguson and myself with some hacking skills. They were a very welcome addition to our growing cyber army. The Skype call was to brief him on the particulars of what we needed hacked, and the peculiar protocols of this particular Anonymous Operation. As we spoke, I could hear the muffled thud thud thud in the background, as the Israel Defense Forces once again pounded Gaza in a bombing campaign that was well under way at that time. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore.
Commander X: Look, brother - you don't have to do this for us, you should take care of your own situation there.
Anonymous Palestine: You mean the bombs? Don't worry, they're further away than they sound. Besides, we got this. And someday, we may need those people in Ferguson, and we know they'll be there for us.
Anonymous Palestine would go on to be our biggest asset in Operation Ferguson, and this isn't really surprising. If anyone knows what it is like to be targeted by racist security forces, it's the Palestinians. The hacks against the Missouri government and police networks began within the hour. Soon, there was not much left to mess with. And this very night, only three days in - and people were marching with Palestinian flags in the streets of the tiny city of Ferguson. And they were wearing Guy Fawkes Masks. By the end of the day, we had twenty thousand followers on our Twitter account, and counted the founder of Twitter and many other celebrities among them.
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Friday - August 15, 2014 approx. 6:30 AM ET - Second Cup Coffee House Montreal, Quebec - CANADA
Day ten of the Ferguson Uprising. We now had north of thirty thousand Twitter followers. People were on the ground in far more places than Missouri. Dozens of cities around the world began to stage sympathy protests with Ferguson. Millions were in the streets around the world. It was staggering and breathtaking, and Anonymous was right there from the first moment, doing our job and making a difference. My morning began pushing out a story of Tibetan Monks and Nuns who had flown in from Dharamsala, India to join in solidarity with those actually marching in the streets in Ferguson. Pictures of these wonderful Tibetan Buddhists across from the main protest encampment at the Ferguson Police Headquarters hugging what we had come to think of as "our" protesters, was something we worked hard to get to the media that day.
This is one role we always take on during the Freedom Operations, as anyone who read my first book surely knows. We are the masters of media and propaganda, and we know it and wield it on behalf of ourselves and those we choose to stand up for. But in Anonymous Operation Ferguson, we augmented that with some very specific spin control aimed at the police and governments in Missouri, and their attempt to demonize the victim of this hot-blooded murder, and to make a saint out of the murderer. Our efforts at balancing the playing field in this regard was something that Michael Brown's mother would comment on when she secretly met with one of Anonymous representatives weeks later. She also decried the lack of more seriously transgressive hacking. Which I thought was especially humorous as we had been reported that day to have crossed the ten million in damages line and there was little left in Missouri to hack.
In the midday, I met online with Bassem Masri in an encrypted chat. He was a great and very funny guy. As I said previously, he was Tef Poe's roommate at the time, and in just ten brief days and with a huge help from Anonymous, we had managed to make him into a veritable global livestreaming star. I was liasoning with him now, because Tef Poe had become so saturated as the instigator of the entire thing that he was too overwhelmed to deal in fine-grained detail with his new "creepy hackers in masks" friends. (Author's Note: That's a joke Tef)
Bassem: This is such an honor Commander X. I want to thank you for everything you guys have done for us so far. I don't think we could have got this far without you guys.
X: Just X, the Commander nonsense is pretentious bullshit. This is just getting started, weve not even begun to fuck with them yet. That's what I wanted a meeting about. I wanted to see if I could use you, with Tef's backing, to be a pipeline to the protesters at the police station. Will you do that for us?
Bassem: of course, anything you want. Let me take notes hold on.
X: It's important that we open dialog with the protesters we're flying cover for. So I want the channel for general purposes going forward. But specifically tonight, they are having a big pow wow. Would like to send a specific and private message to them through you, if that's ok.
Bassem: Got my laptop open, shoot.
X: Tell them first, Anonymous loves them - as always. We will never leave you. And you are all doing wonderful, so brave, so courageous. But we'd like to encourage you to broaden your street tactics in the realm of the transgressive, just a little. Well, maybe a lot. Things that are often considered "old school" tactics, but they are still very effective, especially when you have the media's attention - as you all do globally at the moment. Here's a list of possibles, and you can innovate others:
1) Banner Drops
2) Gate/door lock downs
3) Freeway/train blockades
Stuff like this. I can send Bassem some PDF manuals on good practices for these tactics.
Bassem: Fuck X, that's damn good stuff. They are really going to appreciate this. I can't thank you enough.
X: No problem, I am here every minute of every day for you.
Later that night Bassem pinged me, it had been a long day - but it was worth talking to him again.
Bassem: Sorry to bother you so late X. I gave them your message and the docs X. They are going to start with some stuff tomorrow. They were blown away, and they wanted to send a message back to you, from the organizers, to Anonymous:
A Message From The Ferguson Protesters To Anonymous
We just wanted to say thank you to all you Anons that helped in Ferguson. We really couldn't have done this without you honestly. Thank you for protecting the protesters, and for thinking up the legislation that we're pushing for. You gave us a voice that no one can take away. I honestly appreciate you guys, I may not know you, and you probably don't know me, but I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Today the protest was beyond awesome, the highway patrol captain even led it, and there were no problems. If it weren't for you guys, the police probably would have gassed the protesters again tonight, but because of y'all they didn't. The county cops were nowhere to be found, only highway patrol and city cops, who are pretty cool. On top of getting our voices out there in Ferguson, you have all helped to spread the word to where this is an International protest now. We have so much support, and we know that we aren't alone because of you guys. Thank you for giving us our voices back, and thank you for supporting us and helping us. You guys are honestly, amazing, even if I don't know who you are. I hope that you continue to help and support us until the legislation giving cops a strict protocol to follow when dealing with situations and the treatment has passed.
Thank you for giving us the start of our revolution and making it known that we can and will make a difference.
SINCERELY -- The Ferguson Protesters
This sort of shit happens to us in Anonymous all the time. But I have to tell you, it absolutely never grows old.
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Monday - August 18, 2014 approx. 8:30 AM ET - Starbucks Montreal, Quebec - CANADA
Two weeks into the Ferguson Uprising. Today, I turned fifty years old. Half a century. A landmark most men celebrate with some amount of gusto. I actually forgot until almost noon, I was so busy with Anonymous Operation Ferguson. My gift to myself, this is no boast, to sleep exactly one hour extra in celebration. That is literally it. My barristas at my favorite coffee house made a hideous scene of bringing me a burning cupcake and singing horrendously out of tune, but it was thankfully over fast. Hundreds of cities and literally tens of millions were now marching every day for Ferguson and Michael Brown. The people most closely involved with Anonymous Operation Ferguson had met the night before, and we had decided to take it to the next level, by calling not only for passage of Mike Brown's Law, but the removal of the Governor of Missouri and later the Mayor of Ferguson. We were going for blood, and I spent the morning pushing out the Communique that was drafted:
Anonymous Operation Ferguson - Communique
Monday - August 18, 2014 11:15 AM CST
Last night the global collective of Anonymous watched in horror along with the rest of the world as the security forces that have besieged the small city of Ferguson, Missouri launched a brutal paramilitary assault on the good people of that city, who stood their ground for the cause of freedom and justice for Mike Brown - murdered by the same police. And if this wasn't bad enough, the Governor of Missouri - having already declared martial law the day before, today announced the deployment of National Guard troops to be used against the protesters in Ferguson. We will not allow this situation to stand.
Governor Nixon: you have exercised extra-constitutional powers to illegally declare martial law, you have presided over the mass violation of the civil rights of the people of Ferguson, you have turned the City of Ferguson into an open air prison, and you have committed crimes against humanity so severe that for the first time in history Amnesty International has deployed a human rights monitoring team to the USA. You have shown yourself to be a criminal and an enemy of your own people. You have behaved like a dictator in the mid-east, and now Anonymous shall treat you as one. You see we have experience dealing with dictators.
Governor Nixon you are now dismissed. You will tender your resignation with the Secretary of State immediately. We will now begin the process, with which we are very familiar - of shutting down your illegitimate and illegal government. We will terminate your electronic communications, leak and dump all your data. We will remove you from the Internet, and your own people with the help of sympathetic legislators will remove you from power.
Furthermore, we will hold accountable and gather evidence against any member of the security forces or military who have harassed, abused, detained - or in any way molested either the protesters or journalists in Ferguson. This specifically includes independent journalists. For your ongoing crimes against the protesters in Ferguson each and every member of the police forces and National Guard deployed deserve nothing short of being locked up in their own jails. We will hold you all to