Some of you may have noticed my name came up in the latest Anonymous civil war. I got doxed in list of Anonymous participants gathered by Backtrace Security. Attached, as their site currently redirects to nsa.gov (now how did that happen?). Astute observers may note that I went public over a week ago, with this talk in front of 1000 people at Pycon.
tl;dr - I don’t care.
I went public to push back against the fear of US government retaliation that prevents people from participating in activities that oppose the government’s perceived interest - even if those activities are completely legal. That attitude - which I heard from people at the conference - is far scary to me than the prospect of visits from the feds. When we’ve internalized a culture of compliance, the FBI doesn’t need to knock on doors any more - we police ourselves before they need to. I wanted to speak out to try to dispel that notion.
Like I’ve said before, I don’t participate in illegal activities - my wife would kill me. But I’m sure I’ve gotten myself on some list, if I wasn’t already; as an Anon said to me: If you don’t have an FBI file by now, you’re not trying hard enough.
It’s time we start trying harder.