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(freenetworkfoundation.org)

This is a guest post from Cole Stryker, a writer and publicist working in New York. It is an excerpt from his book, "Identity Wars: Online Anonymity, Privacy and Control," which is slated for a September release from Overlook Press.

On March 27, 2012 I had the opportunity to attend a private screening of a mini-documentary called "Free the Network," produced by Vice's tech site, Motherboard.tv. The documentary opens at Occupy Wall Street, first depicted as a wacky, disparate band of activists which developed a curious techno-centric bent with the arrival of Anonymous, along with a more or less disorganized faction of hackers who wished to bring about social revolution through technology. The film centers on one of them, a 21-year old college dropout named Isaac Wilder, the executive director of the Free Network Foundation.

Mr. Wilder builds communications systems based around Freedom Towers, DIY kits that fit in a suitcase containing everything one would need to set up an ad hoc peer to peer network. The instructions are simple: "Plug it in. Press the big green button." It creates a local network that stays up no matter what happens to the wider global Internet. All of this is mostly funded through private donations from family, friends, and fellow revolutionaries. Mr. Wilder estimates that the equipment required to assemble a Freedom Tower would have cost over $10,000 as recent as five years ago. Today: $2,000. And it's completely grid-independent. That means solar powered batteries, a DC power system, a server, a router and a suite of powerful software, all contained in a suitcase.

The idea is to build a mesh network, where all computers are nodes that act as transmitters to other computers, in order to decentralize the Internet and remove it from the control of governments and corporations. Mr. Wilder argues that if we are ever going to achieve global revolution, we must wrest control of the pipes from multinational telecom companies who would censor or monitor the communication of social revolutionaries.

(freenetworkfoundation.org)

The documentary depicts the aftermath of a police raid at Zucotti Park during Occupy Wall Street, specifically rows of laptops that had been smashed in by cops, presumably. Several contributors to the documentary speculate that the destruction indicates the establishment is trying to keep the message down. Maybe the cops are just sick of putting up with a bunch of grungy hippies and this was a method of discouragement rather than an outright conspiracy to destroy information. Either way, it's a dark, dark image, one that makes me immediately sympathize with the need to create information networks that can't be smashed in, let alone censored.

I caught up with Mr. Wilder a few days after the screening and asked him where his passion for free networks comes from.

I went to Cuba. In the summer after my freshman year of college with three of my best friends. I really didn't like it at all. The police state. That people didn't have access to information. It just really got to me. I wrote a science fiction novel about building a free network. I love writing, but realized this would actually be better as science fact than science fiction.

He went back to school and connected with an  adviser who pointed him in the direction of the FreedomBox Project, which lit a fire in him.

I mean, I'd already deleted my Facebook. I was already a Computer Science/Philosophy double major. But I spent one more year in school and then I left to start the foundation.

The FreedomBox is a small device that fits in the palm of your hands. It is a small, Linux-powered computer that plugs directly into a wall with built-in privacy-protected email and chat, and a publishing platform for activists living under tyranny. It's a work in progress, and the team is currently soliciting software packages that will make an ideal FreedomBox. The project is ambitious, aiming to bring about the collapse of nothing less than China's "Great Firewall. "

Mr. Wilder says that he'd like to see a burgeoning microwave network in Kansas city, his base of operations, and hopefully, some action in New York and California by the end of 2012. He's quick to reiterate that the technology he wants to see in place is already here.

[This technology] exists already, all over the world. Athens, Berlin, Spain, Kabul, Nairobi. There are huge microwave networks that do what we're talking about doing. It's not just for the developing world. It's not just cheaper. That it's cheaper means we can do it together. These are hacker collectives providing internet access to people who can't get it any other way because the infrastructure isn't there.

He rattles off a laundry list of hacker projects, citing "unbelievable pioneering work" happening across the globe at the hands of hacker collectives.

Mr. Wilder hopes that within five years, a dozen metropolitan areas in the U.S. will have cooperative networks and the beginnings of distributed Wide Area Networks. He says that satellites are a possibility, but he thinks that they're not the most attractive option due to visibility and tracking problems, as well as high latency. He's more interested in near-space platforms at 100,000 feet. These consist of dirigibles, fancy balloons that would float somewhere between Kansas City and Chicago, for instance, connecting the two citywide networks. He says the Air Force and oil companies have been using these for years.

This can be a commons. We did it at a small scale at Liberty Park. Next we'll do it for a thousand people. Then for a few hundred thousand people. And ultimately humanity. We'll have a network that we share and operate together for our mutual benefit. I think it'll happen peacefully because the desire for it will be so overwhelming that there will be no way to stop it. This seems like the best way to counter late capitalist hegemony.

The Free Network Foundation isn't interested in pushing for increased government regulation of the Internet. They don't seem to trust the White House any more than they trust AT&T. And so, they rage against the machine by building a new one.

This is the photo he sent us.

Shortly after publishing our interview with author Cole Stryker about his upcoming book, Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4chan’s Army Conquered the Web, Betabeat received messages -- via Twitter, Facebook, our work email, our personal email, and in the comments -- from a man who claimed to be part of the hacker group Anonymous requesting to speak on the phone.

The source, who goes by the pseudonym Chelsea M. and tweets under the handle IJournalismBlog, emailed us both the home address of Mr. Stryker and this reporter. "No threat to you, just a demonstration," he wrote.

In our interview, Mr. Stryker mentioned being unsettled that IBJ tweeted out his apartment number. After our interview went live, Mr. M tweeted Mr. Stryker's full home address.

We spoke to Mr. M., on the phone yesterday afternoon about his qualms with Mr. Stryker's book, which won't be released until next week, and why he believes it will not accurately reflect Anonymous or 4chan. After we got off the phone, we asked Mr. M. to demonstrate his Anonymous bona fides by tweeting from an established account, he emailed back, "Anon twitter accounts do not represent the views of Anonymous any more than a man chalking his inane ramblings on the street."

If nothing else, our conversation will make you rethink your Facebook settings.

Nitasha Tiku: Before we get started, can I ask how you got my address?

Chelsea M.: Which one? Gmail?

NT: No, my apartment.

CM: Oh, ok, the same way that we get everyone's.

NT: And how is that?

CM: Why would I tell you that? Like I said in the message, it wasn’t a threat. It was a demonstration.

NT: So, who are you? Who are you speaking for?

CM: Oh, no one can speak on behalf of Anonymous, and that’s what we don’t like about Cole, you know. He speaks on behalf of people that he can’t speak on behalf of. He’s misrepresenting and compromising everything we do.

NT: So you are a member of Anonymous?

CM: Yes. If that’s how you want to put it, then yes.

NT: Is Chelsea Meader your real name?

CM: No, Chelsea Meader's not my real name. [laughs]

NT: You wanted to speak to me. So what is your issue with Cole?

CM: What annoys me so much is this unstoppable determination in the media to define Anonymous on terms fit for the public. It can never just be "This is how they do it and why, according to them"... it has to be a censored look at what we do and a one-sided explanation of why. Writers have the story in their head before they get to work. They choose their angle and find the evidence to back it up, just like any cheap YouTube whore pushing his 9/11 conspiracies or whatever. If he knew a thing about us, he would have a private Facebook. While it may not be an overly publicized route to success for us, a small amount of research would have showed him that we rely heavily on social networking to dox [slang for exposing a user's personal information online.]

I say no one can speak on behalf of Anonymous but I’ve spoken to a lot of people about Cole. And the consensus is fairly, sort of unanimous. People are generally pissed off at him in Anonymous.

NT: You seemed to disagree with how Cole portrayed Anonymous in the Betabeat interview.

CM: We are not all hacktivists. We are hackers, kids, adults, gays, straights, blacks, whites, furries, social engineers, comedians, writers, painters, pedophiles, rapists, racists, runners and all that lies in between. Like any other community, we are diverse, to sum us up in a short book on memes and hacktivism is like summing up Islam with a short book on terrorism.

NT: You object to the characterization that Anonymous is more politically-motivated and that different people are responsible for the hacktivism, versus the trolling?

CM: That's just plain wrong. We do more of the political stuff and we do more of the personal stuff, it’s the papers know which makes the better story. 
I see more life-ruins in a night than I do corporations attacked in a month. And if he thinks that we’re gonna use our vigilantism to protect his freedom of speech or something, then that’s just not true. We’re still gonna do personal attacks. We always do personal attacks. Personal attacks happen dozens an hour and they will continue to. Especially when people deserve it, but sometimes when they don’t, you know.

NT: I take it you didn't like Cole's tweet about ordering Chinese and watching Chocolat with 4chan?

CM: He said “Anon”, but more importantly this little joke shows a severe error of judgement with regards to what we might find funny. Pretending, even as a joke, that Anon likes you is considered a pretty massive faux pas.

NT: So he's not following protocol?

CM: Give to the community, take in moderation. Donate porn to the threads, submit original content in the way of memes and stories, offer to stream movies, offer your photoshop skills up for free, upload every cool wallpaper on your hard drive for your bros. Don’t write a book about us. Don’t talk about us outside of 4chan. Don’t attract newfags. Follow the rules to some degree.
 Never assume you understand.

NT: Cole tweeted out our interview with the words "u mad, 4chan?
"

CM: It’s a meme (“u mad, bro?”) used by trolls to irritate (known as flaming) others. It is a deliberate and stupid attempt to get on our bad side. He wants to call us out and test us? N**ger please, we eat hipsters like him for brunch.

 He also uses Tumblr
. We don’t like Tumblr, generally speaking.

NT: Is your issue with a 4chan book that somebody is exposing something about your community?

CM: No, I don’t think it is. No, I've spoken to journalists and writers and novelists and that kind of thing who’ve written or are in the process of writing books about us. And its no big deal as long as they tell the truth as they find it. And Cole may be telling it as he found it, but he was looking for it.

NT: The book isn’t even out yet, so what specifically are you taking issue with?

CM: There’s not much that we’re not taking issue with. He’s ignoring massive, massive sections of the community. Deliberately.

NT: What sections is he ignoring?

CM: Well, for example, he mentions how often he goes there for shock pictures. Did he tell you what those shock pictures were?

NT: Yes.

CM: What did he mention? I’d be curious to know what he mentioned here. Because if he’s thinking of what I'm thinking of, he belongs in prison.

NT: It was a Manga photo. It wasn’t anything that would send someone to prison.

A: No, no. If he’s been going on 4chan for the time that he said he has, he has definitely accessed child pornography. No question. It’s impossible to ignore.

NT: He never mentioned anything about child pornography.

CM: No, he really wouldn’t, would he?

NT: I’m not really sure where you’re getting that from.

CM: What, the child pornography?

NT: Yes.

CM: Because I’m a member of Anonymous. Every single member of Anonymous has seen those things. It’s--there’s not choice in it.

NT: Okay.

CM: I’m not saying that he willingly accessed it and masturbated to it or anything like that. I’m not saying he enjoyed it even. But he will have seen it. And he is choosing not to make that public because he knows that that’s not as lighthearted as the "memesphere."

NT: So you would prefer that he make that public?

CM: I’d prefer that if he’s gonna talk about Anonymous, that he talks about the whole of Anonymous. He can't pick and choose which segments he wants. He seems to be saying we’re almost part of this Tumblr/Reddit kind of meme bollocks. Yeah that’s fine because a big part of us are, but a big part of us aren’t. And then he talks about LulzSec as if… I can’t remember. I haven’t got the quote in front of me. He said something along the lines of “I don’t think the same people who are ruining lives are the same people who are going and taking down Mastercard.” Bullshit.

What does he know about that? He’s been there since March. You know there's actually a name for him, for people like him, who arrive in March. It’s called a “summer fag.” Because he arrives in summer and he fags up the place.

NT: Well, I don’t understand why you want him to expose the child pornography. I’m assuming you’re talking about the /b/ board, right?

CM: Yes, yeah, of course.

NT: Well, what is your issue with him not exposing the fact that there is child pornography or the—

CM: The negative?

NT: Yeah.

CM: Well, because he’s decided that they’re negatives. We haven’t. We’ve decided that everything’s neutral. You know there’s no… the pictures—

NT: Child pornography is neutral?

CM: Yes. There is no good or bad. It’s just favoritism. It’s opinion. I understand this is a hard thing to explain, but please take the time to read up on the chans' history with regards to illegal content. I'm not saying it is neutral to me, I'm saying that it will often be met with as much acceptance and abhorrence. Y’know, if someone hates it, they can block it. They’re welcome to block it and not look at it. But if others want to, then they will. And, you know, I’m not gonna hate on someone for that.

NT: But you’re hating on him.

CM: Yeah, because what he does affects me. I need to do my job within Anonymous. And if he’s—

NT: What is your job within Anonymous?

CM: It depends. Other people have described it as social engineer. I don’t know what –

NT: What does that mean?

CM: It means I talk to people like you or like Cole or like Cole’s sister who I’ve been speaking to today. And other people like that.

NT: I really wouldn’t know anything about that. But I guess I’m perplexed. Oftentimes a book is not going to encompass the entirety of a particular thing and I don’t think that he purports to. It’s not out yet, so I haven’t read it. But I think he’s just examining one aspect of it. In fact he/you said in the interview that it’s impossible for any one person to speak for anonymous.

CM: He’s new to the boards, he’s new to Anonymous. He doesn’t understand it. And yet he’s written a whole book about it. I don’t understand what’s perplexing about that. I don’t understand why that wouldn’t bother you if you were in the same position.

NT: As a reporter, you oftentimes have to do as much research you can in the time you’re allotted.

CM: Can I just say- I’m a writer, I’m a journalist. That’s not important but I do it. And I’ve gotten published and all of that. I go through the same processes that I’d imagine you do, and I can see that Cole doesn’t. He’s not the victim of this. Anonymous is. And that’s not fair.

NT: How are you victimized by this?

CM: Because when he misrepresents us in his book, our jobs get harder. If people start outing our message, people start tightening up security. And you can extrapolate that further, you know, if people know how we talk, then they can infiltrate. That kind of thing, you know. He’s just spreading assumptions and lies.

NT: Well if they’re assumptions and lies they shouldn’t be able to affect you in terms of tightening up security.

CM: Oh no. The security thing was an example of stuff that happened before with Facebook and things like that. But what he’s doing especially touches a nerve with me. Because he’s talking about how we talk, how we communicate. Things like that, like the kind of people we are. How we speak, even. And that, that bothers me.

NT: Can you give a specific example?

CM: Well when he starts quoting thing about which board to go to for example. He mentions /b/ and he mentioned that we don’t like talking about /b/. That’s enough already. Some little bloke could read that and then write to me and say you know remember rules 1 and 2. And I might be fooled into thinking “Oh, well, he knows his business. I better get on with it,” when really I’m taking on some idiot who’s never done it in his life.

NT: But that quote is accurate then? What Cole said?

CM: Oh, yeah yeah yaeh.

NT: So he does know something.

CM: [laughs] He knows the things that are published. I mean, those rules of the internet, you can Google them. This, that’s no secret—

NT: So if they’re Google-able, then they’re already out there. Then you should have no issue with him.

CM: Oh those rules are already out there. No, I’m not disputing that.

NT: My question is, in reading about, say, the people who at least identified themselves publicly as Anonymous, around the time that Wikileaks was making headlines, they said in the Guardian that the reason they were supporting Julian Assange was not because they supported him, but because they supported the right of the free flow of information.

CM: No. one person said that. Anonymous didn’t say that. One person said that. That, that represents one individual who, for all the Guardian knows, was speaking on behalf of only himself.

NT: So how do I know you’re speaking on behalf of—

CM: You don’t. You don’t. You can say whatever you like about me. You can say I’m just some nut who got you to phone up. It’s fine. If anyone purports to be speaking on behalf of Anonymous then they are wrong. And that’s what I believe.

Betabeat reached out to Mr. Stryker about about how he dealt with issues of child pornography. He responded by phone:

I don't know why he would say I avoided the topic of child porn, when there is a whole section of my book on that. Yes, having spent many years on 4chan, I have seen child pornography. But I never posted, shared or linked to any. It seems to me that child pornography is used on 4chan mostly as a means to shock others, and not for sexual gratification.

The publishing world took note and next week, the 27-year-old Mr. Stryker will release his first book: Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4chan’s Army Conquered the Web. Naturally Betabeat wanted to know more. But before we could ask him a question, Mr. Stryker had something to report ...

"They found out where I live. He tweeted me my apartment number!"

Are you serious?

I’m like freeeeeeeaking out. [laughs]

Wait, who?

It was just some random guy. What happened was he initially tweeted, 'What makes you a 4chan expert?' My publicist insisted on positioning me as a 4chan expert on the Amazon page, even though I knew it would invite ridicule. I tweeted back jokingly, 'Oh 4chan and I ordered Chinese and watched Chocolat on the couch last night.'  And he responded, “Oh at [apartment number redacted] or over at their place?” I was just like what the fuuuuuuuuck.

He knew your building number and your apartment number?

Not, the building number. Just the apartment number. I don’t know if he doesn’t know it or if it does know it and wants to drag it out and mess with me a little bit longer before he divulges.

Is this the first response that Anonymous or 4chan has had to the book?

No, I posted about it while I was writing it. I would start like a thread and say, 'Hey, I’m working on this book, what do you think about that?' People were generally like, 'Well, we’re gonna find out where you live.' I knew there was a little bit of danger in that. I did not know they’d be able to find my information before the book came out. [Ed. note: Shortly after Betabeat got off the phone with Mr. Strkyer, who was headed to the Tumblr office to talk about his book, he emailed us, “My sis just im'd me...she keeps getting fb invites from anons. They're trying to dox me!”]

Are you freaked out?

A little bit. I feel like Anonymous right now is so politically-motivated in a way that it wasn’t even a year ago. They’re going after huge corporations and governments rather than individuals the way that they used to before. But they do occasionally go after people. I’m sure you heard about the Parry Aftab thing. She’s a cyberbullying expert that’s often sought out for shows like Good Morning America to talk about how kids shouldn’t be on the internet because it’s too dangerous. They sent a SWAT team to her home. They used a phone re-routing software, I think, to make it look like a man was calling from inside her house and saying, 'Hey I've killed four people and I'm holding two others hostage.' That’s the kind of stuff that worries me because someone could get killed in a prank like that.

Do you feel like that’s at odds with the more contingent who redefined themselves as “hacktivists”?

Oh for sure. Anonymous is such a big group and it’s hard to pin down what they’re up to at any given moment. I think that the lion's share of their activities have been more hacktivist oriented rather than just trying to make someone’s life miserable.

Do you think it’s a different group of people who are resorting to the pranks?

Yeah, I do. I don’t think the kind of people who go after an 11-year-old girl like Jessi Slaughter are the same people who are rising to the defense of Julian Assange on Twitter and preparing to go after Mastercard.

So how did you get started with the book?

I was writing a series of posts about the Jessi Slaughter scenario last summer and those posts got the attention of a literary agent who wanted to do a book on cyber-bullying. While I would have done that book, I was much more interested in the community of 4chan where a lot of that stuff comes from. What motivates someone to try to destroy someone else’s life online? Why is it this place where everyone’s anonymous?

Didn’t you say you and Nick would try to outgross each other?

We went to college together and we kept in touch mainly because we both had jobs that allowed us to be on gChat all day. Whereas four, five years ago we would have been sending each other Rotten.com links, 4chan is a clearinghouse for bizarre, shocking content you can’t find anywhere else." [Ed Note: We asked Mr. Stryker to give some examples of what they sent, but it turned out to not be appropriate for mixed company.] It was fascinating to me. Why are people that are out there sharing this stuff? Are there that many sickos in the world? Or is it just people like me who are doing it because they think it’s funny?

Tell me about the research process.

I spent May and June basically locked in my room on 4chan, interviewing people who are responsible for the internet community that paved the way for something like 4chan to come around. I interviewed people who were responsible for The WELL, which was an internet community before Usenet, and I interviewed a guy who was a famous troll on Usenet.

Back then trolling meant something very different than what it does today. Trolling back then was inoculating new users to the mores of an online community in a funny way. They would trick people by giving them false information that everyone was part of the community would know. The newbies would feel stupid and then subsequently try to conform more to the manners and mores. It wasn’t this malicious thing it is now where you’re basically trying to cause someone else pain for your own enjoyment.

You mentioned that you weren’t able to get access to Moot for the book?

It was discouraging, but at the same time I don’t think that Christopher Poole is really what’s interesting about the 4chan story. In the same way that I don’t think Mark Zuckerberg is particularly interesting in terms of the way Facebook changed how people communicate. They’re both basically people who jacked the source code from another project. All Christopher Poole did was take the code from a couple different Japanese forums and put English on top of it and then keep the community going for the next eight years. There really wasn’t a lot of innovation happening.

I give him a lot of credit for not selling 4chan out because I’m sure there were a lot of times he could have made some decent money by trying to monetize it. But on the other hand, the second you start trying to make a dime off 4chan is the second that it stops being the special thing it is. That’s why people move onto the next community.

What can readers expect from your book? Are you revealing something about 4chan we don’t already know?

I spend about half the book talking about memes and how memes work on 4chan. I talk about the history of the word meme and how it came from Richard Dawkins 1976 book The Selfish Gene and how that terminology has been co-opted over the past decade. And I talk about all the communities online that paved the way for 4chan, like Rotten.com, Something Awful, Stile Project, You’re the Man Now Dog! I talk about this infrastructure that’s appeared over the last decade that I call the 'memesphere.' Reddit, Buzzfeed, Cheezburger Network are all a part of this system tracking viral content on the web. It’s this new form of participatory pop culture.

Did you get any sense of age or gender for a 4chan user?

It’s overwhelmingly male, for sure. There’s no data to back that up, but speaking as someone who spent countless hours on the site, it’s just not a place where any female would really want to hang out.

I don’t know about that.

Well there are women there, but 4chan is so antagonistic to females, I’d be surprised if 10 percent of the users at any given moment are female.

How do you expect them to respond to the book?

Well there are these 'Rules of the Internet' that 4chan has come up with and the first two are copied directly from Fight Club. 'The first rule of /b/ is don’t talk about /b/. The second rule of /b/ is don’t talk about /b/.' So even though I feel I’m very sympathetic to the 4chan community and try to give them a fair shake, just the fact that I’m talking about them and revealing their secrets is probably gonna make them angry. It’s kind of like when your favorite band goes to a major record label. And suddenly everyone is aware and everyone pretends to be a huge fan and everyone knows all their lyrics. You don’t feel so special anymore. I kind of feel like that’s what 4chan has experienced over the last six months or so. They’re on the front page of newspaper every few days.

Do you think they’ll try to pull something at your book release party next week?

It’s possible I know there’s enough people who hang out on 4chan in New York City to cause trouble because Moot held a meetup at Barcade in Brooklyn once and a lot of people showed up.

Are you scared to go back to your apartment?

Not yet. [laughs] I’m not the kind of person who is going to underestimate these people’s ability to ruin your life, I’ve seen them do it to other people. But it’s difficult to predict whether 4chan will turn you into a villain or a hero. Boxxy, when she first started out, everyone was like, 'We hate this girl, let’s kill her, she’s so annoying, we’ve got to destroy her.' And now she’s 'The Queen of /b/.'

She was a 14-year-old girl who uploaded a video where she spastically talked about nothing for five minutes. It was a tween girl being totally obnoxious. 4chan was like, 'Oh we gotta ruin this girl.' And they did to the point where she left the internet for a couple of years. She’s only recently surfaced and now that she’s back, everyone loves her, she’s a mascot. They send her money to her PayPal account. So it’s difficult to know if they’re going to love you or hate you, but I don’t have high hopes for my personal standing in the community.