In an article about a recently-uncovered plot to undermine Wikileaks (which is worth reading for the procedural details of the plotters' plans, among other things), Glenn Greenwald makes a point I was going to write about at the time:
After Anonymous imposed some very minimal cyber disruptions on Paypal, Master Card and Amazon, the DOJ flamboyantly vowed to arrest the culprits, and several individuals were just arrested as part of those attacks. But weeks earlier, a far more damaging and serious cyber-attack was launched at WikiLeaks, knocking them offline. Those attacks were sophisticated and dangerous. Whoever did that was quite likely part of either a government agency or a large private entity acting at its behest. Yet the DOJ has never announced any investigation into those attacks or vowed to apprehend the culprits, and it's impossible to imagine that ever happening.
And then follows it up with the critical explanation:
Why? Because crimes carried out that serve the Government's agenda and target its opponents are permitted and even encouraged; cyber-attacks are "crimes" only when undertaken by those whom the Government dislikes, but are perfectly permissible when the Government itself or those with a sympathetic agenda unleash them. Whoever launched those cyber attacks at WikiLeaks (whether government or private actors) had no more legal right to do so than Anonymous, but only the latter will be prosecuted.
That's the same dynamic that causes the Obama administration to be obsessed with prosecuting WikiLeaks but not The New York Times or Bob Woodward, even though the latter have published far more sensitive government secrets; WikiLeaks is adverse to the government while the NYT and Woodward aren't, and thus "law" applies to punish only the former. The same mindset drives the Government to shield high-level political officials who commit the most serious crimes, while relentlessly pursuing whistle-blowers who expose their wrongdoing. Those with proximity to government power and who serve and/or control it are free from the constraints of law; those who threaten or subvert it have the full weight of law come crashing down upon them.
Spot on. And this is not only the governing principle in the context Greenwald's describing but in U.S. policy generally, both domestically and internationally. That's how Mubarak could spend 30 years torturing and killing people and winning "elections" with over 90% of the vote and still not be a dictator, and that's why U.N. Security Council resolutions are sacrosanct when it comes to Iraq but meaningless when it comes to Israel. It's amazing how much simpler it becomes to understand what the U.S. does in the world once you accept this underlying principle.*
* (And let go of this one.)
The Distant Ocean 
A necessary component of all this is the criminalization of common behavior. Whether it is the publication of leaked classified information, smoking marijuana, exaggerating your income on a mortgagee application, having sex without a condom, or putting your money in a foreign-owned bank account, lots of people do it but until you come to the attention of the wrong people, nobody cares. It is just a means spreading more terror.
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If the new Wikileaks-avenging Anonymous more or less overlaps the traditional 4chan Anonymous — that would be about the most amazing example I could name of the unprecedented unpredictability of the internet. 4chan is the asshole of the internet; this is like swine coughing up pearls.
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“4chan is the asshole of the internet; this is like swine coughing up pearls”
Comment of the month at least, if not the year!
It’s hilarious to hear the tones that these internet actors are described in by the right. Essentially they want us to fear manga fan geeks who have enough sense to realize that government censoring the internet is a bad thing.
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Good point, drip.
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I have been giggling nonstop reading this.
Step 1 : Gather all the data
Step 2 : ???
Step 3 : Profit
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