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Comment by gasull | Hacker News Reader

I'm wondering if LulzSec is a false flag operation very well engineered.

It isn't, there's no point in doing that, not to mention how illegal that would be. The US govt doesn't need any more scandals of this nature (wiretapping is enough I think).

Also, whenever a government really wants to do something, they'll use any excuse that's available. For example; PATRIOT ACT, DMCA, Iraq Wars, etc. etc. For cyber-security, if none of this Anon or LulzSec stuff happened, it would be Russian or Chinese hackers that are infiltrating and by god we must protect Americans from those evil foreign hackers. Or they would rely on the terrorist excuse: the terrorists are losing in real life so they need to re-build support and attract younger people so why not hack some sites and gain new supporters that way? Beheadings and suicide bombings really fuck up the recruitment rate for terrorist organizations.

See how easy it is to come up with an excuse that the internet needs to be locked down?

"It isn't, there's no point in doing that, not to mention how illegal that would be. The US govt doesn't need any more scandals of this nature (wiretapping is enough I think)."

Wiretapping scandal became public circa late 2005 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_co...

Random collection of additional federal political 'scandals' since 2005:

1) This goes from 2001 - 2008 so skip to 2006 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_political_scand...

2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_political_scand...

Additional 'scandals' with solid link to US Government:

1) http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/05/gps/

2) http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110218/02143213163/more-h...

3) http://www.thenation.com/article/161057/wikileaks-haiti-let-...

4) http://www.ban.org/ban_news/2010/101022_caught_exporting.htm...

5) http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1026810/us-governme...

6) http://www.elizabethwatson.org/featured/wikileaks-reveals-a-...

Just some random examples I pulled in 5 minutes. I don't believe the argument "...not to mention illegal that would be." or "The US govt doesn't need any more scandals..." has any bearing whatsoever on their decision making process at the level of authority needed to authorize something as a false flag operation for various reasons.

You're right of course, but my main point is they don't need to do much in order to come up with an excuse to do something. I'm sure there are easier ways to get consent for locking down the internet than to create a false flag operation; just use something that already exists (copyright infringement, terrorism, porn, war on drugs, etc.)

They've tried all those things, and it's not moving along as fast as they'd like.

Since when has the government decided what to do based on need?

> not to mention how illegal that would be

Come on. Since when did that stop a government from doing something?

here's a thought: perhaps the fact that LulzSec is perpetrating this stuff rather than scarier alternatives like China or Russia will point out the absurdity of the situation rather than forcing heavy-handed legislation.

headlines like 'witty 19 year old college student breaks into CIA' is a lot less scary to the general public than 'chinese hackers exploit CIA website'.

The same questions and speculation come up in every LulzSec post.

It might be that they are not a false flag operation but the Government is going to take advantage of the media attention to "civilize Internet".

I hear this concern, but I'm not quite sure what the government can even do to "civilize". What would it mean exactly? Tighter regulation of domains, criminalization of encryption, tracking down and harshly sentencing crackers, forcing an "Internet ID", registering hardware? Any of these measures seems extraordinarily expensive. Maybe doable if the CIA drums up a War on Hacking, shifting attention away from the War on Terror, post-bin Laden.

In Vernor Vinge's novel Rainbows End governments have done pretty much what you describe - running any kind of computing device that isn't part of their "secured" infrastructure is illegal:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbows_End

Note: one of the many interesting things about the book is that it creates a scenario where this kind of control is very much a grey area.

> I'm not quite sure what the government can even do to "civilize"

Nothing that would make anything better, and everything that would mean they have more powers.

This is exactly the kind of qualitative fear mongering I was referring to.

I've been hearing this a lot.

Is there any evidence at all, though, that it's a false flag operation? So far as I can tell, the argument is implicitly "It's impossible for anyone in the world to be anywhere near as stupid as LulzSec appears to be, so it has to be a government plant." Unfortunately, that runs afoul of the maxim to never underestimate the depths of human stupidity...

Or is this more said in jest, a way of just pointing out that the script kiddies behind LulzSec are really, really stupid and doing something that threatens to undermine a free and open Internet?

OK, why's this almost a 100% sure a false flag op? Because they're using a giant botnet ("Lulz Cannon"), and not something like LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Cannon, what Anonymous used). Who uses botnets? ScriptKiddies? Maybe if they've got access to rich Daddy's gold credit card to buy these botnet minutes from the web crime pros in russia; but for sure they can't build a powerful botnet like this. The "good guys" Anonymous apparently had some very skilled people; the chance that the "idiot ScriptKiddies" LulzSec has even more of them is very small. And on the other hand: What would a false flag op use? LOIC on their own PCs at home? Or in the agencies? LOL, for sure... No, they'd use a giant botnet; what else...

And lastly: Always ask the question "Cui bono?" (Latin for "who's gonna profit from it?"). In the Anon case it was clear; they were activists trying to express their support for wikileaks and their anger on organizations that ceased support for wikileaks. But who's profiting from what LulzSec does? They themselves? Think again!

Not to be crass, but did you miss the whole "wikileaks" thing?

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