In his book "The Friends of Voltaire" (1906), the English writer Stephen G. Tallentyre summed up the attitude of Voltaire toward free speech as:
Careless readers assumed Tallentyre was quoting rather than paraphrasing, so this remark is often attributed to Voltaire himself.

A further source of confusion about the origins of the quotation: "Tallentyre" was actually a pseudonym used by Evelyn Beatrice Hall, a woman. See a page at geekfeminism.wikia.com for a clear explanation of some of the reasons why women often prefer to use a male pseudonym.

I was reminded of this quotation when I read a recent news story about Aaron Barr, former CEO of HBGary Federal, the spin-off of HBGary, the company at the heart of the HBGary breach attributed to the hacktivist disorganization known as "Anonymous". The breach exposed civil rights abuses by the American secret police and their business partners with a vividness not seen since the Watergate hearings, and drew worldwide attention from mainstream media. To some extent this was no doubt due to the "human interest" appeal of a story which featured a spectacular reversal of fortune for someone who hours before the breach had been boasting of having "identified" the alleged real life identities of alleged leading members of "Anonymous".

Some suggested background reading for anyone who has no idea what I am talking about:

• a previous LQ thread on the HBGary leaks,
• "HBGary", Wikipedia, https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/HBGary
• "Aaron Barr", Wikipedia, https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikiped...iki/Aaron_Barr
• "Hunton & Williams", Wikipedia, https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikiped...n_%26_Williams
• "Glenn Greenwald", Wikipedia, https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikiped...radley_Manning
• Public Intelligence, various leaked HBGary documents (see particularly drafts of Barr's cyberstalking minicourse, one version of which was entitled "Social Media: Targeting, Reconnaissance, and Exploitation"), http://publicintelligence.net/tag/HBGary/
• Anonleaks, leaked HBGary emails, http://hbgary.anonleaks.ch/
• Parmy Olson, "Anonymous Takes Revenge On Security Firm For Trying To Sell Supporters’ Details To FBI", Forbes, 6 February 2011,
• Nate Anderson, "How one man tracked down Anonymous—and paid a heavy price", Ars Technica, 9 February 2011,
• Nate Anderson, "(Virtually) face to face: how Aaron Barr revealed himself to Anonymous", Ars Technica, 10 February 2011,
• Lee Fang, "US Chamber’s Lobbyists Solicited Hackers To Sabotage Unions, Smear Chamber’s Political Opponents", Think Progress, 10 February 2011,
• Mike Masnick, "Play By Play Of How HBGary Federal Tried To Expose Anonymous... And Got Hacked Instead", TechDirt, 11 February 2011,
• Kerry Lauerman, "A disturbing threat against one of our own", Salon, 11 February 2011,
• furiousxxgeorge, "Don't let this story die, it's big", DailyKos, 13 February 2011,
• Steve Ragan, "Inside the talk that started a war with Anonymous", Tech Herald, 14 February 2011 (a story which discusses Barr's cyberstalking minicourse),
• Anonymous, "HBGary INC. working on secret rootkit project", Crowdleaks, 14 February 2011,
• Nate Anderson, "Spy games: Inside the convoluted plot to bring down WikiLeaks", Ars Technica, 14 February 2011,
• Glenn Greenwald, "More facts emerge about the leaked smear campaigns", Salon, 15 February 2011,
• Peter Bright, "Anonymous speaks: the inside story of the HBGary hack", Ars Technica, 15 February 2011,
• Barrett Brown, "How Anonymous hacked the security firm hacker", The Guardian, 17 February 2011,
• Cory Doctorow, "HBGary's high-volume astroturfing technology and the Feds who requested it", BoingBoing, 18 February 2011,
• Darlene Storm, "Army of fake social media friends to promote propaganda". Computerworld, 22 February 2011,
• John Leyden, "HBGary's nemesis is a '16 year-old schoolgirl'", The Register, 17 March 2011,
• Steve Ragan, "Anonymous: Government contractor has weaponized social media", Tech Herald, 18 March 2011,
• Steve Ragan, "Themis: Looking at the aftermath of the HBGary Federal scandal", Tech Herald, 22 March 2011,
• Greg Masters, "HBGary faces Congressional probe", SC Magazine, 24 March 2011,
• Peter Bright, "HBGary's open letter: full of denials that don't hold water", Ars Technica, 19 April 2011.

Soon after the breach, Barr resigned as CEO of HBGary Federal. So what's he been up to since then? Well, by his own account, he's been trying to repair his damaged reputation as a security researcher. He was even recently preparing a presentation for DEFCON giving an inside account of the breach from the victim's perspective. (As you can see from the above link, "Anonymous" has already offered its own version of the "crack" of the HBGary servers.) This talk would surely have been well attended.

But it seems that Barr withdrew after receiving legal threats from his former employer, HBGary:

• John Leyden, "Pwned HBGary Federal boss cancels debate after threats", The Register, 28 July 2011,
• Nick Farrell, "HBGary censors former staffer", Techeye, 28 July 2011
  
  Quote:

  Barr has told DEFCON organisers he was withdrawing from an August 6 panel discussion after attorneys representing HBGary Federal threatened to file an injunction against him if he did not quit.

More bad karma now accrues to the account of HBGary and its shady business partners, I think.

Are the denizens of the Surveillance State even more angry at Barr (for exposing some of their dirty work) than they are at "Anonymous"? It wouldn't surprise me, but we must also consider the possibility that this episode is just one more disinformation project of the sort which Barr appears to specialize in, a reputation which ensures that Barr has a certain credibility problem.

But assuming the legal threats are genuine, I urge the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), two leading privacy and civil-liberties advocacy groups in the US, to protest. I would also like to suggest that they try to arrange a public roundtable discussion including Barr, leading privacy/civil-rights advocates, and some more or less neutral security experts such as Bruce Schneier.

I'd like to know what legal firm was hired by HBGary. Was it Hunton and Williams? Or did HBGary use the services of the (former?) General Counsel of Cymru Research, Rich Cummings, who also happens to be one of the principal victims of the breach? Ironies abound.

While I am not familiar with the details of the legal threats against Barr, this certainly seems like the kind of episode which these organizationsm, CDT, EPIC, Techdirt (and other privacy-rights organizations and blogs) often denounce.

In case it isn't already obvious, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" pretty well summarizes my own attitude towards free speech. I suspect this is true for many persons equally concerned about the exponential growth in civil liberties abuses by Surveillance State and the fact that no entity other than "Anonymous" appears to have been even marginally effective in exposing and opposing these abuses.

Or in one word of two syllables: "Skokie"!

I think the Anonymous is run by the gubmint. The name is aptly picked too. They will use this to destroy anonymity, pass new surveillance legislation, obtain more power, and take your freedoms (if you still have any). I don't believe that Anonymous has ever done anything good, or released truly relevant and incriminating info about anyone, especially the gubmint. If they ever do, I might change my mind, but it is very unlikely.

Assuming you meant you thought it unlikely that "Anonymous" (the hacktivist disorganization) would ever divulge "truly relevant and incriminating info about anyone", have you examined this material?
http://publicintelligence.net/tag/HBGary/
http://hbgary.anonleaks.ch/aaron_hbgary_com/
I think it is highly relevant, extremely incriminating, and I think that it ought to change your mind. Among the revelations:

• A consortium of three US spycos (HBGary Federal, Berico, Palantir) were seeking a contract with a law firm, Hunton & Williams, a contract to design and implement a campaign of clandestine surveillance, astroturfing, defamation, and perhaps worse, targeting a US constitutional lawyer/journalist (Glenn Greenwald of Salon) and political advocacy groups opposed to the power of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (a lobbying organization)
• The then CEO of HBGary Federal was designing a minicourse (the expected students were apparently employees of agencies like FBI, NSA, DISA, DHS, and other US spycos) in which students would have been instructed in cyberstalking US persons not suspected of any wrongdoing in social media websites such as Facebook
• In what appears to be an extended classroom exercise, students would have been shown how to target (apparently in a Red-Team/Blue-Team exercise) US Army soldiers stationed in an intelligence unit in the US state of Texas, who happened to be graduates of two high schools in the state of Washington
• The "tactics" taught in the exercise included creating false personas of alleged former high school classmates, by targeting currently enrolled students at the two high schools, plus family and friends
• A similar exercise apparently targeted employees of Exelon, a US company which provides reactor technicians who operate the control rooms of many US power reactors
• HBGary Federal and several better known US spycos were actively working on using their examination of the Aurora and Stuxnet code to design their own "advanced persistent threat" malware
• Clear indications that at least one employee of HBGary Federal wanted to sell such malware to corporate clients, for use in espionage targeting political advocacy groups opposed to such ecologically/socially questionable practices such as "frakking" and further mergers of corporate giants; in some documents this project is referred to as Corporate Reconnaissance Cell (CIRC).

Don't take my word for it!--- study the leaked documents and decide for yourself.

These initiatives, which went under the name "Team Themis", have been widely reported on (see my previous post), and some US congresspersons have called for a congressional investigation, a call which I certainly support, if I may be permitted to chime in.

My unhappy past experience with utopian ventures suggests that those who suspect that "Anonymous" will end badly (perhaps due more to internal dissension than to "disruption" by the secret police forces) may well eventually be proven correct. But I cannot help being impressed by the fact that in a few short months they have done far more than the presumably well-funded investigative reporters of the New York Times, Washington Post, NBC, CBS, ABC... to expose abuses by the Surveillance State. When I review the comparatively timorous half-hearted opposition by some members of the US Congress to such abuses, I can't help feeling an urge to cheer on the "hacktivists". But I'd much rather see such relevalations originate with "respectable" journalists, as happened decades ago with the Watergate caper.

I think it is telling that many American "talking heads" have reacted with such venom to the actions of "Anonymous" and its kin. One need not, I think, read very far between the lines to see that they are enraged by the fact that these youngsters who are not playing by the old rules are making them (the "legitimate" reporters) look like lazy sods who couldn't find a hankerchief if a pretty woman dropped it at their feet.

Another thought: if US agencies like the FBI obeyed the FOIA law, many more abuses would no doubt be revealed, no "cracking" neccessary. Let me throw back in their faces their favorite saying, slightly revised: if they have nothing to hide, why are they not obeying the law?

IMO, the true heroes of American democracy are those who come across damning information and choose to follow the dictates of their conscience rather than the directives (generally unsourced in laws tested in court) of their employers, at great risk to themselves. Never something to be done carelessly, but only after extensive research and contemplation.

http://www.armycourtmartialdefense.info/

I have considered and rejected that hypothesis, but it is probably true that the US secret police will try to turn any resistance to their advantage, and in the general absence of genuine muckraking journalism by professional investigative reporters in the US, they have enjoyed some success.

It is true that the US secret police likes to boast that it has riddled the ranks of every political action group, even every "hacktivist group", with government informants, but IMO, this often repeated but unverifiable claim is likely to represent another example of the kind of disinformation campaign which was revealed in the HBGary Federal leaks.

I think it more credible that threads like this might eventually be disrupted by astroturfing.

I don't think anyone is ever mentioned on the mainstream media that is not with them or part of their plan. When the gubmint want to cover something up, they do it, they don't just mess around and ask for things to be removed in a polite manner. No, they have their special ops on site immediately, and the story never gets out, or they make something up.

See my comment on the less than Stygian nature of US government coverups in the other thread.