and welcome back to the big picture i'm sam sacks in for tom hartman coming up in this half hour remember anonymous the high power internet hacking collective that has taken down company sites like amazon master card and visa well despite its hacking success the group still remains a mystery so where do they come from and what's anonymous is game and later america prides itself as a nation where quote we the people can govern ourselves through voting unfortunately conservatives didn't get that memo will explain the conservative assault on democratic voters in tonight's daily take.

this week you hacktivist collective known as anonymous began a campaign to expose and shame suspected pedophiles who use twitter to prey on underage children already hundreds of twitter accounts of suspected pedophiles have been outed alongside a threat by anonymous warning quote you mess with our children you mess with us anonymous says it released the names and hopes that twitter will do its part working with law enforcement agencies to enforce its own network and crackdown on child pedophilia in recent months anonymous has been instrumental in breaking up child pornography rings on the internet just like last october excuse me the group claimed it took down more than forty child porn websites and released the names of more than fifteen hundred members of those sites as r.t. dot com recently pointed out anonymous might be better at policing the web than any of the government agencies paid billions to protect children. but anyone who's

familiar with anonymous knows anonymous isn't exclusively interested in exposing pedophiles the last few years since anonymous has crept out of the darkest regions of our internet the organization has been behind a series of brazen sometimes miss civitas and often politically motivated attacks on high profile internet targets those include attacks on the church of scientology back in two thousand and eight high profile attacks in two thousand and ten against amazon pay pal master card and visa shutting down their websites as payback for those companies ditching support for wiki leaks in two thousand and eleven anonymous hacked into and published sixty eight thousand e-mails belonging to the security firm h.b. gary federal in this year and what anonymous called quote the single largest internet attack in its history the group took down the websites of the department of justice in the f.b.i. the recording industry association of america and the motion picture association of america all the protest the department of justice is raid on file sharing website

mega upload and the stop online piracy act that was being debated on capitol hill foreign governments from egypt to tunisia to nigeria to even the vatican have been targeted by anonymous and whatever grassroots roots movements are have taken hold from wisconsin to occupy san francisco to most recently the student protest in quebec anonymous has contributed with their own internet antics but in recent months the story of anonymous has included a number of arrests across two continents and betrayal by one prominent member of the group still anonymous remains one of the most intriguing forces on the internet capable of speaking truth to power and fighting on behalf of working people across the planet while also capable of doing unbelievable damage so where did anonymous come from what are its goals and where is it headed. my next guest wrote the book on anonymous me olson joins me now she's the london bureau chief with bureau chief

with forbes magazine and author of the book we are anonymous inside the hacker world of lol sec anonymous and the global cyber insurgency parmalee welcome to the show thank you thanks so let's start with your experience writing this book how difficult was it to write this considering you're covering a group that is anonymous how did people how did the people you were talking to how did you know they were actual members and how do you know that what they're saying was actually true. oh very good questions it started off with blogging that i was doing for forbes and i wanted to basically investigate who these people were that were attacking the web sites of master card and pay pal they were billing themselves as this kind of collective of thousands of people from all over the world scuse me and and it was intriguing that they seemed to come from this kind of subculture on the internet a culture where there were etiquettes and rules where anything when you didn't have

to you never talked about your personal life and it was fine to bully people and there was almost a kind of moral authority that they were giving themselves this kind of vigilante justice that they were dishing out to anybody that they consider to be the the bad guys often people in authority are greedy corporations and and so investigating them just it was a matter of reaching out to them through their chop channels through internet relay chat channels through twitter and eventually finding some senior figures with the collective who are willing to talk to me one on one through e-mail and also through internet chat yeah i mean your book is fascinating because it's really kind of goes into this underbelly of. where. these anonymous plots are where it came from and it's also really it's character driven. it struck me that these operations are just centered on you know the technical skills of hocking but also on deceiving people social deceit pretending to be different people absolutely and also the

whole garrity of some of the things going on within within these chat rooms you talked about. what kind of insights that give you into the character of these people people who belong to anonymous and kind of what their motivations are. well first on that point i would say that it is a very broad set of beliefs and motivations among the people who are part of it and the book kind of explains how anonymous is split into two there's a kind of civil war of factions between those who believe that anonymous should be used as a collective for good to change the world have a socio political agenda and those who believe it should stick with its roots of pranks and lulz as they call it which is where it kind of came from where people started kind of getting together to spam other websites and other people's my space pages with with gore and pictures of porn and things like that and they believe that it should stay like that as far as characters the people who tend to really

get attracted to anonymous if you end up being very passionate supporters of it even organizers actually in the real world or in the physical world tend to oftentimes will be people who are drifting a little bit into looking for some sort of purpose and anonymous and they can really latch on to it's a place of great camaraderie and a sense of real fulfillment and purpose particularly when there's some sort of socio political agenda or when they're working together as teams and another thing about it which i kind of found through writing the book is it really isn't a big organized group it's often lots of small groups who work in their own ways and they kind of invoke the power of the name like a brand in order to get attention from the media in order to cause a stir and the people who i kind of based the book on ended up being some of the really senior figures with anonymous the ones who went on to establish that all psych there was about three or four of them who actually a stop list the group and they all had very kind of extreme personalities one was

kind of this self-styled revolutionary hacktivist from new york another was this kind of comedian slash entertainer from the shetland islands and another one was someone who was being a girl online a sixteen year old girl online but very very good at hacking and they work together so incredibly well. to cause a great amount of damage on websites and and just thousands of people were following them on twitter almost more than a quarter of a million people were following them yeah. i mean the the sixteen year old girl ended up not of course obviously being a sixteen year old girl but on this rift you talked about it seemed you know from your book you kind of document what seems like a natural progression where it started off as these these laws and these pranks but then as i guess the rest of the world started becoming more. politically aware and movement started coming out of you know after the financial crash and stuff like that it kind of progressed into this politically motivated. enterprise.

yeah do you see one side winning out over the other what is the what is the future direction of anonymous i mean that's probably a tough question but. it is tough it's a very unpredictable phenomenon you can't really prepare for it you can only really deal with the aftermath but i think what you're saying earlier about this kind of reaction to what's going on with our economy and whatnot i almost see what's occurred with anonymous parallel to what we've seen with the occupy movement and the tea party movement this is kind of grassroots backlash to the established authority almost a sense of oppression from commercialization and with the internet with this particular kind of subset it's seems like a kind of backlash against you know our data and our loss the loss of our privacy and for many people with anonymous they see it as a platform on which to assert their voice to be heard and to regain a sense of control and a sense that they have some power over over the world around them and in the case

of the people who i profiled in the book anonymous became an incredible platform for them they were people who were hitherto unknown until last year when they suddenly became notorious in their world and in the real world and of course they've they've all since most of them since been arrested yeah. and you talk a lot about that and i guess the character of sob who who is betrayal of people should read your book to to learn more about that story. knowing more you know about anonymous from writing this book which is more the vast majority of anybody else knows about anonymous should or should they be feared embraced i mean what's what is the way you know the person who's just going about their day here anonymous i mean what kind of reaction should they have. i don't think the reaction should necessarily be one of fear perhaps interest you know with anonymous it isn't really

this big malevolent calculating organization this is what people in anonymous often like the public to believe because it gives them that power and that fear and a lot of them get a kick out of that what it really is is lots of small groups of people working together often a kind of organized mess and opportunistic as well they'll look across the internet for vulnerabilities and websites and then they'll exploit them just based on what i've reported and what i've seen the looks ploy those security vulnerabilities hack steal the data publish it and then attach a cause to it afterwards so that it looks as if everything has been planned all along and so in many cases the real threat isn't so much anonymous it's our own carelessness and our own inability to really protect our own data and and just sort of be internet savvy so if you have a web account for instance which you probably do facebook linked in twitter you should always have lots of different passwords for each account never use the same password on every account and always make it a relatively difficult password to crack so several words perhaps in as one

password like a song lyric or something like that. per meal so there's a lot for coming out of the book is we are anonymous everyone should check it out it's brilliant it's a fun read thanks a lot for coming up thank you. coming up from coast to coast efforts are underway to recruit the twenty twelve elections florida voter id laws they all want to put mitt romney in the white house tom we'll tell you who's behind this war on voting and how we can put a stop to it and tonight's daily to. wealthy

british style. time to. market why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with my next concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report.

just. and now it's time for tonight's the good the bad in the very very end fund there is slowly ugly the good. pundits fit e.-v.

electric car has been given the highest fuel efficiency rating ever from the environmental protection agency the twenty thirteen model of the fit received a combined adjusted miles per gallon rating of one hundred and eighteen and p g's according to the u.p.a. this car has an estimated annual fuel cost of just five hundred dollars not just americans but citizens of this planet need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels or else we frankly could all be duped on is doing good work let's hope some american car manufacturers take it a step further. the bad walmart no kidding according to a new report by the national employment law project wal-mart's heavy outsourcing of jobs is driving down wages at factories across america wal-mart subcontracts stout side companies for production and many of those companies have histories of paying employees a very low wages along with numerous other labor violations and because wal-mart

real wise on these companies they can do just about anything to their own workers and get away with it without fear of losing their contracts just another example of corporate america screwing over the working class and somehow getting away with it . and the very very ugly arizona republican house candidate ron gould. came out with a new ad this week showing just how much he hates big government and the affordable care act yet opens with pictures of guns and scenes of a smug and smiling gold and then this happens this is what i do that last fall. you would think someone on the team would speak up and say you know what maybe it's not such a good idea to use gun violence in a political ad especially in the same state where congresswoman gabby giffords was gunned down last year. and then again maybe we should expect too much from far

right wing politicians who are clearly very very. so it looks like a constitutional crisis could be brewing between the state of florida and the federal government on wednesday florida governor rick scott sent a letter to the a letter to the department of justice and for me at that the state will continue with its democratic voter purge effort this by warnings from the d.o.j. that the state is in violation of the voter rights act and the voter registration act the miami herald reports that the letter quote there is the justice department to sue florida and quote. governor scott claims the voter purge is necessary to ensure that undocumented immigrants don't vote in this year's election however all

sixty seven county election supervisors in florida have pledged not to comply with governor scott since the purge list says the ministration have compiled are riddled with errors leading to legal citizens losing their voting rights florida is just one piece of the puzzle depicting the right wing assault on americans who tend to vote for democrats from minorities to college students to the poor to the elderly all those people vote for democrats thanks to alec written vote thanks to alec written voter id laws excuse me and they've been introduced in thirty four states and passed in seven states the brennan center for justice estimates that as many as twenty one million americans could be denied their right to vote if so that will translate into a landslide romney win but just to make sure romney is getting into the voter suppression game sell as investigative reporter leaf falling out republic report on covered the romney camp campaign has paid more than seventy thousand dollars to

this guy nathan sproul to do political consulting work what exactly are they paying sproul for well given sprawls previous record then most likely is being paid to disenfranchise democratic voters as following reports back in two thousand and four sprawls political consulting firm was investigated for destroying democratic voter registration forms in oregon and nevada while working for the bush cheney campaign the democratic voters in nevada who registered to vote through sproul mysteriously found their names absent from voter registration rolls when they showed up at the polls also in two thousand and four sproul spearheaded initiative using the lies and deceits to overturn the state's clean elections law yep and this is the guy right here. but mitt romney has reached out to help win the election just like florida sproul is just another piece of the puzzle in the nationwide effort to rig

the two thousand and twelve elections and that effort is the subject of tonight's delegate by the voter purge underway in florida is what's in the news today it's really just one slice of a massive thirty year nationwide effort by conservatives to make democracy only available to rich people and leave the rest of us living without a voice of the newly entrenched corporate oligarchy rather than believing in american democracy and making it easier for all americans who are of age and eligible to vote to actually be able to vote conservatives are instead very methodical about selecting who can vote and who can't those americans who conservatives don't want to vote include minorities college students senior citizens and those who are receiving or have received any kind of federal benefits or the corporations of course in other words people who tend to vote for democrats but rich white guys people like former indiana secretary of state charlie white who

was convicted of voter fraud or mitt romney who likely committed voter fraud nest shoes it's claiming he lived in his son's unfinished basement or newt gingrich and that is for connor who committed voter petition fraud none of those guys ever received any attention whatsoever from the very same conservatives who are screaming about voter fraud today and are carrying out massive voter purges around the nation one of the most influential republican strategists of the last thirty years paul way rick who founded the moral majority the heritage foundation and helped run both the reagan and both george bush campaigns said this in one thousand nine hundred eighty when speaking to a group of republicans at a christian political meeting about how conservatives shouldn't want everybody to vote. how many of our requests to have what i call them draw good government they want everybody to vote i don't want everybody to vote

elections are not won by a majority of people they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now no matter of fact our leverage in the elections quite candidly go drop only oculus go down that man you just saw the man who said i don't want everybody to vote paul weyrich he also happened to be one of the co-founders of the american legislative exchange council known as alec in the last few years alec has pushed his very own piece of legislation written by corporations or republican lawmakers to restrict voting rights to only those americans with photo id this voter id laws been introduced in thirty four states and already passed in seven of them and guess which americans tend not to have photo i.d.'s the poor the elderly and urban or reservation dwelling minorities people who tend to vote for democrats according to a study by the brennan center for justice eleven percent of eligible voters do not have a photo id that's twenty one million americans will be denied their right to vote

by paul way works alec if they have their way and then there's what's happening in wisconsin thanks to an obscure election law passed by republicans in that state last year tens of thousands of college students were ineligible to vote today in wisconsin since the law didn't give them enough time to update their addresses after graduating from school last month again college students tend to vote for democrats which is of course why they're being targeted. and then there's what's happening in texas where so-called voter roll maintenance will kick as many as one and a half a million texas voters off the rolls houston chronicle found that one in ten texas voters have had their registration suspended and among young voters people under thirty voters who tend to vote for democrats the number jumps to one in five between two thousand and eight and two thousand and ten three hundred thousand eligible voters in texas were told they were being removed from the voting rolls

requiring them to go out of their way to prove that they are indeed eligible to vote and guess which sorts of people didn't have to jump through these sort of hoops didn't have to show up at a government office and prove the legal citizens prove they're not dead prove their address hasn't changed. you know mostly the rich people. the people who can't afford to show up that's mostly low income americans who are too busy working and raising their kids and the words people who tend to vote for democrats. and then of course there is florida so you find it curious that just as conservatives are passing radical anti immigration laws that will likely cost them the expanding vote this election but at the same time florida governor rick scott has launched a voter purge of mostly hispanic voters under the guise of removing undocumented immigrants from the rolls as the miami herald has reported u.s. citizens with hispanic surnames and other minority democratic voters are being

disproportionately targeted in gov rick scott's voter purge while republican voters have been largely ignored this is very similar to what jeb bush and katherine harris did in florida in two thousand when they purged the florida voter rolls using names of convicted felons who lived in texas why suddenly start looking for convicted texas felons who might be voting just ahead of the election in florida because given the flaws in our criminal justice system a list of convicted felons will be disproportionately full of minorities people who vote for democrats and african-americans have a smaller pool of last names than white americans so there are a lot of good law abiding african-american floridians with similar names to african-american felons in texas so at least eight thousand legal non felon registered african-american floridians were knocked off the voter rolls just before the two thousand election a disaster for al gore but for conservatism florida result in success for george w.

bush who officially won the state by a little more than five hundred votes even though later a recount by a consortium of newspapers found that al gore actually won the state of matter which recount criteria which you just. if those eight thousand minority voters who were kicked off the rolls had been able to vote in the supreme court would never have been able to help rove and bush steal the two thousand election in the first place it's pretty simple you name the democratic voting bloc and i'll show you a conservative strategy to keep them away from the polls and voter id laws to minority voter purges masquerading as efforts to crack down on voter fraud to voter challenges or republican lawyers stand of the doors to polling places and mostly minority neighborhoods and challenge people's rights to vote throwing many of them onto uncounted provisional ballots democratic constituencies like students hispanics blacks the poor and the elderly are being systematically stripped of their right to vote are becoming like king george's england of the seventeen

hundreds in the one we rebelled against and overthrew were only wealthy white landowners could vote joseph stalin perhaps apocryphally said it doesn't matter who votes it matters who counts the both well sort but today the republicans have gone one better there not only having their buddies in the corporate world count the vote but now they're also deciding who votes welcome to the koch brothers new republican kingdom of america only wealthy people need apply to vote. and that'll do it for the big picture tonight as tom always says democracy begins with you get out there get active tag your it say tomorrow.

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