The recent meta mess really bothered me. It exposed a weakness in our community, and that weakness led to some significant problems.
Leaving the names out of it for those of you who may not have heard about it, one Kossack was cyberstalking other Kossacks and telling them they needed to GBCW. Some folks had been on the opposite sides of pie-fights with the people being stalked and that led to a witch-hunt like atmosphere with fingers being pointed because people here were angry and scared. Pastries were thrown. Emotions rode high. It was bad news. We turned on each other.
Though I don't want to talk as much about the incident itself, I want to personally apologize for one of the comments I posted. When I talked about using our skills to find the stalkers, and posted that I'd like to help, I inadvertently put some Kossacks involved in the meta conflict in fear of being attacked. By offering to help, I think I caused some harm. Some folks mentioned that they were afraid of having their computers and on-line identities destroyed.
Activities like those are not only wrong and unethical, but completely illegal. I never intended to suggest in any way that this was the sort of activity we were considering. I would not support any illegal and unethical use of our technological skills here at DailyKos, and I would never support any vigilante-style attack. I did not make that clear in the comments I made. I should have.
What we were suggesting was legally collecting information which would have been used to identify the stalkers, and turning that data over to law enforcement. We didn't act because we didn't want to impede the actions of the powers that be in any way.
The fact is that this incident was an absolute tragedy any way you look at it. I'd like to take some steps to help make sure that the next time we have to deal with something like this, or with right-wing trolls, or with O'Keefe style infiltration or any other cyber issue, we stay smart, stay rational, pull together, and get through it without losing our heads.
What happened over the weekend needs to never happen again. We need to keep our commitment to being a reality based, fact based, data based community that gets smart when it gets attacked.
So I'm thinking of putting together a series of posts with some of the other Anonymous Kossacks and anyone else tech-savvy who might be interested.
I want there to be a list of well written, easy to follow, tutorials posted here that teach people:
- How to be Anonymous online,
- How to write a secure password,
- How to protect yourself from data collection by both governments and corporations,
- How to modify your facebook, twitter, to protect your privacy,
- How to set up separate accounts so that you can insulate yourself from other contacts, such as professional and familial ones, if you feel the need, and
- Other, Similar Topics.
Some people are okay with the denizens of the internet knowing who they are. Some people are okay with their families and friends knowing about their work and activism. Some folks aren't.
I, for one, would like this information to be out there and available so that it will be much harder for people to target our posters here and stalk them. So that right wing trolls won't be able to easily gang up on one of us. So that people's privacy is better protected.
I'm going to run this like an open thread.
Anyone else think this is a good idea?
What other topics would be good to cover?
What should we call the series?
Is there anyone not a part of Anonymous Dkos that would want to participate in something like this?
2:39 PM PT: Avila has already written some basic steps here. You should check that out.