Part 3 (1/2)

Neo212: And Neo saw the source in front of him eliminating everything, so he moved forward to merge with it!

Xavier thought that Neo212 must be quite young to keep coming back to these Matrix references.

Fkb00: Our action online started on its own, with curiosity and a technical challenge. We're all connected. It's definitely a type of resistance.

Clue: That's why we have to use it for the greater good. Once discovered, plans that a.s.sist in the action of an authoritarian regime will provoke more resistance from people.

Neo212: The people, the people, it's all very Bolshevik sounding...

Clue: The problem is that the conspirators and conspiracies are all connected. It's like a network of twine on nails. Nail = conspirator, twine = communication. All the nails are connected either two by two or by going through another nail. Some are on the fringe of the conspiracy, others are central and communicate with many conspirators and others still may know only two conspirators, but act as a bridge between two important sections of the conspiracy.

Neo212: Let's get crafty now. Your engineer side is showing.

Clue: It reminds me of the Heroes timeline. Knowing that a conspirator cannot conspire alone, what's the minimum number of links that have to be cut to separate the conspiracy into two groups? Come on guys, it's time to start using your brains!

Fkb00: a.s.sa.s.sinating a 'bridge' conspirator would be a radical and efficient method.

Clue: True, but we'll use our brains to find an answer that holds true for all conspiracies, except if Fkb00 wants to become a mercenary.

Fkb00: I'm sure I'd be good at it. My job at the university is depressing. Should I dare say that it smells like a conspiracy?

Neo212: Something is missing in your theory for it to be representative.

Clue: ????

Neo212: We have to add some importance to the type of information, some weight, like in logical diagrams. When you look at diplomacy, there are diplomats who don't communicate anything of importance, while others deal with war and peace in some parts of the world.

Clue: Thanks for your a.n.a.lytical insight. You're right, the weight of the link is essential, but I wonder about conspiracies in general, no matter the weight of the links because it changes from one conspiracy to the next.

Neo212: To cut a conspiracy in two, you have to cut the network that links the conspirators in two. Divide and conquer.

Clue: There is a crucial difference between a conspiracy and the individuals that make it up because individuals don't conspire when they're isolated. It's probably here that we have to add the abstract value of the weight of the link between two conspirators, and then we can calculate conspiratorial power. It's the sum of the weight of the links between the conspirators.

Neo212: Oh, he's stealing my idea! It's always the same between the engineer and the a.n.a.lyst.

Clue: Get back to your craft with the nails and putting bigger or smaller twine according to the importance or the number of information shared.

Fkb00: Your total conspiratorial power is also independent of the specific disposition of the links between the nails.

Clue: Exactly. Separating a conspiracy in two is separating the total conspiratorial power in two. Any half split could then be considered a conspiracy itself and we could continue to indefinitely cut it in the same way.

Neo212: It's true that it's possible to have fun implementing it graphically, with beeps and whooshes like in War Games.

Fkb00: Another possibility: throttling the conspiracies by reducing the weight of the heavy links that acts as bridges between regions of equal total conspiratorial power.

Clue: A guy I really like wrote: ”A man in chains knows he should have acted sooner for his ability to influence the actions of the state is near its end.” Faced with powerful conspiratorial actions, we must therefore antic.i.p.ate. We can foil a conspiracy by drastically restricting the information available to it. If we attack it properly, it will no longer be able to comprehend its environment or formulate an action plan.

Neo212: Nice demo. That's going to cause h.e.l.l in US diplomacy. It's about attacking the way information is transmitted and the type of information. IT resources today strengthen the capacity of the US to conspire. And us hackers are actually the only ones able to fight on this level to find more fair systems.

Fkb00: Seems clear to me. I'd like to talk about it in person on Thursday.

Neo212: Sure, but if that's why we have to form a party, count me out. It's just not my thing. But I'm OK with supporting the action using my technical skills. Keep me posted.

Clue: Thanks for the sparring, guys.

Fkb00: Send me the info for Thursday.

Neo212: I'm off to have some fun, until next time.

Xavier left the channel and toggled to Twitter to check his recent DMs. He had new followers. Someone called @SciF0r seemed to be interested in his ideas. New tweets appeared on the corner of his screen, but he didn't pay any attention to them. He decided to spend the night on a new encryption code.

5.

SOPHOX.

Hacker.

Published on 28 November 2010 by sophox

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n.o.body is left unscathed from childhood. Parents, people and places brand us for life. Julian has had quite an epic life. Like an Australian Tom Sawyer, he lived very free in the middle of nature the first years of his life. Sometimes home-schooled, sometimes at school or taking correspondence courses, this shapes a man to be inevitably self-centered. Julian seems happy to say that he's lucky to do what he likes, to have a pa.s.sion. He's proud of himself.

When I think about his childhood I think he was marked by life with a stepfather who was part of a sect or linked to it in some way or another. His stepfather was a son of Anne Hamilton Byrne who founded a sect often referred to as 'The Family.' She would dress all her supposed children the same way and bleach their hair. If you've seen the film Village of the d.a.m.ned, you get the idea. It's very scary. While searching for pictures of Julian I was surprised to see that he's had white hair for a long time. Was he part of the sect? When he was on TSR, his hair was light chestnut, which begs the question: did he dye his hair? Since he became a public figure, he's wanted to change his physical image. The question very often comes back to his hair. His mother said that his hair turned white after a stressful custody battle for his son. Julian tells a whole other story: I was very blond until 12-ish, until p.u.b.erty. I built a cathode ray tube at 15, at school, and connected it backwards. The Geiger counter went 1000, 2000, 3000, 40,000. That was about the time. Also I had some head scans, because I had something like viral encephalitis. It was very mild. I just lost feeling in one cheek. Earlier on, at nine, I'd had head X-rays because I'd headb.u.t.ted a giant earth ball.

I did some research on his stepfather, but Julian is very discreet about his relation with the man from the sect, a man who had five ID cards, lied about his past, his studies... He must be a great manipulator. Is Julian one as well?

Christine a.s.sange fled to protect her children, but at the same time denied them any roots. If they were always moving and on the run like criminals, how could he make any friends?

Is it because of this life that he's more attached to machines, as he didn't have any friends, or is it a natural inclination?

In any case he doesn't talk about his childhood and there's not much to find on that part of his life on the Internet. Maybe he has a secret to uncover. When you're related to a grandmother by marriage whose head of a sect, you can make up anything.

Let's move on to his hacker life. I know, I understand! Why did society see this as a negative thing from the start? Ignorance is afraid of knowledge! Absorbing the knowledge of the network and the technology of the Internet on a daily basis was a real revolution. It was fascinating for those who grew up with it like Julian, but a bit overwhelming for older people. NASA personnel, departments of defense and major laboratories work with the Internet, but he just had fun with it and was even an integral part of its creation. It must give you a feeling of power to dominate machines when most people are so ignorant as to how they work.

Why have hackers always been considered criminals? Hacker ethics are quite clear: knowledge and improvement. It's true that sometimes n.o.body asks them to do anything and yet they fiddle with software that doesn't belong to them. Illegality is only present because the system is hidden. If it could be accessed freely, hackers would poke around anyways to quench their thirst for knowledge and possibly improve software.

Imagine considering everything a system with flaws and trying to find a way to solve them. After having spent a few years with a hacker, I can tell you that they're obsessed with their computer. Today the computer is just a means to get involved directly in the world. For us it's Facebook and Wikipedia, and for hackers it's source codes and chat forums.

But who is Julian a.s.sange?