Gamergate and the feds Among the many unexamined aspects of the Gamergate scandal is the possible misuse of federal resources to suppress free speech on the internet and to defend from exposure and public criticism, with decreasing certainty: * a group of for-profit businesses including Gawker, UBM, and their investors, here described as the Gawker network * an unidentified organized crime network * an unidentified foreign intelligence network inside FBI, NSA, and IARPA * federal assets targeting the above Methods that are known to have been used include: * Hacking, DDOSing, SWATing, death threats, and other forms of harassment * Public denunciation of people who question suspicious behaviour * Scrubbing information from websites * Threats to blacklist people from future business and employment * Ideological capture of executives and owners of several popular websites * A deflection campaign that planted news articles in major US, Canadian, UK, AU, German, Swedish, and Polish media Methods that are suspected to have been used include: * Similar pressure (threats, etc) on business executives and news editors * Development of a database of targeted individuals and their personal information * Directing third-party criminals to target individuals for identity theft * Directing third-party criminals to manufacture grievances by harassing public figures on their own side * Misuse of company databases to assist in doxxing critics * Misuse of police resources to assist in doxxing critics * Tapping of private Internet connections at ISP or backbone level * Refusal to prosecute individuals known to have taken part in such activities Known federal connections include: * Unidentified members of the FBI in San Diego were working with Kate Edwards of IGDA on a project to counter the harassment of women in video games one month before critics of the Gawker network were widely accused of harassing women in video games. Suspected federal connections include: * Wikipedia editor TaraInDC, who aggressively promotes the line that critics of the Gawker network are harassing women in video games, shares the online username of lifetime US foreign service officer and General Dynamics BICES system administrator Tara Ann King. * Lincoln Park Strategies, the marketing firm that participated in the Rad Campaign press conference blaming critics of the Gawker network for the Fappening, is linked through the Republic 3.0 organization to the Third Way movement that is composed of hedge fund managers who operate internationally, former high ranking defense and intelligence officials, and former high ranking aides to President Clinton and Senator Reid. * Hacker groups supporting the Gawker network include Bantown, GNAA, LulzSec, and the Bill Waggoner Crew. Several of these groups have been raided by the FBI or are widely believed to be staffed by FBI informants. * A photographer named Jepeczenka Svadakovic supports the Gawker network. Encyclopedia Dramatica claims that she is an FBI operative and her sister is an NSA field agent. * An "Anonymous" video claims that the hacker Laurelai is involved and is an FBI operative. * According to an anonymous report, several people connected to IARPA have publicly condemned the criticism of the Gawker network. * UBM Tech owns the magazine IW Government and runs the Black Hat hacker conferences. * Alex Lifschitz, one of the individuals involved, is the son of an executive of the US company Gehr Industries which has a subsidiary known as Milspec Industries, suggesting that it is a supplier for the US military. * The FBI has been made aware of evidence suggesting that someone close to Lifschitz has claimed responsibility for a terrorist threat against Utah State University, and the FBI has taken no apparent action as a result of this information, not to investigate the threat further or to discourage false news reporting blaming this threat on critics of the Gawker network. * There are rumors that some websites that have been most aggressive at censoring criticism of the Gawker network had previously been approached by the FBI during investigations of online harassment and child pornography. Known foreign connections include: * A police agency told the independent journalist "Camera Lady" to stop investigating the subject and to remove her videos from Youtube. She is believed to be in Canada. * The BBC and CBC were among the first conventional news organizations to jointly accuse critics of the Gawker network of misogyny. * Suspected foreign connections include: * UBM runs a trade show in China and is based in the UK. * An Australian website whose owner expressed concern over covering the issue may have had a Chinese investor. * Hans Tung, believed to be a Chinese national, invested in the news website Siliconera shortly before the website's founder claimed that people above him had ordered him to suppress discussion. * BoingBoing has run articles promoting Jamaat-e-Islami and covering for the Taliban's atrocities, and has deleted dissenting opinions from the comments of these articles. Suspected organized crime connections include: * Richart Ruddie aka Charto911 is involved in numerous sketchy-sounding businesses and is associated with Las Vegas bookie John Taylor, who is connected to other sports bookies in Boston. One of Ruddie's business is an online reputation management service that uses special techniques to remove negative reviews of businesses from the web, which may involve a conflict of interest depending on who placed the negative reviews. Charto911 has been mentioned in relationship to the Bill Waggoner Crew, a hacker group believed to have been recruited by the Gawker network. Charto911 is a member of the black-hat Warrior Forum and has been accused of extortion on at least one occasion. * TFYC was encouraged to make peace by donating to iFred in the manner of a mafia extortion scheme. iFred once used a mailbox forwarding service that is used almost exclusively by criminals. iFred gets its money from Kathryn Goetzke White of Innovative Analysis, a company with no online presence whose only known source of income is through a subsidiary selling light bulbs online. Coincidentally, selling light bulbs online happens to be one of Richart Ruddie's business models. White has traveled to Europe to seek donations. iFred's lawyer one year was Thomas Tuohy, the personal lawyer to the Illinois Secretary of State. White's husband John White of Compass Marketing is an advertising executive. * There is a rumor that Polygon was founded by Microsoft to lower metacritic scores of games exclusive to its competitors' platform. * There is a rumor that another involved video game website has aggressively banned users who are vocal supporters of platforms competing with Microsoft, particularly Sony platforms. * There are rumors of open-source and Internet cultural organizations in the San Francisco area being staffed in recent years with increasing numbers of managers who receive six-figure salaries while contributing little to the organization, and who hire unknown developers at above-market wages while much of the work continues to be done by unpaid volunteers. What is being covered up? The reaction to the criticism of the Gawker network is so excessive compared to the criticism that it raises the question of what the reaction is intended to protect. The nature and breadth of the response suggests that it is meant to protect a state-sponsored intelligence operation of some sort, or the investments of someone in intelligence whose colleagues are not above abusing their power to make a few dollars. A type of operation that would merit this response might include a hostile presence in the Five Eyes surveillance system through a NATO allied unit operating in San Francisco. However, this is only speculative. Note on the Sony hack While drafting this statement, Sony's global network was taken over by a competent group of attackers in a targeted attack. Sony was previously hacked by LulzSec, one of the groups supporting the Gawker network and an organization that has been raided by the FBI. LulzSec and its associates would have knowledge of Sony's network and how to attack it. It is possible that the Sony hack was conducted using hackers provided by the FBI for the benefit of one of Sony's competitors or a stock shorting scheme. Recommendation to the US government Due to the possibility that the FBI and NSA are actively part of the problem, a parallel investigation should take place under the control of the Army and Homeland Security. HomeSec has responsibility for ConUS and the Army has people stationed all over the world who can run a 24-hour investigation cycle. Someone in the US Attorney's office should be ready to issue indictments based on whatever is found. Possible crimes that may be uncovered include: * 18 USC § 1961 - Racketeering - Extortion in creating a problem and demanding payment to solve it * 18 USC § 4 - Misprision of felony - Knowing of a felony and failing to report it * 18 USC § 242 - Deprivation of rights under color of law - using federal resources to pressure websites into banning people for their opinions * 18 U.S. Code § 1512 (b,d) - Obstruction of justice - witness and evidence tampering Given the combination of deception, greed, and blackhat capabilities, it is possible that some of the businesses involved have hired criminals to inflate their advertising clickthrough rates in order to defraud their advertising networks. Given how shady everyone involved seems to be, it is possible that both parties may be aware of this, and that advertising fees may be used as a slow and steady means of money laundering. Final notes More investigation is needed. Follow the money. Discover the social networks. There are signs that some of these companies were ordered to censor the subject by one of their investors. We still do not know who their investors are, let alone which investors gave this order. Anyone involved in the blackhat groups is encouraged to leak logs. Whoever has recruited you for an op has probably set you up, especially if they offered you federal protection, so you should expose them before you get all the blame. Anyone who has received any kind of pressure to conform to the false narrative of misogyny and MRAs needs to report what type of pressure this was and where it came from. This can be done anonymously.