Uncovered document details Anonymous strategy for selecting targets

Maryland, delayed foreclosures, and herd immunity

The Washington Post notes that thousands of Marylanders are losing homes in a second wave of foreclosures. Others have already noted this hit. Worse yet, the Post article acknowledges that "foreclosure experts and state officials knew [it] was coming but no one wanted to see." So they knew it was coming, and did it anyway. Thanks for nothing. Like an ostrich with its head in the sand.

For what its worth, I think the Post is somewhat disingenuous in acknowledging that state officials knew the inevitable was coming. While it is true that some rhetoric acknowledged that the state was just delaying the inevitable, other statements suggested that the state was taking preventative measures.

The article does contrast the Maryland foreclosure process, which has been painfully drawn out over an average of 575 days (among the longest), with Virginia, whose foreclosure crisis has largely run its course (an average of 184 days, the shortest in the nation). I will be very curious to see economists do a post-mortem comparing Maryland's heavy-handed, interventionist approach to foreclosures vs. Virginia's hands-off approach.

What this article fails to deliver is a definitive verdict on Governor O'Malley's policies: is the second wave worse than it would have been if the state had just allowed foreclosures to happen? Or have they, as expected, made things worse?

In at least one measurable way, these policies have made things worse. Maryland's intervention has delayed the recovery of housing prices in Maryland, as predicted last year. As a result, homeowners not affected by foreclosures have felt the impact because their mortgages continue to be underwater. Delaying foreclosures in Maryland is akin to people choosing not to vaccinate their kids; as a result, the herd immunity (so to speak) suffers. I like to think of timely foreclosures acting as a firewall to the spread of more foreclosures. When foreclosures are delayed, everyone suffers through lower housing prices.

I was one of many who warned this time would come. I take no small bit of pride in acknowledging this. I would rather have been wrong. And while I an not a housing expert, I take my predictions and warnings seriously. I make them with due consideration to all of the available information. My track record stands by itself. And I have not been hesitant to admit when I have been wrong.

It is also no small bit of irony that this article came to my attention when it was tweeted by Occupy Wall Street. That loose collective appears to have the same short institutional memory as Anonymous--the Occupy movement has fought foreclosures at every turn. Now, it's somehow newsworthy that a policy that Occupy actively advocated--indeed, actively participated in favor of--comes back to kick people in the ass.

My seven demands for #occupywallstreet

In my last post, I talked about some of the reasons why I didn't (and don't) support #occupywallstreet. One of them was the rhetoric, include the use of the word "demands." Another part was the message, and some of the demands clearly fit into that category.

Turning the rhetoric and message on its head, here are my "demands" of those of you who are participating in #occupywallstreet:

1. Obey the law. This is pretty simple actually. Please note: blocking traffic is not obeying the law. You're obstructing the freedom of movement of other people. Resisting arrest is not obeying the law. What you're doing may be peaceful, but peaceful can still be unlawful. If you need to get a permit, then go get one.

I'm not in NYC, but it seems to me that most people are already doing this. So good on you.

2. Vote. I would be willing to bet that probably half (or perhaps even more) of the people at #occupywallstreet either aren't registered to vote, or didn't vote in their last election. Or the one before that, or the one before that. All the statistics show that the younger one is, the less likely it is that they vote. So go register and vote. Because if you don't, I (and others) don't want to hear you complain. If you already vote, then great. You can move on to #3. If you don't vote, or aren't even registered, then this item is for you.

3. Stop making bullshit excuses to get out of jury duty. Along with your rights as a citizen come certain responsibilities. Jury duty is one. So take pride in this responsibility and stop trying to invent ways to avoid it.

4. Patronize the street vendors. The New Republic reported that some of the street vendors in the area are losing a lot of business because of the occupation. Some of you are going to complain that's because the NYPD set up barriers. "It's their fault, not ours!" Fine. Then seek out these hard-working people and patronize them. According to the article I cited above, they're blaming you. So go fix that problem.

5. Promote transparency and accountability. I noted that the wepay.com donation accounts have no transparency or accountability into how donations are being spent. Why should I (or anyone) donate money if I have no idea how that money is being spent? Or if it's being spent in the way I intended, at all? All donations and expenditures should be made public so that people can see how their support is being used.

6. Be a good neighbor. Some of the people who live in the area complained that #occupywallstreet is loud and keeping them up at night. How about having some respect for the people who actually live there (as opposed to your temporary occupation) by being respectful during the hours when most people are usually sleeping.

7. Stop feeling entitled. I recognize that not everyone at #occupywallstreet is young, but from everything I've seen via social media, pictures, etc., younger people make up the biggest percentage of you. Rightly or wrongly, you are viewed as a entitlement generation. Going into McDonald's and getting mad when you ask for, and don't get free food, only reinforces that notion (cited in The New Republic article). Asking for forgiveness from mortgages and student loans, any and all debts? The same thing. Every time you ask for something, you are reinforcing what people already believe about you. Honestly, I don't care about if you truly feel that way or not. That is the perception that people have about you. There are 6,780,000 hits on Google for the entitlement generation.  You have to work hard to change that perception. Otherwise you play right into people's perceptions. Instead of asking, highlight the areas where you as citizens have contributed to society.

Take a look back at these seven "demands." Are they really all that much to ask for?

Seven reasons why I don't support #occupywallstreet

Let me start out with the immediate caveat that I fully support the right to peaceful, non-violent, non-disruptive protest. On the other hand, blocking traffic, for example, is disruptive. It prevents the freedom of movement of other people. It might be peaceful, but it is disruptive and unlawful. So don't be surprised if that gets you arrested. But enough of that.

A second caveat: this is my response to #occupywallstreet as it is seen through social media, specifically Twitter and Facebook, and also some other related Internet sites. I am not on the ground, I haven't been there, and I don't intend to go there. With a few exceptions, I have tried to stay away from the "news" and "MSM" coverage since that itself is a huge issue. So if you have issue with my view of how things are going down, perhaps your independent media types need to do a better of crafting the message.

Let me also state up front that I expect many people to disagree with me. I'm not trying to convince you to abandon your side. I'm just explaining my side. I don't claim to speak for 1% or 99%. I speak only for myself. Oh, and please send your intelligent responses to this guy.

Tim O'Reilly wrote a post a while back about #occupywallstreet and generally lamented that

 the people who were there were the wrong people...It seems so odd to me that the Tea Party isn't out in force at this protest. It seems so odd that government largesse aimed at rich corporations seems to be OK with them, while government largesse aimed at the disadvantaged ought to be cut. I would have loved to see blue collar Americans out in force at this protest, not just college students.

I've never self-identified myself as "Tea Party" but I might as well be. I'm a married white male in my mid-30s, a conservative-libertarian who isn't afraid to criticize the Republican Party when they stray too far from the party's principles. I'm one of the types of people that Tim O'Reilly thinks should be out protesting on Wall Street. But I'm not, so this post is meant to explain why.

First, my back-story.

I was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, which had the recent distinction of being named the poorest city in the United States. It wasn't quite that bad when I was born, but Reading is a blue-collar industrial place that rise and fell with the railroad. It has never quite been the same since then.

I was fortunate, at a very young age, when my parents moved us just outside the city limits. Rather than having to survive the rough streets of Reading, I grew up in an otherwise nondescript middle class neighborhood and grew up mostly middle class. By the time my brothers and I were in school, my mom went back to work and both parents worked. We had enough.

Throughout school, I worked; first delivering newspapers. Then at a farmer's market. Then at K-Mart. Then at the local hardware store. None of these jobs were beneath me.

I did well enough in high school to get decent grades without working very hard. I enjoyed sports more than school. My sights, instead, were set on college.

I started college in a small, liberal arts school in Virginia. It was expensive, but there was financial aid and student loans. I could do this. Things started out OK, but very soon it became apparent that a butt-load of the financial aid I had been promised was not going to appear. As a result, after one single semester in Virginia, I transferred to Bloomsburg University, a state school back in Pennsylvania that would cost me considerably less. Despite the transfer, I worked hard and graduated in 3 1/2 years total.

Like most political science majors, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do. I was leaning toward law school, and that became plan A. Beyond that, there was no plan B. Yet on a whim, I applied to Georgetown University's National Security Studies program and (somehow) got accepted. This was my new plan A, but it was Georgetown. One semester at Georgetown was more expensive than three years at Bloomsburg. I kept working hard, took on a part time job, and got my Master's Degree in only three semesters. But the student loans kept on mounting. I was digging myself into some serious debt by the time I graduated.

That was 1999. Fast-forward 12 years to the present. I'm still paying off my student loans, can you believe it?! I'm paying off a mortgage that is probably worth more than the current value of my house. If I wanted to move now, it would be very difficult, if not impossible. I opposed bailouts across the board.

So why I am not at #occupywallstreet?

1. Rhetoric. I've mentioned this before, but the rhetoric is over-the-top and largely fringe leftist in nature. Revolution, occupation, solidarity, comrades. I grew up at the peak of the Cold War. This language is not foreign to me. Yes, they're just words, but words mean things. And I don't like the things that these words mean. Additionally, the strong anarchist, socialist and anti-capitalist tones aren't going to attract me, either.

Closely related, the other bit of rhetoric that bothers me is the constant class warfare. It permeates everything that I see about #occupywallstreet and ties it all together. 1% vs. 99% is a perfect example of it. Seriously, put down the Karl Marx. It didn't work then and it won't work now.

The rhetoric is so over-the-top that I totally whiffed on @The99Pct, which I understand now (in embarrassed hindsight) is a parody account. Sadly, many of the posts aren't too far from what I've seen (especially online).

Like it or not, this point alone will keep people away. Viva la revolucion! But very few on the Right are going to join you, even if they agree on the core issues.

2. Message. People keep saying that #occupywallstreet is leaderless, but they shouldn't have to. It's pretty obvious. Many groups showed up making sure to get their message out. Against Bush, against the wars, against this or that or  the other thing. They, collectively, are against so many things I've lost track. And that's sort of the point. What is the message? The "official" demands keep growing and changing. At one point, the demands included references to Troy Davis and the elimination of the death penalty. It has nothing to do with Wall Street. It's an attempt to link a supposedly populist cause to the "occupation."  This is an example of what the military would call mission creep.

I've talked before about the negative connotations you send when you use words like "demand." This goes hand in hand with the point I mentioned above about rhetoric, but it applies equally here.

Among their declaration and demands, they claim that corporations "have sold our privacy as a commodity." Yet they're using corporations to get their message out. Facebook is perhaps the most notorious social network for privacy violations, yet #occupywallstreet has a home there.

3. Hypocrisy. One of the many themes espoused by those at #occupywallstreet is to decry the influence of money in politics. They seem to hate Citizens United and the whole idea of corporate personhood. I understand this. In some ways, I am sympathetic to the cause. However, the same people who despise the influence of money in politics are happy to welcome the support of multiple unions (re-read that Citizens United link; it doesn't just protect corporate funding of independent spending for political broadcasts, but also union funding). And it's known that the biggest spender in the 2008 election cycle were not corporations, but unions. So it seems hypocritical to complain about the influence of corporate political spending, while cozying up to unions, who actually spend more on politics.

And then recently, #occupywallstreet welcomed the support of MoveOn.org. It has been well-documented that MoveOn has been heavily funded by the billionaire George Soros. It seems further hypocritical to scream bloody murder every time the Koch Brothers spend a dime on politics, but just shrug away the same sort of political spending by George Soros. This inconsistency in the message reeks of hypocrisy.

Don't claim (without evidence) that corporate donations to the NYPD are buying off the police, but that Michael Moore and MoveOn support to #occupywallstreet are somehow beyond question.

4. Antisemitism. Despite the "leaderless" claim, there are still groups behind #occupywallstreet. One of them is Adbusters, has been accused in the past of antisemitism. A freelance writer by the name of Nathalie Rothschild wrote an article about her experiences at #occupywallstreet:

But the responses I got to my article were even more astonishing than the carry-ons in the Financial District. I received a string of indignant emails and tweets about my Jewish, kleptocrat banking connections; demands that I reveal the details of my pay checks and that I come clean about my not-so-hidden agenda. I was told that my family name disqualifies me from having any opinion about the protest and that I have 'the karma of a demon'. One reader posted my article online, headlining the post 'Journalist & Jew - Nathalie ROTHSCHILD'.

This is pretty sickening stuff. Please, it's about time for someone at #occupywallstreet to stand up and condemn this stuff. But they won't, because...

5. There is no accountability. I've talked about this before in regards to Anonymous. Anonymity allows people to take credit for anything good that happens while simultaneously reject all bad things as "someone else." Anyone can do something in our name, they say, so we can't be responsible. The same goes for a "leaderless" organization. No one is accountable. No one will stand up to the antisemitism that Nathalie Rothschild faced. Multiple wepay.com pages are set up for #occupywallstreet, collecting thousands of dollars in donations with little or no accountability in how that money is being spent.

6. There is no accuracy. Claiming the top 1% don't pay any taxes is as silly as those people at the town hall meetings a few years back who told the government to stay away from their Medicare. The truth is that the top 1% of earners pay over 38% of all income taxes. They pay 23.27% of their income to federal income taxes. On the other end, the bottom 50% of earners pay less than 3% of all income taxes and are taxed, on average, 2.59%. In fact, most of the bottom 50% pay no federal income taxes at all.

When you start out your argument with a claim like this, it shows you as being uninformed. I stop listening to anything else you have to say. The truth is that we have a highly progressive income tax system already.  A Buffet tax (a proposal of the President and also one of the demands) won't even hurt the man it's named after because most of his income is through capital gains, not salary. Your demands are built on claims that wash away like a sand castle built right up against the water at low tide.

7. I have a job. This isn't meant to be cruel to the unemployed, but I do in fact have a job. In fact, I have my own business. I can't spent weeks marching around New York City because I actually go to work everyday. I don't mean this to sound harsh, but sleeping on cardboard and eating pizzas paid for by someone else is not contributing to our economy. From an economic perspective, you are not contributing to the collective, common good. You're not doing your fair share.

Despite signs to the contrary, you do not have a "right" to a job. And the job you might land might be at Wal Mart or McDonald's. If you think working a retail or fast food job is beneath you, then maybe you're at the wrong protest. Wear our your shoes pounding the pavement looking for a job instead of waving a sign. Don't bitch that the 99% pay too much in taxes if you're not working; because if you're not working, you're obviously not paying income taxes.

I welcome your comments, criticisms, and questions below this post or via Twitter.

#OpBart Round 2: Anonymous still doesn't get it

I had intended this to be a much longer post, but there is just so much material to cover that I decided to wrap it up into a short summary. If readers have specific comments or concerns I'll certainly be willing to go into more detail.

A few points:

• A week after citing In re Hoffman, protesters don't seem to have actually read the case. Crowding a train platform to protest is in and of itself causing a disruption in service. Blocking escalators (when the police tried to clear out the Civic Center station) is causing a disruption. Neither of these are protected by the First Amendment.
• Along the same lines, people seem to still think that peaceful always means lawful. As I explained last week, this is not always the case. There's a reason it's called civil disobedience.
• Blocking traffic, as reported on the BART police scanner and tweeted by @YourAnonNews, is certainly not an activity protected by the First Amendment. This is yet another example of the naivete of the protesters in painting their own free speech with an overly broad brush.
• Once again, people seemed incredulous that there are limits to the First Amendment. I implored people to read and understand Time, Place and Manner (TPM) restrictions, which are a well-established part of First Amendment law. Look, you have every right in the world to disagree with TPM restrictions (such as permits), but being ignorant of them is a failure on your part. You may think its undemocratic to require a permit to protest, and you have every right to believe that! But the truth is that TPM restrictions are the reality.
• Many people expressed shock at the number of police and the fact that they were in "riot" gear with bean bag shotguns, etc. It's called precaution, I'm sure you've heard of it. Like it or not, that long line of police on the street is protecting you from traffic, and other people too. Could you imagine if a protester was hit by a car on a busy street? People would be howling that they police did nothing to protect them.
• One woman with a bullhorn who was featured on the ABC News stream decided to unleash her entire political platform in front of the camera. Most of her rant had absolutely nothing to do with BART. People are hijacking your protest for their own causes.
• Police repeatedly reported protester numbers around 150-200.
• Being accused of trolling by Anonymous and Anon sympathizers is surreal.Now I'll admit there is a gray area between pushing buttons (which I certainly do), and trolling. That being said, putting forth an alternate viewpoint is not trolling, it only helps to diversify the otherwise echo chamber that exists in the Twitter #OpBart stream.Arguing a valid point, even if it provokes a response, is not trolling. Still, given the history of Anonymous and 4chan, I take the accusation of trolling like receiving a gold medal. (Clarification: lest it be thought otherwise, I am most definitely trophy hunting (thanks for the comment). I have said before, and I'll say again, that I support civility in public discourse (recognizing that I am far from perfect). Still, I thought it was ironic to be accused of such from Anons).
• A Monday article in SFGate received almost all negative comments concerning the previous protest last week and the (planned) Monday protest. Those interviewed on TV seemed frustrated. In short, there is little or no public sympathy for the #OpBart protests at the train stations. I (and many others) have suggested protesting elsewhere, but that seems to have fallen upon deaf ears. How about then that you consider the words of Jennifer Granick, a well-known lawyer, highly respected in the tech community, who previously worked for the EFF: Protests should be at BART HQ interfering with management business as usual, not at the stations screwing with commuters' work.

In summary: How cool is our First Amendment that we can openly protest government actions? It's awesome, and I fully support the right of people to protest. That being said, do it within the well-established rubric of First Amendment law, especially Time, Place, and Manner restrictions (if you have problems with TPM, that's a fight for another day). Ignorance of the law is not an excuse to do whatever you want. I seriously recommend you consult some good First Amendment lawyers (and stop getting "legal" advice from Twitter, seriously). Get a permit and get a plan together to protest at BART HQ or someone else that doesn't cause disruption.  Do all that, and I'll absolutely support your protest. I bet the BART commuters will, too.

There is so much more to cover, but that's enough for now. If you have questions or comments about specific actions, please post them in the questions or hit me up on my Twitter account and I'll be sure to address them. Until next week...

In re Hoffman and the limits of protesting in a train station

The Anonymous protest at BART train stations last week was sitting on top of some pretty nice case law. Namely, In re Hoffman [67 Cal. 2d 845], a California Supreme Court case from 1967. Fifteen protesters were arrested for loitering; specifically, for handing out leaflets opposing the Vietnam War in Union Station in Los Angeles, which at the time was privately owned. The Court likened the train station, despite being privately owned, to a public street or park. As a result, the writ was granted and those arrested were freed.

Generally speaking, the BART protest is even more clear, since BART is a public, governmental agency. The jump from private property to public space doesn't even have to be made.

But the Court also made an important distinction about the protester's activities:

...the test is not whether petitioners' use of the station was a railway use but whether it interfered with that use. No interest of the city in the functioning of the station as a transportation terminal was infringed.petitioners' conduct was also unassailable under statutes aimed at protecting the city's interest in preserving good order, cleanliness, public health, and safety. Nor did their presence violate any legitimate interest of the railroads, their patrons, or employees. It invaded no right of privacy...
Nor was there any other interest that would justify prohibiting petitioners' activities. Those activities in no way interfered with the use of the station. They did not impede the movement of passengers or trains, distract or interfere with the railroad employees' conduct of their business, block access to ticket windows, transportation facilities or other business legitimately on the premises.petitioners were not noisy, they created no disturbance, and did not harass patrons who did not wish to hear what they had to say.

In short:

Had petitioners in any way interfered with the conduct of the railroad business, they could legitimately have been asked to leave... Similarly, had petitioners' activities conflicted with any valid municipal interest, the municipality could have proceeded against them.

Not to belabor the point, but as I stated in my previous post, protesters allegedly (at least according to news reports) tried to hold open the door to a train at the Civic Center Station to prevent it from leaving. Additionally, their self-described "DDoS" attack on the stations blocked access, interfered with railroad business, and raised public safety issues (this last point being quite ironic given the reason for the protest). These two actions, at the least, are not protected by the First Amendment.

Anonymous has a lot to learn about the First Amendment

Update 2 (1:15PM): This ars technica article estimated the number of protesters at 60, with an equal number of media. 

Update 1 (10:49AM): I made a comment in the original post below about crowd size. And YourAnonNews, one of the Anonymous press accounts, just made the following post:

#OpBART: a SF Anon said 200-300 protested, and he/she said that they only saw about 15 in Guy Fawkes masks.

My guess was "a few hundred." Anon deserves kudos for accurately representing the number of protesters (at least as much as I could tell). 

Yesterday evening in San Francisco, Anonymous held what was, by all accounts, a successful protest of BART (dubbed #OpBart). There were at least a few isolated incidents (people throwing stones at a train, and a report of a woman with a firearm), but neither of these could be positively attributed to the protest itself. If there were any arrests, they certainly weren't central to the event itself.

The protest was in response to a number of things, but most recently, the decision by BART to turn off cell service in a number of stations with the explicitly stated purpose of thwarting a prior planned protest. From my personal standpoint, I felt like it was unwarranted and asked whether the action constituted an unconstitutional prior restraint. I think it did. From a legal standpoint, IANAL, but this action was, in my opinion, "a very gray issue. Not as black and white as most would like." Still, at the least, very shady.

For about two hours I monitored #OpBart via Twitter, a live ABC News stream (with occasional live reporting), a BART radio scanner feed, and (rarely, when it was working) a ustream feed. I wasn't there (obviously), and I don't claim that the above knowledge gives me total understanding of the events that occurred, but I think these sources (altogether) provided a pretty clear picture.

The Good

From what I saw and heard, combined with news reports, the protest was entirely peaceful. I thought that someone (whether Anonymous or someone else, perhaps a bystander or commuter) might do something stupid which would provoke a more forceful police response, but I didn't see any such action. I said that I would be impressed if someone didn't do something stupid, so I'll stand by my word and say so. Also, I should make it clear at this point that Anonymous (or anyone for that matter) has every right to protest, and I fully support their right to do it. I also, generally speaking, support the reasons they're protesting.

I also thought in large part that the police handled things well. Despite some people suggesting that the BART police were heavy-handed (side note: Jake and I met in Poland a few years back and we agree on a lot of things and disagree on just as many!), I didn't see any evidence of that. And more importantly, I haven't seen any such evidence of police heavy-handedness from people who where actually there.

The Bad and the Ugly

Yesterday, prior to the protest, BART made a statement (I'm still looking for a link) that they had the right to limit free speech with time, place, and manner restrictions. This was met with incredulity that a government agency could actually limit free speech. The problem with this belief is that it is completely ignorant of First Amendment case law. Time, place and manner restrictions are well within the state's power in terms of limiting free speech. The courts require that these restrictions meet an intermediate level of scrutiny, which is to say that they must be content neutral, narrowly tailored, serve a significant government interest, and leave open ample alternate channels of communication. It's all well and fine if you understand this doctrine and simply disagree with it, but to be ignorant of the reality of First Amendment case law is pretty sad.

There seemed to be a pervasive belief that as long as the protest was peaceful, it was also lawful. Unfortunately for those in attendance, this simply isn't always true. I posted the following question on Twitter:

Is anyone willing to suggest that your free speech allows you to prevent other people from moving around as they please?

This is a purposely probing question to see if people understand that rights are not absolute. Free speech does not give you free reign to do whatever you want. The boundary of your rights exists where they begin to interfere with the rights of others. Commuters headed home from work have every right to move around freely. Mostly, they just want to go home. Unfortunately, several train stations were shut down at various times, preventing them from getting where they were going.

Now it's fair to suggest that it isn't entirely clear why the stations were closed. Did BART close them preemptively, or did the protesters actions force the hand of the BART police? The Civic Center station platform was filled with protesters who (at least according to news reports) tried to hold open the door to a train. In later instances, it appeared that BART police were acting proactively by closing stations before protesters arrived. So from my perspective, it seemed that both were the case. Eventually, the protestors at the Civic Center station were given an "unlawful assembly" announcement and either left on their own, or were more or less forced out of the station (it wasn't clear to me what exactly happened).

No matter how you draw it up, as a result of the protests, Anonymous disrupted public transportation and prevented some people from going about their day. This appears to have been entirely peaceful, and incurred no arrests, but that doesn't make it legal. What's sad is that Anonymous crude understanding of the First Amendment caused them to trample on other people's rights.

Overnight, I got the following reply:

@theprez98 Anonymous did not disrupt your BART experience, Anonymous did not close stations, Anonymous did not kill people.

Smart guy, I suppose! I wasn't in San Francisco so my BART experience wasn't disrupted (but I never claimed that I was). I didn't claim that Anonymous killed people, either. I think (and please, correct me if I am wrong) that this guy is basically saying: "If BART hadn't done what they'd done, we wouldn't have had to protest. Our actions were a reply to what BART did. So their action is responsible for the reaction." If this is in fact the point he's trying to make, it's a disturbing view: "We want the publicity for these actions, but not the responsibility for them." It lacks accountability, which seems to be the hallmark of Anonymous actions (especially when those actions are less than lawful).

Toward the end of the protest (at least in terms of when I was watching), a crowd of protesters (after walking around to and from four different train stations) converged at one of the entrances to the Embarcadero train station. The protestors basically blocked up the entrance. The actions here, and at other stations, led people to say that Anonymous had successfully completed their first "in real life" DDoS.

How ironic that when cell service was shut down, people complained loudly about free speech (and rightly so), but also about public safety and the ability (or inability) to use 911 when cell service was no longer available. Blocking the entrance to a train station is a public safety issue, no? Your question is: What if I needed to call 911 and cell service was off? Completely legitimate question. My question is: What if something happened in that train station and people needed to get out quickly? Your "IRL DDoS" might have prevented that. I think my question is just as legitimate.

Other

The commuters that I saw that were interviewed by ABC News were either confused about the protest or were made that someone had disrupted their commute. I didn't see any sympathy from anyone who was interviewed. This is certainly too small of a sample to be of any scientific use, but at least anecdotally, the protest didn't seem to have much traction with BART riders.

How about crowd numbers? At any given time, I only saw maybe 50-100 people in the ABC News live camera shots. I recognize that there were several actions going on at once, so I'll give the protesters the benefit of the doubt, but I would estimate (again, roughly, based on my limited resources to monitor) that there were perhaps a few hundred protesters. Media, onlookers and police certainly added to those numbers. I'll be curious to see what Anonymous self reports in terms of participation.

Lastly, and more of a contextual comment than anything else. When protesters were blocking the train station entrance, some Anonymous folks on Twitter referred to it (reasonably, IMO) as a peaceful protest (again, keep in mind that peaceful does not always equal lawful). When the police (also reasonably) cleared protesters from blocking the station, police were "stormtroopers" taking an "aggressive stance." Context is important here, guys. If you want to be taken seriously, you're not going to win any friends with this sort of attitude. A similar situation occurred when protesters kept interrupting an ABC News reporter trying to make a report from the scene. It led the hosts in the studio to call the protesters "stupid" for killing coverage of their own protest.

Final Thoughts

Anonymous deserves credit for putting together a peaceful protest. I fully support their right to do so, and I support the reason they chose to do so. But their crude and sometimes ignorant understanding of the First Amendment is a very broad brush that can't seem to stay within the lines. They don't seem to mind or care, but every time they paint over the line, they're walking on someone else's rights.

I have some more ideas about this analogy in general, but I'll save them for a future post.  At this point I am more curious to see your thoughts. I welcome your comments, suggestions or critiques. If I got the facts wrong, call me on it (but back it up, too). Just don't be this guy.