Operation Tunisia seemed to erupt out of nowhere. It was only much later that I was informed about its precise conditions of its birth; even years later, its founder fumbled when pressed for a precise explanation: “I don’t really know why it worked,” he insisted during an interview. Two geeks, Slim and Adnon (not his real pseudonym), living in different regions of the world, acting independently but united in the belief that they could make the world better, set their sights on Tunisia. Slim Amamou, a Tunisian citizen in his thirties, was hoping Anonymous would get involved in publicizing the troubles roiling his country. A programmer and blogger, Amamou was fascinated by Anonymous; he had given talks about the power and draw of nonidentitarian politics. He described Anonymous as the number zero: the all-powerful number, the non-number. This was a fitting example for a young Arab man, given that it was Arab mathematicians who popularized zero. Embodying the idea of void and infinity, zero was long held in the West as a heretical concept, only entering usage in mathematics and philosophy during the intellectual, and political, ferment of the Enlightenment. Zero—the ultimate placeholder, refusing a concrete identity.
While Adnon, living on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea, chose to be Anonymous, living a privileged life in a quaint historic town in Europe without fear of government repression, Amamou was backed into the corner of anonymity. Tunisia was under a regime of heavy censorship: in 2010, this nation of just over ten million people scored 164 out of 178 in Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index (an annual rating that measures press freedoms based on a questionnaire filled out by non-governmental organizations, journalists, jurists, academics, and human rights workers in various countries). Like many Tunisians, Amamou used anti-censorship circumvention tools to read news and get the word out. The use of proxies and virtual private networks (VPNs) was “standard knowledge among the youth,” he said to me. In Tunisia, geekdom was often spurred by necessity and the will to survive.
Soon Anonymous would come to symbolize the general plight of Tunisians, said Amamou in an interview—an icon to be adopted by the young urban hacker and rural commoner alike because of the role Anonymous played in their country’s revolt. Many knew Anonymous had been the grain of sand that gave rise to the pearl of media attention absent at the start of their revolution. It was a modest and safe contribution to be sure, but still a vital one. On January 8, a week before Ben Ali fell, Tunisian schoolchildren sitting in a courtyard paid tribute to Anonymous by donning the mask.
Amamou, who was already active in the sphere of Internet politics, did not always act anonymously. On May 21, 2010, he was briefly detained by government henchmen for his role in organizing a demonstration against web censorship, set to take place the next day in front of the Information Ministry. He was re-arrested on January 6 during the height of the protests. He explained, “I was interrogated for five days by state security … It is a place where people get killed, you see, and I believe—I am sure actually, I don’t believe—that I was saved by Anonymous.” Anonymous participants from Tokyo to Europe heard about his plight (it was circulated on Anonymous channels), leading to a flood of calls to the Tunisian government.
So Anonymous had long appealed to Amamou. As his country inched closer to full-blown revolution, he wanted the faceless collective closer. So he “summoned” Anonymous to appear. He thought that if an operation took off, it would force the world’s media to stop ignoring Tunisia. Although he called for Anonymous, he was not naive: “Anonymous is not your personal army” is a refrain which he knew well. “You cannot control Anonymous,” he told me emphatically, castigating me after I asked him what he would change about Anonymous if he could. All you can do is hope they will arrive. Fortunately, they did.
And it was due in part to Adnon, who was fifteen years old when he first found Anonymous. Raised in Europe, his family was very well-off—though you would never know it by hanging out with him. He was one of the first individuals from AnonOps I met “afk” (“away from the keyboard,” in IRC parlance), a pleasure I have since enjoyed on multiple occasions. Out of the entire bunch, he was the most unassuming. Kind, calm, and contemplative, he first struck me as a “regular guy,” but within twenty minutes of meeting him, I could see why some of the older hackers were fondly protective of him.
Taking cover from the unyielding sun under the rustling leaves of a tree on a hot summer day, our conversation mostly involved Anonymous shoptalk. That meant roughly 30 percent gossip, 20 percent conspiracy, and 50 percent welcomed pedagogy about the innards of Anonymous. The transition from online chatting to in-person conversation was seamless. Just encountering someone from this realm, in the flesh, was a relief.
He would complain about his boring and menial day job (though wealthy, he was not spoiled) and would become more excited when he recounted one of his many outdoor adventures involving biking or canoeing. Sometimes bored at school and having spent a fair bit of time online, he joined AnonOps in the fall of 2010 during the first phase of Operation Payback. He recounted: “I got involved because I read some article somewhere and thought, ‘oh man, dem hax are cool!’ Then it was so much more than that.” Though far from being a talented hacker, he was still technically proficient, one might even say a quintessential geek.
As he sailed along in the Anonymous ship, he accrued new skills: security protocols, and database and webserver management. But “the biggest things I learned,” he said, “were not technical. Teamwork and organization are massive.” He was one—among four I met—of those organizers and brokers essential to making Anonymous’s clock tick, a device which resembled Dali’s gooey melting clocks more than a Swiss machine.
For much of the fall of 2010, Adnon was an avid spectator on IRC, only occasionally chipping in on organizational matters. But he chatted, especially with other channel operators such as joepie. Finally, late in December, Adnon pitched a proposal, aided by those he had talked to for long hours. The proposal forever altered the course of AnonOps.
His suggestion was simple: use Anonymous resources to publicize the plight of the Tunisians revolting, at the time, against their president/dictator Ben Ali, who had been in power since 1987. In his own words: “We had this #anonnews channel and there was like three of us as moderators … One of the guys there who I think was Tunisian said something like ‘This kid burnt himself about this and there’s a few people doing some small protests. It would be cool to do something.’” The Tunisian government had by then already blocked the diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks, which created an enticing and urgent bridge for a cohort of geeks.3
Some channel goers initially insisted it was “insane … to take on a government.” Adnon let it go. A week later, on New Year’s Eve, Adnon was on holiday with his family. With a blizzard roaring outside, he sneaked away and jumped online from his hotel room. He pushed back against the naysayers, bolstered by a sense of righteousness—and also a dose of misinformation and misunderstanding: “I, being oblivious to the actual size of the ‘moralfag’ anons, assumed there were thousands of active members and said, why not?” It is true there were thousands during Operation Avenge Assange, but the consistent number ran only in the hundreds, and those working specifically on propaganda and technical matters numbered even fewer, and were shrinking. But he kept pressing, and eventually enough were convinced:
Many joiners were still skeptical. As Quinn Norton reported for Wired, many “didn’t think either the op or the revolution had a chance.”4 But it turned out to be one of the group’s most stellar operations, ushering in a transformation from Anonymous to Anonymous Everywhere. No longer was the group bound to Internet-y issues like censorship and file sharing.
A day or so after Adnon resurrected the proposal, he received a private message (PM) on IRC from someone on #internetfeds, offering their many services—web
defacements, DDoSing, hacks. Maybe this would be easier than he thought. On January 2, 2011, at the dawn of a new year—always a sign of hope—Anonymous published the following press release inaugurating #OpTunisia, eventually translated into French, Arabic, Spanish, and Italian:
A time for truth has come. A time for people to express themselves freely and to be heard from anywhere in the world. The Tunisian government wants to control the present with falsehoods and misinformation in order to impose the future by keeping the truth hidden from its citizens. We will not remain silent while this happens. Anonymous has heard the claim for freedom of the Tunisian people. Anonymous is willing to help the Tunisian people in this fight against oppression. It will be done. It will be done.
This is a warning to the Tunisian government: attacks at the freedom of speech and information of its citizens will not be tolerated. Any organization involved in censorship will be targeted and will not be released until the Tunisian government hears the claim for freedom to its people. It’s on the hands of the Tunisian government to stop this situation. Free the net, and attacks will cease, keep on that attitude and this will just be the beginning.
The Tiger Consumes Four Chickens a Day
But let’s back up to the onset of revolution itself. Mohamed Bouazizi, Nawaat WikiLeaks, and Chelsea Manning all deserve thanks for its inception. In 2010, living under the Ben Ali regime since 1989, scores of Tunisians were downtrodden, living in deplorable conditions, and fearful as human rights abuses—torture, censorship, and detentions—intensified in the country. The country had not been party to any large-scale protests for decades, and its many Western allies, including the United States, singled Tunisia out as a model of political and economic stability in an Arab region otherwise known for strife and uncertainty.
So when revolution hit—and when the mainstream media finally reported on it with substance—it came as a shock (for Westerners, at least). The demonstrations led to one of the quickest dictatorial downfalls in recent times, and spread as a chain reaction across the region, becoming what is now called the Arab and African Spring. Like so many revolutionary moments, hindsight reveals that there had been, in plain view, enough despair to fuel a fire of defiance for weeks. All that was missing was a match: in Tunisia, two presented themselves.
First, on November 28, when WikiLeaks released its first batch of 220 diplomatic cables, they made the shrewd decision to partner with local activist and media outfits around the globe. One was in Tunisia: Nawaat WikiLeaks provided them with Tunisia-specific cables. Three Nawaat members translated the cables into French and published them under the banner of TuniLeaks to coincide with WikiLeaks’ larger public release of documents. Nawaat also worked with foreign geeks and hackers to ensure that their website with the cables remained online in the face of vigorous attempts by the government to censor it.
The cables confirmed what was widely known but theretofore undocumented as fact: Ben Ali was rotten to the core, his regime was mired in corruption, and his family lived in opulence while the rest of the country struggled to meet its daily needs. “The widely available proof of government corruption and hypocrisy based on an unstoppable flow of leaks was significant in fanning the flames of anger and agitation among citizens throughout the region,” wrote Ibrahim Saleh, an expert on Tunisian politics.5
Many Tunisians read these cables, duly noting the exact number of chickens fed to a pet tiger, and the three types of juices served at dinner—one of which was kiwi, hard to procure in the country:
12. (S) The dinner included perhaps a dozen dishes, including fish, steak, turkey, octopus, fish couscous and much more. The quantity was sufficient for a very large number of guests. Before dinner a wide array of small dishes were served, along with three different juices (including Kiwi juice, not normally available here). After dinner, he served ice cream and frozen yoghurt he brought in by plane from Saint Tropez, along with blueberries and raspberries and fresh fruit and chocolate cake.
13. (S) El Materi [Ben Ali’s son-in-law] has a large tiger (“Pasha”) on his compound, living in a cage. He acquired it when it was a few weeks old. The tiger consumes four chickens a day. (Comment: The situation reminded the Ambassador of Uday Hussein’s lion cage in Baghdad.) El Materi had staff everywhere. There were at least a dozen people, including a butler from Bangladesh and a nanny from South Africa. (NB. This is extraordinarily rare in Tunisia, and very expensive.)
19. (S) Most striking of all, however, was the opulence with which El Materi and Nesrine live. Their home in Hammamet was impressive, with the tiger adding to the impression of “over the top.” Even more extravagant is their home still under construction in Sidi Bou Said. That residence, from its outward appearance, will be closer to a palace. It dominates the Sidi Bou Said skyline from some vantage points and has been the occasion of many private, critical comments. The opulence with which El Materi and Nesrine live and their behavior make clear why they and other members of Ben Ali’s family are disliked and even hated by some Tunisians. The excesses of the Ben Ali family are growing.6
Second, on December 17, 2010, three weeks after Nawaat.org released the translated cables, an unrelated act of desperation ripped open the soul of the nation. Bouazizi—a young fruit and vegetable seller—was accosted by the police, who seized his unlicensed food cart and refused to return it even after Bouazizi offered to pay the fine. His first attempt at retrieving his cart was a frustrating failure. Low-level government officials refused to even talk to him. Doubly insulted and with a family of eight to feed, he set himself on fire. Powerless and voiceless in one moment, he became, in the next, impossible to ignore: but at the terrible cost of his life.
Protests began in Sidi Bouzid, the city where Bouazizi resided. Quickly they radiated out in every direction. Lives were lost at the hand of the police, causing more people to join in the protests. Takriz, an Internet-savvy group chartered as a mailing list in 1999, worked to connect the rough-and-tumble street youth to the Internet.7 Though Takriz had no direct connection with Anonymous, they were kindred spirits. A network of a few thousand, Takriz generally refuses to cooperate with journalists, bandies about obscenity as a shock tactic, and proudly embraces anonymity. Its current Twitter account reads: “Tunisian cyber think/fight tank & street resistance network since 1998. Free, True & Anonymous—Takrizo Ergo Sum—We make revolutions!”8
Bouazizi passed away from his burns on January 4, 2011, and the next day an estimated five thousand mourners attended his funeral, many of them chanting, “Farewell, Mohamed, we will avenge you. We weep for you today, we will make those who caused your death weep.”9 The next day, 75 percent of the nation’s lawyers went on strike, calling for an end to the crackdown.10 Tunisians from all walks of life—teachers, union members, students—joined the fray. Protests continued to spread and police violence escalated. By January 13, dozens of journalists, bloggers, and activists had been arrested and over sixty protesters had been killed. By the middle of the month, Ben Ali decreed a state of emergency, but it was impossible to contain the fury. However, reading the Western mainstream media at the time, one would have barely known.
“After all, you do not have to wear a mask to do it”
The North American and European public first got word of the protests from the publication of a brief Associated Press story on the riots. The report was understandably lacking in detail, as the revolts had just broken out. With each passing day, even as the protests intensified, the reporting in the mainstream Western media outlets, with a few minor exceptions, remained tepid. On January 9, 2011 (with Anonymous already engaged in Tunisia, acting as digital courier pigeons to get word and videos out from the trenches to the public at large), the AP published another story, picked up by newspapers like the New York Times and the Globe and the Mail, parroting Ben Ali’s position. “People taking part in the spate of unrest say they are angry at a lack of jobs and investment, but officials say the rioting is the work of a minority of extremists intent on damaging the north Afr
ican country.”11 Ben Ali would flee less than a week later, on January 15, 2011.
As part of its campaign, Anonymous wrote the following letter to journalists:
It has come to our attention that the ongoing riots in Tunisia have by and large escaped the notice of reliable Western news networks. It is the responsibility of the free and open press to report what the censored press cannot. The public demonstrations, as well as the actions Anonymous has taken in solidarity with the citizens of Tunisia, demand mainstream coverage.
The Tunisian government, led by President Ben Ali, has shown an outrageous level of censorship, not only blocking the websites of dissident bloggers, but also sites like Flickr and any website or news source mentioning WikiLeaks. In a show of blatant disregard for the guaranteed right of free speech, over the past 24 hours Tunisian government officials have hacked email and Facebook accounts of anyone who has taken actions labeled as “activism” (which may be as “dangerous” as planning a protest, or as innocent as commenting on a discussion board for a WikiLeaks related group). Entire Facebook accounts have been commandeered by the Tunisian government, who have even gone so far as to change profile pictures to a pirate ship in a mockery of those who stand for freedom of speech.
Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy Page 15