Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Suppressing Dissent

I once heard it said (and I can’t find the quote) that a society’s level of freedom isn’t determined by how it treats its normal citizens – it’s determined by how it treats those who dissent and don’t adhere to society’s norms.

Nowhere do I find this more evident than in the Byron case.

Look, let’s be blunt: from everything we know about what Byron was doing, it was kind of stupid. He was acting as an agitator to the G20 security establishment. He wasn’t being particularly subtle. He was trying to stir up a response, and he did.

I think it’s clear that he’s guilty of mischief. He’s certainly an agent provocateur (def: “a person or group that seeks to discredit or harm another by provoking them to commit a wrong or rash action.”)

Joshua Errett over at NOW Toronto described it best:

“What Sonne was actually trying to do is expose security inadequacies of the G20, as is the role of the hacker. His intent was never to harm, and any crimes he allegedly committed were entirely victimless.

That the justice system can’t see the deep shades of difference between Sonne detailing security lapses and petty vandalism is an outright shame. And, in some ways, discrimination. If Sonne had been a cowardly Blac Blocker, bail would have already been set. There certainly seems a different set of rules for hacking.”

With the ruling yesterday that Byron will remain in jail until his trial and be unable to have any contact with his wife during that time (unless in the presence of lawyers), there’s little question that he got the “rash action”.

And it’s clear that Canadian society has made its statement on how it intends to deal with dissent – zero tolerance.

In contrast to Byron’s crimes, those who steal $30-$50 million, dangerous offenders, those who kill while drinking and driving and crack dealers all go free on bail.

This is one of the more disturbing issues with the case – not that Byron wasn’t guilty of being annoying, but that the treatment he is receiving at the hands of the justice system in Canada is far more harsh than those who commit far more significant crimes that leave people hurt, dead or destitute.

Free Byron.

Technorati Tags: byron sonne, canada, dissent, free byron, overreaction, politics, stupidity, supression


Byron (and influence through the media)

If you’re following the Toronto news today, one of the main stories out there is about a former team member of mine, Byron Sonne. The news coverage (CNN, Yahoo) paints Byron to be one step this side of Timothy McVeigh… explosives, threatening police, etc.

And that doesn’t even mention that the picture that they’re using makes him look that way.  (As an aside: in my 11th grade journalism class, we spent a lot of time talking about how pictures frame the news story that you’re reading.  Before you ever even start the Globe and Mail coverage of this story, you’re greeted with a blurry, grainy picture of Byron looking like he’s about to blow up a building.   Regardless of whether the facts  support the charge, our minds are primed with all of the times that we’ve seen a terrifying looking psychopath looking very similarly to this picture… and we read the story with that bent.)

Unfortunately, the reality seems a little less glamorous. If you read Byron’s Twitter account, you’ll find that Byron was being little more than the opinionated activist that he is. “An agent provocateur”, as someone told The Star. He talked about investigating the fences and posted video of the fences. He talked about how the cameras were being set up in locations that were likely to be used by activists. And he was pointing out that the amount of money spent on “security” for this conference was a little out of range.

One of the things that Byron has been most pilloried for in the news was the talk he gave a few months back on radio surveillance (a decent account can be found here).

Amazingly, Byron even posted the slides to that supposedly “provocative” talk on his Twitter feed. (I’ve put the same slides here for the BitTorrent challenged). Read them… there’s nothing in there that suggests anything but a security professional talking about insecure radio transmission.

Let’s give a different picture of the guy that used to work for me. Byron’s a very smart and well-rounded engineer. While he wasn’t the top producer on the team, he was someone who I valued a great deal from a management perspective. He was vocal and would push others to come to the table with their best (even when he wasn’t up to their level). He was the member of the team most willing to call out others in a meeting. It wasn’t just internal… he was even willing to call out a vendor in a blog post. (Note that since I wrote this, nCircle took

Influence and Failing Kindergarten

Had a great chat with my friend Drawk Kwast recently that he recorded for his list of users (which was an honor given the people he usually interviews). As expected, we rambled all over the map and talked about a million different topics around influence, living an adventurous and successful life, and always being willing to have fun and do the things that most people won’t do.

The thought that stuck out to both of us during the chat was the idea that we’d fail kindergarten if we were subjected to another year – that the things that has made each of us successful to this point would have caused utter failure in the current school system. We both have a nearly chronic inability to follow the rules, stay in single-file lines, refrain from asking “why?” about a million times too often and ensure that we always make the sky blue when we color.

As Drawk said: “we’d in the corner eating the paste.”

I realized later that I should have corrected him… so I will now… “we’d be in the corner figuring out how to take the paste, turn it in to some crazy 5-star dish involving liquid nitrogen and debating about how to market a nationwide line of “frozen paste” shops.“.

It’s a trait that a lot of my friends seem to share.

The MP3 is worth a listen – Drawk had some great stories on there and I talked about random stuff that some people might find interesting.

(Aside: if you haven’t picked up Drawk’s “Domination Basics” ebook, you need to – it’s free and one of the better reads of the last year. The last person who I convinced to read it immediately sent me the message that “OMG! Drawk Kwast is the UberMan!!!!”. All I can say is that you should read it yourself and find out what all the exclamation points are all about.)