Like this article, I too do not support the current assessment of Anonymous as the priority threat to national security of democratic governments in any part of the world.  I too believe the danger of over-reaction by governments to movements will be  counter-productive.  And as an artist, I have spoken a lot about the reality of declining creative and innovative as a  direct by product of war on 'terror policies'.

Yochai Benkler has put this, and a lot more, into an excellent article within the usually hawkish Foreign Affairs Journal which I usually avoid.  Believe me, when this journal starts publishing these types of articles there is a change in the air that those currently on top need to listen to before its too late.  For those that are loosely  familiar with the over-used concept of the military-industrial-complex (MIC), this article illuminates some new angles. Again, I stopped reading Foreign Affairs,  but perhaps they have decided to become relevant again.

I am heartened that Benkler links this issue to the decline in innovation, creativity and expression in Western democracies (and hallmarks of American exceptionalism in the past tense) which an over-militarised civil society has encouraged.

Hacks of Valor

SNAPSHOT:  The U.S. government has begun to think of Anonymous, the online network phenomenon, as a threat to national security. This is the wrong approach. Seeing Anonymous primarily as a cybersecurity threat is like analyzing the breadth of the Vietnam antiwar movement and 1960s counterculture by focusing only on the Weathermen.

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