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Much has happened within the Anonymous hive since Thursday night’s shooting death of an as-yet-officially-unnamed Anon at the hands of Dawson Creek RCMP officers. The officers had been called out to deal with a masked Anon who had reportedly ripped posters from the walls and overturned tables at a BC Hydro open house presentation for their contentious $8.8 billion Site C dam proposal. Police were called to deal with the protester, but by the time they arrived he had departed.

Instead, they shot a different masked Anon who was on the sidewalk outside the venue.

An Anon lost his life while in opposition to @bchydo and #SiteC. It would honor @jaymack9's memory if we keep those actions in mind. — Operation Anon Down (@OpAnonDown) July 20, 2015

The Site C dam’s construction has so far been delayed by vigorous resistance from environmental groups and the First Nations of the affected area, a group known as the Treaty 8 Tribal Association.

CBC reported that the Anon shot by cops was holding a pocket knife. Anon claims knife was on his belt & was removing it coz told to do so. — Pirate Party Canada (@piratepartyca) July 19, 2015

Eyewitness reports indicate that the masked man may have been trying to put down the knife in his hand when an unnamed RCMP officer shot him. After he fell to the sidewalk, an officer kicked away the knife, then turned him over and handcuffed him. He died at the hospital. The aftermath of the shooting was caught on video by Cory Pfeipher, who posted it to Facebook. In the video you can hear him say, “The cops just fucking shot this guy. He’s fucking dead. There’s blood everywhere. This is fucked up.” That video has been viewed over 150,000 times.

It wasn’t long before Anonymous responded publicly. Although it took roughly 24 hours for the news to hit the wider Hive Mind’s radar, once it did it exploded like an atom bomb.

At least two separate groups began working on retaliatory actions, while innumerable others worked through that night and the next to identify the fallen Anon. While the police have not released his name, there is among the collective a dread, a burdensome sense of immanence, over the continued silence of brother JayMack9.

@just_a_bear_ U and everyone else here our friend.. — jay mack (@jaymack9) July 16, 2015

That was his last tweet. His previous one indicated he would be in attendance at the BC Hydro Open House. He has not been heard from since.

This shooting in Dawson Creek, BC, has many of you upset. He was a member of Anonymous, but he was also Native. — Christian Big Eagle (@WalkingDeadAnon) July 18, 2015

You all prattle on about how you want to defend the life of a man you never knew. I'm going to mourn my friend. #OpAnonDown fucking idiots — DevonJHall (@SynableBish) July 20, 2015

SynableBish isn’t speaking to media, but we have spoken to other friends of Jaymack’s, and they have not had contact with him since Thursday. A Facebook page which appears to belong to the same person also has not been updated since Thursday. We’re withholding more information until we are sure the family of the deceased has been notified.

In the aftermath of the shooting, a new Twitter account and hashtag emerged: OpAnonDown was a group effort which boasted the Twitter support (if not more) of Commander X, the firebreathing PLF activist who famously went on the run to escape American charges, crossing the Canadian border with journalist Amber Lyon. Since then he has been involved in many operations, ostensible retirement notwithstanding, including OpFerguson, the Anonymous response to the police shooting of Michael Brown.

Within less than 24 hours, they’d released a press release via YouTube video and accompanying Pastebin transcript.

Anonymous Press Release: Operation Anon Down Saturday – July 18, 2015 4:00 PM ET At approximately 6:30 PM PT on July 17, 2015 at an Anonymous protest in Dawson Creek, British Columbia which the RCMP was informed about in advance, an RCMP officer mercilessly shot and killed a masked Anon without provocation or cause. This is the fourth Anon to be slain by security forces around the world in as many years. Turkey, Egypt, Palestine and now British Columbia in Canada. As in the past, Anonymous will not stand idly by while our own are cut down in mask. Anonymous has fought for the lives of protesters all over the globe, from Tahir Square in Egypt to Ferguson, Missouri. We will most certainly avenge one of our own when they are cut down in the streets while protesting the earth wrecking environmental policies of the Canadian government. To this end Anonymous announces the launch of Operation Anon Down. The focus of this Op going forward will be gaining justice (and vengeance if necessary) for our fallen comrade in Dawson Creek. But we will also memorialize our previously slain brethren, and prepare to take action for future Anons killed by police – as we have no doubt they will cut down more of us. To begin we will identify the RCMP officer involved, thoroughly dox him – and release that dox on the Internet. Because the world has a right to know every detail about killer cops. We will offer support and raise funds if necessary to cover the burial expenses of our fallen comrade. He will be buried with the honor and dignity that his courage has earned him. We will ensure that he is never forgotten, and takes his place in the growing ledger of brave Anonymous martyrs around the world. Then we will press the RCMP and Canadian government for justice. This RCMP officer must be named, fired, and charged – for the murder of our brother Anon. And if we do not receive justice, rest assured there will be revenge. We call upon our fellow Anons in Canada to take to the streets and protest at the RCMP headquarters in every Province, every day – until our demands for justice are met. We call upon the Global Collective of Anonymous and allied crews to remove the RCMP cyber infrastructure from the Internet. March, create and sign petitions, hack, dox. We may not be able to bring back our fallen comrade, we may not even be able to prevent other Anons from being slain by murderous police – but we can sure as hell show them that there will be a steep price to pay when they kill us. “Behind this mask there is more than flesh and blood

Behind this mask is an idea

And ideas are bullet proof” We Are Anonymous We Are Legion We Are Everywhere We Do Not Forgive We Do Not Forget To the murderous officers of the RCMP…it is to late to Expect Us —————————————————————— Website – http://www.OperationAnonDown.cf Twitter – @OpAnonDown

That’s when things started going bad for the RCMP.

Anonymous taunting #RCMP after apparently targeting its websites. https://t.co/PsYMYVEKDk — shane woodford (@WoodfordCKNW980) July 19, 2015

RCMP lied about the identity of our Anon they killed. They lied about him failing to comply with orders to put down a pocket knife. — Operation Anon Down (@OpAnonDown) July 20, 2015

RCMP claimed to LIQ that they took their website offline themselves. This is the second lie we have called them out on. | #AnonDown — Operation Anon Down (@OpAnonDown) July 19, 2015

The RCMP were quick to claim the websites, of the National and Dawson Creek divisions of the force, were offline for “maintenance” which is almost certainly a surprise to their systems administrators, as it just happened to coincide with an Anonymous DoS or DDoS attack. The distinction is important: in a DoS attack the attacker uses only his/her own computer. In a DDoS attack, the attacker uses enslaved, hacked computers often rented from for-profit blackhat hackers. The latter tends to be considered more criminal and less protesty by judges and juries.

4) It is traditional here in Canada for First Nation protesters to show up with rifles. | @AnonAutopsy @Anon2Earth @GeorgieBC — Commander X (@CommanderXanon) July 18, 2015

It’s fair to say Commander X’s style (and his statements of purported fact such as the above rifle quote) are not universally popular among Anonymous. In fact, according to people within the Op, on Sunday night he was locked out of the OpAnonDown account after Anonymous as a whole suffered blowback from public perception of violent threats from the Hive.

Under new management. Hacked by @H4rv357v01d. — Operation Anon Down (@OpAnonDown) July 20, 2015

We spoke to the hacker to get his side of the story. We also asked Commander X for comment, which he absolutely declined to give.

The #RCMP will face the consequences of their actions but violence will not be used by us. We won't stoop to their level. — Operation Anon Down (@OpAnonDown) July 20, 2015

Commander X, locked out of this acct by request of Anons who think tweet storms will save world. (Also cause bad at group work). #AnonDown — Operation Anon Down (@OpAnonDown) July 20, 2015

Our #V4Vengeance will be swift, and powerful but it will not include violence. #AnonDown — Operation Anon Down (@OpAnonDown) July 20, 2015

.@OpAnonDown under new management. More focus on justice and less on vengeance. #Anonymous — emaN (@H4rv357v01d) July 20, 2015

Noting a stylistic difference? We thought so.

“Yes, I took the account, @OpAnonDown from X,” H4rv357v01d told us. “I won’t discuss how (I have to keep a few secrets). The reasons were obvious. The tweets coming from that account about ‘vengeance’ were distracting from the issues at hand, which are the fact that a man was killed by police and also about #SiteC and @bchydro. I was seeing reference to armed protest because of the fallen Anon and that’s not how Anons protest.”

“I didn’t take the account to try to run this Op, far from that. Access has now been given to several other Anons. I took the account from X because of the disruptions he was causing in the name of OpAnonDown. Anonymous doesn’t resort to violence to make our message heard, and several tweets from @OpAnonDown alluded to violence. X has bungled Ops in the past because of his famefaggotry, ineptitude, or what-have-you. There were planned rallies opposing the #SiteC dam project and tweets from within @OpAnonDown has caused those to be cancelled due to perceived threats. That does nothing to honor the memory of @jaymack9.”

“If anything, I feel, more attention should be given to the fight of the First Nations to stop #SiteC because it is important enough that a man lost his life over it.”

But OpAnonDown, whether under X or under Y, was not the only group in action.

On the bright side #OpCyberPrivacy is gearing up to run a SubOp for vengeance and justice for our fallen brother. Let's make #BaconPoutine — Op Cyber Privacy (@OpCyberPrivacy) July 19, 2015

OpCyberPrivacy, whose members had hacked numerous Canadian government sites to protest the passage of spy bill C-51, were also on the case, and have the advantage of knowing their way around government servers. We spoke to several members of the international team about their efforts, which included another tangodown of the RCMP servers Sunday night.

Of course, they have their own YouTube video.

An operative we’ll call Sir told us, “We #TangoDown’d two sites tonight in addition to pen testing many others. the main site, rcmp-grc.gc.ca (205.193.86.86) as well as ssc-spc.gc.ca 205.193.117.149.” We verified this independently. Oh, but there’s more.

“Tonight I was wondering around some gc.ca’s [Canadian government websites] and realized something… They have all their config files available publicly. They also have a large number of tarballs floating around anyone can download. These files appear to contain a roadmap of the website, the code behind it, where all the files are on the server it’s hosted on, javascripts, etc, etc, etc. I came across what looks like some manner of financial ledgers here as well. Also publicly available.”

We’re no haXXors, but they showed us enough that we can confirm the claims, which would seem to indicate the RCMP ‘s [sorry, copypaste error] AAND’s servers are shockingly porous. The RCMP’s are just tippy and vulnerable to DDoS.

Sir put it in a nutshell. “It’s open for anyone to download and view, everything you’d need to plan an attack, and the server itself is vulnerable to a host of exploits.”

#AnonDown has accessed docs marked "secret" inside Canadian government. It's not just a DDoS op anymore kiddos. More tomorrow. Night all. — Operation Anon Down (@OpAnonDown) July 20, 2015

We also asked about the apparent coup in OpAnonDown, and oh, he had plenty to say about that.

“We took his access and will continue on as planned. X will have nothing more to do with any of this, as it should have been from the get-go. He advocated for violence, something Anonymous never does! It’s disgusting. He is a rat, a piece of shit. Scum of the earth type. He is the cancer Anonymous needs to cut away.”

But tell us how you really feel.

Someone has already responded:

The Twitter account @OpAnonDown was hijacked by malicious individuals and is no longer the official account for Op Anon Down. | #AnonDown — Op Anon Down (@OpAnonDown2015) July 20, 2015

A second OpCyberPrivacy team member explained how OpCyberPrivacy and OpAnonDown were connected. “The goal of both ops is to bring this murderous cop to justice. Opcyberpricacy had begun action at the same time as opanondown and came together. We’re involved because this is an implication of C-51: The Worst Case Scenario kind of implication.”

As for what justice looks like in this context, s/he was clear. “Justice is immediate dismissal [of the officer who killed the Anon] and applicable criminal charges.”

“Almost the entirety of Anonymous is behind this. They will feel the full wrath of the entire Collective until justice is served.”

UPDATE: they’re not letting the grass grow.

https://twitter.com/OpAnonDown/status/623160304910794752

So is anyone involved in Dawson's Creek going to stop and consider what he'd want? Cause this aint it — DevonJHall (@SynableBish) July 19, 2015

Categories: Activism, Anonymous, Breaking, Canada, Cyber, Dawson Creek, DDoS, DoS, Hackers, Hacktivism, Interviews, News, OpAnonDown, OpCyberPrivacy, Ops, Police, Protests, RCMP