In our last roundup, Sitara’s Tumblr blog had been hacked by rival hacker gang, Prime_Eight. After a brief investigation, Josh discovered that the person who had paid big bucks for the hack was a Blume employee and a member of New Dawn.
To kickstart her blog back up again for the new year, Sitara issued this:
State of the Union: I’m back. Been a lot going on around here. Got a new member, hacked a bunch of a**holes, you know the drill… Welcome to the DedSec State of the Union address.
Marcus is the new guy. Some of you might know him as Retr0. He’s another case of ctOS targeting someone incorrectly, and potentially ruining their life. Potentially. But our boy is an excellent hacker. We met while he was correcting his ctOS profile. Nice bit of work. Now he and Wrench are in the middle of an epic bromance.
Aside from recruitment, we’ve been pursuing some leads on your favorite corrupt tech giants. Most leads that come our way don’t pay out, but some… some do. And we’ve done good work.
As for our goals for the New Year? We’re hearing whispers that Nudle has some fancy s*** planned for their key note in February, so we’ll be looking into that. Also been hearing about disappearances around the old trainyards and in the homeless encampments. (If you have any info about that, please send it our way.) I’m sure we’ll unearth even more work for DedSec.
Peace out.
In which Sitara discovers a disturbing development about one of DedSec’s previous members, Benicio:
Happy New Year!
We celebrated in typical DedSec fashion: loud and proud. Pretty sure Wrench and Marcus still have hangovers. You really gotta keep hydrated, kids.
A bunch of leads poured in after our last post. We’re loving it, so keep ‘em coming. We also got a lot of questions about how we work, so I figured I’d explain a bit.
We each pick our own ops to research and then pitch them to the group. Whoever is interested joins in. Those who aren’t interested, don’t. Sometimes there’s not enough to keep more than one or two people busy on a single op, even if a lot of people want to do it. If there’s a lot of interest, and a lot to do, that’s when the whole group throws in on something. It’s different each time.
Right now Wrench is following up on the Nudle stuff. Josh picked up on some strange noises coming out of Prime_8 (the jerks). Marcus and I are following up on the disappearances. One of our own disappeared a while back, so this one hits close to home. Kid named Benny. Benicio. He’s a good guy, and not the kind to just drop off the grid without warning. All of us are really invested in this one. I’m sure you can understand why. For now it’s just Marcus and me working on it because we don’t have enough for the others to do yet.
I think we’re dealing with a couple different causes on this one. The disappearances are too random. Whoever is taking the homeless isn’t the same person (or people) taking tech savvy college kids. I’m betting on something sketchy with one of the tech giants. Marcus is betting on the mafia. Could be both. Or neither.
For those of you who keep sending us messages saying it’s The Shuffler, or The Hook, or Bigfoot… please stop. Those are urban legends and just waste our time.
Again, happy New Year, guys! Here’s to 2017 being a good one.
A photo of ex-DedSec member, Benny and Ai Li, taken in 2016:
Sitara’s getting pretty sick of disenfranchisement:
#NoMoreLies
Josh stumbled on something really interesting while he was looking into Prime_Eight’s police file. Looks like the PD has been suppressing reports of a fatal shooting. Cop shot an unarmed black kid. A witness recorded it on their cell phone, which the cops of course confiscated for evidence.
You’d think this would be a huge f!@#$%$ deal, but someone over at WKZ massively edited the released footage and most of the other media outlets don’t seem to know about it. It looks like ctOS flagged the vic (Mike Nassan) as high threat. Just like they flagged Marcus. And just like with Marcus, so far we aren’t finding any actual evidence of dangerous behavior in the boy’s background. We won’t know more until we get a hold of the rest of that footage—and trust me, we will—but it looks like a cover-up.
This can’t stand. We can’t let it stand.
Because the truth matters.
Hacker Group Exposes Police Shooting
The released footage shows a police officer approaching a young African American man identified as Mike Nassan. The encounter quickly escalated with the officer throwing the young man to the ground and the young man pushing the police officer in return. There were two shots fired and paramedics said the young man was dead before they arrived on the scene.
Amidst accusations of corruption, the police department released a statement declaring they “deeply regret this tragic event” and they offer their heartfelt “sympathy to the young man’s family and community.” They refuse to release the name of the officer involved.
DedSec claims the death was a result of poor police training, which allowed the incident to escalate, and erroneous ctOS information. Nassan was apparently marked as a high risk criminal in his ctOS profile, although there is no record of him committing any crime and, indeed, he appears to have been a promising high school athlete. The hacker group claims the police officer was primed to consider Nassan a threat because of the ctOS profile.
------------
Mysterious Disappearances Haunt Oakland
It’s been a year since Richard Jackson disappeared and still we have no new information, just more disappearances. The young man was reported missing in January 2016 by his girlfriend, Seema Mashruwana, who herself went missing four months later. A well-known street artist, she was last seen working near the train tunnels in south-east Oakland. Two other members of the same social circle have also disappeared.
Were all of these young adults kidnapped? Is this all some elaborate hoax? Friends and family are bewildered. Mariana Jackson, Richard’s mother, says she “just wants to know what happened” even if it turns out her son is dead. “There’s no closure,” she says, “and you find yourself wondering all the time if he’s okay. If he’s hurting…”
Wrench takes over the blog …
IT’S REAL!
THE SHUFFLER IS REAL! Don’t let Sitara FOOL you.
Okay. Sitara told you all about Benny, right? College kid. SMART. Bit of a doofus. All around great DedSec member. He disappeared. DISAPPEARED! And so did his BEST BUDDIES. Him and three other kids. The Shuffler 4.
I KNOW he was looking into the Shuffler when he disappeared. He was KEEPINg NOTES and making MAPS of the CITY and s @#$. We STILL have his computer with some of his files. Kid encrypted them pretty good, but I’m SURE we’ll find some INTERESTING s@#$ in there.
Some people are saying it’s just a bunch of flakey kids RUNNING AWAY and they’ll show up again. Well, they WON’T. Not unless we find them! I mean, shit. Even THEIR FAMILIES are GIVING UP on them now. We went to Benny’s FUNERAL. They didn’t even have a body!
The TRUTH is out there, and we’re gonna FIND IT.
For updates and content from Sitara, you can follow her DedSec Hackerspace Tumblr blog directly (please note that it is in English only).
As always, feel free to create your own DedSec-inspired art and messages using our DEDSEC_DESIGNS kits and share them with us using hashtags #DedSecCreations or #JoinDedSec.