Anon on the run: How Commander X jumped bail and fled to Canada

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/12/anon-on-the-run-how-commander-x-jumped-bai/

By Nate Anderson
Ars Technica
Dec 11 2012

"You scared?" asks the fugitive in the camouflage pants as he sidles up 
to our pre-arranged meeting point in a small Canadian park. He wears 
sunglasses to hide his eyes and a broad-brimmed hat to hide his face. He 
scans the park perimeter for police. "Cuz I'm scared enough for both of 
us."

It’s a dramatic introduction, but Christopher "Commander X" Doyon leads 
a dramatic life these days. He jumped bail and fled the US after the FBI 
arrested him in 2011 for bringing down a county government website -- 
the only Anonymous-affiliated activist yet to take such a step. When I 
meet him months after his flight, he remains jumpy about getting caught. 
But Doyon has a story he wants to tell, and after he removes his hat, 
sunglasses, and backpack, he soon warms to the telling of it. It's the 
story of how, in Doyon's words, "the USA has become so tyrannical that a 
human rights/information activist would feel compelled to flee into 
exile and seek sanctuary in another country."

And it goes like this.


Cease fire

On December 16, 2010, at exactly 12:30pm, Doyon issued a typed order 
into an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) room used by the hacker collective 
Anonymous. "CEASE FIRE," it said in all caps. The command had no visible 
effect in the Starbucks where Doyon was working, though somewhere nearby 
the Web servers for Santa Cruz County, California groaned back to life 
after being flattened by a 30-minute distributed denial of service 
(DDoS) attack meant to protest an ordinance that regulated sleeping on 
public property.

Doyon unfocused his attention from his laptop screen and looked up at 
the coffee shop around him. Real life rushed back -- the buzz of 
conversation, the smell of roasted beans. No one paid him any special 
attention, but Doyon felt a sudden pang of fear.

[...]

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