Suppressing Dissent
July 21, 2010
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.
Byron (and influence through the media)
June 23, 2010
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 the orginal post down)
Above all, Byron Sonne was always an ethical person and someone who I trusted a great deal. And I agree with the assessment that Jesse Hirsh made in an interview with The Toronto Star:
“I suspect that this may just be a stunt and perhaps a stunt that got out of hand,” Hirsh said.
Regardless, it’s a shock to me that this would lead to an arrest and incarceration. None of the posts made threats or suggested potential for harm. His talk is innocuous. And this all looks like a very large over-reaction from a police service that felt somewhat embarrassed that someone was publicly calling them out on their failure to encrypt their communications and poor placement of security cameras.