Business as Usual? Arms, Surveillance and Arab Dictatorships

A wave of revolution across the Middle East and north Africa this year has left tyrants and dictators clinging to the power they once took for granted. Citizens of countries including Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain and Syria have taken to the streets and in some cases fought and died in an attempt to overthrow their rulers. But as Britain has offered its support to the newfound freedom fighters, some have made accusations of hypocrisy. After all, like many other western nations, the UK has been doing business with authoritarian regimes in the Arab world for decades.

Little is known about the true extent of the relationship the UK has maintained with dictators and autocrats across the region. However, as the old regimes crumble, details have begun to slowly emerge. Last week the organisation Human Rights Watch released documents it discovered in Libya, revealing that UK intelligence agency MI6 collaborated with Muammar Gaddafi's security services to transport terror suspects to Libya for interrogation, where they were allegedly subjected to torture. MI6 continues to deny involvement, though the secret documents paint an altogether different picture.

Amid the uprising in Egypt earlier this year, protesters made a similarly shocking find. After ransacking a government intelligence agency headquarters in Cairo, they unearthed hidden underground interrogation cells, evidence of torture, and a stockpile of documents that outlined a paranoid government programme of industrial-scale mass surveillance. Most controversially, among the many files was a letter from an English, Andover-based IT-security company, dated June 2010, offering to sell Egyptian authorities spy technology that would enable them to intercept dissidents’ emails, record audio and video chats, and take copies of computer hard drives.

The company, Gamma International, denies that it sold the technology, worth over £250,000, to the Egyptian authorities. “Gamma complies in all its dealings with all applicable UK laws and regulations,” it said in a statement. “Gamma did not supply to Egypt but in any event it would not be appropriate for Gamma to make public details of its transactions with any customer.”

Many similar products, manufactured in western countries, are believed to be widely available to Arab governments facing uprising. An extensive recent investigation conducted by the Bloomberg news agency, for instance, found that Trovicor, a German company with links to Siemens and Nokia, had supplied “monitoring centres” to at least twelve Middle Eastern and north African nations.

Such technology is used by governments around the world, including in the UK. However its use in most western countries is strictly regulated and can only be used when authorities have grounds to believe it could help prevent or detect a crime. Authoritarian regimes in the Middle East do not have the same regulatory framework, though this does not restrict western firms such as Gamma International and Trovicor from selling them their products.

Since the discovery of documents showing British and other European companies had either offered or sold intrusive spy technology to regimes across the Middle East and north Africa, a group of concerned European politicians has taken action. Six MEP’s including Baroness Sarah Ludford, Liberal Democrat MEP for London, made a joint request to the EU’s head of foreign policy calling for a decision on whether European companies contributed to human rights violations in countries including Tunisia, Bahrain, Egypt and Syria.

“I don’t know whether the EU has paid sufficient attention to this,” Ludford said. “It raises very important issues about whether export of surveillance equipment from the EU is being used in repression and human rights abuses. The law is a mess: it’s not being properly or rigorously applied and that needs to happen alongside responsible companies that check what the ultimate use [of the technology] is going to be.”

According to Dr Andrea Teti, a specialist in international security at Aberdeen University, it is not possible to stop surveillance systems from being used for repressive purposes unless firm new legislation is implemented, controlling the countries to which it is exported.

“Just because the physical harm comes once removed from this particular technology, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be concerned about it,” he said. “If there are safety implications for people in terms of their human rights or physical safety, then we should have some kind of controls. The problem that we have in the west is that in most cases those regulations are quite poor when it comes to export licensing. The onus is definitely on us to deal with that side of things – and we haven’t done so.”

Through the course of the Arab Spring the murky world of mass surveillance has undoubtedly been exposed by the fracture of once intensely secretive regimes. But important questions have also been raised about the UK’s role in arming state forces responsible for brutally repressing protests across the region.

In February the Foreign Office said it was conducting an “immediate and rapid review” of all UK arms export licences to affected countries. Between February and June, however, arms sales to Libya, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia totalled over £30m – 30 per cent more than for the same period in 2010. Weapons exported included sniper rifles, shotguns and submachine guns, according to an investigation by The Times.

The government has since blocked the export of arms to Libya and Syria as part of an EU embargo, and also revoked a number of military export licences to Bahrain. But Oliver Sprague, director of human rights group Amnesty International’s UK arms control programme, said it was a case of “closing the stable door after the horse had bolted,” and called for tighter regulations.

“Countries are entitled to purchase weaponry for legitimate defence and policing purposes, but was it ever remotely sensible for the UK to sell weapons and crowd-control equipment to countries like Gaddafi’s Libya?” he said. “The key question is: are our existing risk-assessment procedures tight enough when it comes to sending arms overseas? The lesson of countries like Bahrain and Libya is that they’re not and we could still end up sending weapons to human rights abusers in the future.”

The Foreign Office said that there was no evidence of any misuse of controlled military goods exported from the United Kingdom, though admitted “further work is needed on how we operate certain aspects of the controls.”

A spokesperson said: “We do not export equipment where there is a clear risk it could be used for internal repression ... Respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms are mandatory considerations for all export licence applications. HMG [Her Majesty’s Government] reacted quickly to the events in the Middle East: we reviewed licences and moved swiftly to revoke where they were no longer in the line with the criteria.”

This article first appeared in issue no.893 of the Big Issue in the North.

Work Elsewhere

Hello all. Been rather busy recently and have not had the time to update this website very frequently. However, the good news is I'm currently building a new section for 'reports' & 'clippings', as I predominantly only post features, interviews and other longer pieces here... so lots more content is in the pipeline. In the meantime, find below links to work I produced last month (more on the agenda in September):

Banks urged to end loans for cluster bomb makers, Big Issue in the North, August 29 2011.

University staff asked to inform on 'vulnerable' Muslim students, the Guardian, August 29 2011.

Facebook faces up to new privacy row, Big Issue in the North, August 22 2011.

Phone hacking survey & the role of investigative journalism, Frontline Club, August 19 2011.

New police riot powers would be 'unenforcable', Big Issue in the North, August 15 2011.

UK authorities should not be given a communication 'killswitch', openDemocracy, August 11 2011.

Campaigners gear up to oppose fracking in the UK, Big Issue in the North issue, August 8 2011.

Police forces come together to create new regional surveillance units, the Guardian, July 25 2011.

'We were raised by a generation of hypocrites'

Young Deacon is angry. The 17-year-old south London rapper watched his peers wreak havoc across the city last week in a frenzy of fire and destruction. In part of the borough where he lives, Wandsworth, a group of an estimated 1000 ransacked shops and clashed with police for several hours. Similar scenes took place in neighbouring Brixton and Peckham.

As the city was burning, at home in his bedroom Deacon wrote and recorded a song. Though he did not approve of the destruction on his streets, he felt he understood why it was happening. The rioters were filled with rage – and so was he.

Titled “Failed by the System”, the song – which can be heard here – touches on the Iraq war, unemployment, and criticises the media (“We’re branded alot / As rioters, looters / Murderers, yobs / Knifers, shooters / Depicted as the worst / On your news and computers”). It references budget cuts, crime rates and accuses the government of not having a grasp on why the riots happened (“You're focused on an issue / But you don’t know what the issue is / We were raised / By a generation of hypocrites”).

A debate has raged across Britain about whether the riots were just an expression of mere opportunistic criminality or a symptom of something much deeper – rooted in societal inequalities. For Deacon it is unquestionably the latter. His lyrics tap in to a sense, reflected in interviews with young people involved in the rioting, that something at the core of our society is broken or at least failing to function the way it should:

Don’t give up on the kids / They’re in need of support / Better role models / Not leaders at war / It takes a whole community / To raise a single child / So please think twice / Before you blame him 'cause he’s wild / If only he had that / Little bit of guidance / Maybe he wouldn’t be / Running from the sirens / Maybe he wouldn’t be / Adding to the violence / And maybe he wouldn’t be / Out in the riots

So what compelled Deacon to record the song? “The same reason why large amounts of young adults took to the streets that very same night, intent on causing havoc and destruction – the reason is anger,” he says.

“Like so many others my age, I feel as though I have been dealt an injustice within the society I live, or in other words, the sense of being ‘Failed by the System’. This idea is grounded not only in the rising of tuition fees [for university], but also within the spending cuts including youth club activities, and even through the stereotypical generalisation we – as a generation – receive from public authorities such as the Metropolitan Police.”

But it is not just politics or economics that is the root of Deacon’s grievance. The media, he believes, also has a significant role to play. He mentions a peaceful protest the black community staged at Scotland Yard two months ago that received no news coverage, referred to by another young man in Tottenham last week.

“As unfortunate as it is, the young generation have come to the realisation that in this day and age, those with power only respond to violence and destruction,” he says. “It [the media] is there to selectively filter the thoughts and opinions of a whole nation. This may seem like a whole different discussion, but nevertheless is part of an important issue that led up to the outbreak of riots, and therefore needs to be addressed.”

Quoting a friend, he adds: “We steal a pair of trainers, and the youth are in the media spotlight. A banker breaks the economy, and receives bonuses.”

On Wednesday, Deacon plans to release an album – “Poetic Justice” – for free download that he says will address the circumstances that led to the rioting. He invites people to listen to his music to “experience the system through the eyes of the failed.”

As for the future, he warns more trouble could be on the horizon, though remains somewhat hopeful that things could change for the better.

“I believe that the riots Britain faced this week are but a ‘small’ spillage of a boiling pot,” he says. “Save the youth, save the future."

This article originally appeared at: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/ryan-gallagher/raised-by-a-generation-of-hypocrites-youth-riots-london

America, Extradition and 'Policing the Internet'

Not often do US officials pay visits to students in Sheffield. But after building a website that allegedly shared links to pirated TV shows and movies, 23-year-old Richard O’Dwyer became a wanted man.

Accused of criminal copyright infringement, the Sheffield Hallam University undergraduate now finds himself at the centre of an extraordinary story. US authorities are attempting to extradite him so that he can be tried and imprisoned in America.

The threat of extradition came as a serious and unexpected shock to the O’Dwyer family. Richard’s mother, Julia, has since been forced to take sick-leave from work because of the stress it has caused her, and now spends her days trawling the internet to research the law.

“The effect of all this upon our family is immense,” she said earlier this month. “The thought of having my only son taken thousands of miles away to face an unknown legal system and without being able to monitor what is happening or to be able to advocate for him fills me with terror.”

Though Richard’s case is unusual, it is not isolated. Since 2004, 28 British nationals have been extradited to America, made possible by a treaty signed in 2003. Introduced to speed up the extradition of terrorist suspects, the treaty was negotiated by Tony Blair’s Labour government with the George W. Bush administration in the aftermath of 9/11. It allows the US to request extradition of UK citizens without evidence and on the basis of “reasonable suspicion” alone.

Using the powers of the treaty to go after people for breaching copyright and other crimes not associated with terrorism, the O’Dwyer family believe, is a clear abuse of its purpose. By allowing American authorities to seek extraditions on such grounds, they claim that the UK government is failing to protect its citizens and that the treaty is imbalanced in America’s favour.

"If Richard has committed any crime, it was committed on UK soil, and we have sufficient copyright legislation over here so that he can be prosecuted in the UK,” said a family spokesperson. “To extradite a young man in the middle of his university studies is wholly disproportionate.

“Since the Extradition Act came into force in 2004, the US has agreed to the extradition to the UK of only three people with a claim to US nationality. So presumably the US would understand if Britain were equally as protective of its own in preferring to try British defendants in the UK ... Just because an extradition request is made, doesn't mean that the British authorities have to agree to it.”

At the heart of the issue is the internet and how it has changed the nature of crime. In the seven years since the UK-US extradition treaty was brought in to force, the internet has hugely expanded – and with it hacking, piracy and other so-called “cyber-crimes”.

Another British citizen, Gary McKinnon, finds himself in a similar situation. A Scottish computer hacker who suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, McKinnon has been fighting extradition to the US since 2003. He admits hacking in to US government computer systems in order to try and find information about UFOs, but wishes to face trial in the UK. If sent to America, he could face a prison sentence of up to 70 years.

According to one of the UK’s leading experts on extradition law, Julian Knowles QC, the problem is that the extradition treaty does not contain a provision – known as “forum” – allowing courts to decide on balance whether each respective case is best heard in the UK or abroad. And because the internet has made it much easier for crime to be committed across borders at such a rapid pace – as well as change the nature of crime itself – the law has as yet failed to adapt.

“The law just doesn’t cater for this situation,” he said. “They [the Americans] will go after people who have committed crimes abroad with very little linkage to the US. And the English courts are powerless to say: ‘well, actually, the crime has been committed here in the UK.’ It’s the absence of that power that I think is the problem.

“What the McKinnon and O’Dwyer cases have indicated is that there can be real injustice in sending people back to the US to face very savage sentences – nothing like the sort of sentence that really matches the harm.”

A forum amendment, which would allow judges to consider whether McKinnon and O’Dwyer would be better tried in Britain, was tabled by politicians back in 2006. But it was not brought in to force at the time, Knowles says, because there is a “big dose of politics in extradition law making” and a reluctance to “upset the Americans”.

In June, a joint parliamentary committee on human rights recommended that urgent action was needed to make sure Britons were not extradited over alleged offences committed inside the UK or without any evidence being offered against them. “We wholeheartedly support the introduction of a forum safeguard,” the committee wrote. “It is difficult to understand why this has not yet happened.”

Isabella Sankey, director of policy for the human rights group Liberty, said that due to changes in technology there has been an upsurge in countries asserting jurisdiction over alleged actions that take place in other parts of the world. She agrees that it is in the interests of justice for a forum provision to be introduced.

“The Internet increases our risk of falling foul of the law, making it possible to commit an offence on the other side of the world without even leaving your bedroom,” she said. “[A forum amendment] would allow UK courts to bar extradition in the interests of justice where conduct leading to an alleged offence has quite clearly taken place on British soil.”

Earlier this month US authorities went further than ever before, claiming that anyone in any country who owns and runs a website with the .com or .net suffix is under their jurisdiction because these domains are by a technicality registered in the US state of Virginia.

Critics have branded this a clear attempt by America to “police the internet” as it struggles to control piracy of American-made films and television shows outside its own borders; the implications are severe. If the country was to try to prosecute every British individual with a .com or .net website linking to copyrighted content, it would put huge and unprecedented pressure on the UK’s extradition system.

In the meantime, US authorities continue to aggressively pursue both O’Dwyer and McKinnon, as well as nine other British nationals whose extradition cases are pending. McKinnon’s case is currently being reviewed by home secretary Theresa May, while O’Dwyer will face a preliminary hearing in September.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The UK's extradition arrangements are currently being reviewed by an independent panel to ensure they operate effectively and in the interests of justice. We expect the panel conducting the review to report at the end of the summer.”

This article first appeared in issue no.887 of Big Issue in the North.

LulzSec Interview: the full transcript

Last week, hacker collective LulzSec returned with a bang, attacking a series of websites owned by Rupert Murdoch's News International in apparent response to the ongoing phone hacking scandal.

For 50 days between May and June, the tight-knit, six-strong group made headlines across the world, rising to almost instant notoriety after perpetrating a series of audacious cyber attacks on high-profile government and corporate websites, before abruptly announcing that they would disband. Among just a few of LulzSec's targets: Sony, the US Senate, the CIA, the FBI and even the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency.

The authorities continue to try to track them down, and on Tuesday 20 suspected hackers were arrested in the UK, US and Netherlands as part of an ongoing international investigation. In a joint statement with an affiliated network of hackers known as Anonymous, LulzSec responded to the authorities directly. "We are not scared any more," they wrote. "Your threats to arrest us are meaningless as you cannot arrest an idea."

Earlier this month, two weeks after they had announced their apparent split, I managed to track down "Topiary", a founding member of LulzSec and self described "captain of the Lulz Boat". The interview was long - almost three hours - and covered lots of ground. But a great deal of what Topiary told me never made it in to the final write up, published by the Guardian, due principally to restrictions of space.

It was troublesome, deciding what to include and what to omit; the entirety of the interview was valuable. So rather than let the sections that were not printed disappear into the ether, the most sensible thing to do, I felt, was to have the full transcript published here in its entirety.

In the sections that were until now unpublished, Topiary explains how he first became involved in hacktivism and pays credit to his fellow hackers. He details the basis for extortion claims levelled against LulzSec by one US security company; reveals that he recently engaged in a bout of philanthropy, donating thousands of dollars to organisations including WikiLeaks; and also takes time to talk politics - blasting the US government, who he says are "scared of an uprising"... (click read more below for the full interview.)

The Fall of Murdoch

The fall of Rupert Murdoch has taken place not because of government ministers, the police, or other such figures in authority positions. It resulted as a consequence, quite astonishingly, of relentless muckraking on the part of excellent journalists who smelled a rat and followed its trail.

It is a truly fascinating moment – a watershed of some kind. We are now witnessing the same politicians who have cowered in Murdoch’s dark shadow for decades clamber over eachother to fire criticism in his direction. There is an undeniable stench about it – and perhaps just as the rotten core of News International has been exposed, so too has the spinelessness of the Westminster establishment.

No matter how it happened, however, the important thing is that it has happened. No longer will Murdoch be able to wield his all-pervasive influence on British politics. There will be no more backdoor meetings, friendly lunches and lavish parties: those days are over.

So the key question is now, where next? The investigation in to the full extent of the phone hacking – and its culture – could take months, more likely years. Over 3000 suspected victims have still to be contacted and there can be no doubt some of the worst revelations are yet to come.

Though amid the heightened climate of hysteria, it is important to keep a cool head. There must be a reasoned debate about how journalism, particularly tabloid journalism, can move forward after this ugly chapter. George Monbiot’s proposed introduction of a Hippocratic Oath for Journalists is a strong starting point.

There is a definite danger that politicians – with the broad support of the wider public – will attempt to impose new regulatory powers upon the press. This is a cause for concern. It is not in dispute that the self-regulating Press Complaints Commission (PCC) failed spectacularly on a number of levels throughout the duration of the hacking saga. (In a 2009 report, for instance, the PCC found "no new evidence to suggest that the practice of phone message tapping was undertaken by others beyond Goodman and Mulcaire" and dismissed the Guardian's coverage as "dramatic".) But it is not a given that the PCC should be scrapped altogether, as many, including prime minister David Cameron, have suggested.

Wholesale statutory regulation would dangerously inhibit freedom of the press, and we must remember that the print media is already bound by many laws (the Data Protection Act, the Human Rights Act, Defamation law etc.). It was a toxic, profit-crazed, scoop-obsessed culture at the News of the World that resulted in endemic phone hacking – not a lack of strong legislation.

This is where the discussion should begin. It is a bonus that after so many years there now seems to be, suddenly and without precedent, a broad consensus on the need for some kind of media reform. Every party and almost every politician is for once in agreement: as Murdoch’s empire crashes to the ground, it's time to build something new from the rubble.

This article originally appeared as part of openDemocracy's forum on the fall of Murdoch: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/james-curran-nick-couldry-ryan-gallagher-suzanne-moore-julian-sayarer/ourkingdom-forum-fa

Why LulzSec went on the Attack

Its audacity was brazen and apparently fearless. Among its high-profile victims were Sony, the CIA, the FBI, the US Senate and even the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency. Exposing frailties in government and corporate networks, the group leaked hundreds of thousands of hacked passwords, and in the process garnered more than a quarter of a million followers on Twitter. But after just 50 days, on 25 June, LulzSec suddenly said it was disbanding.

Just hours before this announcement, the Guardian had published leaked internet chat logs revealing the inner workings of the group, which appeared to consist of six to eight members. The logs showed that authorities were often hot on their heels, and that after an attack on an FBI-affiliated website two hackers had quit LulzSec as they were "not up for the heat". As media attention mounted, Ryan Cleary, an Essex-based 19-year-old suspected of affiliation to LulzSec, was arrested in a joint UK-US "e-crime" investigation. Had the pressure simply got too much to handle?

To find out, the Guardian tracked down one of LulzSec's founding members, "Topiary". A key figure in the tight-knit group, he was revealed in the logs to have managed LulzSec's Twitter account and to have written their press releases. After verifying his identity by asking him to send a direct message from the account – "This is the captain of the Lulz Boat," he confirmed – we began a long conversation by Skype.

"I know people won't believe this, but we genuinely ended it [LulzSec] because it was classy," he says. "The leaks we promised happened . . . 50 days were reached, we just about hit 275,000 Twitter followers, things were on a high, so we redirected our fans to [hacker collective] Anonymous and [hacking movement] AntiSec and wrapped it up neatly . . . A high note, a classy ending, a big bang, then a sail into the distance."

LulzSec's jovial public image undoubtedly helped it achieve unusual popularity within a short time. Its stated aim was to provide "high-quality entertainment at your expense," and the word "Lulz" is itself internet slang for laughs. The group's popularity spiked after it planted a fake story on US news outlet PBS.com in protest over what it claimed was a misrepresentative WikiLeaks documentary made by the broadcaster. The story falsely reported that rapper Tupac Shakur, who was killed in a shooting 15 years ago, had been found alive and well in New Zealand.

"What we did was different from other hacking groups," says Topiary. "We had an active Twitter (controlled by me), cute cats in deface messages, and a generally playful, cartoon-like aura to our operations. We knew when to start, we knew when to stop, and most of all we knew how to have fun."

But the group's mission, Topiary explains, was not calculated. Almost everything LulzSec did – from choosing its name to its next target – happened spontaneously. "We made it up as we went along. We were originally @LulzLeaks on twitter, but I forgot the password so we became @LulzSec. My first name was The Lulz Train, then The Lulz Cannon, then The Lulz Boat. I had no idea what The Love Boat was, it was a complete accident . . . I wrote every press release in Notepad without planning. That's what made us unique, we just came out and made stuff up out of nowhere . . . We released when it felt right, we tweeted what felt right, we wrote what we felt needed to be wrote. We weren't burdened by plans or board meetings, we just did it."

The leaked chat logs also revealed the hackers appeared to revel in the international attention they received. However, Topiary says it wasn't that LulzSec was media-hungry, but that the media was LulzSec-hungry.

"We didn't contact a single media outlet for at least the first 40 days, they just kept reporting on our humble tweets," he says, though he admits the attention "gave us more reasons to leak more. It was a thrill, sure, and it did play a role. We enjoyed occasionally confusing and pranking media with weird tweets, or giving exclusives to certain journalists to piss off other certain journalists. It was another aspect of the situation that helped us leverage the entertainment."

Yet although many of LulzSec's attacks were perpetrated "for the lulz", the group was accused of attempted extortion by one US security company, Unveillance – a charge Topiary staunchly denies. It was also criticised after it hacked and dumped thousands of Sony Pictures Europe customers' usernames and passwords online, some of which were reportedly later used in scams by fraudsters. But Topiary is unapologetic.

"It's Sony's fault for not defending – and encrypting – its customers' data," he says. "Similarly, in a perfect world, we'd have dumped said data and nothing would have happened. These scams simply prove that other people (our fans/spectators) are more evil than us."

Towards the end of LulzSec's reign, it seemed to gravitate towards more overtly political causes. It occasionally compared itself to WikiLeaks in tweets, and its penultimate leak was a joint effort with Anonymous to expose Arizona police as "racist and corrupt", and to "sabotage their efforts to terrorise communities fighting an unjust 'war on drugs'."

Anonymous is well known for its acts of political "hacktivism". On Monday it reportedly threatened to attack the Metropolitan police over News International's phone hacking and the possible extradition to Sweden of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Earlier this year the group claimed responsibility for a series of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on government websites in Tunisia, Iran, Egypt and Bahrain, and in 2008 it attacked the Church of Scientology after it allegedly attempted to suppress a leaked video interview with actor and scientologist Tom Cruise. Topiary has been heavily involved with Anonymous in the past, occasionally acting as its spokesman in televised interviews.

"Anonymous has been a great way for the younger generations to get involved through methods they understand, like utilising the internet," he says. "My main goal with Anonymous was to spread the word of revolution to those who might be seeking something new."

How does he define revolution? "Revolution is kicking the Tunisian government in the teeth by rendering their malicious Javascript embedments inert, allowing Tunisian citizens to surf Facebook without fear of password sniffing. Revolution is a horde of activists holding up Anonymous masks and thanking us for assisting their hard work by obliterating their government's ministry, stock and finance websites, replacing them with inspiring words. Revolution, to me, is bringing down the big guy while not forgetting to stand up for the little guy."

Though Topiary will not disclose his age, he describes himself as a teenager and "an internet denizen with a passion for change". He believes he is part of a generational shift in the way technology – specifically the internet – is increasingly being used as a tool to influence the world. The actions of Anonymous in particular, he says, have brought attention to the idea that actions taken online can have a major impact in real life – "linking the two realities". But he also recognises that the actions of Anonymous, LulzSec and other affiliated hackers can be used by governments as justification for greater control of the internet. So how does he balance his actions with that knowledge?

"It only results in greater government control if we remain apathetic and let it happen," he says. "The goal with Anonymous is to brutally cut down the middle of that decision and shout 'NO' to laws we don't agree with. Laws are to be respected when they're fair, not obeyed without question."

For now, however, Topiary is taking a break from law-breaking. He says he will continue operating on the margins of Anonymous, but will not engage in any more hacking. Instead, he intends to create art, video and graphics for the group to help with a new public relations project, to be titled Voice.

"I've been at this non-stop for a while, it's a big time-sink," he says. "Some people can handle it for years on end, and I respect those people. I just needed some air and a new page in the Anonymous/LulzSec era."

After the arrest of Cleary last month, suspected US hackers believed to be affiliated with LulzSec had their homes raided in Ohio and Iowa. In the past, hackers have been offered immunity from prosecution if they cooperate with the authorities. But, if caught, Topiary says he would "never snitch" on other hackers and that he would "pretty much" rather go to jail than work for the government in any capacity.

"Not sure I'd have a place in government security, unless they enjoy bizarre tweets," he says. "But again, no, I wouldn't accept a job that would fight against the things I've fought for. As for the authorities, well, if they have their claws in, they have their claws in, there's not much I can do about it. But I can only hope that they haven't pinned any of us, especially my friends from LulzSec."

This article originally appeared at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/14/why-lulzsec-decided-to-disband