Regardless of whether the ones he called out are innocent (though I suspect most are, since his methods are the work of a madman), he trawled through hundreds of profiles, twitter feeds, IRC conversations, and basically cyberstalked the hell out of every friend of every person he thought might be a "leader" of Anonymous; many of them underage, and the vast majority completely oblivious about Anonymous. He even created a fake persona, who was a kid just like his targets. This is the stuff pedophiles and con-men do to get closer to their victims. I'm not suggesting the guy is a pedophile (but "con-man" might be a good word to describe him); I'm just saying that I can't believe any adult (if not Barr himself, who I don't think is quite sane, then one of the many people at his company who had some idea of what he was doing) would look at all these activities and not think, "Whoah! This is crazy and probably illegal. We need to reel this guy in, or get him out of this company before he causes us real trouble."
he trawled through hundreds of profiles, twitter feeds, IRC conversations, and basically cyberstalked the hell out of every friend of every person he thought might be a "leader" of Anonymous...This is the stuff pedophiles and con-men do to get closer to their victims might do.
That's also what private investigators and intelligence agents might do. By your logic, all private investigators using the same methods are pedophiles.
If I were deliberately smearing AB, I'd try to concoct a reason to mention him as you do in posts also mentioning "pedophile" and "schizophrenic" as often as possible, only I'd use logic that wasn't such an indiscriminate stretch.
That said, yes, I agree he's an unsavory character. His actions were also likely to get him in trouble. He was totally out of his depth and should've been fired.
"If I were deliberately smearing AB, I'd try to concoct a reason to mention him as you do in posts also mentioning "pedophile" and "schizophrenic" as often as possible, only I'd use logic that wasn't such an indiscriminate stretch."
Yeah, I would, too.
But, I'm being sincere. This is creepy behavior from a guy who was not listening to reason from anyone around him.
I don't think anyone needs to smear him...anyone who reads the emails can't come away thinking this guy is a good guy. I'm just ranting because this whole thing is terrifying to me.
The thought that our government might be funding this kind of insanity under the guise of "national security" is...well, have you ever seen The Lives of Others? It's a great film about the Stasi in East Germany, and how they read everything, watched everyone, kept dossiers on everyone, and basically just kept an eye on every single person on the off chance they might be up to something. This, to me, is the modern equivalent...though I would hope it's not taking place in any actual police office.
A friend of mine has a father who had a file on him by the Stasi. In it they had a "scent sample". Someone had broken into his bedroom and stolen a piece of linen that he had slept on while he was in the shower one day. It's crazy to think that someone had/has the job of collecting "scent samples". And what a government would need that for, really.
And agreed, the coder was a saint among men!