At this time of year, everyone does these year end posts in attempts to sum up the year and make the year that is ending seem particularly eventful. Usually, only a few big things happened. This year, this sort of post is worth doing. This is a brief outline of the events of discontent in 2011 with an emphasis on what I know the most about.

2011 was a year punctured by a series of related but distinct events with one common theme: discontent. The year started off with revolutions all across the middle east. Some of the places these occurred are Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya. Some people attribute the WikiLeaks cables to helping spark the uprisings. One of the big events during these uprisings was when the internet was taken down in Egypt because protesters were using it to organize. Telecomix, a group of noble hackers, helped dissenters communicate securely.

Starting in late 2010, David House publicized the mistreatment of Bradley Manning. Bradley Manning was accused of leaking classified US military documents to WikiLeaks. He had been in solitary confinement in the Quantico marine base since summer 2010. David was one of his visitors and said he had watched Manning’s state deteriorate greatly. He brought Manning’s conditions to the media and eventually people took notice. Manning is also a citizen of the UK so they showed concern for his conditions, as did the UN. Shortly after his story became widespread, Manning was placed on suicide watch and his clothes were taken away at night. He was bullied and his condition became worse. In March, David was removed from the visitors list. Hype around his case continued to build as supporters held a large protest at Quantico. In April, Manning was transfered to Ft. Leavenworth in what seems an attempt to make the public forget about him. Unfortunately, it seems like people did forget about Manning for a while.

In the middle of May, the Spanish protests started. They continued throughout the summer in a sort of ‘occupation’ at times. These marked the first major protests outside of the middle east and served as a model for later events like Occupy.

Starting in mid-May, the script-kiddie tactics of Anonymous reached their height and LulzSec appeared. I originally supported LulzSec. They appeared slightly more intelligent than Anonymous and, at first, less destructive with their methods. It helped that one of their first targets was PBS after they published their documentary, “WikiSecrets”. This documentary implied that many people I know were involved in leaking documents, putting them at risk. Unfortunately, the targets grew more random and LulzSec’s actions more malicious. They became destructive and seemed to enjoy breaking into things and wreaking havoc, not caring about the damage they dealt. Destruction is not the way to improve the world.

LulzSec spawned the AntiSec movement, which is still around but has grown quiet since Occupy. In this, they encouraged others to destroy. Around July and early August, the internet was chaos. Almost no one was speaking out against AntiSec. Those who did were attacked. I got fed up with decided to in early August and immediately got my site DDoSed. Others who spoke up met the same fate. Eventually, AntiSec wound down and many more condemned the last of their flurry of actions.

In late May and June, one year after Bradley Manning was imprisoned, the US government sent out subpoenas to WikiLeaks and Manning supporters. They were summoned to a secret grand jury on WikiLeaks in Alexandria, VA. The location was no coincidence; Alexandria is home to many current and former government employees. Even worse, those who plead the fifth could be granted immunity and if they still refused to testify, they would be held in contempt of court and sent to jail. One of my friends, David House, was subpoenaed in June. He plead the fifth and has not been granted immunity yet and hopefully never will be. In response to the grand jury, some friends and I started the group Civic Counsel and held a protest. More on this in a later post.

In July, Assange began his hearing in the UK to see if he would be extradited to Sweden on rape charges. Sweden has interesting rape laws. I am not a lawyer, let alone an expert in Swedish law, but I have heard that usually a case like this would not be pursued. The women he was accused of raping later decided they did not want to bring charges against him but the trial still went forward. Assange was placed in jail in December 2010 and bailed out by Vaughan Smith, former war journalist and owner of the Frontline club. Smith provided a place for Assange to stay while under house arrest. He clearly had the better evidence in his trial. Everyone thought he would win. Unfortunately, politics played a big role and his appeal for extradition was denied. He is trying to re-appeal still. As much as I have issues with Assange and think his sex life has nothing to do with WikiLeaks, his trial was clearly influenced unfairly by outside politics.

In early August, Operation BART started in San Francisco after the BART police shot and killed a man. These protests went on for many weeks, into September. They had varying attendance but the biggest ones were quite large. OpBART also marked the start of serious protests in the US. The police presence was huge, often numbering four or more police officers to one protester. The larger protests had around fifty arrests, sometimes more. At one point, the police arrested journalists and part of a journalism class that was visiting as part of their studies.

Also in August were the London riots. My knowledge of these is minimal but I can say that it is the odd one out of all the protests in that the rioters were actually violent and destructive. In fact, I would liken them to some of the actions AntiSec has taken. Destruction does not bring positive change.

In late August and early September, WikiLeaks spun out of control. Daniel Domscheit-Berg left WikiLeaks, destroyed some documents, and got into a petty fight with Assange through the media. Assange let his ego control him and engaged in this irrational spat. Shortly after, WikiLeaks published most of its remaining documents without looking them over much and claimed it was crowd sourcing them on Twitter. This was a shame as many revelations that would be normally noticed were lost in the torrent of documents. Some surfaced but not many. Just after this release, it became public that David Leigh’s book on WikiLeaks contained the encryption key for the unredacted versions of the recent WikiLeaks releases. WikiLeaks normally redacts names and identifying information to protect innocent people from harm. This key, combined with the file that used the key on the WikiLeaks website, endangered thousands of people. WikiLeaks refused to apologize for this OpSec failure and blamed it on Leigh. Ever since, WikiLeaks has become more of an egocentric mess. They even refused to reopen a dropbox. At this point, I have no idea how they will survive. WikiLeaks did a great job of sparking revolution but it could not adapt or sustain its success.

Occupy was perhaps the biggest event of the fall. Love it or hate it, everyone knows about it. Occupy was worldwide but concentrated in the US, starting with Occupy Wall Street. The protesters demand economic justice and that those in charge fix the broken system. Occupy is technically representing the 99% income-wise but many in the 1% support Occupy too. Some accuse Occupy of having unclear demands but, as one Occupier said it well, Occupy is a good way to start the discussion about how to fix our country economically. It is also one of the best ways to get attention for the issues. I cannot even begin to cover the major events of Occupy in this post. Its short history is riddled by protests, arrests, repeated evictions, and trouble within the occupations. It is an experiment in true democracy. Such large-scale experiments rarely go right the first time and Occupy has its share of flaws. That said, I have never seen a movement catch and spread so quickly. If honed and improved, Occupy could make a big difference. I will definitely write more about Occupy, particularly Occupy Boston, in the future.

In mid-December, Bradley Manning had his pre-trial hearing. A few days before, the government denied all of his witnesses except the ones they were calling as well. What a great start. One of the main pieces of evidence appears to be the chat logs that Adrian Lamo gave to the government. They claim they found the same chat logs on Manning’s computer. Witnesses for the government also testified they found classified documents at Manning’s aunt’s house. There are numerous issues in this case which I shall discuss later more completely.

2011 has been exciting. Unfortunately, although there have been many movements, none seems to have lit a fire that burns on. Most were little sparks that fizzled out. Still, discontent is at the front of people’s minds and it will not go away anytime soon. We are walking the path to worldwide revolution. We are approaching the point of no return.