Episode 7 – No Back to Normal – Podcast Transcript

Jason:
Welcome back to another episode of Twin Trouble, a podcast about abolition and the struggle against empire. My name is Jason …

Jeremy:
And I am Jeremy.

And we are…. TWIN TROUBLE!!

Jeremy:
This episode is recorded during the Anniversary of the George Floyd uprising, we are going to share some reflections on the significance of last year’s mass protests – what has changed, where are we now, and where is the movement headed?

Jason:
We will be commenting on recent hacks, including Jones Day, MPD Leaks, Colonial Pipeline, JBS and the CItizen App leaks.

Jeremy:
We are also releasing this podcast in time for June 11th, the international day of solidarity with Marius Mason and long-term anarchist prisoners. We’ll dive into what it means for supporting prisoners in the wake of last year’s uprisings, where many more people have been swept up in the ongoing repression of social movements.

Jason:
We also have a new section, No Back to Normal, where we will be talking about how Covid continues to change the global landscape, even in what is incorrectly called the ‘post’ pandemic era.

Jeremy:
Also we have some updates to the mobile game we have been developing, Smash! MAGA.

Jason:
So let’s get into it!

Anniversary of George Floyd Uprising

Jason:
Last year people rose up in unprecedented ways hoping to see an end to the racist institution of policing. People have burned down copshops in the fight for abolition, and these struggles have garnered mainstream support and no doubt changed the landscape profoundly on what is possible. Movements to defund the police have yielded some results, as numerous police departments have lowered their budgets, which in many cases make up the bulk of a city’s yearly finances.

Jeremy:
In certain other cities like Chicago, they scandalously diverted the bulk of the federal CARES Act funding, meant for helping people deal with the challenges and hardships of the COVID-19 pandemic, into the police and jails. Over $280 million dollars went to the CPD and Cook County Sheriff’s Department, including police payroll accounts!

Jason:
But remains to be seen is actual change in police structuring and behavior. Police murders continue. In fact, as we are recording, people are mobilizing again in Minneapolis because the police shot and killed Winston Boogie Smith. It was just a few months since the police killed Daunte Wright in nearby Brooklyn Center. Seems nothing has changed.

Jeremy
In Chicago, Anthony Alvarez and 13 year old Adam Toledo were slain by cops in the same week. The shootings were captured on body-cams and were released, showing Adam had his hands up and Anthony was running, no possible reason at all for these harrowing killings. Again the community is traumatized and shaken up. People have been mobilizing in seeking justice for Adam and Anthony but the cops Eric Stillman and Evan Solano remain free while ‘under investigation’ by COPA, a committee handpicked by the Mayor and the city, without community input despite its name.

Jason:
For years, Chicagoans had been fighting for the Community Police Accountability Council, or CPAC, to give the people of Chicago a say in their own matters of public safety. But despite the broad support mayor Lori Lightfoot drags her feet and continually refuses community input on any changes to the system. Her revisions to foot-pursuit guidelines for police that could have prevented the deaths of Adam and Anthony came all too late, nor are comprehensive to prevent this racist police killings from occurring again and again.

Jeremy:
Last year’s campaigns for the forming of CPAC and Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability have joined to fight for the Empowering Communities through Public Safety ordinance. Lightfoot recently counterpointed by proposing a new temporary police accountability commission, candidates voted upon by districts but hand selected by the mayor. And she maintains the right to hire and fire the Police Superintendent of her choice. This commission is unacceptable to the community who had been long fighting for real community input on police accountability, and has been described as a plagiarism of ECPS, but taking out the community part.

Jason:
There is a vote in the city council public safety committee on June 18th for the ECPS ordinance. Keep a look-out for that and if you are in Chicago talk to your alderpeople!

Jeremy:
We are serious about defunding the police, and one atrocious program which needs to go is the Shot Spotter surveillance systems utilized by CPD. In an op-ed by Freddy Martinez of Lucy Parsons Labs, he notes that ShotSpotter is the untested program which within 5 minutes led cops to a location where they killed Adam Toledo. This program has cost the city 33 million since 2018, money which was seized from the neighborhood through asset forfeiture, and used against the people. It is up for renewal in August and more pressure needs to be put on the city to #EndShotSpotter, and other crime-predicting technologies which increase contact between people and police who continue escalating situations with deadly results.

Jason:
What sort of accountability are people looking for in regards to policing? A shift in focus on what is considered public safety is the core part of the demands – the defunding and divestment of the people is the root of the problem. Funding for education, health, housing, social and public spaces have been gutted and are still devastating working class, immigrant, black and brown neighborhoods, these are the sort of policy level and systemic impovershments which create the conditions in which interpersonal violence occurs. The solution to these problems is not more police and prisons, these are also well-documented destabilizers of communities, people thrown in jail can miss work, jeopardize housing, people can miss deadlines, obligations made to family, all of these things create greater tension and lead to violence within communities.

Jeremy:
One problem is related to the lack of public space for people to congregate freely. Everywhere you go you need to have money, bars are open till 2 and the parks close at 11 here in Chicago. The police are regularly hassling people and dispersing people aggressively, notably in Washington Park in NYC, but also in Chicago in Grant Park on Michigan Ave and various encampments of the houseless community. Loitering laws have racist roots and maintain that tradition. Capital continues swallowing up land and privatizing everything, raising rent and making it more difficult for people to maintain their homes and survive, all these things are related

Jason:
Simply put, crime, as they call it, is never a single-dimensional issue with a single solution, especially one based on punishment and police violence. We need to reframe public safety as something that addresses human needs. Because Strong communities are Safe communities.

Jeremy:
But our long term goals in abolition is sidequested with the near-certainty of broad reform, notably with The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act which looks to change numerous currently existing obstacles to police accountability, including ending qualified immunity. It failed to pass last year of course, but this year the bill passed the house, again, without a single GOP voting in favor. It currently sits in a divided senate, where tensions are already high given that the Trump coup attempt has and still is supported by some members.

Jason:
Now abolitionists envision a world without police and prisons, and also many organizations working around police violence are calling for the jailing of these killer cops. Derek Chauvin was convicted and will be in prison, and although we know that will never bring back George Floyd, Adam or Anthony or all of the others, it raises the question, right now, if there are no tangible consequences for these cops who are still out there shooting civilians, how will they ever change their behavior? On one hand it makes for poetic justice that these pigs go to prison, after they have been arresting and sending countless community members to languish in these jails. But is this catharsis really a model of justice? A frequent rallying cry at protests is “Jail Killer Cops”, oftentimes turning into “Kill Killer Cops”. Now we’re not endorsing or prescribing any behaviors, just merely illustrating how the tension is urgently palpable. Chicago, like many cities, we are always one moment away from a riot, and the mayor and her cop cronies’ failure to address or involve the community in police accountability is going to end up perpetuating this violence.

Jeremy:
And the cops are pigs no doubt. The other day, some cop started harassing a small group of people gathered at a street memorial for Anthony Alvarez, taking down parts of the memorial and ordering them to disperse. This attack on memorials is a frequent occurrence, and adds insult to injury, the constant disrespect harped on by Blue Lives fascists like FOP boss John Catanzara and far-right alderman like Sposato, Napolitano, Gardiner, and Raymond Lopez are echoed in far right circles. When people organized alongside the family of Anthony Alvarez for a rally outside the 16th street copshop a few weeks back, demanding justice and the firing of killer cop Evan Solano, these alderman called for a Back the Blue rally and brought a crowd of rowdy racists which berated the crowd and family, causing an arrest. Essentially, these aldermen knew that by inviting these assholes, it was creating a situation where escalation and violence was likely.

Jason:
One asshole of interest in this story is that disgraceful POS president of Chicago FOP John Catanzara, has been pushing back against any such reform and police accountability and feuding with Mayor Lightfoot over the course of the last year. We look back on how he has been a mouthpiece for Trumpian law and order, defended the brutality inflicted upon protesters and citizens at the hands of the police, condemning rioters and looters but supporting the Jan 6 insurrectionists. Recently he bragged about the FOP’s meaningless no-contest vote against the mayor and is dragging on police contract negotiations for a police force that he says is overworked and underpaid in a city run amok in a revolving door system ran by so-called leftist Kim Foxx. He also echoed the right-wing line that Lightfoot is a racist because she didn’t want any white people interviewing her. As cringey a move it was for the mayor, these right-wing clowns were thirsty as hell for anything to point to that suggests racism against white people, and Catanzara, as redpilled as he is, swallowed that whole sucker.

Jeremy:
Hes a right-wing clown all the way, a dangerous one in fact. His officer status was suspended as he is under investigation. He also has a status hearing that will have happened on June 10th which determines the future of his role in the FOP, as he is accused of violating 11 department rules for a series of violent Islamophobic and inflammatory social media posts. He also has been making false reports and been insubordinate to his supervisors. This fucking clown, as Lori called him, is definitely going down.
June 11

Jason:
We’re releasing this episode of our podcast on June 11, the international day of solidarity with long-term anarchist prisoners. Every year people across the globe put into action various ways to support anarchist prisoners and their struggles. And we want to talk briefly about what June 11 means to us, both of us having observed this day from both sides of the wall, as anarchist prisoners and supporters of anarchist prisoners.

Jeremy:
Both of us recently appeared on a panel in The Final Straw podcast, there was some great discussion about prisoner support strategies from a variety of folks so be sure to check that out thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org or at the Channel Zero podcast network.

Jason:
Anarchists are against all forms of hierarchical power and state control, in particular prisons, police, and the court system. As we talked about earlier, we are abolitionists, fighting for the dismantling of all prisons and release of all prisoners. Anarchists of course have also often been the target of government repression. And so June 11 we are focusing our efforts in bringing attention to and working to support our anarchist comrades behind bars. There is a list of prisoners on the June 11.org website, and you can also find more information at Anarchist Black Cross.

Jeremy:
So June 11th was originally focused on fighters for earth liberation. It was started in 2004, the date of Jeff “Free” Luers sentencing to 22 years for burning SUVs in Oregon. Then later there were other comrades who caught long prison terms, such as Eric McDavid and Marius Mason. There was the “Green Scare”, the targeting of the SHAC 7, much of this is covered in the book “Green is the New Red” by Will Potter, and you can also read more about the history of June 11 on the website.

Jason:
Marius Mason is still doing his 22 year federal prison sentence at FCI Danbury after having been convicted of the arson of an GMO research facility and logging equipment, actions which had never hurt anybody physically.

Jeremy:
Later, June 11 was generalized into a more international project, supporting all long-term anarchist prisoners around the world. There are a number of prisoners listed on the June 11 website, and we want to take a minute to read their names:

Marius Mason
Sean Swain
Michael Kimble
Thomas Meyer-Falk
Alfredo Cospito
Anna Beniamino
Bill Dunne
Eric King
Joaquín Garcia
Jennifer Amelia Rose
Sam Faulder
Joshua Stafford
Doug Wright
Noah “Kado” Coffin
Xinachtli
Vangelis Stathopoulos
Lisa Dorfer
Marios Seisidis
Claudio Lavazza
Miguel Angel Peralta Betanzos
Davidee Delogu
Panagiota (Pola) Roupa
Nikos Maziotis
John Paul Wootton

Jeremy:
One of the forms of solidarity we can do is build support not just for the individuals that are incarcerated but to defend their actions and further the movements they are a part of. A lot of the crimes our friends are imprisoned for are not universally accepted by more mainstream, reform-oriented activist types. So we want to bring attention to why our comrades risked their freedom and their lives to fight for a better world for all of us.

Jason:
The government in repressing our movements hopes that it will deter others. But if you listen to these anarchist prisoners, there are few apologies or regrets. They want to see people continue where their work has left off. Solidarity means attack!

Jeremy:
But also, understand that people have gone through a lot, we are seeing a lot of burnout, and it’s all getting very real – people are facing enormous repression as the thousands of arrests of protesters last year during the uprisings means jail and prison is a reality for many. If there’s not much rioting this year, there are so many valid reasons for this.

Jason:
Furthermore, movement work doesn’t always involve torching cop cars or hacking websites, it involves sooooo many different things. One day we will do a podcast where we don’t talk about riots, we’ll talk about the multitudes of other activities anarchists are involved in. Mutual aid and gardening, teaching, cooking, coding, playing, dancing, engaging in community can be revolutionary. We are building our own infrastructures outside of the state and capitalism.

Jeremy:
But notably now in the wake of the various and ongoing uprisings, we must continue building support for those facing and serving time. We can never forget that they are still in there as we speak. Always remember, they’re in there for us, we’re out here for them!

Jason:
A couple updates on some folks.
If you’ll remember, Eric King has faced some heinous repression from federal prison authorities because of his case and his politics. In 2018 guards intentionally put him in a situation where a known and armed white supremacist attacked him. In another incident, he was ambushed and beaten by guards, and he is currently facing additional federal charges for defending himself in this attack. So this month, his attorneys at the Civil Liberties Defense Center filed a civil suit on his behalf with evidence that he has faced chronic, targeted harassment and severe emotional and physical torture for years in retaliation for his political views.

Jeremy:
In another case, we’re very happy to see Gerald Reed finally free after 31 years in prison. Gerald like many others were forced into confessions under Jon Burge’s watch, this was an era in Chicago policing where torture was inflicted upon the black community in order to get false convictions. After too many years, many cases were finally later overturned and the city had to offer up millions in reparations. However there are still victims of Jon Burge’s torture unit still behind bars so the struggle is not over.

Jason:
Sean Swain is up for parole in August and is currently trying to raise money for a lawyer. He has been locked up since 1991 and had been moved away via interstate compact from Ohio to a Virginia prison as punishment for the prolific hellraising he is well known for.

Also, last April water protector and grand jury resistor Steve Martinez was released from jail after steadfastly refusing to testify about the movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Major respects!

Jeremy:
So there is renewed effort demanding that charges be dropped on all the protesters who were arrested by police in the BLM uprisings. There are petitions people can sign and spread, so check out the Drop The Charges Coalition.

Jason:
And again for June 11, we encourage listeners to check out June11.org and into these imprisoned anarchist’s cases, check out their support committee websites to see how people can help these comrades through words, actions, and ongoing material support.

Jones Day Leaks
Jason:
So, also in this episode, we want to talk about the hacks, leaks, and ransomware attacks on corporate infrastructure which have major political ramifications and give a glimpse into the future of how the US hacking laws may change to reflect this surge. Already Congress is holding hearings on the recent attacks, Biden has issued an executive order about cybersecurity, and there is talk of strengthening anti-hacking laws and US offensive hacking capabilities. Some big heads are calling for increased regulation of cryptocurrency, as many people incorrectly believe that doing so would cut down on ransomware attacks. And the Department of Justice has announced that it has escalated the priority of it’s ransomware investigations to the same level as “terrorism”. So what has gotten them all shook up, exactly?

Jeremy:
The first major hack we want to talk about was done by this group of hackers known as cl0p who got got into the systems of Jones Day, the law firm who in February was hired by the city of Chicago to assist in parsing emails between the Mayor’s office and CPD to advise on public messaging regarding police policy. Basically, this law firm, the same firm that had previously worked with Trump to litigate his bogus election fraud claims, was to help the city of Chicago get their stories straight regarding the botched aggressive police raid of Anjanette Young. The ransomware negotiations between Cl0p and Jones Day ultimately failed and the emails were dumped to the dark web.

Jason:
Enter Distributed Denial of Secrets, the transparency journalist collective. Now before we get into it, it must be noted that like in every one of the ransomware data leaks DDOS has worked on, the data had already been publicly released in one form or another before DDOS took a look at it. It would be irresponsible not to report on the leaked data, regardless of it’s origins, and DDOS is simply preserving and making that information available to other journalists.

Jeremy:
In early May, noted journalists began writing on the Jones Day leaks and the mayor’s response was to refuse to comment on them because the material was from hacked sources and thus cannot be trusted as legitimate. Furthermore she tried discouraging journalists from commenting on the emails. But there are some scandalous revelations that cannot be ignored, posing important questions for the future of the mayor and the police, and we are just going to lay out a couple of the findings here.

Jason:
In one lie that was exposed by the leaks, CPD and the mayor denied the police usage of kettling, the tactic in which cops surround protesters, refusing them exit, and systematically picking them off and arresting them as they utilize other crowd control tactics such as tear gas or some equally violent tool. They denied this, but in an email August 18th, a CPD spokesman Don Terry writes “In the education and training bulletin of september 2011, under crowd control operations…you’ll find movement to encirclement. The technique is used to contain a group of individuals and effect an orderly arrest”

Jeremy:
In the aftermath of the same police riot last summer when CPD deployed the kettling tactic, the arrest records they released included personal addresses of protesters, which were shared via social media in right-wings circles. Effectively, this practice of listing personal addresses amounts to doxxing, endangers protesters at a time of increased Back the Blue reactionary violence. Lightfoot was shown to have been aware of the practice and was forced to urge CPD to end this.

Jason:
In another gem, an email revealed that mayor Lightfoot was aware of the lack of evidence linking gun violence to pretrial incarceration, but nevertheless continued to publicly blame and pressure judges to keep people in Cook County Jail, despite high-level city officials knowing that the claim was wrong. In July of 2020, then Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Susan Lee emailed her colleagues alerting them that it may have been an error to “attributing violence to people being bonded out”, that according to recent studies, “very few folks who bond out actually commit violent offenses with a gun”. She invited CPD to review the data, but that review never came, and CPD continued touting the lie. Superintendent David Brown later said “Electronic Monitoring and low bond amounts endanger our residents … I will continue to bring attention to the sheer number of repeat offenders who are given little to no jail time… and go on to commit more crimes.” But that very week, a leaked email showed that mayoral spokesperson Pat Mullane wrote that the State’s Attorney office had presented data showing “there is no short term revolving door”, and that “given this…we really have to get off this narrative as to the reason why violence is high”.

Jeremy:
Basically, the same old tired anecdotal high profile violent cases that occur in .6% of those released are rearrested were used to hyper-sensationalize the risk and utilize fear to justify the jails and police in a time when more and more people are realizing that they are becoming irrelevant and actually harmful to public safety. More egregious is that this is happening during the pandemic. Lightfoot argued against a mass or large-scale release of detainees at CCJ, citing the risk of increased crime but also to curb the potential spread of Covid 19 from the jail, which became so rampant that CCJ became THE central hotspot in the state.

Jason:
This is beyond fucked up on so many levels. 10 people in custody have died in CCJ due to covid, while Lightfoot cites the same old tired lies about public safety, the likes of which has directed the project of mass-incarceration over the past half century. Over the pandemic, the jail population has dropped to 4000, the lowest in years, however, locking people up physically in CCJ has been replaced by the widespread usage of Electronic Monitoring, or EM, the home confinement shackle system often called “ankle bracelet”. Thousands in Chicago are locked up in their own homes unable to live their lives, facing countless challenges to participate in society. Furthermore, like in the case of activist and musician Mohawk Johnson’s, there are numerous technical failures in which the equipment reports false violations, threatening to re-incarcerate him and others. If you don’t already, you should follow him on twitter not just for a look at how fucked up EM is but also for the hot takes on video games, cartoons his music.

Jeremy:
Another thing about these ankle bracelets, it’s a false solution to mass incarceration. It is not an abolitionist strategy to advocate for more EM. It actually is an expansion of the carceral system to the streets, creating this new industry, all these corporations producing new electronic monitoring equipment, some of which can have pretty creepy features, not just GPS but also microphones. And what is the ultimate result if EM is expanded as an alternative to jail? A society where more and more of us are walking around literally in chains, carrying around a kind of jail with us at all times.

Jason:
Also revealed in the hacked emails was that city officials were strongly suggested to inform residents about a planned demolition of the Crawford Coal Plant in the Little Village neighborhood, but failed to do so. This is injury upon insult to injury, as the plant had already been a well-documented case of environmental racism, being located in a working class immigrant neighborhood and directly affecting asthma rates for residents. The implosion had the effect of covering a square mile in thick dust and smog, in which residents were not told to prepare for in advance. During a global pandemic, they did this, and then did it again a month later, finishing demolition then-still standing parts of the plant without telling anyone.

Jeremy
Emails showed the mayor’s office scrambling around at the last minute and ultimately failing at letting community members know about the first or second explosion. The development company Hilco was hit with a 300,000 fine, but so far no meaningful reparation has come to the residents of Little Village, who had been protested to shut down the plant and install something more useful to the community, instead, Hilco intends on building some distribution warehouse.

Jason
Anyways, there’s actually a lot more to the Jones Day email leaks we haven’t talked about that are definitely worth looking into. It will continue to be interesting to see how the city responds to these sorts of revelations.

Colonial Pipeline Attack

Jeremy:
So, there was another major hack in the past month we want to talk about, the recent ransomware attack against Colonial Pipeline. Many of their files were encrypted and they actually paid $5 million dollars to the group to recover their files. Now “DarkSide”, the well-known Russian-based group taking responsibility for this hack, has claimed that they are “not political”, that they’re doing this strictly for the money, and that they “do not want to cause disruption”. In response to criticisms of affecting infrastructure, they have said that they will “check each company … to avoid social consequences in the future”.

Jason:
Ethical robbers!

Jeremy:
It should be noted that the hackers never had access to any of the physical infrastructure that could have caused any ecological damage. Only business and administration data. And it should be noted that in the end Colonial Pipeline actually paid the ransom to decrypt their data! Who says crime doesn’t pay?

Jason:
The Colonial Pipeline is the largest oil pipeline in the so-called United States, and they have been responsible for hundreds of disastrous oil spills, leaks, and explosions that have caused death, injury, and immeasurable ecological destruction. Exactly the reason why people had been opposing the Dakota Access, Keystone XL and Line 3 pipelines. People are also gathered as we speak in an ongoing struggle to stop the construction of the Line 3 Pipeline connecting so called Canada to Minnesota and Wisconsin. Already activists have been removed from blockades and arrested while squatting on tractors, Unicorn Riot is doing on the ground reporting of this ongoing struggle.

Jeremy:
Even if the hackers here were simply motivated by profit, we aren’t mad that the infrastructure of the fossil-fuel economy was targeted. That shit needs to be shut down anyways

Jason:
The hack has also caused a stir within the right-wing culture wars, the paranoia getting hyped up so much that people began hoarding gasoline in plastic bags and guarding their operations with guns at gas stations. One could only imagine their reaction to the possibility of a slight raise in prices to meat, at least meat from JBS, who also was also hit with a ransomware hack. ALthough the ransom was paid, the likelihood of a serious hit to the supply chain is small, but interestingly, the feds seized a server where the bitcoin ransom was held and managed to recover 2.3 million from the hack.
Now this is interesting – this has caused bitcoin to drop, as greater regulation of the currency seems a likely response due to these surges of successful ransomware hacks and is a dream for security apparatus. This may jepordize the anonymity of the coin, a major privacy concern and also effecting the heart of the need for bitcoin.

MPD Leaks

Jeremy:
Then there was another major ransomware attack last month, this time targeting the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington DC.

Jason:
The group known as Babuk posted small portions of officer information to prove their authenticity and then began negotiations with the MPD. Screenshots of these conversations were posted later after the negotiations broke down. The MPD offered $100,000 not to release the information, far below the $4 million the hackers were asking for, saying that they were “comfortable with the outcome” either way. Some perspective on that $100,000 figure, DC spent millions to prosecute the J20 Conspiracy trial for the actions against Trump’s inauguration. The police spent over $300,000 to buy extra riot equipment to handle those protests. Yet they didn’t bother to protect their own officers from having their personal information dumped all over the internet.

Jeremy:
And that’s exactly what ended up happening!

Jason:
So the hackers dumped 250GB to the darknet, including disciplinary reports on police officers, psychological evaluations, credit histories, addresses, social security numbers, scans of drivers licenses and handwritten signatures, essentially full doxxes. Wow!

Jeremy:
There was apparently significant intelligence on “urban gang activity”, a whopping 156GB of data, including files labelled “beefs” and “conflicts”. Then there was also a lot of information about the police response to right-wing extremist groups like the Boogaloo Boys in the immediate aftermath of the Jan 6 coup attempt.

Jason:
Distributed Denial of Secrets has published around 74,000 emails of the MPD leaks, and is working with other journalists to release the rest.

Jeremy:
As always, it’s cool to see the police targeted like this. But that doesn’t necessarily make Babuk or groups like them any hacktivist ally if they were purely motivated by profit. Would they have withheld the information from the public if they got the payout they were looking for?

Jason:
Furthermore, the choice of targets Babuk goes after seems more opportunistic and random than political, they previously hit the Houston Rockets for example. They had reportedly posted their criteria for target selection, saying they do not target hospitals or non-profit charities, but then they go and say that they would consider targeting non-profits if they were “foundations who help LGBTQ and BLM”. What the fuck is that about?

Jeremy:
A very stark reminder that not all hackers have sophisticated ethical political analysis, not everyone understands who the real enemy is.

Jason:
In general when it comes to what would be classified as property crime, we understand that there are people who must do what they have to do in order to make it in a society, an economic system, that simply provides no legitimate means of survival. You can’t pay rent with minimum wage. To survive the pyramid scheme, yeah people are going to turn to crime, including looting and fraud and the like. But there is a major difference between targeting a multinational corporation and scamming people in our own communities.

Jeremy:
For example, in prison, everybody steals from the police, people take food from the kitchen, people take pens from the school, copies, cleaning supplies, whatever. But everyone knows, you do not steal from another convict. There are actually major repercussions behind that.

Jason:
So these ransomware crews out there, think about who you go after and why, because your actions affect everybody. A more ethical ransomware is possible!

Jeremy:
One thing that is a little different from prior ransomware attacks is that instead of just encrypting the target’s data and trying to extort them for the decryption key, they are threatening to release the data to the public. Even if these groups aren’t political, there are certainly significant political ramifications to this development in ransomware hacks, something that we welcome and will have to pay attention to.

Jason:
So, there was another controversy with the MPD leaks, is that within the leaked data there was the identities of informants. Some people are like yeah revealing police misconduct is good and all but maybe this is something that should be kept secret.

Jeremy:
The system tries to keep the identities of police informants secret, but there are a lot of problems with this. Most informants were usually first involved in illegal activities and are only cooperating with the police after the fact to avoid or reduce their prison sentence. This incentivizes them to lie, exaggerate and fabricate, and prosecutors know this and have no problem with it. And in many criminal cases, we don’t even know who the identities of the informants are. In my hacking case, I knew the identity of one of the informants, Sabu, but there were actually several others we never identified, referred to as CW-2 and CW-3 in legal paperwork that we had to fight to get in the first place. And I never even got to see transcripts or notes from a single interview between any of the informants and the police. We don’t know what was asked of them, we don’t know what was promised to them.

Jason:
And this is standard practice, despite the legal right to confront one’s accuser. In the majority of cases defendants plead guilty to avoid risking a significantly longer prison sentence by taking a risk at trial. The end result is that people rarely get to challenge the veracity of the informant’s statements, nevermind even knowing their identity or background. Often informants get in even more legal trouble at the same time they are cooperating with the police, and if this information surfaced, it could be grounds for getting cases thrown out or even prosecutors charged with misconduct. Yet, this is so rarely the case, because they fight so hard to keep this information secret.

Jeremy:
In federal prison, they take great lengths to protect the identities of snitches. We often aren’t even allowed to hold onto our own legal work, even publically accessible legal documents anyone can get on PACER. In late 2020, amidst everything else that was happening in the world at the time, the Bureau of Prisons passed new rules creating a new disciplinary charge, a 231 shot, for asking another prisoner to see their legal paperwork like their PSI or sentencing documents, even though this information is legal to possess and distribute. The justification was specifically to protect other prisoners from finding out who the informants are.

Jason:
So we say fuck that shit, we aren’t shedding any tears if these snitches get outed.

Jeremy:
This is a broader conversation about leaks, these big data dumps, about the level of redaction. A lot of journalists are having to make tough decisions about the degree of redaction, and usually err on the side of caution. Famously, Edward Snowden made the decision to redact the names of the NSA agents who drafted the various documents and slides describing the vast surveillance network and internet monitoring systems. But why should their identities be protected at all, since they’ve never given a damn about our privacy?

Jason:
Think about how hard government lawyers fight to protect the identity of cops involved in shootings. Usually takes prolonged legal battle to find out the name of the cop and their disciplinary history. Cops also routinely cover their badges at protests and elsewhere, even when it is often illegal to do so.

Jeremy:
One of the hacks when I was working with Anonymous, the Shooting Sheriff Saturday hack, I defaced 77 police websites and released their emails. Now before we released the emails, we took the time to look through the emails, and removed the jail rosters, because they contained mugshots and personal information on people who had been arrested, not even convicted, many of whom had their cases eventually dropped, and we didn’t want to expose them to any further problems following their arrest. However, the emails also contained the snitches who used the “report a crime” function, I was sure to put all that out there!

Jason:
I’d call that an “Anonymous Tip”!

Jeremy:
So yeah, leaked data must be carefully curated, especially to prevent the inadvertent release of information on innocent people. Certainly the criteria is circumstantial, and must be determined on a case by case basis. But when dealing with the police, we think it’s a much simpler decision, because All Cops Are Bastards!

Citizen App

Jason:
This brings us to, yes, another recent high-profile leak of data, this time coming from “CITIZEN App”. The app’s goal is to crowdsource the identification and apprehension of “suspected criminals”, and the disastrous implications are immediately obvious to anyone looking at policing as a problem rather than as a source of public safety. And now, with the help of hackers who have scraped publicly-accessible data and made it available, again, through Distributed Denial of Secrets, journalists are uncovering some disturbing new details.

Jeremy
Citizen App was already being looked at for numerous scandals and the misadventures of it’s wannabe crime-fighting CEO, Andrew Frame. Andrew frame said “Get this fucking guy” in a livestreamed manhunt in which he personally offered a bounty for the wrong person.
The story went like this. A fire broke out in Palisades, California, in which due to unsubstantiated tips and mob mentality, a livestream posted the name and picture of the wrong person which was viewed over a million times, and incredibly a bounty set by Frame that increased to 30k over the course of the night.

Jason
These app models essentially encourage users to become Vigilantes, in fact, Frame’s prototype for Citizen was called called just that in 2017, “With Vigilante, vital information is unlocked and everyone can do their part,” the company said in 2016, letting us imagine what that “part” should be. Now their new live-stream feature in which users can pursue suspects, spread unsubstantiated rumors, shows that it can and has turned into a manhunt of ad-hoc extrajudicial vigilante squads.

Jeremy
It was only the 16th livestream on the Citizen app’s new feature, and it almost led a man to a false arrest and suffer potential violence. They say the manhunt was fueled by the high-stress due to the danger presented by the fire, which caused people to panic, jumping to conclusions. But the inverse is actually true, the app itself and the notifications created the panic and spread the misinformation about the falsely suspected arsonist. Last year, right wing fake news channels presented as fact that Antifa was starting the fires in Oregon, and militia organized in response. The dangerous implications of these alerts on such apps towards marginalized communities, specifically the houseless community cannot be understated. This can get someone killed by an over-enthusiastic individual, a mob, or by the police.

Jason
Also, its racist as hell. Former employees told Motherboard that a portion of the user base is “Insanely Racist” which comes out most clearly in the comment sections. Other apps include Redzone Map, the tagline of which on the app store is “avoid shady parts of town”. Of course, RedZone is also referenced as an app used by thrill-seeking “ambulance chasers” or armchair daredevils looking for a vicarious walk on the wild side”, whatever the fuck that means.

Jeremy
Research fellow Chris Ghillard at Harvard says that Citizen app “Magnifies the fear of the other, and who and what they feel belong in their neighborhood or area. As we have seen, that often means people who don’t look like them”. We downloaded the app Crime and Place and Redzone and found that the entire city of chicago, except downtown and gentrified, whiter parts of the north sides were labeled as red zones. What are the implications of this? Users are to interpret that the city is not safe, perpetuating tired racist stereotypes that Chicago, most specifically Black and Brown neighborhoods, are hotbeds of crime, unsafe to be in.

Jason
This creates a recursive cycle of oppression – labeling entire areas as high crime similar to risk assessment algorithms based on where one lives and police aggregated crime data are used to justify increased policing in particular areas, resulting in further arrests and crimes reporting, perpetuating a racist cycle of incarceration and police violence.

Jeremy:
Like a privatized version of the police’s “High Impact Drug Trafficking Area”

Jason
At first I was like, this is black mirror meets back the blue, but then i realized its more like the movie Nightcrawler, where creepy right-wingers monitor police scanners looking for eye catching incidents of violence or arrests to sell to tv networks to push a narrative of crime-infested cities that infect the suburbs. “If it bleeds, it leads, especially when the victims are white”.

Jeremy
And while Citizen said it plans to get it right next time, Frame suggested in a Slack message that it won’t be the last time Citizen offers a cash reward. “We need to build this into the product and we will,” he wrote, indicating that they are making plans to continually expand these livestreamed manhunting features.

Jason
Right now there is this right-wing narrative that the Defund the Police movement is causing a surge in crime. Every year as summer begins, as weather gets warmer and more people are outside, more crimes are reported – now this is a well known and understood phenomena, that every year they sensationalize, as if it is some new crime wave unaddressed by liberal politicians.

Jeremy
On slow days, Citizen will relax the standards on what qualifies as an ‘incident’ worthy of a notification, as to constantly inundate users with fear, so that they may be convinced to subscribe to pay features of the app. These are people financially vested in continuing the spectacle of high-crime rates, no different then the private prison industry. Essentially, the business model is to capitalize on fear of crime – and Frame knows this, the more notifications go out, the scarier they sound, the more people buy into their app. They’re grifters, capitalizing off scaring people with being nosy and now gives people a platform to snitch. The design of this and similar apps like Crime and Place, Redzone, WIldfire, Guardyman is to push this law and order agenda rather than address actual issues of public safety.

Jason
Now when we talk about public safety, we talk about building strong communities through investing in human needs, where the contexts which create violence are reduced. But these dinosaur BTB RWers laugh at these ideas, they are more interested in keeping prisons full then they are in actually reducing the number of incidents where harm occurs. This lack of social imagination is part of a larger problem that permeates American ‘culture’, their focus is on the individual’s choices independent of the social context in which they occur, they’ve been brainwashed by toxic cops and robbers mythology so ingrained, anything else to them is commie snowflake social worker nonsense.

Jeremy:
Interestingly, during the uprisings that marked 2020, Citizen also identified areas where protests were occurring, ostensibly to warn users to stay away….or go towards. Although Forbes called it an ‘unofficial social network for protests”, it remains to be seen how useful it was for people on the ground who were interested in participating in the movement. However, as it was back then and is now a tool to give notifications of Crimes occurring, it seems like an non-explicit way of conflating protests with criminality. Activists are generally cautious about how they post information about ongoing protests and sharing of locations, as not to implicate individuals or groups as being in a particular place or action, and we find it highly unlikely that a great deal of of protesters would go to a crime-stopping application for up-to date information on where the action is at, or to post about it.

Jason
A more likely theory is that pro-police right wingers who likely make up a healthy chunk of Citizen’s userbase are more interested in finding out where the protests are in order to avoid them.. Or to go to them and harass, berate or counter BLM and left-wing protests, as are becoming more and more characteristic of protests starting last year.

Jeremy
Furthermore, Citizen outsources it’s “central analysts’ to Cloud Factory, who hires people overseas. So they are listening to police scanners in faraway cities and issuing notifications to app users, without any on the ground understanding of the areas they are issuing warning notifications for or the implications of doing so.

Jason
Citizen also has test pilot programs including vehicles and collaboration with private security companies, the ambition of which is to be able to detain + apprehend suspects. Leaked emails between the firm Securitas show claims that high level members of LAPD have said of the program, “it could be a game changer”.

Jason:
So hackers have scraped all of Citizen App’s data, including links to videos that police had requested be removed, and made it available to the public, providing a more detailed look at how they collect and analyze the data than would be available by using the App itself.

Jeremy:
The hacktivists, calling it “The Concerned Citizen’s Citizen Hack”, released this quote along with the data: “Fuck snitches, fuck Citizen, fuck Andrew Frame and remember, kids: Cops are not your friends.”, finalizing it all with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter

Jason:
Sums up nicely everything we’ve been talking about today.

Jeremy:
The name sort of reminds me of that 70s raid on FBI offices in Pennsylvania, they were called the “Citizen’s Commission to Investigate the FBI”, and they literally busted in, made off with thousands of classified documents, and published detailed of how the FBI was doing all that COINTELPRO illegal surveillance of leftists and panthers and all that.

Jason:
So we talked a lot about various hacks and leaks of recent months. What would you say is the overall state of hacktivism in 2021, as compared to your era?

Jeremy:
Well, first, I want to say that we’re just outside observers here, I’m not at all involved in those circles anymore. We’re just giving our commentary here based on our opinions and experiences, not on behalf of any particular organization, just from what we’ve read in public news sources. So before I was arrested, around 2011 and early 2012, we were doing great work, there was a lot of shit getting hacked and leaked, and it all coincided with Occupy Wallstreet and the Arab Spring. After the busts, and the ensuing fear and paranoia, a lot of people say that Anonymous kind of fell off. Then also, I thought the DNC Leaks, and the WikiLeaks shift to the right, was also a major disappointment. Regardless, I don’t think that any of this is a reflection that the state of hacktivism in general had died down at all. There was always meaningful work being done, even if it isn’t always the big names and big headlines. Hacktivism is bigger than Anonymous. Leaking and whistleblowing is bigger than WikiLeaks. And these days, since I been out? The shit is wild, wilder than it has ever been. Hell just in the past year, with BlueLeaks, ParlerLeaks, Jones Day, and all the others, 2020 and 2021, like everything else, there have been some major tectonic shifts, major moves being made.

Jason:
People are rising up and taking action. And we want to give props to the people out there doing the damn thing. Not just the hackers doing the actual intrusions, but the journalists who are dissecting these document dumps, who are publishing articles and analysis. Groups like Lucy Parsons Labs, Distributed Denial of Secrets, and other independent journalists.

Jeremy:
The lulz are with you.

No Back to Normal

Jason
This will be a new section in which we discuss the ways in which the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated existing hierarchies and systemic vulnerabilities under capitalism, killing millions and pushing millions more into increased impoverishment. Yet we are told it is time to go back to normal. Fuck back to normal.

Jeremy
More and more people are out maskless, seemingly giving the impression that society made it out of the apocalyptic times of plague and looming civil war. While it is of course good that half of the US adult population is vaccinated, that means the other half isn’t, and global vaccine inequality demonstrates that capitalist hegemony still reigns. This cannot continue if we really hope to survive the challenges ahead with climate change and growing economic inequality.

Jason:
As temperatures rise and ecological balance suffers, it is all going to catch up with us, and living standards will continue deteriorating. Course this will hit the countries hardest that have not been enriched by global capitalism, or even having contributed or necessarily benefited from over-industrialization that wrecked the environment over the past few centuries. More natural disasters will occur and due to these systemic inequities, these will affect working peoples the worst.

Jeremy
Meanwhile, arrogant American COVID denialism keeps spreading despite widespread access to vaccines. Even in the so-called ‘post’ pandemic, conspiracy theories are still being pushed by GOP and other right-wingers, which are slowing the vaccine rollout by deliberately confusing people, endangering everybody by helping further subject them to a deadly virus. In the last few months, rates have lowered in the US but still surge globally,

Jason
Basic talking points on the right reveal the true nature about the general toxic Americanism of valuing individual liberty over collective health.
They cry for “freedom” and that it’s “my body my choice”. First off, fuck them for stealing a line for reproductive rights to proclaim their covidiocy even while they continue to fight so viciously against women’s rights.

Jeremy:
So everyone would know these basic facts about the virus, but these idiots insist on some racist conspiracy theory about China manufacturing this dangerous communist bioweapon to destroy America, that the whole thing is a hoax to keep the sheeples locked in their homes providing the perfect cover for Antifa and BLM terrorists.
The GOP culture war over masks is at least partially responsible for the disastrously high number of deaths in this country, we need accountability for this. Yet cult followers are still spreading vaccine hoax QAnon bullshit, filling right-wing channels with the same old disinformation. These are false beliefs that they will likely take with them to the grave.

Jason
Remember the spikes last summer? Restaurants and other indoor businesses are now increasingly not requiring masks, and now in Chicago as in most other places, are allowed full capacity, guests only required masks if they are vaccinated, the onus apparently falling to the staff to verify this, putting workers in precarious position to be the ones to inquire to potentially reactionary tirades of anti-maskers, who do not shy in taking any opportunities to cause scenes in shopping centers, bars and restaurants.

Jeremy
Because of widespread vaccination, now people are acting like the virus is over. And the right wingers are finally getting what they wanted: the economy is reopening and people are going back to work. But as articulated in the May 31st episode of It’s Going Down, we are in a phase of class recomposition, where we can reconceive and renegotiate the terms of selling our labor to the bosses, now that work in all industries has drastically changed due to covid, working from home, and future automation.

Jason:
For many people the end of shutdowns means that the unemployment that has sustained them during quarantine is at risk as they may be expected to go back to work. And because people are going out and about now, the demand is greater for service and retail labor. But these jobs are largely going ‘unfilled’. Now this is a unique moment where workers have an advantage over the bosses. We need to use this moment to fight back for better conditions, across the board. We can negotiate for better pay, better hours, better health benefits, things which have been steadily declining under neoliberal austerity and under Trump’s reign of terror. Regardless, we have the upper hand, both because the owning classes need us more than ever, but also because workers need them less.

Jeremy:
Over the past year, millions of people have had free time to do with what they will without the oppressive wage-system of work dominating their lives. During quarantine, people had time to be exploring their talents, learning new skills, doing research, thinking consciously about career and job prospects. People also put time and energy into their own enterprises and bolstering up the informal economies. Bosses are being forced to make concessions because the deal is just not that appealing anymore. Minimum wage is always too low, and they want us to go back to that? Fuck that.

Jason:
Many workers are simply not going back, often in an ad-hoc, non-officially-organized manner. Many businesses are just receiving letters taped to front doors saying “Closed, because nobody wants to work in these conditions”. This is very notable in the restaurant and service industry, where front-line workers who face great covid risk and not receiving living wages, health insurance, and are expected to work many hours to compensate for the lack of employees willing to work under these conditions. So check out that It’s Going Down podcast for more analysis on this “striking with your feet” phenomenon.

January 6

Jeremy
Lastly we want to pop off with some updates of the ongoing Jan 6th fallout. Currently about 550 people have been charged for participating in Trump’s QAnon coup at the capitol thing, and now some are beginning to take plea deals for their participation. We are watching the situation closely, as the fallout of this historic event could set precedence for how the DOJ prosecutes those involved in political uprisings in the future, not just from the right-wing – read white supremacist – MAGA camp, but also how they may weaponize these measures against leftist or other liberatory uprisings as well.

Jason
So the GOP blocked that Jan 6 commission from forming via filibuster. Now a filibuster is ostensibly to prevent a majority party from exerting total dominance over a minority party in order to keep some ruling class bi-partisan rule intact. However, if you compare the very stakes of what Jan6 represent, a very real threat to a ‘democratic election’, if you wanna call it that, the filibuster is being weaponized by a fascist party to maintain unpopular, non-democratic rule over the country, and is most clearly a power play. The Dems are just not taking this as seriously as they should, it becomes increasingly clearer that these neoliberals are incapable of standing up to this never ending Trumpist coup. They did walk out on the Texas Senate as they tried passing that racist voter restriction law, which is also being pushed by the GOP in many other states, and is another part of the GOP general strategy to maintain unpopular rule.

Jeremy
Jan 6 – They don’t even wanna look at the thing. It also makes sense that the GOP wants to block a commission from forming because many in the GOP were active participants in the Stop the Steal bullshit. It also has just came to light that Paul Gosar, US Rep of Arizona plotted a so-called “Brooks Brothers Riot” in his home state Arizona. Leaked messages show that Gosar wanted to enlist violent Proud Boys to disrupt the 2020 certification in AZ.

Jason
We talked previously about how a full investigation on the events that led up to Jan 6 needs to occur. More is constantly being uncovered, and without appropriate response and accountability, or a comprehensive explanation and plan to prevent this ongoing slow motion coup from occurring, we are bound to see this shit happen again. Trump’s musings that he will somehow be reinstated in August should be incredibly worrying, but instead is easily dismissed as mere rantings. He is literally a fascist trying to consolidate his power in alternate reality Mar-a-Lago, while the GOP is doing everything they possibly can to preserve Trumpism and America First, doubling down with their plans to include him in their fight to take back power. He’s talking August, they literally cannot even wait until the midterms.

Jeremy
But all this talk of jailing cops and MAGA insurrectionists prompts the question: what is the abolitionist response to incarcerating these jan 6 insurrectionists? This is a subject we hope to explore in future episodes and invite anyone with opinions on the subject onto our show.

Also of note in the unfolding free speech debate is Facebook banning Trump for two years on their platform, for the continual spreading of news. This is possibly setting a precedent for the deplatforming of fascists globally, who aim to use social media to maintain control. Look at Bolsonaro and Netanyahu for example, who are citing election fraud in their own countries a la Trump style. Coups are just on the rise, period, with Myanmar and Belarus, there is mass political repression on activists fighting against authoritarian rule.

Related, Nigerian leader Muhammadu Buhari banned the app Twitter from being used by the people, after Twitter deleted a post he made which essentially threatened dissidents with violence. Later, he announced on twitter, in a form of irony, the twitter ban he was enacting, in the country.
Smash! MAGA

Jeremy:
So, last episode we talked about the video game we’ve been developing. We want to give you some updates

Jason:
That’s right, if you’ll remember the game is called Smash! MAGA: Trump Zombie Apocalypse, it takes place in a dystopian parallel reality ravaged by police brutality, Trumpian fascism, and a global pandemic.

Jeremy:
Basically all of 2020, but with zombies.

Jason:
In addition to fighting zombified Trump supporters, you battle riot cops, do a bit of looting and wealth redistribution, property destruction, some graffiti, and destroy various symbols of colonialism like the Columbus statue.

Jeremy:
Remember the old Nintendo game Smash TV? The gameplay is kind of similar, but in our game, you get to go around and actually smash some TVs, TVs that are broadcasting fake news and corporate propaganda.

Jason:
Also, the last level is the January 6 capitol hill coup attempt, can’t believe this hasn’t been portrayed in a game yet, but we’ll boldly venture into that controversy.

Jeremy:
We’ve been making good progress on it and hope to have it completed within the next few months. But we do have a beta version of the first level ready to play, so if anyone is interested in previewing it, please sign up at smashmaga.com!

Jason:
So the major update is that Apple rejected us from the App Store, We are in the process of appealing the decision and working with them to get our game on the store, but in our conversations with them reveals they are not inclined to take any chances.

Jeremy:
At first the reason they stated was “inappropriately referencing the COVID-19 pandemic”. They have a blanket policy against any mention of COVID-19, even for games, presumably to reduce the amount of misinformation from being spread on their platform. There are actually hundreds of games on there about plagues, virii, and pandemics, getting around the restriction because they do not explicitly mention COVID-19.

Jason:
And neither does Smash! MAGA. In our game, it’s kind of ambiguous what is causing these right-wingers to become zombified. There is a generalized plague that swept the globe, and in the first level you defend a hospital from anti-vaxx conspiracists. But is it also the fake news, the propaganda, that makes them brainless, unable to listen to reason, just foaming at the mouth nonsense-spouting zombies?

Jeremy:
Speaking of, there is an app on the App Store called Texans for Vaccine Choice, an anti-vaccine facebook group turned political action committee known for spreading vaccine-autism conspiracies.

Jason:
Also, Apple decided to let Parler back on their platform. Remember we talked about Parler last episode? That cesspool of white supremacy and right-wing conspiracy theories that helped facilitate the January 6 coup attempt, it’s coming back to the App Store.

Jeremy:
So after our first rejection, we went through our game with a fine toothed comb and found a small graphic in a loading screen of a crowd of anti-vaxxers in a crowd, one of whom is holding a “COVID Hoax” sign. We changed it to “VIRUS Hoax” and resubmitted it along with a detailed appeal, but Apple rejected us again, this time claiming there was “upsetting, offensive, or otherwise objectionable content”. They gave this reason in one line, without providing any further explanation or specifics.

Jason:
Apple has rules that prohibit any app from discriminatory or mean-spirited content against a targeted group such as religion, race, sexual orientation, gender, or national/ethnic origin. But political affiliation or ideology doesn’t fall into any of these categories. Being a right-wing MAGA QAnon conspiracist or a white supremacist Proud Boy or whatever, you’re not part of any historically oppressed group. You’re just an asshole.

Jeremy:
An asshole that deserves far worse than to be mocked in a video game.

Jason:
So after several back and forths written appeals we got on the phone with a representative from the App Review Board who made it clear that the decision was already made that he was just talking to us to explain their position. But we did nail him down on a few central points which hadn’t been brought up in any of their previous explanations.

Jeremy:
Most importantly, Apple said that they were not going to allow a game set at capitol hill coup attempt under any circumstances because it was “polarizing”. Not only that, but he was so bold to say that they weren’t going to allow any games about any “current events”.

Jason:
That’s ridiculous on so many levels. First off, there’s actually nothing in the App Review Guidelines that mentions anything about “current events”. But as one of the most important events of 2021, the capitol hill coup attempt was covered by nearly every media that exists on the planet, and it is reasonable to believe that people would make video games about it. It is hard to believe that to our knowledge we are the first people doing such a game. Not to mention that our game is a fictional, artistic expression of those events, specifically involving zombies.

Jeremy:
The Apple representative then said that they didn’t want to include anything that could be “upsetting”, and gave an example like what if someone had a family member who was at the events at the Capitol? Well we countered with what about people who were affected by World War II might be triggered by the countless games on the subject? He said well that’s not current, I’m like, OK then, what about the countless games about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Jason:
There are so many militaristic games set in Iraq that portray the US as the good guys, where you can go around blowing stuff up and killing all kinds of people indiscriminately. And we’re talking about very unpopular wars here. Most of the US, not to mention the world, views the war in Iraq as a very big mistake, based on a lie, that the US should never have been there, yet there are countless games about it. How do you think the people who live in these countries and have to deal with the consequences of decades of US imperialism would feel about these games that glorify these wars? “Upsetting or otherwise objectionable”, to say the least.

Jeremy:
To contrast, the January 6 coup attempt was universally unpopular and widely condemned, even by both political parties. In any case, our game, in mocking them, is on the majority opinion side of the “debate”. Again, we’re talking about people who literally tried to overthrow the results of an election by force and violence, people died. Apple is really worried about upsetting them?

Jason:
The Apple representative then went ahead and argued that MAGA supporters would be considered a “targeted group” as defined by their guidelines. That’s actually really fucked up. Apple’s guidelines explicitly define targeted groups as religion, race, sexual orientation, gender, national/ethnic origin – as in groups that have been historically oppressed by vicious hate crimes and discrimination. It’s really insulting to equivocate that to mocking right-wing Jan 6 insurrectionists. It’s actually a white supremacist “reverse racism” talking point to be claiming that white people or Trump supporters are being targeted by hate crimes.

Jeremy:
In any case, Apple’s App Review Guidelines does specifically allow for political satire and humor: there’s a hundred games about Trump, even one where you can slap him in the face. But that satisfying exception notwithstanding, it’s clear they just don’t want political games. Apple’s review board are some hyper-sanitizing gatekeepers. They reject over 1 million apps a year! There is so much software out there that Apple has made unavailable to iPhone users.

Jason:
It’s monopolistic control over what users are allowed to run on their own devices is actually a focus of the major Epic vs Apple battle currently playing out at trial. Remember they kicked Fortnite off the App store. Basically they want some bourgeois-ass walled garden with only safe, comfortable apps, and the grit is not allowed, whether they can give a valid articulable reason for an app’s rejection or not.

Jeremy:
And this vague, overly broad restriction on “otherwise objectionable content”… well it actually reminds me of the catch-all rationale the Bureau of Prisons relies on to justify every new encroachment on our rights: “it threatens the safety and security of the institution”.

Jason:
No wonder they call modifying your phone to run your own software “jailbreaking”.

Jeremy:
Apple some shit. So much for “think different”. Fake ass tech liberal capitalist BS

Jason:
This a good time to bring up it’s horrible legacy of sweatshop labor? Remember, they literally had to install suicide nets at factories in China because workers kept jumping off.

Jeremy:
The largest tech corporation in the world.

Jason:
So, we’re determined to release the game to iPhone users, even if we have to provide instructions on how people can sideload the game onto their iPhone outside of the App Store. But we will also try to have it on other platforms, such as Google Play and Steam. And again, if anyone wants to play the demo version, hit us up at SmashMAGA.com!

Jeremy:
It’s both entertaining and relevant, and we’re gonna release it for free. Hell bro, it’s been good to dive into this project with you. If you all didn’t know, me and Jason used to make hundreds of video games when we were super young like 11 years old, programming in QBASIC.

Jason:
Even though we been separated for many years, we’re back at it. Can’t stop, won’t stop.

Final

Jeremy:
So that’s pretty much it for this episode. Wow, that was a lot.

Jason:
We invite you to check out this episode’s show notes, which includes links to some of the topics we discussed today

Jeremy:
We hope this summer’s full of fire and fury.

Jason:
The flames of the resistance burn bright!

Jeremy:
Til next time… we are…

TWIN TROUBLE!!1