Questions for Sabu
Introduction
This is a list of questions I have for Hector Xavier Monsegur a/k/a Sabu, who will be speaking at the Suits and Spooks conference taking place on June 19 and 20, 2015. I'm neither a suit nor a spook, nor sure I'd be comfortable hanging out with suits and spooks, but I'm posting these here in case they're useful for anyone who's going.
I realize that Sabu probably can't or won't answer many of these. And some questions would probably be more appropriately addressed to the FBI, but they haven't been answering journalists' questions. In any case, there's no harm in asking, right? So, in no particular order (but numbered for ease of reference):
About your arrests and related matters
- Prior to the FBI's announcement of your arrest, you had been doxed by a number of people. Some of them have since engaged in public, acrimonious pissing contests about "who doxed Sabu first," and bragging that they helped the FBI. But as far as I have been able to determine, the earliest "doxing" was in March 2011, while according to this article, the FBI already knew who you were by February 2011.
- When did the FBI first identify you, if you know?
- What do you think of the people fighting over "who doxed Sabu first"?
- Before your arrest but after you knew you had been doxed, why did you continue hacking?
- According to a court document, "On or about May 24, 2012, the Government moved to revoke Monsegur's bail because he made unauthorized online postings." What was that about?
- You reportedly told a cop, "My name is Boo. They call me Boo. Relax. I am a federal agent. I am an agent of the federal government." Was this reported accurately? Did you actually say "Boo," or did you say "Sabu" and the cop misheard you?
- Your plea agreement refers to your "attempt, in or about 2003, to sell four pounds of marijuana, which is barred by the statute of limitations," and your "attempt, in or about 2010, to sell one pound of marijuana," and assorted other crimes unrelated to LulzSec. Why were unrelated crimes from prior years bundled into this plea agreement in 2011? (FYI, this is the reason I asked on Twitter whether you had been an informant for another agency -- I was trying to figure out why you weren't sentenced for these crimes until after your LulzSec arrest.)
- Your sentencing hearing contained glowing praise for you from the prosecution, defense, and judge. As there was a lot of repetition, I suspect that some of this praise wasn't really about you at all, but was intended to encourage other people to become informants. What do you think of this possibility?
About being an informant
- Prior to the FBI showing up at your door, had you already decided what you would do if/when they showed up?
- Multiple media reports say that you became an informant "immediately" or "the next day" after getting arrested on June 7, 2011. But by my reading of the court papers, you only officially became an informant on August 15, 2011. Is this correct? If so, what was your relationship with the FBI between your arrest on June 7 and your plea agreement on August 15?
- Fox News reported that the FBI had an agent watching your online activity 24 hours a day. (I assume they mean agents in shifts, unless FBI agents don't need sleep.) Is this correct? If so, what was that like?
- Were you authorized to engage in "otherwise illegal activity"? If so, can you say what was authorized? If not, does it mean that the FBI considers all of your online activities to be legal while you were an informant?
- The FBI has special approval requirements for "high level" confidential informants, "defined as individuals who are part of the senior leadership of an enterprise that (a) has (i) a national or international sphere of activities, or (ii) high significance to the FBI's national objectives, even if the enterprise's sphere of activities is local or regional, and (b) engages in or uses others to commit activity that qualifies as Tier 1 Otherwise Illegal Activity under the Guidelines."
- Were you considered a "high level" informant?
- How does the FBI define "senior leadership" in the context of a "leaderless" movement such as Anonymous?
- You dropped many hints that you were an informant.
- Can you confirm that at least some of these were intended as warnings?
- If yes, were you surprised at who did or didn't pick up on them?
- Was the FBI aware that you were dropping hints? If so, why were they OK with it?
- Why do you think so many people kept working with you despite multiple indicators that you were an informant?
- I speculated that the FBI might have wanted your informant status to be obvious, thereby ensuring that only gullible people would work with you, so that the FBI could more easily arrest or manipulate them. Do you think this is a possibility?
- Someone said they provided you with information about public corruption, with the idea that the FBI would be more likely to act on it coming from you than from tips@fbi.gov. Is providing information to an obvious informant an effective way to get the FBI to act on tips?
- Do you feel that the FBI cared about your safety and effectiveness? If not, why did you keep working with them? If you felt unsafe, would you have been able to quit?
- Did you work directly with any other informants, or only with FBI employees?
- How was the pay?
- Whose idea was it to use the hashtag #FFF [Fuck FBI Friday]?
- If it was your idea, why was the FBI OK with it?
- If it was the FBI's idea, were they expressing a desire to be sexually penetrated by Anonymous?
- You also used the #antisec hashtag. Some have criticized this, because you were using the word differently than the original AntiSec movement. Whose idea was this, and what was the intent?
- Did you only go after hacktivists, or other types of hackers and criminals also?
- Have you been involved in other high-profile cases, where your involvement hasn't been publicized?
- Chatlogs indicate that you provided targets for other people to hack. How did you obtain the targets? Did the FBI tell you which targets to suggest to others?
- How many people were arrested with your assistance?
- I noticed a pattern where someone would say they're working with you, then abruptly disappear. Am I correct to assume that most or all of these people got arrested?
- Particularly with regard to terrorism investigations, the FBI has a history of creating and then foiling their own plots, sometimes using informants who are obviously informants, thereby only arresting people who are young, easily-led, and/or metally disabled. Did you consider whether the FBI might have been using you in a similar way? Do you think this is a good use of tax dollars?
- tflow says that you tried to stop him from disbanding LulzSec. Similarly, Kayla wrote that "Jake and Mustafa wanted to walk away" but "you raged at them in IRC" and "actively pulled children back into a world of crime to continue something they didn't even want to do." Is this accurate? If so, why did you do it? If you think it wasn't entrapment, why not?
- In your CBS interview, you said that you didn't identify anybody. But the FBI said that your chats with co-conspirators were critical to confirming their identities (via tflow). Do you have an explanation for this seeming contradiction? (My guess: there's a subtle difference between "I identified them" vs. "They identified themselves as we chatted.")
- It has been suggested that you incited more criminality while you were an informant than before, including crimes in other countries that the FBI could have no hope of monitoring or pursuing. Was this your idea, or the FBI's? Why was the FBI OK with it?
- Does the FBI think they did anything wrong in their handling of you? Are they doing anything differently now?
- Are you worried about your safety?
About other informants/infiltrators
- Former FBI director Robert Mueller confirmed that the FBI "used confidential human sources, search warrants, and physical surveillance" to identify you. Do you know who exactly snitched on you?
- I made a list of all known informants associated with LulzSec. Am I missing anyone?
- You promoted the Twitter user @MalSec, generally believed to be Storm a/k/a St0rm associated with LulzSec. There were rumors that MalSec is your cousin and was also an informant. Is there any truth to these rumors?
- The FBI had a confidential human source in Tampa whose case was opened the day before your arrest, and closed two days after your arrest was announced, who also provided information to the FBI about LulzSec. But there have been over 9,000 articles about you, and not a single one about this unknown Tampa source. Why do you think this is?
- This article claims that "One in four US hackers is an FBI informer."
- Does this statistic sound accurate?
- This article came out the day before your arrest. Any connection?
- Am I guessing correctly that one LulzSec associate is an undercover law enforcement agent?
- When you came back to Twitter recently, you wrote that there are still informants within Anonymous, and that people should assume chats are being monitored. Then you deleted those tweets (and apparently no one kept screencaps). Did the FBI ask you to delete those tweets?
About the Stratfor hack
- You provided an FBI-owned server for the exfiltration of data from Stratfor, and the FBI monitored the hack in real-time. Then all the Stratfor emails wound up on Wikileaks, and the FBI has refused to answer questions about how this happened. Can you shed any light on the matter?
- With regard to the theft of credit card numbers: Stratfor said that the FBI told them that the FBI notified the banks (who presumably notified customers). However, as far as I have been able to determine, no one was notified. Did the FBI just drop the ball, or was someone within the FBI participating in credit card fraud?
- When the Stratfor subscriber data was made public, it potentially put a huge amount of sensitive information at risk. For example, if Paula Broadwell used the same password on her email as she did at Stratfor, then the FBI (via Jeremy Hammond) literally gave everyone in the entire world the potential ability to blackmail the head of the CIA. Was there any discussion or concern within the FBI about the Stratfor hack facilitating other hacks, possibly with more serious consequences?
- Do you think Hammond (and other hacktivists) erred in dumping data publicly instead of holding onto it for further research and potentially more valuable use later?
- Do you think that Hammond could have been manipulated by a foreign government or criminal group in the same way he was manipulated by you and the FBI?
Miscellaneous
- What happened to the Bitcoin?
- In January 2012, your associate palladium listened in on a law enforcement conference call. The media almost unanimously portrayed this as a win for Anonymous and an embarrassment for law enforcement. But from my understanding of the timeline and content of the call, it seems like LE knew in advance that Anons would be listening in, and tailored their discussion accordingly. Can you confirm that LE knew in advance that their call would be monitored by Anons? If so, do you know why they haven't done anything to counter the erroneous depiction in the media?
- Multiple Anons (Barrett Brown, Commander X, KYAnonymous, and Laurelai) claim to have received advance warning of impending FBI raids of themselves or others.
- Do you know anything about these incidents?
- Does Anonymous still have moles within the FBI?
- What do you think of Parmy Olson's book
?
- What do you think of Gabriella Coleman's book
?
- What do you think of the LulzSec-inspired dance, Hack Politik?
- Why did you want to meet Quinn Norton in person? And why were you rude to her?
- Why were you rude to Adrian Chen?
- I understand that Stanley Cohen represented members of your family, and has known you for many years. Are you still in touch with him? Do you have any thoughts about his sentencing?
- Of all the articles about you, which do you think is the most accurate?
- Are you the one who deleted the @LulzSec tweets? If so, why? Have they been archived?
About your life now and in the future
- What are you doing now? Have you gone whitehat?
- Was it all worth it?
- What are your plans for the future?
- How are the children you had been caring for? (People keep calling them your nieces, but they're technically cousins, I think?)
- Do you have any advice for:
- Currently active hacktivists?
- Security professionals?
- Other informants?
- Law enforcement?
- The general public?
- Kids who want to grow up to be hackers?
Thanks. See you around the 'net.
(Sorry, I don't have my website set up for comments. If you're on Twitter, please tweet at me. Or post your reply somewhere on the internet and I'll probably come across it.)
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