For Part Two scroll down or click HERE

For Part Three scroll down or click HERE

We last left off with Christopher Doyon a.k.a. Commander X’s insanely wild phone call to radio host and activist, Robert Norse, a few hours after he led a DDoS attack against Santa Cruz, California’s county website. Throughout the phone call, Doyon repeatedly urged local residents of Santa Cruz, as well as Norse’s entire audience, to join his fight against the city by downloading a cyber tool called the High Orbit Ion Cannon (HOIC) directly from his website.

Unbeknownst to probably everyone unfamiliar with an HOIC, if you get caught using it like Doyon did, you could face a lengthy prison sentence. I previously reported that you could face up to five years in prison but it turns out that you can actually face up to ten years so Doyon can go fuck himself even further for trying to stitch up innocent people, including activists in Santa Cruz, who advocate on behalf of the homeless.

And not only did Doyon fail to warn anyone about the illegality of a DDoS attack, he brazenly told everyone that it was perfectly legal. As he put it, not only was it legal, no one had been arrested for the attack on Santa Cruz (um, it had only been a few hours since the attack when he said this) nor were the feds even interested in what had happened. Needless to say, shortly thereafter, he was arrested and later indicted.

This article and the next are going to cover what happened in the weeks following Doyon’s DDoS attack using three of the earliest and most detailed sources I could find. First, Ars Technica did a massive two-article spread about Doyon in early December 2012, after journalist Nate Anderson met up with him in Canada for an interview. 

It is the first and most in-depth article I found that reported on Doyon’s version of events. Interestingly, Ars Technica published it two months after Anonymous’ lead media liaison, Barrett Brown, was arrested, and only a few days before Doyon and others went live with #OpIsrael.

The second source is a 2014 The New Yorker article in which David Kushner spoke with Doyon, and the third is Doyon’s own 2017 book entitled, “Behind the Mask: An Inside Look At Anonymous.”

Let’s start with Doyon’s earliest version of what transpired after the attack on Santa Cruz via Ars Technica:

‘It dawns on me… this isn’t Paypal or MasterCard,’ he tells me when we meet in Canada. ‘This is fucking two blocks away. I just took down a government website two blocks away—and I told everybody I was going to do it. My heart starts to pound.’

He stepped out of the coffee shop and onto Pacific Avenue. Down the street, a reporter from local TV station KSBW was doing a ‘stand-up’ with the Santa Cruz chief of police, asking the chief about the just-concluded denial of service attack. The chief was looking right at him.

So Doyon hopped a bus that took him into the mountains 20 miles outside of Santa Cruz proper, where he hiked up to the ‘pot camp’ he called home for the moment. He stayed in the camp for a full week, scared of pursuit, until he was eating crusts of bread. The winter weather turned cold and wet, and Doyon grew miserable and hungry. He returned from the mountains to his old haunts in town and eventually to his regular coffee shops—despite knowing this ‘was a bad fucking idea.’ He had reason to worry; over the last decade, by his own admission, he has done nothing but cause trouble in Santa Cruz. The cops knew him well.

Two years later, the The New Yorker wrote:

Doyon decided that he had made his point. He typed ‘cease fire,’ and the county’s site flickered back to life. (Despite the attack, the city’s anti-homelessness law did not change.)

Doyon hardly had time to celebrate before he grew anxious. ‘I got to leave,’ he typed to [Joshua Covelli]. He fled to his shack in the mountains…A few weeks later, Doyon’s food ran out, and he returned to town.

And here’s what Doyon wrote in 2017 (my emphasis):

I had already told the Santa Cruz Sentinel, the local news paper – that Commander X of the Peoples Liberation Front would be calling in to the local pirate radio station Free Radio Santa Cruz during that evening’s radio show hosted by local homeless advocate Robert Norse. In the meantime though, I felt the need to get out of sight and I was exhausted. I packed up and set out for the public park that ran along side the San Lorenzo river for a nap.

Later that night, in the Coffee Roasting Company cafe – I fired up Skype and voice morphing software and did my call in interview with Robert Norse on FRSC. The interview was brief, and plagued with technical problems. I was relieved when it was over, and I made my plans to get the hell out of town for a much needed break from civilization. As I was boarding the bus the next
morning, a headline in the Santa Cruz Sentinel caught my eye. Looking around in either direction, I bought a copy and stuffed it in my pack just before boarding the bus north.

Monday – December 27, 2010 approx. 7:00 PM PT – Roasting Company Cafe Santa Cruz, CA USA

I had received word from street activists that two FBI agents had been asking questions about me for days in Santa Cruz. I had been out at my mountain camp, recuperating from the hectic activities of the past month in town. Needing supplies, and not sure exactly what to do next – I had been forced back into the city where I found out about the federal dragnet for me almost immediately. I had spent the day on the San Lorenzo river bottom, hiding and sleeping. Finally I decided fuck it, what ever is going to happen – let it be.

In the entry above that Doyon dated December 27th, he stated that he was recuperating from the “hectic activities of the past month,” which would take us back to November 27, 2010. However, he’s also stated in the past (and in this very same book!) that he didn’t infiltrate Anonymous until December 10th, so it’s unclear what “hectic activities,” if any, he was involved with between November 27th – December 10th, 2010. 

In #OpISIS Part 3, I wrote:

Doyon’s presence in the IRC channel in December 2010 is the earliest interaction that I know of between Doyon and Anonymous that’s backed up by released chat logs. With that said, I’d be super interested in what Doyon was doing that month between his last appearance on Norse’s radio show [November 4, 2010] and his appearance in Anonymous’ IRC channels. Just saying.

Aside from this discrepancy, Doyon’s story is pretty kosher so far, yes? He carried out the attack, got freaked out, hopped a bus, and took off for the mountains. He stayed there for approximately a week or two in a makeshift shack before returning to town knowing full well it was a “bad fucking idea.”

After returning to Santa Cruz from his jaunt in the mountains, according to Ars Technica, here’s what happened to Doyon after he stopped in at a local coffee shop (my emphasis):

One day in mid January, Doyon dropped by a favorite coffee shop, sat down, and opened his laptop. The barista was acting odd, giving a strange jerk of his head that made Doyon wonder if the man had a tic in his neck. Doyon logged into his password-protected computer and had just started work on the ‘operations’ that take up most of his time when ‘a fucking arm comes from fucking behind me’ and snatches his laptop by its screen. Doyon looked up to find a local cop holding his machine. The sudden realization of what happened hit him hard.

Two years later, Doyon told The New Yorker that an FBI agent had been snooping in the IRC (duh), in addition to two federal agents showing up at the coffee shop:

Doyon hardly had time to celebrate before he grew anxious. ‘I got to leave,’ he typed to Covelli. He fled to his shack in the mountains. Doyon was right to be wary: an F.B.I. agent had been snooping in the I.R.C. The F.B.I. obtained a warrant to search Doyon’s laptop.

A few weeks later, Doyon’s food ran out, and he returned to town. While he was at the Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting Company, two federal agents entered the shop. They brought him to the county police station.

However, three years after that, Doyon wrote in his book that it was only after two local Santa Cruz officers hauled him off to the police station and put him in an interrogation room that two agents from the FBI’s cyber-crime division based out of San Jose, California showed up.

And sure, maybe Doyon doesn’t particularly care to distinguish between a local cop or a federal agent; they’re all the same to him. Regardless, it doesn’t change the fact that it appears Doyon used Ars Technica to cover up the actual date of his arrest, which occurred one month earlier than what they reported.

Doyon looked up to find a local cop holding his machine. The sudden realization of what happened hit him hard…Out from the back room came a couple of FBI cybercrime agents in their ‘scruffy-ass fucking hoodies’ and blue jeans. Doyon, one of the 40 Anons raided that day in a major sweep across the country, was served with a search warrant. In a press release announcing the raids, the FBI reminded people that ‘facilitating or conducting a DDoS attack is illegal.’

Doyon, one of the 40 Anons raided that day in a major sweep across the country, was served with a search warrant. If you click on the link above for the press release, it takes you to a page on the FBI website that reads (snippet): 

FBI agents today executed more than 40 search warrants throughout the United States as part of an ongoing investigation into recent coordinated cyber attacks against major companies and organizations. Also today, the United Kingdom’s Metropolitan Police Service executed additional search warrants and arrested five people for their alleged role in the attacks.

These distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) are facilitated by software tools designed to damage a computer network’s ability to function by flooding it with useless commands and information, thus denying service to legitimate users. A group calling itself ‘Anonymous’ has claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying they conducted them in protest of the companies’ and organizations’ actions. The attacks were facilitated by the software tools the group makes available for free download on the Internet. The victims included major U.S. companies across several industries.

That same day, news outlets like ABC News reported “Five arrested in U.K. for alleged role in ‘operation payback’ attack, and both ABC and Financial Post reported that the FBI “executed more than 40 search warrants across the country yesterday as part of an investigation into a series of cyber attacks last year that targeted financial institutions and Websites executed by Internet activists loyal to WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange.”

So, to be clear, Ars Technica reported that Doyon was raided and served one of the forty search warrants that the FBI executed on January 27, 2011, in connection with their investigation into Operation Payback.

Remember when Doyon said in his 2017 book that he single handedly took down MasterCard’s website during Operation Payback despite the fact his dates don’t even add up based on what the media reported? The same operation he has never, ever been charged for despite his confession?  

On December 11, 2012, the day that Ars Technica published the article, Doyon clearly wanted members of Anonymous to believe that he was served with one of those forty search warrants due to his alleged participation in Operation Payback. And he used the 2012 Ars Technica interview to do just that. I mean, that’s what they published, right?

But he wasn’t. He was arrested and his laptop was seized one month prior and so the real question is why Doyon tried to hide the fact that the laptop he used for #OpPayback was seized by the feds one month before forty search warrants connected to Operation Payback were executed?

#OpISIS 8.7 Part Two

Aside from the Ars Technica article, I was unable to find any evidence that Doyon was arrested and had his laptop seized on January 27, 2011. However, had Ars Technica actually done their homework, they would have come across Robert Norse’s radio broadcast from February 17, 2011, which probably could have cleared some things up before going to press, as they say. 

During the show, Norse, who was quite familiar with Doyon by this point, reported that he “had not been seen in a couple of months.” For those of you trying to follow the timeline:

December 10, 2010: Doyon infiltrates Anonymous via their Operation Payback IRC channel (per Doyon)

December 15:  Doyon takes down MasterCard’s website during Operation Payback (per Doyon). That same day he sends out an email to multiple media outlets warning them that “Commander X” and the “Peoples Liberation Front” (PLF) are going to attack Santa Cruz county’s website the following day. 

December 16th: Doyon follows through with his threat and then calls in to Norse’s radio show later that day as “Commander X” and with a poorly disguised voice. Years later, he tells the media that he left town almost immediately after the attack. When he returned to Santa Cruz a week or two later he was arrested and his computer was seized.

It was approximately two months after this, on February 17, 2011, that Norse reported Doyon’s disappearance. What followed on his radio show was a fascinating interview that Norse conducted with an activist on the streets of Santa Cruz named Scott Curry. Curry confirmed Doyon’s disappearance, adding that he had not been around “since late December [2010].” 

Norse: So we’re talking with Scott…You say you’ve been to the jail to check out—I know Chris Doyon, or “Curbhugger Chris,” as we call him, the Peace Camp 2010 PR activist, uh, has not been seen in a couple of months. You checked his campsite and you thought he wasn’t around? 

Scott: I found no sign that he’s been around since late December and, uh, when we checked at the jail with the correct spelling of his name, they said that they had never had him in there. 

Norse: Which you found peculiar because…?

Scott: Because I’m almost positive he has been in there so..and actually even recently so…

Norse cut back to the studio:

Norse: Yeah, it’s for sure he’s been in there. Ed Frey bailed him out of jail recently, uh, when he was apparently, uh, grabbed for what—either for not showing up for court for some kind of community service for an old petty theft charge, perhaps I’m not quite sure what it was, but he was definitely in jail. It’s strange that the jail didn’t seem to have the record…

Ed Frey is an activist and attorney who co-founded Peace Camp 2010, a protest in Santa Cruz that basically triggered Doyon’s cyber attack on Santa Cruz after a handful of activists, including himself, were charged and prosecuted under the city’s anti-lodging law. Frey also posted Doyon’s bail in September 2011, after he was indicted.

A month before this radio show, he and five others, including Doyon, were due in court but according to one website, Doyon failed to appear. Frey told the judge, “Mr. Doyon lives in a very rural area in north county and has no telephone.” 

Norse continued:

Curbhugger Chris [Doyon], of course is, uh, a very articulate, kind of a radio man from way back east. Uh, according to his account, he was from Maine, had his own radio show, actually ran for political office back there, and came over here and got involved with Peace Camp 2010. Became a leader and spokesperson for Peace Camp 2010 for a couple months, uh, creating probably more publicity in that period of time than activism has seen in a number of years….

Norse cut back to the street interview:

Norse: You had his name on some legal documents that came from the jail?
Scott: Uh, there were some legal documents at his camp from his last stay at the jail and, uh, so you would think that they would have record of that. It’s interesting that—I’m not sure why it is that they didn’t have record or claimed to not have record but it was kinda strange. 

Norse: You have the name of the person you spoke to?

Scott: Uh, no, I do not. 

Norse: Well, it could be inept in some way.

Scott: Yeah, it’s possible, uh, it’s…it’s…it’s kinda a hard situation. Actually my wife talked to the person…I don’t think she got the name either…I wasn’t sure if maybe the FBI made him disappear or something…

Norse: Oh, come come…

Scott: Nah, I don’t actually believe that’s probably the case but it’s just strange that he’s been there recently and we know his name, and the spelling of his name, and that they accepted the spelling of his name and everything enough to put it on legal documents but the jail didn’t know who he was so I’m not sure how— 

Norse: The FBI apparently, according to Ed Frey, his attorney, the FBI has his computer…
 
Scott: That’s what I heard…

Back in the studio, Norse:

“Chris, uh, is also—he may be a suspect in the brief, uh, I guess it was a…how would you describe it…the incident, when the county website got taken down. We got a call from a guy called Commander X who claimed that an East Coast group in solidarity with Peace Camp 2010 was shutting down the county’s website and demanding, or urging, that the district attorney stop the prosecution of these cases.

I’m not sure, frankly, how effective or positive a tactic like that was for anybody, for any supporters, to do but I understand why people would be pissed that homeless people are being targeted still by the city and county for prosecution for doing what they have to do….

Anyway, um, Ed Frey reported that Chris’s computer had been seized by the FBI for, and I wouldn’t know why they would seize it other than he was a suspect in the case of this—connected in some way with the cyber activity of the—because the county website was shut down for about, uh, I guess, it was from half an hour to an hour one day by this group. I’m not sure what they called themselves but the guy who called in, I think it was a guy, there was a voice disguiser that called themself Commander X. The voice wasn’t too well disguised, I think, but there was a voice disguiser. At least an attempt to disguise the voice.

Doyon had not been seen in a couple of months. Scott Curry confirmed that Doyon had not been around since late December. We understood Doyon was taken into custody by the FBI here in Santa Cruz back in December when they confiscated his computer. Ed Frey reported that Chris’s computer had been seized by the FBI. The jail had no record of him even though we all know he was there…

Of course, you’re welcome to believe that a well-known and respected radio host, local residents of Santa Cruz who were active in the advocacy scene for the homeless, and even Doyon’s own attorney lied about Doyon’s arrest in December 2010. Nothing wrong with starting yet another nutter conspiracy theory, amirite?

In the meantime, I feel pretty confident that Doyon was, indeed, arrested and his laptop was seized one month prior to the feds serving forty search warrants on Doyon’s Operation Payback buddies. So again, the question is why did Doyon lie to Ars Technica and try to hide the fact his #OpPayback laptop was seized one month before the FBI executed 40 search warrants related to Operation Payback?

And I haven’t even gotten to the best part. In his 2017 book, Doyon completely changed his story. Rather than being served a search warrant on January 27, 2011, and having his laptop seized like he told Ars Technica, now the arrest took place on December 27, 2010, exactly one month prior to the FBI executing those forty search warrants.

Monday – December 27, 2010 approx. 7:00 PM PT – Roasting Company Cafe Santa Cruz, CA USA

I had received word from street activists that two FBI agents had been asking questions about me for days in Santa Cruz. I had been out at my mountain camp, recuperating from the hectic activities of the past month in town. Needing supplies, and not sure exactly what to do next – I had been forced back into the city where I found out about the federal dragnet for me almost immediately. I had spent the day on the San Lorenzo river bottom, hiding and sleeping. Finally I decided fuck it, what ever is going to happen – let it be.

The first hint that something was wrong is that I couldn’t login or connect to my VPN. Almost immediately after that, I saw one Santa Cruz police officer coming in the front door of the coffee house as another came in the back way. I was trapped, I was V&. They were upon me fast, and even as I reached to shut the power off on my laptop to protect the encrypted partitions – one officer lunged across the table and grabbed my laptop by the screen and pulled it away from me. The two SCPD officers they sent to pick me up were partners. Officer Wallace and Wilson.

In fact, Doyon’s latest version specifically states that he was not served one out of those forty warrants because daring escapes and bullshit and whatnot.

The news broke early in the morning, on the worst possible day for it in the history of Anonymous. As we scrambled desperately to thwart the dictator Mubarak and keep the Internet turned on in Egypt, it was on Twitter that the first reports appeared. 

An army of FBI agents had fanned out across the USA from coast to coast, and had kicked in the doors of dozens of Anons while serving over 40 search warrants. All computers and electronics were seized, even those belonging to family members or room-mates. Even game consoles were taken. Folks of all ages from a grandmother to a teen-age girl were dragged from their homes before dawn and arrested.

But there was one Anon on their list they didn’t capture that day. Me. When I caught the news I was in San Francisco. The moment my self-appointed body guard Frank heard about the raids, he practically dragged me to his van and insisted on relocating me to Berkeley immediately. The rest of that day was a blur, as I sat in the cafe for twelve hours working with other hackers from around the globe trying desperately to keep Egypt connected to the Internet. 

But the news reports on the raids were everywhere in everyone’s feeds – and the mood within Anonymous was somber….and angry. But due to the frenzied activity surrounding the Egyptian Revolution and our involvement in it, it would be almost two weeks before some of us could come together with a plan. That plan would have a name, one that gained total consensus fast. Anonymous Operation Vendetta. “Op V” was the shorthand code name.

As the details began to trickle in on Twitter it became painfully obvious the FBI had chosen their targets carefully. Many good and influential Anons, whom I had worked with this past few weeks – had their doors kicked in. The_N0O, Trivette, and even our own Absolem – all had been attacked at dawn for the crime of being Anonymous, their doors dropped and all their electronics taken. 


No doubt I also would have been targeted during this sweep, except I had already anticipated the possibility and escaped the dragnet. But the intel I was getting from the streets in the Bay Area was that the feds were literally everywhere looking for me. Only the fact that I kept moving and kept to the shadows of society helped me escape capture by the FBI Cyber Crime Division.

“When I caught the news I was in San Francisco.” This dude doesn’t even care that he told Ars Technica years prior that he was sitting in a Santa Cruz coffee shop when all of this went down. And yes, unbelievably, this story gets worse.

#OpISIS 8.7 Part 3

Now that we’ve determined that Christopher Doyon a.k.a. Commander X lied to Ars Technica about his arrest, perhaps in an effort to cover up for the FBI seizing his #OpPayback computer one month prior to them serving forty Operation Payback warrants (unless the media outlet was outlandishly confused after interviewing him), let’s see how much damage was done. 

Going back to the 2012 Ars Technica interview with Doyon, which I described previously as the earliest and most detailed account of his shenanigans that I could find, this is what happened when he was arrested and his laptop was seized on or around December 27, 2010:

Doyon dropped by a favorite coffee shop, sat down, and opened his laptop. The barista was acting odd, giving a strange jerk of his head that made Doyon wonder if the man had a tic in his neck. Doyon logged into his password-protected computer and had just started work on the ‘operations’ that take up most of his time when ‘a fucking arm comes from fucking behind me’ and snatches his laptop by its screen. Doyon looked up to find a local cop holding his machine. The sudden realization of what happened hit him hard.

‘I’m fucked,’ Doyon says, remembering the moment. ‘They got the computer running.’

On screen, his documents were open for anyone to read: the press release announcing the attack, the Anonymous chat logs used to coordinate it, the High Orbit Ion Cannon (HOIC) computer attack tool. Out from the back room came a couple of FBI cybercrime agents in their ‘scruffy-ass fucking hoodies’ and blue jeans.

Uh huh. Do you know who else was fucked? Joshua Covelli, the hacker that Doyon recruited into this mess. And, um, Doyon’s documents were open for anyone to read like the press release he wrote for the DDoS attack he waged against Santa Cruz county’s website, Anonymous IRC chat logs, the HOIC…?

Why would this so-called hacker have this data and information pulled up on his computer screen three weeks after he first joined Operation Payback and almost two weeks after he carried out the Santa Cruz attack? If we’re to believe the lies he told Ars Technica, he had this information open on his screen a month after the attack! 

In my opinion, this is some of the most mind blowing, absolutely fucked, and convenient shite I’ve ever heard to explain away how and why the feds served forty Operation Payback warrants a month later. Keep in mind, the Ars Technica article didn’t come out until December 2012, meaning there’s a good chance that unsuspecting hackers who worked with Doyon had no idea that his devices were seized in December 2010, until the article was published.

Here’s what Doyon wrote about his December 2010 arrest in his 2017 book:

Monday – December 27, 2010 approx. 7:00 PM PT – Roasting Company Cafe Santa Cruz, CA USA

The first hint that something was wrong is that I couldn’t login or connect to my VPN. Almost immediately after that, I saw one Santa Cruz police officer coming in the front door of the coffee house as another came in the back way. I was trapped, I was V&. They were upon me fast, and even as I reached to shut the power off on my laptop to protect the encrypted partitions – one officer lunged across the table and grabbed my laptop by the screen and pulled it away from me.

Pretty much the same admission. Any information Doyon had on his computer about Anonymous’ operations, the cops had now. After the seizure, local police arrested Doyon and took him to the Santa Cruz police station where two federal agents showed up. According to Doyon:

Officer Wilson chuckled and led me into the station. I was taken into an interview room. ‘Just sit there’ Wilson pointed at a chair ‘two men have some questions for you’. 

‘Feds?’ I asked. 

‘I told you, I don’t know – they didn’t tell me Chris. But I would say that’s a good guess…’

About ten minutes later, the door swung open and two men walked in. These were not your average G-men for certain. Dressed in grubby jeans, dirty gray hoodies and wearing equally filthy sneakers – these guys looked more like college rejects than feds. But each carried a very large laptop case, and that was the giveaway. They were federal cyber-crime agents, no doubt about it. 

They went to the other side of the table and reached for two chairs preparing to take a seat. I raised my cuffed hands to stay them. ‘Can I see some identification gentlemen?’ I asked. They paused, glanced at each other briefly – and as one reached into their back pockets. The two produced standard issue FBI badges and ID cards. I examined each one carefully, making note that indeed both these men were from the FBI’s cyber-crime division based out of San Jose, California. Satisfied, I nodded at them and settled back into my chair.

The two agents once again reached for the backs of their chairs to pull them out and have a seat. Once again I raised my hands to stop them. ‘That won’t be necessary gentlemen, you won’t be here long enough to get comfortable. I want my phone call, and my attorney. And I won’t be answering any questions.’ I said firmly with a bit of a smile. The two FBI agents once again looked at each other, shrugged and proceeded to depart the interview room.

Did you read that, kids? If the feds arrest you for a cyber crime all you have to do is tell them that you won’t answer any questions and they’ll shrug and walk away. It’s that easy!!

This rendition of what allegedly happened at the Santa Cruz police station isn’t the first time that Doyon sounded like a cop apologist. According to him, cops, federal agents and even judges were all sympathetic allies to his cause. For example, this is also what allegedly happened between him and Officer Wilson:

Although we were both clear on the lines that divided us, there was a sort of mutual respect and honor between us. ‘What the fuck is this all about [Officer] Wilson?’ I asked. 

‘Hell I was hoping you could tell me Chris,’ Wilson replied turning to look at me. ‘All I know is I am doing someone’s bidding’ he said with a tone of disgust in his voice.

Yeah no. I don’t believe for a second that a Santa Cruz cop told Doyon that he was disgusted at the prospect of arresting him.  Coming up later in this series, you’ll learn about how many times Doyon made these types of comments, especially about other cops, including one incident where he was arrested (again, allegedly) but the officer released him the following day because he supported what Doyon and his friends were doing.

If you believe this story that Doyon shamelessly peddled to his audience then you must also presume that the police officer’s superior was a sympathizer, as well, and willing to lose face over the incident. You see, Doyon claimed just last year that the incident for which he was allegedly arrested lasted hours, multiple people were involved, police vehicles were lined up and down down the street, it was a media spectacle, and he was ultimately charged .

Not only that, he said that the charges against him were dropped (we never actually learn what the charges were), which means that the prosecutor was a sympathizer, too!

Again, Doyon repeatedly paints this picture for his audience that most cops, feds and even judges will be friendly and sympathetic to your cause, and always respective of your rights. This is some seriously dangerous rhetoric to be spreading throughout hacktivist/activist communities, although I’m not surprised. Recent court documents suggest U.S prosecutors lied to a federal judge about Doyon’s criminal history in order to reduce his sentence.

I’ll cover more of this incident in an upcoming article. In the meantime, there’s not enough street drugs out there to make me believe Doyon’s story.

Doyon Goes on the Run…Again

After the two FBI agents apparently ran away from Doyon, the local police moved him to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Department where he met with his attorney, Ed Frey. After his release, the plan was to get Doyon’s laptop back the following morning.  However, upon return and after filling out the appropriate paperwork, he was told by the police that his laptop and cell phone were seized by the feds.

After leaving the station empty-handed, Doyon decided to once again go on the run. Returning to the 2012 Ars Technica article, he told the media outlet that he left Santa Cruz within 48 hours of his release and hitchhiked to San Francisco:

Doyon wasn’t immediately arrested on the DDoS charge, but he knew that a net was closing around him. He returned to his mountain camp and ‘smoked some fucking weed’ before considering his options….

Within 48 hours, he had stowed his belongings in his mountain pack, hiked down the ridgeline from his camp until he struck Route 1, and hitchhiked north to San Francisco. He ‘ran in circles around the Bay Area’ for a few months, moving from Berkeley to San Francisco proper to Silicon Valley cities like Mountain View. 

Don’t forget that in a 2009 radio interview with Robert Norse, Doyon broadcasted the name of the property bordering his mountain camp and even mentioned that the forest ranger was well acquainted with him so yes, I’m sure Doyon was able to hitchhike his way out of town without anyone noticing. In 2014, The New Yorker wrote:

Doyon was released, but the F.B.I. kept his laptop, which was full of incriminating evidence. Frey, a civil-rights lawyer who knew little about cybersecurity, drove Doyon back to his hillside encampment. ‘What are you going to do?’ Frey asked.

He spoke in cinematic terms. ‘Run like hell,’ he said. ‘I will go underground, try to stay free as long as I can, and keep fighting the bastards any way possible.’ Frey gave him two twenty-dollar bills and wished him luck.

Doyon hitchhiked to San Francisco and stayed there for three months. 

And according to Doyon’s book, he was in San Francisco by January 1, 2011, so again, here we have Doyon admitting that he wasn’t in Santa Cruz during the month of January 2011, meaning he lied to Ars Technica in 2012 when he told them that he was served with a search warrant on January 27, 2011, while he was in Santa Cruz.

Doyon Runs Into Some Bears, Survives, Heads Back to Cali. Also, Why Did Ars Technica Screw Up This Story So Badly?

According to The New Yorker, after Doyon left San Francisco in April, 2011, he “hitchhiked around the West,” which was backed up by Doyon’s book, “It was an insane spring…I had traveled to Montana and Idaho in a vain attempt to probe and possibly cross the Canadian border.”  However, before he left San Francisco and “hitchhiked around the West,” he told Ars Technica a whopper of a story. Remember this part?

Within 48 hours, [Doyon] had stowed his belongings in his mountain pack, hiked down the ridgeline from his camp until he struck Route 1, and hitchhiked north to San Francisco. He ‘ran in circles around the Bay Area’ for a few months, moving from Berkeley to San Francisco proper to Silicon Valley cities like Mountain View.

Ars Technica then wrote:

Doyon claims that a source within the FBI’s cybercrime division got in touch and warned him that a grand jury had issued an indictment and that an arrest was imminent. (The FBI did not respond to our requests for comment on these claims.)

So Doyon hopped a Greyhound bus to Helena, Montana. He planned to cross the unfenced Canadian border, taking up a new life as a fugitive.

Um, pardon me? While Doyon was still in San Francisco and/or the surrounding areas between approximately January 2011 – April 2011, a source “within the FBI’s cybercrime division” warned him that a grand jury issued an indictment? Folks, how is this even possible? 

A grand jury indictment wasn’t handed down until September 21, 2011, so why would the feds contact him in early spring 2011 about something that didn’t exist yet? The day after Doyon was indicted, the U.S. government filed a request to unseal the indictment and the first line of the document reads, “On or about September 21, 2011, the federal Grand Jury in San Jose, California returned a three-count indictment charging defendants Christopher Doyon…” I mean, I’m not an attorney. Do they just pull dates out of their arse? 

And I’d get into the whole “How exactly did the FBI contact Doyon?” but the article wrote “a source within,” meaning that the FBI may not have been aware of the leak. The indictment against Doyon was for the DDoS attack against Santa Cruz county’s website so I’m assuming that this was once again Doyon’s way of trying to paint the feds, or at least one of them, as sympathetic to his cause and willing to risk his/her job for him.

If that’s not what he meant then obviously this begs the question of whether or not the FBI’s message was sent through an intermediary. I’m just kidding. It doesn’t matter. Even if Doyon was telling the truth (and that’s doubtful), the FBI clearly knew where to find him the entire time: They either contacted him directly or the feds surveilled/monitored the intermediary after passing along the message.

This ain’t rocket science.

After finding out about this (non-existent?) indictment, Doyon decided to hop a bus to Helena, Montana and from there, cross over the border into Canada. He then told Ars Technica this elaborate story about killer bears, bear spray, park rangers, and whatnot so he “hitchhiked back down to Helena, where he caught a Greyhound back to California.” Ars Technica then wrote:

It was May 2011. He remained a wanted man.

What, how? Again, it would be another four months before a grand jury issued an indictment against Doyon so how did Ars Technica screw up this badly? Were they lazy? Too afraid to confront Doyon about this particular discrepancy? Or did they mean that Doyon was wanted for all the outstanding citations he received in Santa Cruz dating back to 2009? Or the warrants issued for his arrest for things like absconding and petty theft? You know, all of the things that Ars Technica failed to mention in their article. Did they mean that?

In fact, one blogger covering the Peace Camp 8 trial (see #OpISIS 8.6: A Summary of the Commander X Story So Far) wrote on January 22, 2011:

Not all defendants appeared in court. Unofficial spokesman for Peace Camp 2010, CHRIS DOYON was conspicuously absent from the proceedings. Attorney, ED FREY, admitted he had no idea why Chris wasn’t in court, but, informed Judge Gallagher that ‘Mr. Doyon lives in a very rural area in north county and has no telephone.’ No warrant was issued, but Gallagher ordered Doyon to physically be present at the next appearance.

Then, on May 3, 2011, they reported:

Santa Cruz, Ca. — Jurors delivered a verdict this afternoon in the Peace Camp Six trial. Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, and Hung. A sixth defendant, Chris Doyon, was absent and a bench warrant was issued. A good Samaritan paid Doyon’s bail, but that “fact” was irrelevant to District Attorney, Sarah Dabkowski, who reported to SENTINEL reporter that there is a warrant for Doyon’s arrest. 

Uh huh. Is this what Ars Technica meant when they said that Doyon was a wanted man because it sure wasn’t about a federal indictment in May 2011. And sure, the Peace Camp 8 case seemed like a load of bull hockey but that doesn’t give journalists (or pseudo hackers like Doyon) carte blanche to mislead their audience.

After Doyon arrived back in California around May 2011, Ars Technica went on to report that Doyon’s close brushes with the law “piled up.” A few weeks before he was arrested, two FBI agents allegedly came into a coffee shop where Doyon was working and asked the barista about the wireless router in the back: 

In the Haight Street coffee shop, Doyon closed the lid of his laptop and picked up the ‘I need food’ cardboard sign he used to raise cash, then worked his way around the FBI agents in order to get to the door.

Such incidents piled up. 

A few weeks later, at a Berkeley coffee shop, Doyon sat at a table when another FBI agent walked in with paperwork authorizing him to remove and search the shop’s wireless router. A moment after the agent stepped into the back of the shop, the Wi-Fi went down. Again, Doyon edged out the door, convinced agents were trying to sniff out his digital trail.

Ars Technica just got done telling us that a source inside the FBI warned Doyon that a grand jury had just handed down an indictment against him and that his arrest was “imminent,” and now we’re expected to believe that despite this, the F B I came and went out of these coffee shops and never recognized and arrested him? Have you ever seen Christopher Doyon?? Not to mention the fact that he wasn’t that hard to tail.

I know that I’ve harped on the 2012 Ars Technica interview quite a bit in the last few articles but, again, you have to remember that this was the first article published that reported on Doyon’s alleged story in excruciating details. The fact that Doyon manipulated those details or flat-out lied says quite a lot about both his character and blatant lack of concern for hackers that continued to work with him.

For example, despite being fully aware that the feds knew exactly who he was by December 2010, including the fact that he was the guy running around behind the Commander X persona, Doyon buried himself deeper into Anonymous via Operation Tunisia. And as you’ll learn, he continued running operations, including one against WikiLeaks, and other against the Orlando Chamber of Commerce