* voiceofthevoiceless.org
Justin Samuel turns up as programmer for new Firefox internet browser
Where is former Animal Liberation Front prisoner and FBI informant Justin Samuel now? Designing the internet browser you may be using to read this.
This week I was shown a video advertising the new Firefox 4 browser, and asked if the “Justin Samuel” in the new Mozilla Firefox promotional video is the Justin Samuel who entered a grand jury in 2000 and implicated me in six fur farm raids.
It was.
Watch the video at this link (click “watch video”). Justin Samuel is the second person speaking. The man who verifiably worked (or works) with the FBI is now ensuring the new Firefox browser “is the most secure browser out there”. Raising the question: how secure can a browser be when the man assigned to make it secure has a working relationship with the FBI?
Justin Samuel’s grand jury testimony
In 1997, myself and Justin Samuel orchestrated a series of mink releases across South Dakota, Iowa, and Wisconsin. After our indictment, Justin Samuel was the first to be arrested and offered his testimony against me in exchange for a reduced sentence.
You can read 86-page Justin Samuel’s grand jury transcript at this link. His testimony and promise to testify at trial was a major factor in my eventual prison sentence.
A.L.F. snitches: where they are now
While “where are they now” rumors of Animal Liberation Front / Earth Liberation Front informants abound, ranging from former straight edge mink feed cooperative bombers gone 7-11 employee drug addicts to SUV-firebombers gone SUV-drivers, the resurfacing of Justin Samuel is among the more timely and confirmed updates on just where A.L.F. informants end up when they betray their friends, their movement, and the animals.
In August I wrote about the curious micro-trend of Animal Liberation Front informants going into the computer security field. Darren Thurston, who implicated several people in Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front arsons, is now a computer security consultant. Justin Samuel, on his UC-Berkeley graduate student profile, posts several articles he authored on computer security before surfacing on the Mozilla Firefox 4 team.
It is not unreasonable to speculate this may be more than a coincidence. The FBI would have an interest in placing its prized “ecoterrorist” assets in privileged positions of root-level access into our digital lives – after they’ve burned all bridges in our real ones.
Animal Liberation Front informants in the computer security field: Coincidence, or strategically placed “men on the inside”?
Open letter to Mozilla Firefox
A few questions that might be posed to Justin Samuel’s current employers at Mozilla (these are really three ways of asking the same thing):
*Do you feel employing Justin Samuel, someone who has has worked with the FBI as an informant, to be a credibility-compromising to your product, and trust-eroding among its users?
*Can you brand Firefox a “safe and secure” browser with someone who signed a plea agreement obligating him to provide information directly to the FBI?
*Can anyone feel comfortable using Mozilla Firefox 4 knowing a person responsible for making it “secure” has a working relationship with a federal law enforcement agency?
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While I don’t believe in “internet security” (and am aware of Google / CIA links) I’m still going with another browser… starting now.
– Peter Young