If 3301 is an organization like they claim to be, if they really are privacy and digital liberty enthusiasts like they say… why haven’t they revealed themselves to the people who have proven capable and suitable enough to be part of their “organization”, people that they said they were looking for in the first place? Why haven’t they given Marcus Wanner , for instance, access to their operations, Why did all communications between 3301 and the participants cease after the first cicada puzzle was solved?
This question, like the previous one raises concerns that lead to speculations which cannot be confirmed to be correct or incorrect nor true or false, I’ll address some of these here. While many people still believe Cicada to be a recruiting tool for a top secret organization (or at least anonymous group), there are those that believe Cicada is really about connecting like-minded individuals… “highly intelligent individuals” who share the same values both online and offline, people who believe that the flow of information should be free and equal for all those who seek it, people who believe in non-censorship online. These individuals are driven by something called The hacker ethic: access to computers—and anything that might teach you something about the way the world works—should be unlimited and total. always yield to the hands-on imperative!—no individual should be unable to explore the web because a certain government or entity deems it to be inappropriate. Seeing how 3301 operates, how they have conducted their communications with the world, it is pretty clear that they are driven by the same values as well. I can see how the belief that Cicada is about connecting these individuals is justifiable, here’s why – about 90% of the people who are online everyday for any reason at all actually don’t understand how the internet works. Most people have no clue what happens when they hit “send” after typing a text message, or “login” after filling their details on Facebook, Instagram, Netflix or whatever the case may be. For those who do understand what’s under the surface, for those who are very rare in modern society, those who are conscious about what they share online, websites they visit, those who are concerned about their privacy by maybe using a VPN when browsing, since anything you do online can be used against you (often without your knowledge), in a world of constantly increasing surveillance, governments spying on their own people and cooperates tracking your every move for monetary gains, it is important for those individuals to connect, to understand that they aren’t alone in their resistance, after all, these individuals are the reason we have tools such as The Onion Router.
Saying that Cicada is about the friends you make along the way, connecting like-minded individuals can also be used as an escape to the horrifying possibility of it being unsolvable, if it is unsolvable, if there aren’t any answers… I would consider that to be a terrible thing, I understand that it wouldn’t have been a waste of time, (I think people who have participated in Cicada to any extent at all have learned amazing skills for themselves) and that “magic isn’t fun if you know how the magician does the trick”. I personally think people with such skills should be known at least within the hacker community, these people are valuable, it would be a shame if 3301 remains anonymous forever.
The purpose of the Cicada puzzles isn’t clear, the only thing that is known about it though, is that it is promoting digital liberty, privacy and security. Whoever 3301 is, I think I’d like to meet them some day.
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