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Operation: Marcab Invasion post report (HUGE SUCCESS)
Well, here is my own post raid report from San Diego Comic-Con, the history of the Marcab Invasion, and the events leading up to it. Lots of TL;DR, but the history leading up to it is important since alot of stuff happened behind the scenes.
You guys have no idea how close the plug came to being pulled on the entire thing, many, MANY times.
When the whole Anonymous movement was taking place globally and it looked like a long campaign, several different factions announced long term plans for outreach events over what will become known as the Summer of Lulz, July specifically. Euroanons (London especially) made plans to fly Mark Bunker and Tory Christman out for the global protest on the 12th, and WashingtonDC anons were rallying the entire eastern seaboard of the United States into a march on the national mall. The western US had been enturbulating nonstop in San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, but we didn't have any large outreach event planned so far.
A few people had made threads on Enturbulation on the subject of Anonymous doing something at Comic-Con, although nothing really materialized. Anonymous, in the spirit of doing, instead of coaching, made me think "Well, how would a raid work at Comic-Con?"
Comic-Con has over 125,000 people from all over the globe attend and is one of the largest gatherings of comics, pop media, and fandom in the Western Hemisphere. San Diego itself is packed with tourists during this weekend as well. In short, it's one of the most concentrated gatherings with the ability to reach people globally. San Diego anons are resourceful but there was no way we could pull it off without help from Anonymous members globally. A plan was hammered out that could reach the most amount of people with the least amount of funds. I met with Enturbulation Staff about the possibility of a donation drive in May, in order to raise funds to reach people here at the Convention in July. The plan was approved for there to be a link on the website to the Marcab Invasion and for me to post a thread. These were done.
As far as the site itself, I had already set up the site for the San Diego Anonymous cell, and decided instead of creating a new website, to put the Invasion on the San Diego website. Paypal was set up with an anonymous widget so anyone could donate. And people did. I was amazed seeing it happen. A few other Anon cells linked to it.
I had also not seen a store out there that sold proper Anony-gear, so a lot of work also went into creating the Cafepress store, with the funds from it going to fund the Marcab Invasion, for people that didn't want to flat out donate but wanted some cool gear. And it is all incredibly sexy. 
Behind the scenes, I was working with several members of Comic-Con staff to get it off the ground. The original plan was to do a table drop of youfoundthecards on the freebie table, with a handout along the registration lines. Donations were pouring in, and we found a printer that was semi-local that would work with us.
We got the word back from Comic-Con staff that youfoundthecard was a no go. Activist causes cannot be promoted at Comic-Con, but there is a loophole. If you’re promoting an activist cause via a comic, film, or other form of pop media that Comic-Con celebrates, then that is okay.
Looks like the original assessment of creating a new website had to be revisited. A few people on Enturbulation had been making beautiful artwork for the cause, and there had been a few aborted comic book attempts.
Once again, why not?
After another week of hard work getting everything set up, San Diego launched You Found The Comic - Anonymous Comics, and promoted a Comic Jam for all the members of Anonymous with artistic abilities that wanted to pick up a pen through the cause. We hope to have issue #0 completed soon by the end of August.
We finally got approval on the card design, since it was promoting a comic.
Mark Bunker, aka Wise Beard Man, loved the idea, and made a video promoting it which pushed our donations even higher – a large part of what we received was because of this video. Everyone involved wishes to give him our sincere thanks.
The final plan had four operations to it – one main one, with the other three operations being diversions to keep the Scientologists at the convention busy.
Main plan – freebie table drop of tens of thousands of youfoundthecomic postcards
Diversion 1 – Youfoundthecard drop outside and inside the convention
Diversion 2 – Raid on the org Saturday night
Diversion 3 – Actual visible Anon protest outside the con by the trolley station. These last two were what was hopefully going to divert Scientologist attention the most.
The order went to the printer the week before, rushed. The last few days leading up to the Invasion were torture. Scientology knew we were doing something. We knew they would pull several things that weekend. But what? All of us, especially myself, were walking on eggshells.
Tuesday rolls around and we go drive about eight hours to pick up the cards. When they wheeled out the pallet stacked tall, to see all the hard effort of the last few months come to fruition…it was amazing. We dropped off the first batch of cards at the convention then went home for a much needed drink.
Then Wednesday rolls around. The first day of the convention, and the first indirect skirmish. I parked myself down by the grassy area on the south side of the convention center, where the line started to wrap around all the way to the back of the Convention. I met up with DCSF and handed out about 2000 youfoundthecards in less than an hour before security came up to me.
Overall, it wasn’t too bad. DCSF had wandered off handing out cards and I called her and told her to stop, and she got the hint to not come back while I was talking with security.
The “official” story that he told me was that “someone” had visited youfoundthecard in line using a blackberry or iPhone or something and was shocked at the “religious hatred and bigotry” involved, specifically, the cartoon parodying the mac VS pc commercials where linux gets beaten with a baseball bat. Now, I knew this was BS as you had to link through alot of places on YFTC to get there. I knew we would be found out, but I didn’t think it would be that fast. I unmasked to speak with him and we talked for quite a while about what it was, what we were doing, and the fact we had set up something on the freebie table that was approved by the convention.
Any guesses as to “who” was complaining?
I had to explain that while I was not the site administrator on youfoundthecard, I WAS the admin for youfoundthecomic, and I knew for a fact there was absolutely no objectionable content unless someone had hacked my site in the last three hours. He was on his radio for a bit, determining what to do with me, and overall, was very polite and neutral. I would have rather dealt with him than with the harbor police.
Apparently, I wasn’t allowed to hand anything out there in the grassy area. Comic-Con annexed that property for the first time this year, using it for line control. Previous demonstrations had gone on there in the past, so I thought we were fine to hand out items along anyone in that area. This was an honest point of confusion.
Long story short, we met with another anon who had gone down the line, simply to make sure he wasn’t handing out anything, and spent a few HOURS doing damage control. I finally explained to security that I wasn’t aware there was an issue with us handing out cards where we were, and that in order to make his job and everyone’s life easier, we would change our plans and only hand things out at the north end of the center and over by the trolley station, off of Convention Center property. The other reason I wanted to do this was because I didn’t want to run the risk of the freebie table postcards getting pulled since the design was identical.
He agreed that was the best solution and thanked me for being open and honest with him. I shook his hand, and myself and the other anon went inside to get our badges. Afterwards, I spent some time talking with Metro police to let them know what we were doing, that we were going to be in there, and finding out what we could and couldn’t do while at the trolley station.
The plans were updated that night on our forums and IRC. The security guard had made things very clear – if he found us on convention property handing out stuff, our badges would be confiscated and we would be removed from convention center grounds, and the postcards would be pulled from the table. No plan survives first contact with the enemy, so we went to plan B, which we had in place for a while in the event that things weren’t going to go as planned (they never do).
So we had our first battle against Scientologists trying to manipulate Comic-Con staff that weekend, and it was the first of several. I went home and got some sleep.
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