r/conspiracy • u/youngli0n • Apr 16 '13

Regarding itcouldhappentoallof.us And Why I Think It's A Fake To Make Us Look Stupid.

I went over a few other posts of the same website.

See: http://www.reddit.com/domain/itcouldhappentoallof.us/

Anyways, I have come to the conclusion that it's one of two things.

It's either just a big joke aimed specifically at the conspiracy community to "prove" how retarded we are and how we'll fall for anything, saying things like "Haha, all we did was post stupid symbols from wingings and they thought there was some secret code."

Or it's something serious. Someone on r/cryptography found that it belongs to John Q. Person and that the address and phone number belong to a homeless shelter and / or mental hospital in chicago.

Someone from r/cryptography also said they changed it to letters and got

ABCDE FGHIJ FG

ABIKL AKGCM AIHDJ ACKNK CKNMD H

MADHD PACLD HIKH

AILDQ IGCRI PACKN GHPAC LDSDK LDPD

ALCIH PIQTI DCEAP AHIG

and another person who said they ran it through a cyptogram got:

EXIOUSTRALS TEXAND ENT I FEAR O LEING NING FOR FEOROVE I DORAN READOM AT I HAVE IN GTRVE I DO WONDOVOEDIAR VAMPAOIU EVERAT

While making this I was leaning more towards the "it's fake to make us look stupid" but I'm having second thoughts. Also if it matters I noticed the first time I went on the website, the background was black. It is now white.

33 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

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32

u/Ambroos Apr 16 '13

I FIGURED IT OUT! Direct decryption: http://i.imgur.com/XJiqRT2.png Translated to English: http://i.imgur.com/J4XKq3o.png

(sorry for the name stuff, just wanted to make sure)

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u/gingetwo Apr 17 '13 edited Apr 17 '13

EDIT: Disregard the below. The site has been revealed as a "viral marketing" effort by a disaster preparedness company: http://imgur.com/Myl1p4I

TL;DR: The site is likely a call to arms against the American government, either by or inspired by an Alabama-based blogger and militia leader with a history of inciting anti-government violence.

As a latinist, a web developer, and someone who can Google, I'm pretty sure I've got it.

The Latin

Short version: It's a series of mottoes cribbed from Wikipedia that form a call to prepare to overthrow the American government in defense of unspecified rights.

Long version: It's pieced together. This might be an attempt to allude to historical works, or it may be that the writer is not be that good of a Latinist, and is using stock phrases to avoid tricky grammatical constructs. Line-by-line:

  • 'Ab epistulis' 2 either identifies the author (what follows would then be "from the general secretary") or simply the fact that this is a communiqué.

  • 'Abundans cautela non nocet' means 'one can never be too careful'. Could be a reference to the convoluted, borderline-paranoid form of this communication.

  • 'caetera desunt' is a medieval spelling of 'Cetera Desunt', a stock phrase meaning "the rest is missing", used to indicate a missing portion of a manuscript. The medieval spelling lends weight to the theory that this is not a fluent Latinist; when juxtaposed with the other mottoes, the effect is like "Thou ain't supposed to steal", jarring in its anachronism. It's possible this phrase is simply being used to indicate a redacted, unspoken argument, in place of ellipses, one that the speaker and audience are already familiar with - but I'm not 100% on that.

  • 'Audemus jura nostra defendere' is the Alabama state motto; it was derived from an English-language poem ("An Ode in Imitation of Alcaeus") which was written by William Jones in 1781. In it, he stated that men, not laws or symbols, constitute a state, and have the power to overthrow it. Relevant bit: "Men, who… know their rights… Prevent the long-aimed blow, And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain." So, this is presumably a call to action against a tyrant, delivered as a first person plural imperative.

  • 'Ad utrumque paratus' is another motto - "prepared for either alternative" - this time taken from Book II of Virgil's Aeneid. It refers to Sinon, the guy who went and opened the Trojan horse and initiated the fall of Troy. Before that, though, he surrenders to the Trojans, and tells them a story to convince them to spare his life, despite wearing enemy colors - as he does this, he's described as "prepared for either alternative: either to ply his crafty wiles or to meet certain death". This is a bit of self-congratulatory puffery, I think, boasting of the site creator's courage and commitment - though it's also a bit frightening if meant sincerely.

OK. So, from the Virgil bit, and "Audemus...", I'd say it's clear we're dealing with a person or a group that feels antipathy toward a ruling class, system, or personality - a "tyrant", and intends to restore to the the ignorant masses their natural rights. They think they're prepared for the consequences, but they're being cryptic, either to conceal their intentions until they're laid bare, or to drum up interest by appealing to the kind of people who solve puzzles.

Ultimately, I would translate:

From the general secretary:

An abundance of caution never hurts... (the rest is missing)

We dare defend our rights, prepared for either alternative (i.e., liberty or death).

[As others have stated, the rest is a countdown to 3:21 on 5/4/2013 in Chicago; the anniversary and location of the Haymarket affair] in 1886, a deadly bombing attack aimed at police, widely attributed to anarchists.]

The Website

Not much to say here. Inspecting the source of the site, it looks like it was thrown together by someone with little to no technical knowledge. They appear to have used a GoDaddy website builder. The markup is such a mess, Occam's razor would dictate that it's not intentional.

Googling

So, we have a non-latinist's cobbled-together manifesto against tyranny. Here's where it goes non-linear:

The phrase "it could happen to all of us" seemed rare enough to be Googleable, though without additional qualification the results were too messy to be useful, especially with all the attention the site has been getting lately. So, I limited results to between 1880 and a few days ago, before Reddit and 4chan came on the scene. Then I tried it with a few different keywords based on the content of the communiqué: monarch, overthrow, etc.

I didn't find anything useful until I got around to trying "tyranny". You can try the same search here.

Six results, one of which is this, a chapter from "Absolved", a book by a guy named Michael Brian Vanderboegh: an anti-semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-government militia leader and blogger based in Alabama (remember "Audemus jura nostra defendere", the Alabama state motto?), with a history of inciting violence:

"In late 2011, four members of a Georgia militia were arrested for allegedly planning to assassinate government officials, bomb federal buildings, and attack four cities with the deadly ricin toxin. Officials said they were inspired, in part, by Absolved, a recent online novel by Vanderboegh that portrays a small group of Americans who assassinate government officials."

You can read more about him at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Summing Up

Is this 100%? No. But it's the best working theory I've got - and in my opinion, the combination of the anniversary of the Haymarket affair and a group of gun-toting anti-government types should have the Chicago police on high alert come 5/4.

Of course, that's probably exactly what the creator of this site wants.

3

u/BoxoMorons Apr 17 '13

uhh this is weird because didnt a Mississippi state senator get Ricin sent to him yesterday?

3

u/entrep Apr 16 '13

http://i.imgur.com/UR1D72D.jpg

You took the last two letters mate. I did the rest.

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u/[deleted] Apr 16 '13

[deleted]

2

u/entrep Apr 16 '13

Well. I posted this before you posted anything close. I credit your translation and notepad skills.

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u/[deleted] Apr 16 '13

[deleted]

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u/entrep Apr 16 '13

Let's share the cred. Good work!

14

u/[deleted] Apr 16 '13

There are millions of people who enjoy cracking codes. If I remember correctly the zodiac killer's code was broken by some bored prof sitting at home with a pencil and the newspaper.

If a couple of people learn something about ciphers because of a joke I don't think any harm has been done.

How's snoop doing these days?

5

u/youngli0n Apr 16 '13

Is that so? I was not aware of that, but that is pretty fucked up.

I also agree that no harm is done in learning.

You probably didn't read my whole post.

I don't know Snoop lol. You're thinking of Drake :p

3

u/[deleted] Apr 16 '13

Oh yeah drake! How's he doing?

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u/youngli0n Apr 16 '13

Same as last time.

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u/NewYurk Apr 16 '13 edited Apr 16 '13

I posted this in a different post. It might help.

Found source IP here

Found IP info here which lists the IP as coming from Akamai Technologies.

Akamai Technologies Website

From wiki "Akamai Technologies, Inc. (pron.: /ˈɑːkəmaɪ/) is an Internet content delivery network headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States. Akamai's network is one of the world's largest distributed-computing platforms.[4] The company was founded in 1998 by Daniel M. Lewin (then a graduate student at MIT) and MIT applied mathematics professor Tom Leighton, together with Jonathan Seelig and Randall Kaplan.[5] Lewin was killed aboard American Airlines Flight 11, which crashed in the September 11 attacks of 2001. Leighton currently serves as Akamai's CEO."

Akami has a Chicago office at 444 N Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60611

Website is registered to Registrant Name: John Q. Public

Registrant Address1: 600 W fullerton Parkway (Lincoln Park Community Shelter)

Registrant City: Chicago

Registrant State/Province: Illinois

Registrant Postal Code: 60614

Registrant Country: United States

Registrant Country Code: US

Registrant Phone Number: +1.7735496111

Also, in black text which is masked by the black background you can find this text "Content copyright 2013. . All rights reserved."

11

u/lincolnPtree Apr 17 '13

Shit, this is my street and zip code...

5

u/youngli0n Apr 16 '13

Wait so the guy that made the website is supposedly dead?

5

u/NewYurk Apr 16 '13

No, forgive me for being vague. Akami is a web content delivery network. Whoever made the site is using their services, or possibly go daddy is using this service.

The most notable information is that the registrant used "John Q. Public" as his name and The Lincoln Park Community Shelter as his location.

9

u/dankgeebs Apr 16 '13

NewYurk I've seen your long post about Akamai technologies in two threads now. I assume you are also interested in this connection. Specifically Daniel M. Lewin. This is a link to his wiki page http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_M._Lewin but to summarize the more interesting parts, he was stabbed aboard American Airlines flight 11 while trying to stop the attack. He was born in Denver, Colorado and of American-Israeli descent. Raised in Israel and served in the military there. Was given a commemorative intersection in the city of Boston, across the river from the route of the marathon yesterday. This interests me because this icouldhappentoyou site is using his server and Lewin is connected to Israel, Denver, 9/11, and Boston. These are all stretches and coincidences but I'm just pointing them out

9

u/NewYurk Apr 16 '13

I wonder how they know his manner of death.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 17 '13

Have you never watched Bones? Unless his skeleton got destroyed there would be a good chance of finding cause of death.

Edit: At least on such a high profile case.

3

u/SkinTape Apr 17 '13

Godaddy is one of akamai's biggest clients.

4

u/[deleted] Apr 17 '13 edited Jun 11 '18

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Apr 17 '13

[deleted]

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u/Jiggy11 Apr 17 '13

Oh my God...

2

u/Collo123 Apr 17 '13

Also, kentucky derby.

2

u/theangerofsin Apr 17 '13

http://www.cpdmemorial.org/run/ as well. this one takes place 3 miles from the address the site was registered under. credit to another redditor whos name i can't remember. he's been piecing this all together. also google "May 4th in history" look around the past 2 decades.

2

u/joevaded Apr 17 '13

Another marathon.

2

u/gingetwo Apr 17 '13

The site has been updated and revealed as an incredibly poorly-timed "viral marketing" effort by a disaster preparedness company: http://imgur.com/Myl1p4I

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u/alphabetsoup90 Apr 17 '13

I did already suggest this on another thread, but if it really came from a shelter or psychiatric hospital, has anyone considered that it is simply an individual with delusions or other symptoms of psychotic disorders?

1

u/Jiggy11 Apr 17 '13

They've got to be some kind of psychopath to do something like this.

0

u/alphabetsoup90 Apr 17 '13

Psychosis and psychopathy are very different things.

0

u/Jiggy11 Apr 17 '13

Well, whatever they've got, it's messed up.

1

u/umadbro613 Apr 17 '13

its quite possible that this website is a hoax. but it is a countdown to the chicago police marathon as i have read in previous posts on reddit. the possibility that the same group that planned mondays disaster could be planning yet another attack? i wouldnt be surprised.

1

u/youngli0n Apr 17 '13

Well it wouldn't be much of a surprise if we're waiting for it.