Syber News

Fake Steve Jobs, after first urging us to bring AT&T to its knees with Operation Chokehold, has seemingly had an attack of conscience. Either that, or perhaps the person behind Fake Steve, Dan Lyons, is afraid to see what might really happen if people carry out Operation Chokehold.

Operation Chokehold was a way to show AT&T how sick we all are of their inferior wireless network. The idea was for everyone to start some data intensive application at 12:00 noon PST on Friday, Dec. 18th. That would obviously create havoc on the AT&T network, if enough people joined.

Much as something that might happen if Stephen Colbert asked his viewers to do something, it appeared that the digital flash mob that Fake Steve asked his readers to become might come fruition. There is even a Facebook group formed around the idea with 2,514 fans at the time of this writing.

On Wednesday, Fake Steve backpedaled very quickly, as critics started to pop up and indicate how irresponsible such an "operation" might be. In fact, it could cause people who might need to make an emergency call to suddenly be unable to. And that would include non-iPhone users, the main group of those complaining about AT&T's network.

As Fake Steve says, this was all just a joke. However, it's gained a life of its own and spun out of control.

Also for the record, from our point of view this is all just a joke that has spun out of control and gained a life of its own. We didn’t think anyone would actually do this. But now it’s on Twitter, and some kid has set up a Facebook group and it already has 1,600 fans. There’s even an opposition group on Facebook set up by critics of Operation Chokehold. They’ve only got 17 fans, but still.

What to do, what to do? Fake Steve is concerned that it may be too late to stop Operation Chokehold. He has a few suggestions though:

• Cut the time back from an hour to 15 minutes.

• Change Operation Chokehold to Operation Silent Scream, and instead of all using the network at the same time, turn off your iPhones at the same time. Somehow, I don't think anyone would notice.

• Form actual flash mobs outside AT&T stores and put duct tape over the mouths of employees.

I don't know. Since one of Fake Steve's reasons for his entreaties about the effort is to be sure he doesn't end up in jail, I don't know how the third suggestion above would do any good in that regard.

Unfortunately, I think the project has already reached critical mass. Fake Steve might want to line up some lawyers.