As usual another apparently bored with his life liberal with nothing better to do but search out those "dangerous extremists"

The group's low-tech, mid-nineties-style website features a row of animated gifs of running army men set against a blue and white sky-themed background, flanked by fluttering Connecticut flags. At the top of the page is a grainy image of the group's standard – a Confederate flag superimposed with the seal of the state of Connecticut.

Well, considering the page was last updated in 2001, that might explain a few things. We must have a target we didn't know about painted on our foreheads. Why is it that want-to-be liberal journalists feel they must attack something they know nothing about and instantly fear. Considering the fact that we don't try to bleed individuals for their hard earned money, we make due with what we have.

The site is packed with what it calls "Survival Information" - graphics showing the radius of destruction in the event that any of fourteen Connecticut sites are hit by nuclear blasts, storm information, a list of ham radio standards, and a page declaring the current CSA DEFCON to be set at 2, requiring members to be in "daily contact with cell leaders."

An explanatory note declares that, "No one word can describe the CSA or what we are. We are a little bit Militia because we are loosely organized and heavily armed. We are a little bit Survivalist because we are ready to defend our beliefs and help others in time [sic] of need. We are a little bit Libertarian because of our strongly held beliefs that every American should accept personal responsibility for what they do."

Another page on the website seems to claim that the group has a presence in Middlefield, Connecticut, at #222 on Route 66. Feeling a bit gutsy, I decided to pay them a visit.

Did you attempt to e-mail us? NO! What would possess someone to try and "pay us a visit"? How would you like it if someone you had absolutely no idea who they are knocked on your door and "paid you a visit". We have family and young children, you would have gotten a few choice adjectives and had a door slammed in your face.

In a worst case scenario, we would have you arrested for trespassing.


The Anti-Defamation League makes a passing reference to the CSA in a 2001 report entitled "Extremism in Connecticut." The report classifies the group under the general rubric of "Militia Groups and Paramilitary Organizations," which it characterizes as "an anti-government movement heavily imbued with conspiracy theories, many of which center around firearms." These groups, according to the report, frequently "believe that the U.S. government collaborates with various inimical forces to create a 'New World Order'— a socialist, authoritarian, one-world government."

The CSA seems to barely rate a mention in the report. It says that "there is little evidence that the CSA has a real world presence that extends beyond its Internet activities."

Instead, the ADL believes that the website is simply a clearinghouse for survivalist tactics and militia information.

We are a clearing house for information to the "Patriot" movement. It's intolerant liberal social deviants like yourself that like stirring up trouble just for the fun of doing it that are the threat. You'll have a nice job waiting for you at the ADL.

Of its leadership, the report says that the group's leader is Thomas Icom, "previously most noteworthy for having edited for many years the newsletter Cybertek, aimed at survivalists and computer hackers."

The CSA's website has a page dedicated to refuting the ADL's claims. It insists that the group has a real world presence, saying, "You just keep on thinking that we don't exist in the 'real world' and when the proverbial shit hits the fan you can all just crawl under your beds and die and leave the 'real world' to us."

As for Thomas Icom, the page denies that he is the group's founder, saying, "Thomas Icom is not the leader of the CSA. He's flattered by your misguided supposition, but he is just a member." Instead, the page reports that the group's founder is ctsurvivalist, "a strange and mysterious individual."

Indeed, most of the CSA website's pages are signed by ctsurvivalist, and he has posted most of the messages on the website's recently-opened message board.

As we've stated before, Thomas Icom is NOT the leader of the CSA. Had you bothered e-mailing anyone you would have known this. That's the biggest problem with so called "journalists", they want to make up the facts as they see fit and not bother doing any research.

Still, there is undoubtedly a connection between the CSA and the hacker community. The CSA's website is located within the webpage of the International Information Retrieval Guild, a Connecticut-based hacker group.

This overlap between hacking and survivalism is counterintuitive. The popular imagination associates hackers with teenage nerds like Matthew Broderick's character from 1983's "WarGames." Meanwhile, survivalists are associated with the Unabomber and other violent paranoid loners living off the grid in remote areas of the Pacific Northwest.