Anonymous Speaks About Australian Gov't. Attacks

daria42 writes "The loose-knit collective of individuals known as 'Anonymous' has broken its silence about the distributed denial of service attacks on the Australian government. An individual (who insisted he or she is not a spokesperson for the group) said the attacks were more effective at stopping the government's Internet filtering project than signing a petition, and that the attacks could go on for months." The site where some members of Anonymous are said to hang out, 4chan, got a visibility boost yesterday when its founder moot spoke at the TED conference.

Comments

Anonymous isn;t really a group

[91degrees]

It's more of an activity. Possibly a culture. It certainly doesn't have anyone who speaks for the group as a whole.

Re:Anonymous isn;t really a group

[Anonymous Coward]

# any number of entities (members) considered as a unit
Except they aren't a unit. If it is, it is an amorphous one.
Think of a bus.It would be like saying that people who use buses are acting as a group. They aren't. They are individuals doing the same thing at the same time. They use it/do it for different reasons. They get on and off at different stops with no one directing them to.

Anonymous is like a bus which is always in motion but with no driver or set course.

# a set that is closed, associative, has an identity element and every element has an inverse
# arrange into a group or groups; "Can you group these shapes together?"
# (chemistry) two or more atoms bound together as a single unit and forming part of a molecule

There is no defining element. There is no parameter. There is no standard. There is no "shape" to it. It's a group of bus riders. Just people of all different sorts. You don't have to rich or poor, you don't have to be blue collar or white collar you don't have to have the same ideologies, you don't have to agree about anything. No one EVER drives the bus.

Now, this bus is an extremely large bus that could, theoretically, fit the entire population of the world inside it.
Sometimes a number of the riders agree about something (Let's say carving figurines out of wood). In this case, the figurine carvers huddle together and start carving figurines.

Some of the riders on the bus don't know about it, some do but don't care, some people are offended by it, some people wish they wouldn't, some people just watch, some may even tell them to stop. But this doesn't matter. They can't stop the wood carvers unless they lowered themselves to that level. The only way to stop the wood carvers would be to carve wood and no one else wants to do that! Or they could use force/violence against them but that is even worse than carving wood! They have no control over the wood carvers. So they sit and watch (or don't watch, or bitch, or remain silent, or don't even know it's going on).

These are by-standers to the wood carvers. They are not in any way shape or form associated in any real way to the wood carvers, they are just on a giant bus that could theoretically hold the entire population of the world. Going wherever, going everywhere, going nowhere, at the same time.

Re:Impossible!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wooosh.

There aren't any spokespeople for anonymous, because there isn't any structure to the group. By definition, everyone in it is a "nobody." That's kind of the point.

Re:Impossible!

[shish]

So, basically, a nobody commented.

This is Anonymous -- if they weren't a nobody, then their opinion would be invalid. As it is, they are the most appropriate person to ask.

Anonymous Users vs Anonymous Government

[Herkum01]

It is an appropriate response to a figurehead politician making these rules, because it is a bunch of anonymous peons that are implementing them. The peons hide behind the facade of a government which they don't have to take responsibility for their actions.

Governments love when an individual speaks out, because they can release a bureaucratic horde of government employees to crush them. An individual who cannot be expected to address numerous rules, regulations and pressures a government can bring against them.

So Anonymous vs the government, as far as I am concerned is a fair fight.

Re:Anonymous Users vs Anonymous Government

[silverbax]

That's an interesting take, when I read the section about how the group flooded the emails of politicians and DDoS'd their websites, my first thought was of politicians who don't even know they have a website and don't know how to use email. So basically, an anonymous, faceless group sending massive digital attacks against email boxes that never get checked and websites nobody reads.

It brings into full discussion the group's claim that attacks are more effective than petitions...are they actually more effective? It's an old argument about terrorism, where the organization under attack is forced to do nothing because reacting simply brings more attacks. While I agree that petitions rarely bring change (the Turing case in England being an instance where a petition actually worked), how 'effective' is an all-out digital attack at forcing governments to change policy?

I will say the only effect thus far seems to be creating discussion of the issue (of which I was previously ignorant), but if Slashdot is any indication, people will discuss the idea over an 'Anonymous' spokesperson far more than the merits of their methods or their cause.

Re:How isn't this a form of terrorism?

[FredFredrickson]

DDOS is civil disobedience. They're just loading a site a bunch of times, making the site useless. It's no scarier than protesters having a sit-in, making the area they occupy useless. In fact, it's very similar.

Re:How isn't this a form of terrorism?

[Anonymous Coward]

If your response to a DDOS attack on the a few websites is "a state of intense fear", you need to get out more.

from the drek and morass

[circletimessquare]

of the stupidest lamest waste of time on the internet

comes the most effective force for progressive change

the one thing that an idiot has, that a wise man does not seem to have, is freedom to act

when your education acclimates you to acceptance of a lame status quo, then your education is worth less than being an idiot

Re:The most likely long term effect

[Anonymous Coward]

Is going to be a rapid acceleration in the restriction and closing off of the Internet, greater activity by Governments in monitoring and repressing activity, and eventually a culture in which computer users are licensed and all computers outside the Government and academia run limited, crippled operating systems and applications.

Way to go, guys. You need to learn some history and some sociology. Then you will understand that the most successful criminals DO NOT ADVERTISE their existence. At a certain nuisance level, the cost of your attacks will exceed the cost of fixing the system to stop you. And the rest of us will be made to pay for it.

Both St. Augustine ("an unjust law is no law at all.") and MLK (Letter from a Birmingham Jail) have tread this road before..ya know Just and Unjust laws?

Re:Inconsistency.

[hoggoth]

The meme called "Anonymous" (it's isn't a "group") can't have a spokesperson because there is no official "group", no "membership", no shared beliefs, no secret-handshake.
Someone gets an idea to do something, and posts the idea on several popular websites. Anyone who agrees the idea is a good one and takes the suggested action is, for that moment, part of "Anonymous". An hour later someone posts a different idea, some different people agree with that one and take some action and for that moment THEY are "Anonymous".

Some people who may or may not have ever joined in on suggested ideas under the banner of "Anonymous" understand that there is strength in the concept of NOT having any set membership or agenda that can be attacked, responded to, or replied to. Although I, myself, have never participated in any actions proposed by anyone under the banner Anonymous, I can see that this can be important especially in this day of increasing surveillance and abusive governments.

The idea of having a spokesperson for an un-group is preposterous.

Re:Not a sit in

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to have a mistaken impression of the group. They call themselves "Legion" for a reason. This isn't a few hackers controlling a botnet, they are the botnet.

Re:The most likely long term effect

[T Murphy]

By making attacks like this, they can grab headlines. Any good news reporter tries to get input from both sides, which means anonymous can potentially get their complaints into mainstream newspapers. Obviously, attacking a few websites will not make politicians back down, as they would look weak. Raise enough public interest in the issue, and politicians will listen. Like with most tech-related issues, I do not realistically expect a large public response, but you cant say anonymous isn't trying.

Re:Impossible!

[ae1294]

Many Slashdot readers are also Anonymous members.

I can confirm that this is 100% false. No member of Slashdot is now or has ever been involved with the terrorist organization known as Anonymous.

Re:Not a sit in

[Khyber]

"BZZZZZZZT have you ever used a proxy that wasn't slow as balls? I haven't."

That's what you get for not setting up your own dedicated proxies from a reliable data-hosting center.

"I know that it's possible to DDoS through proxies... but does it work in practice? It does not."

Most DDoS attacks are done via high-bandwidth proxies - IE rootkitted/zombified machines. You simply send one command out (assuming you've got the bandwidth to simultaneously contact every proxy to send the flood command) and away you go.

Don't understand what PROXY means, do you?

Go get a REAL IT job and maybe then you can talk, eh?