Slashdot Mirror
Scotland Yard Has Been After Anonymous For Months
jhernik writes "Scotland Yard has confirmed it has been investigating Anonymous since before the WikiLeaks wars broke out. The Metropolitan police has been investigating Internet vigilante group Anonymous, since well before its current online reprisals against companies not supporting WikiLeaks. 'Earlier this year, the Metropolitan police service received a number of allegations of denial of service cyber attacks againat several companies by a group calling itself Anonymous,' a police spokesman told eWEEK Europe UK. 'We are investigating these criminal allegations and our investigation is ongoing.'"
The x-files were right!
If Anonymous is made up of random people who care about the issue of the moment, how do you investigate them over time? I can't see how they would all care about the same things, as it's not like Anonymous hires people to do stuff.
Unless there's some sort of "Anonymous Hacking, LLC" I haven't hear of...
Police investigate crimes!
A source inside Scotland Yard has also confirmed that they are looking to bring Time Magazine's Person of the Year 2006 in for questioning.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
Anon? Do something illegal? No way.
They're just using it as an excuse to browse 4chan.
They are Guy Fawkes sympathizers, after all...
Yes, Anonymous Coward is a duck. come and find me Scotland Yard. I can fly, you cannot.
I am anonymous, come and get me bastards!
who the group might /b/...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
"Police interested in Anonymous", is what it boils down to. Shows no sign of a clue that Anonymous isn't an organisation as opposed to the section of the geeky general public who are pissed off with current state of affairs/doing it for the lulz.
TL:DR - Scotland Yard can't Triforce.
Scotland Yard is close to capture the leader of the Anonymous group, someone called John Doe.
Obviously they just don't get it.
If you say you are a member of "Anonymous," then at that moment you are a member of "Anonymous."
If, several minutes later, you say "I am not a member of "Anonymous," then you are not a member of "Anonymous."
Anybody can be a member, for any amount of time. There are no central lists, no membership rosters.....in many ways the organization doesn't exist, it;s a "dis-organization."
Scotland Yard is in London, not Scotland. It's the HQ of the Metropolitan Police.
I thought it was common knowledge that Scotland Yard was NOT in Scotland. It's in London.
how do you find/arrest/whatever a group of random individuals that are only connected through the lulz?
Balderdash!
I am Anonymous!
Demonizing your enemy in the face of public opinion is an old tactic. If they make the public think this group is responsible for 'less noble' causes, they will erode support. Doesn't need to be true, or even the same group, to be effective.
meep
So a bunch of Dunning-Kruger internet dumbshits download somebody else's half-arsed software to DDoS websites of powerful and well-connected people. And then wonder why they're getting rolled up by the police. Colour me surprised.
For sixteen year olds, this is understandable -- it seems to be the optimum age for thinking you know everything while not actually knowing anything at all. Anybody else, well, you'll be old enough to serve time, which is just as well, because you probably deserve it for being so stupid.
I do respect Anonymous for taking the fight to some very bad, otherwise-untouchable people, like the Scientologists, but at some point, if you don't use your brain and screw up, you have to accept the consequences. And I suspect that the only reason why half of Anonymous do what they do, is because they don't actually appreciate the danger of what they're doing.
Worth noting that Anonymous lost England the Colonies in North America, and they've probably been after them ever since.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine
"Thomas Paine has a claim to the title The Father of the American Revolution because of Common Sense, the pro-independence monograph pamphlet he anonymously published on January 10, 1776; signed "Written by an Englishman", the pamphlet became an immediate success."
http://www.pbs.org/benfranklin/l3_wit_name.html
"Benevolus — While in England, Franklin penned a number of letters under the name of Benevolus. These letters tried to answer some of the negative assertions made by the British press about the American colonists. These letters were published in London newspapers and journals. "
Perhaps those are the Anonymous guys that England's really still mad at.
you do not talk about Anonymous.
2nd rule is, you do not talk about Anonymous!
Scotland Yard isn't investigating "Anonymous". They're investigating the people involved in the DDoS attacks. If you're a member of Anonymous but you don't participate in attacks, you're alright because nobody knows who you are, or that you're even a member of Anonymous.
However, the minute you start attacking, you are immediately identifiable.
"lulz yeah but we r anonymus. we r legionz!!!1 omg for the first time in my life i can actually identify with something. cool! are there any lonely girls here???/"
Protip: When you're on the internet, you are NOT anonymous. Most of Anonymous is just a bunch of teen-angst lemmings who will only join the DDoS effort if somebody puts up a Rapidshare link to the LOIC software. None of them have any kind of initiative to do it themselves.
"i'm not gonna get caught. lulz, i'll use a proxy"
Furthermore, because they're all just angsty, lonely, horny teenagers (and even some 20-somethings), they have no foresight. They have no clue that their IP address can and will identify them in most cases. If they use a proxy, they're just creating a bottleneck, slowing the DDoS effort and providing their target with a single IP to block for mitigation.
"hey man, ip address is just a number, man... i'm not a number!"
None of them realize that your IP address can and will be stripped from logs and submitted to RIRs and ISPs, and they will obtain your subscriber details (more likely your parent's details) through the legal system in your country of origin. An IP address is just a number when taken out of context, but when it's put IN context your IP is your identity on the internet, and it CAN be linked back to the real world.
"Amazon kicked WikiLeaks off of their servers because BUSH... i mean, OBAMA... sent an executive order to Amazon telling them that he would personally torture their mothers if they didn't! OMG! Attack Amazon because they're a business that chooses not to do business with certain people!!!"
The last thing humanity needs is a bunch of angsty teenagers throwing a fit because their favorite website has to change providers. WikiLeaks violated their contract with Amazon. It is a BUSINESS matter. Get the fuck over it, pick up your toys and go to school.
Don't like what I'm saying? Then suppress my freedom of speech and DDoS me. My IP is 127.0.0.1. And I'll even turn off my firewall for you.
They're almost out of underground tickets and only have a couple bus tickets left!
Did Anonymous have sex in Sweden without a condom as well? If not, I don't see why Interpol would care, since it seems their only prerogative is to probe into the sexual proclivities of consenting adults.
Scotland Yard has been chasing a bunch of tomfooling teenagers for months, but hasn't even bothered to investigate substantiated investigations of wire fraud by the editor of a national newspaper. It's pretty clear who plays the tunes Scotland Yard dance to.
May the Maths Be with you!
Scientology, in their typically thuggish fashion, has been urging governments and the press to declare this group "terrorists" for years. They will no doubt view this as a victory, and probably use it to threaten anyone else in the future who threatens to cross them.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Please just because you use the title "anonymous" doesn't automatically connect you to any and all other anonymous political efforts.
Scotland Yard is in London, England.
Just... don't ask. It's a Brit thing.
Common knowledge in England and Scotland, I would assume. Possibly all of Britain.
The only time we hear about them over here (mainland Europe) is when they are doing something Interpol-like, so I actually thought it was an Interpol-like organisation, and such an organisation could have it's headquarters anywhere. The most logical thing would be that such organisation got the name because of where it has it's headquarters.
So, do they know where Anon's head office is yet?
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
No, it's not common knowledge you FOSStard.
Exactly, just like New York not being a new suburb of York, the county town of Yorkshire, England. It's an American thing.
Durarara!! It's an anime that touches on the exact issue related to Anonymous. It isn't an organized group and it is. There are a few faggots who are consistently using Anonymous as their own personal army but then every other member is just a random person who takes up whatever cause they feel relates to them. In general, you can't get a bunch of people to do something without having a certain skill of getting people to do something, therefore you have a structure to something even as random as Anonymous. Good luck to any governments who think they can actually stop people from doing anything they want at any time.
If Anonymous is made up of random people who care about the issue of the moment, how do you investigate them over time?
This question begins with "if", which is to say, an unsupported hypothesis. That implies a complementary"if" hypothesis, "On the other hand, if Anonymous is NOT made up of random people...".
Is there any particular reason to think that "Anonymous" isn't always primarily the same handful of people? Since you don't know who they are, how do you know that they aren't the same?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
By that line of logic, that means there is no group called anonymous.
That is fair enough. There really isn't any point to trying to take down "Anonymous" because everyone is a member. Think about the ending sequence to V for Vendetta. That is really what anonymous is. It is fitting that they chose that mask as their symbol.
All those traditional botnet DDoS attacks are usually done for extortion, which sounds illegal regardless, plus the botnet owner actually controls the action. There are however three seperate activities in an LOIC attack : publishing the call to arms, participating in the LOIC attack, and directing the LOIC traffic on IRC. I'd imagine the third activity is illegal under fairly modern anti-DDoS laws, but the first two might not be. Or how illegal they are depends upon the jurisdiction. It'll be interesting.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
well some of them did, others go with the facelss suit, others with an anonymous,faceless outline.
Come up with a symbol, publish it anonymously.
congratulations,"anonymous" has chosen yet another symbol.
They have launched a counter intelligence operation. This means they'll go after anybody who is even loosely associated with anonymous as a way to turn them into informants or operatives to bring down the rest of them.
An aggressive investigation means many people loosely associated with anonymous will be entrapped and then used as pawns or as informants to bring down the more experienced hackers.
I said in over a dozen comments that this is exactly what would happen. I mentioned vigilante gang stalking, I listed websites, got told that it was just a conspiracy. I told people anonymous will be tracked down, got told I was a coward. I told people that these people would be gangstalked, have their lives destroyed permanently, you see?
So now it's happening. Scotland Yard admits it. Anyone who wants to know what gangstalking is and what to expect if you have associated with anonymous:
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/gestapo-usa-govt-funded-vigilante-network-terrorizes-america
Also they have to change their name. Its making it bad for people who just want to remain ~anonymous..
Victims of this extrajudicial punishment network -- what some have termed "the torture matrix" -- maintain that its operatives are acting as judge, jury and executioner for what amounts to an evil shadow government. So-called "targeted individuals" -- and by extension, entire families -- are subject to physical assault and psychological and physical harassment that victims say amounts to officially-sanctioned domestic torture. Some victims have moved to other cities and towns seeking a safe harbor -- but they say the persecution recurs in their new locale.
"It appears to be a nationwide network that attracts extremists as well as law-and-order types and people connected to public safety such as firefighters, utility workers, police auxiliaries, retired police and military officers, and even their family members, including children and teenagers," says one victim, who says he has been "gang stalked" for several years. "I doubt it could exist without some people in positions of power looking the other way."
Even some regular, uniformed police are reported to have been intimidated by this network of extrajudicial punishment -- described benignly by its defenders as a social "control" mechanism.
Victims say that they are physically harassed and relentlessly stalked, whether they travel on foot or in vehicles. GPS devices are secreted in their cars or cell phones. When a "target" enters a designated "node" area -- whether near or far -- the local vigilantes in that area receive a signal on their GPS or cellphone devices, often accompanied by a read-out of commands from the "team leader," specifying what kind of sadistic psychological terror and harassment to dish out.
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/gestapo-usa-govt-funded-vigilante-network-terrorizes-america
This is what anonymous members are going to be experiencing. Scientology might be behind some of it, the governments pissed off at wikileaks supporters might be behind some of it, hacker vigilantes and US military cyber warriors might be behind some of it, and Scotland Yard, the FBI, and global counter intelligence agencies will be behind most of it.
Know the risks before you enter the stage.
Specifically because of how Anonymous is designed.
Uhm no my logic does not in fact follow that there is no group called "Anonymous."
No. Everyone is not a member of anonymous, please let some air out of the over-inflated ego. By claiming everyone is a member you are also claiming that everyone on some level agrees with you. It is an old rhetorical trick.
No I won't think about the ending sequence as I have not seen that movie nor do I particularly feel any need to see it.
Are precisely the sort of people who would encourage massive amounts of Wikileaks supporters to DDOS with software they supply.
The only result will be that more people will be put in jail as they are part of that specific group. You have just given The Man an extra excuse (as if The Man needed one).
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Anonymous posts here a lot. My last name is Coward. Anonymous Coward at your service!
I agree.
I think it's entirely possible that "Anonymous" could be an operation specifically designed to give the governments of the world an excuse to try to ban anonymity online.
That is the sort of method that these governments use when they wish to curtail a freedom, or criminalize something that the populace would NEVER support criminalization of. Create a bogeyman, build it up in the media and the minds of the public and legisltors, and then cry out that "it must be stopped."
I am NOT saying that this IS the case, but I think it's something that should be considered as I am convinced that the powers that be see the internet (as it is now, fairly open) as a major threat to their pwoer and dominance - and in a way it is to them because it stops the corporate monopoly on news and information, it allows people to learn about things they'd never be able to find out about otherwise. It allows organization of people instantly, regardless of location worldwide and gives people access to information and resources fairly anonymously that they otherwise would never have access to.
It is a great equalizer when it comes to information distribution and organization - and those are two things that are an anathema to those who want to control populaces.
Fix your font, my eyes hurt when I tried to read that.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
But you see, that is the point. There is no group, no rules, no boundaries and no organisation. Everyone IS anonymous because all it takes is for ANYONE to decide they are behind any of the causes and they are anonymous. If you arrest a few people, the rest will more likely mock the arrested than actually care. Your "logic" does not have any bearing on this whatsoever. It is not supposed to be "logical" it is supposed to be chaotic and shapeless. That is, in fact the reason they won't stop it. It is like grasping at smoke.
I just saw him (her) posting all over the thread about weak passwords. If you're quick, maybe you can still catch him.
I think his last name is 'Coward'.
Have gnu, will travel.
XKCD nails it once again.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
If there was a leader to the Anonymous, that man would be the antichrist. No one can wield such power.
Anonymous does not have a single opinion, and often takes both sides of any argument. Yes, if you have ever interacted with anyone who didn't know you, then you were Anonymous. This does not make you a hacker, or an activist, or a troll, or ascribe to you any other characteristic.
But hey, feel free not to think, as you seem to want to cling to your ignorance so much. If you don't want to learn anything, or even discuss the topic at hand, then this is the wrong place for you.
How many people do you think they can pack into jails before the cost causes their society to collapse? Another million? Two? Ten?
You can't throw everyone in jail. That is the power of Anonymous.
Word users should be severely punished
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
anonymous will re-write your hard drive. Not only that, but he will scramble any disks that are even close to your computer. He will recalibrate your refrigerator's coolness setting so all your ice cream goes melty. he will demagnetize the strips on all your credit cards, screw up the tracking on your television and use subspace field harmonics to scratch any CD's you try to play.
he will give your ex-girlfriend your new phone number. He will mix Kool-aid into your fishtank. he will drink all your beer and leave its socks out on the coffee table when there's company coming over. he will put a dead kitten in the back pocket of your good suit pants and hide your car keys when you are late for work.
anonymous will make you fall in love with a penguin. he will give you nightmares about circus midgets. he will pour sugar in your gas tank and shave off both your eyebrows while dating your girlfriend behind your back and billing the dinner and hotel room to your Discover card.
he will seduce your grandmother. he does not matter if she is dead, such is the power of anonymous, he reaches out beyond the grave to sully those things we hold most dear.
he moves your car randomly around parking lots so you can't find it. he will kick your dog. he will leave libidinous messages on your boss's voice mail in your voice! he is insidious and subtle. He is dangerous and terrifying to behold. he is also a rather interesting shade of chartruese.
anonymous will give you Dutch Elm disease. he will leave the toilet seat up. he will make a batch of Methanphedime in your bathtub and then leave bacon cooking on the stove while he goes out to chase gradeschoolers with your new snowblower.
Listen to me. anonymous does not exist.
he cannot do anything to you. But I can. I am sending this message to everyone in the world. Tell your friends, tell your family. If anyone else sends me another E-mail about this fake anonymous group, I will turn hating them into a religion. I will do things to them that would make a horsehead in your bed look like Easter Sunday brunch.
It could be that Wikileaks is also one of these kinds of organizations.
http://xkcd.com/834/
You're right, everyone is not a member of Anonymous. Anyone is a member of Anonymous.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
But that's the point of metagovernment. How can they stop a distributed, leaderless, international, net-based movement? By imprisoning everyone in the world?
They're busily working on that.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
meh, you proles would've just squandered your peace dividend on frivolous stuff like health care, education and infrastructure.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
no way? I don't believe it! ;-) come on, you knew I was being ironic, didn't you?
In case you're interested: Scotland Yard might have been named as such because the kings of Scotland had their ambassador's residence in the area. But then again, maybe some property developer called the area Scotland Yard because he thought it sounded cool or it would impress people. A lot of streets in London, UK are named for that very deep reason too.
lol, wow. It sounds to me like -somebody- is desperate to deny the truth: That anonymous is ANONYMOUS.
Anon is the ultimate cult; it allows people to join or leave at will, it allows for partial membership, it allows one to be non-contributory,
it does not erode or warp one's sense of self as other organizations do, because the individual member is already anonymous from the start which allows them to remain themselves to themselves. It is alluring because it allows for any deviancy from altruism to animal porn.
People form "cores" all the time, btw. You simply jump into the sea of anon's and say "I'm a leader, here's my plan."
And if your plan gathers consensus, others follow. That is how it works.
Go back to school and get a real social science degree, you anthro-retards.
Scotland Yard will support the government which has lied to UK citizens,
despite the obvious truth that the government has committed crimes.
Sooner or later, it comes down to us vs. them. And there are a lot more of
us than there are of them.
Are you listening, you Scotland Yard fucks ?
Plus the skiddies don't throw knives at cops and kill them
The world is how you make it
Not a new tactic for a confirmed hate group, which means they have already lost.
USA levels of imprisonment are apparently possible without a collapse of society.
So in UK, they could imprison five times more people than currently are held incarcerated there. For every axe-murderer, we could put five Anonymous guys behind bars, and the society most likely would function just as well as USA. From what I see about the numbers of Anonymous, they could imprison every one that did something online to 'protect wikileaks' if they get the evidence, and imprison ten times as many for simple suspicions on doing that, and that imprisonment level would still be quite possible.
Does that answer your question?
You most likely haven't lived in a totalitarian regime. You can very simply throw enough people in jail to change everyone's behavior - ask any old ex-USSR citizen who has lived in times of Stalin, there are quite many of them around. You might ask people of North Korea if you could. The nature of homo sapiens is that they need far more serious worries to consider rebellion against a strong authoritative power - wikileaks wouldn't be it, so such causes can be easily suppressed by simple ruthless actions, jails, torture and executions. Only widespread poverty or starvation or perception of weak leadership or outside force could do it - as for the large dictatorships of 20th century. Force of people? Bah. It can be easily suppressed for generations, as history has shown.
Well, when it mentions
"gang stalking"
it's safe to assume the author is either extremely gullible or paranoid. And when I say "paranoid" I don't mean it in the colloquial way but rather the psychological way.
So, it might not have been worth hurting your eyes over.
*I* am Anonymous!"
Of course we'll all get sued by Scientology and then we and our families will be crucified, but it would be fun until then, and you will have made your important point before your death.
--I am Anonymous! (Coward, optional)
The problem with anonymous is that it's just that, anonymous. They are trying to hide their identity, just like most everyone who uses the internet. The safety of being anonymous allows you perform tasks that are otherwise dangerous for personal, legal, or other reasons. The new problem with anonymous is that it's now that it's started, it's unlikely that even if the find the originator that it will stop. It's not something as simple as oh we caught them, it's something like oh we caught the start now what do we do with the millions of other participants. Unlike china most of the world isn't willing or setup to imprison, or take legal action against that large of a percentage of the population. And even if they did some how manage to stop anonymous it would just spring up again, under new management. It's like terrorism you can't just say "I'll find the one's responsible for it, and stop them". The problem is that anonymous gives power to the voiceless masses, something big companies and government don't want. And once people have power they are not likely to give it up. Why do you think viruses keep spreading, it's because hackers are trying to show off their power, and it's not likely to stop just because CIA, Scotland Yard, or even big lawyers take it on.
But at least one good thing has come from all of this, freely available DDOS software, heck i'm considering downloading it and disassembling it to understand how these attacks work.
I see more and more parallels being drawn between "terrorism" and "anonymous". Both are essentially nebulous concepts that are going to be used to ram home more and more draconian lock-down measures to curb individual freedoms. Formalizing the word ("Anonymous" does this, "Anonymous" does that) is simply a way to engender more fear and concern by pretending that it's some scary world-spanning Subversive Evil Empire wanting to destroy World Peace and Commerce and Benign Governments of the Peoples of Earth wish nothing but to protect it's Law Abiding Citizens (of which we are all a part, yes?)
Makes me want to vomit. Copiously.
"A government is a body of people usually -- notably -- ungoverned." -Shepherd Book
hate filled mob of idiots will continue to think of itself as a group of upstanding genius freedom fighters, even after it has been pointed out to them that, to the outside world, they appear to be a mob of violent, hate filled idiots.
Why did you have to drag the teabaggers into this?!
No I won't think about the ending sequence as I have not seen that movie nor do I particularly feel any need to see it.
Pity, politics aside, it's a pretty damn good movie.
hmmm...
I agree; entirely.
Eh there are a lot of damn good movies.
I just have others on my list.
There's no rhetorical trick. There is a large group of people on the internet with diverse opinions who use some set of internet forums. At any time some small subset of these people may call themselves "Anonymous" and attack or protest some random thing that they think is either funny or important. This subset may or may not include the same people at any given time. Their reasons may or may not even be the same. Their intelligence and actually level of anonymity may vary.
Worth noting that Anonymous lost England the Colonies in North America, and they've probably been after them ever since.
As has already been pointed out, Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin were bullies, not freedom fighters. Like all bullies, once they felt a little pain themselves, they gave up. They were not activists. They had no convictions. They just liked to fuck shit up.
Eh there are a lot of damn good movies.
I just have others on my list.
Of course there and your list is a matter of choice. But choices have consequence, and the consequence of not having seen V is that you are less qualified to comment on the nature of Anonymous than someone who knows the ending sequence of that movie (and indeed the movie/graphic novel as a whole).
So perhaps you ought to listen to folks here who are clearly arguing from a position of greater knowledge? :p
Because if there's any organization that can catch a faceless, nameless, seemingly omnipresent criminal, it's Scotland Yard, amirite?
I don't believe this for one moment. If they were really investigating Anonymous, at least five people falsely suspected of membership would have been gunned down on tube stations already, and 25 more would have been disappeared into terror detention.
Are you allowed to wear a Guy Fawkes mask in court? I hope so.
Anonymous is like a protest. Some people decided to have one. Other people who agree with them joined in. Some people who just want to smash stuff up also joined in.
The police are supposed to only go after the people who DDOS'ed the Church of Scientology, not the people who protested against them outside their offices. In fact they should be protecting the latter from reprisals. Unfortunately they tend to just turn up and beat the shit of people random, with the odd murder thrown in when one copper gets carried away.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC