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Scotland Yard Has Been After Anonymous For Months

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the summon-sherlock dept.

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.'"

7 of 278 comments (clear)

  1. Obligatory by Even+on+Slashdot+FOE · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...

    1. Re:Obligatory by bberens · · Score: 5, Interesting

      That may be true, but there's bound to be a relatively small core of people who are controlling the botnets. Those people might not be involved in every "Anonymous" attack, but they will likely participate semi-regularly in them. Those are the people they're after. Not joe idiot who downloaded the little flooding app.

      --
      Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
  2. SO fucking stupid. by moxley · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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."

    1. Re:SO fucking stupid. by Terrasque · · Score: 5, Interesting

      One of the better descriptions I've heard:

      [Anonymous is] the first internet-based superconsciousness. Anonymous is a group, in the sense that a flock of birds is a group. How do you know they're a group? Because they're travelling in the same direction. At any given moment, more birds could join, leave, peel off in another direction entirely.

      From the wikipedia page.

      --
      It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
  3. England's been after Anonymous since Franlin&P by ron_ivi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. Re:Article has no content, move along by Richard_at_work · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "Citation needed!" is really becoming the modern version of "liar liar pants on fire"....

    The very fact that there is an irc channel indicates organisation, and if you look deeper for long enough you can see the underlying control there as well - there are users who frequent the channel more often than others, and who get listened to more often than others.

    If you want an example of how an uncouth mob can still have organisation and planning, take a look at any protest (the recent student protests in London are a prime example). Taken together, the mob is just that, a mob. Look deeper and there are people in the mob that incite the other members, take the first steps to violence and action, make suggestions - these are the ones that get stuck up on wanted posters and pursued by police.

    "Anonymous" is no different.

  5. Re:England's been after Anonymous since Franlin&am by tmosley · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.