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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.'"
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...
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?
They're just using it as an excuse to browse 4chan.
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."
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.
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.
"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.
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.
They just like to fuck shit up. Not "fuck shit up for a good cause." Just "fuck shit up, and if it happens to be for a cause, whatever."
Sometimes, that's all it takes.