Slashdot Mirror
Anonymous Isn't Anonymous Anymore
An anonymous reader writes "Apparently some small security firm has been able to determine the real identities of several key Anonymous hackers which is resulting in a ton of arrests. From the article: 'An international investigation into cyber-activists who attacked businesses hostile to WikiLeaks is likely to yield arrests of senior members of the group after they left clues to their real identities on Facebook and in other electronic communications, it is claimed.'"
No, you do not understand Anonymous. I'm not sure if anyone really does, but you're QUITE off the mark. Anonymous has no "core group of fanatics" because at any one time, Anonymous is engaged in fifty different things on different scales, and that "core group of fanatics" is never the same across all of them. Most raids in Anonymous have no "core group". Someone makes a suggestion, gets the snowball rolling downhill, and once it accumulates enough mass, all you can do is watch. This is the case with most Anonymous raids. Sometimes a person or subgroup of Anonymous can try to lead a raid, but they can only do so much as the misanthropic bastards start running amok. In the case of the DDoS attacks here, there were likely a number of these subgroups all jockeying for a piece of the action. There are still no "senior members" of Anonymous and there are no "co-founders" of Anonymous. Moot is the closest thing to a founder, but even he knows that he's somehow created a monster that cannot be controlled.
I think your primary mistake was calling Anonymous a "movement". That is complete crap. They're not a movement. They really have no goals or aspirations other than fucking around on the internet, maybe in IRL if they feel brave. They're a huge, unorganized mass of bored teenagers, for the most part. They don't have a cause. They're not trying to affect social change. They may hop on a cause from time to time (ie, the DDoS raids we've seen or Chanology), but it isn't long before they become bored and move on to something else or internal bickering fractures whatever they're trying to do. You cannot remove the "core fanatics" because there is no single core, assuming Anonymous really has a core to begin with.