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Mainstream Media Looks At Anonymous
ScuttleMonkey writes "In an uncharacteristically accurate writeup of Anonymous, the Guardian has published a look at the assembled mob behind the mask. A great place to send those unfamiliar with who or what Anonymous really is. From the article: 'This collective identity belongs to no one in particular, but is at the disposal of anyone who knows its rules and knows how to apply them. Anonymous, the collective identity, is older than Anonymous, the hacktivist group – more to the point, I propose that the hacktivist group can be understood as an application of Anonymous, the collective identity.'"
Expect it.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Sounds like the sort of person who can give a good report on this issue.
Palm trees and 8
I'd feel less animosity towards Anonymous if they didn't insist on using the face of a terrorist.
But not to anyone else, is that the story? So much glorification of such a flimsy premise...
Caveat Utilitor
The Scientologists would have already sued them into oblivion. Their disorganization is their strength.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." .. seems oddly apt, but possibly a little late for the mainstream news.
Just read Lord of the Flies. Or any of the studies of how people behave when they feel like they are anonymous. And you can stop calling them anything or you declare them a gang of bullies and identity thieves that will attack those that say things they do not agree with.
If they are just a random blob of people with out structure you can call them nothing but a population.
If they are not then they have attacked people for as harmless as a teenage boy that started a website that encouraged kids to not use profanity and have stolen identity information from the Sony website.
You can not both hold them Anonymous faultless for acts that was done by the group and give them credit of things that the group have been done by the group.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
In regards to the Sony hack which Anonymous supposedly denies, if Anonymous is leaderless, isn't it pretty much impossible to say whether or not they did something? Can't anybody claim to be Anonymous and do what ever they want? I assume for anything Anonymous does there are some people who consider themselves members who disagree, so does that mean Anonymous didn't do it?
This isn't meant as a critique of Anonymous, but without leaders or hierarchy it's pretty much impossible to define what it is or what it does.
"We are the Borg. You will be assimilated. Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile."
Anonymous is like a one time pad in cryptography. Even if you manage to find a key that decodes the message into something legible, you will never know if you have the right key because in theory, any given message can be reproduced. Anonymous is like that. The minute you think you have it pinned down you realize that in fact it was something else - because it is not an "organization". Rather it is a "disorganization".
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Want to have some fun with the media? Tell them about "anonymous" ftp two decades ago, then tell them about the "anonymous" FTP over email services circa 1991, that'll confuse the heck out of them.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
It's a mob. Bound by no principals except what they happen believe at the moment.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
There's a paragraph or two in the article about the symbolism of the mask and relating it to the culture (wrongly assuming that you cannot use a username) of 4chan. Can someone point the author to a knowyourmeme or similar article about the history of epic fail guy?
I dont think its right to say anonymous is not organized, it seems extremely democratic to me, especially the dos attacks.
If you suggest a course of action and it resonates then it is anonymous, if it gets no support then its just you.
Regarding sony I would wager what happened was during the anonymous dos attack someone peeked at the defenses and went holy crap its wide open,
and went back alone.
IE the initial anonymous attack probably did uncover the vulnerable network but the hack was not by anonymous.
You should have used the word "principles" there.
followup; Zeus canon being fired down under southern hillary (Score:mynutswon, photonic harmonics)
by Anonymous infants on Wednesday
never a better time to disarm. tell the truth. the sky is not ours to toy
with after all?
you call this 'weather'? what with real history racing up to correct
itself, while the chosen one's holycostal life0cider mediots continually
attempt to rewrite it, fortunately, there's still only one version of the
truth, & it's usually not a long story, or a confusing multiple choice
fear raising event.
world wide disarmament is taking place based on the pure intentions of the
majority of the planet's chosen to be depopulated, population. as the
biblical fiction based chosen ones have only one ability, which is
destruction for personal gain, they just don't fit in with all the new
life extending stuff that we're being advised/warned to avoid/ignore. life
likes to continue, advance etc... deception & death appear to have similar
ambitions.
also, there's just enough time left to investigate the genuine native elders
social & political leadership initiative, which includes genuine history
as put forth in the teepeeleaks etchings. the natives still have no words
in their language to describe the events following their 'discovery' by
us, way back when. they do advise that it's happening again.
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retrollted by the diaper leaks group world wide
Anonymous is like the "take a penny, leave a penny" tray at the checkout at the mini mart.
That's right, bloody goddamn communist.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
We are anonymouse. We ar- wait shit!
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
"Mainstream Media Looks At Anonymous, Confirms The Media Still Has Its Head Up Its Collective Ass"!
"In an uncharacteristically accurate writeup of Anonymous
If by "uncharacteristically accurate", you mean they took whatever claims those punk kids make at face value, then I'll agree.
TL;DR: join Anonymous to understand.
Long post:
Why couldn't she just join a channel? There aren't any lack of lurkers in Anonymous channels, plenty of journalists, verified spooks (usually easy to backtrace), trolls, enemies, and curious onlookers in the channels. Or maybe she doesn't know how to avoid being flooded by server messages? XD
Then she should spend some time there without posing as anything but a person, without asking all sorts of nosy questions. Lurk for a few days at least, put some effort in it. Use a VPN if she thinks it's "dangerous" and "scary" or just don't bother.
Unless she's dense as a brick she should get a picture of what is and what is not over time (she might well be dense though; her article was academical twaddle without relevance: she just wanted to grow her e-penis :P).
She should know the tools after a few hours (and please no not just LOIC and other DDOS tools but the knowledge and use of all the free resources that typically take place in active ops), she should understand the significance of having the tools and the source of the tools and the knowledge of their existence if she knows anything at all about modern reality (bet she doesn't), if she happens upon a live operation and partakes she would also come to realize what makes it all work: the diverse knowledge and resources of the individuals who chose to collaborate at that moment in time.
And yes it should be obvious that some bring more to the table than others (but that everyone can help a lot if they want to). Perhaps not as equally obvious that there are extremely resourceful people who rarely say anything at all and never anything that truly reveals their position, and no they are not leaders or rulers: they simply act in their own interest just as everyone else does. If one uses ones head one knows they must be there (and it's also publicly corroborated but I'm not going to provide how and where, it doesn't serve Anonymous or them or me).
And unlike countless retards perhaps she might also understand enough to differentiate between channel and server owners and Anonymous itself, just in same the way as it ought to be obvious that one should differentiate between providers of software and web services and Anonymous itself. Most importantly the same applies to whatever anyone brings: it's their action.
Everyone is born their own leader, everyone always have choices, everyone does as they please, everyone can give and take advice and those with any sense at all thinks about what they're doing and don't act without sufficient support.
And we got no class. We can't even think of a word that rhymes!
A person studying Theater, Film and Media is indeed the most qualified to talk, because the concept is older than written history and perhaps older than the concept of mask itself:
1. In Ancient Greek Theater, especially Tragedy (also in classical theater of other cultures), Anonymous is personified on stage by the Chorus, representing a very elaborate hybrid of the author's opinion and the Public Opinion. The chorus wore masks, to make the distinction between a person and a collective explicit.
2. In Film, although actors are eponymous, the person depicted on the screen is Anonymous, playing a role that is still eponymous. Naive theories of Film claim that this is done to offer each spectator the opportunity to identify with or distance themselves from the role and the person via empathy. Proper theories try to uncover and elaborate the 'psychanalytics' through which the spectator himself loses his own identity, being torn between the person and the role, the lights and the shadows on the silver screen.
3. The Media, as originally conceived by the concept of the newspaper, attempted to reinstate the concept of the chorus by publishing heavyweight unsigned "editorial" pieces, which expressed the paper's opinions in first-plural anonymous terms: "what should we do? who are we to believe? should we condemn them or not?".
Unfortunately, these days, Theater (who is the actor, who is the agent and who is the victim), Film (who is watching whom) and Media (what is real and what is not) serve the you-know-who (a famous expression to depict the not-so-anonymous) to exercise power, control, oppression and distortion of reality.
Personally, I prefer to remain a Nobody (Outis in ancient Greek), best defined by Oedipus when he said: “Cyclops, you asked what I am called, and promised me a gift, so I shall tell you what my name is. I am Nobody. Nobody is what I’m known as by my father, mother, friends and all.”
When the name is revealed, mystery, and Life itself, simply vanish in thin ashes.
if you were to analyze anonymous's larger domain of overlapping grievances, you would characterize what anonymous is about. and you would also describe the motivation that brings people together under the banner of anonymous. this list of grievances can accurately described as internet freedoms
so, for example, anonymous has nothing to do with islamic militant fundamentalism, which, like anonymous, is also largely organic in nature and self-organizing around a set of grievances. now let's say, just for the cachet, some islamic militants started calling themselves anonymous. would you agree that that was still anonymous? of course it isn't the same anonymous: islamic fundamentalism, ANY religious fundamentalism, is no friend of internet freedoms
therefore, the definition of anonymous as put forth in this article is wrong. it is not true that anyone can call themselves anonymous. only those working within the larger agenda of internet freedom. for scattershot, random short term purposes, yes, but you have to be motivated by the idea of internet freedoms to claim the true mantle of anonymous
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Puddi. Puddi puddi puddi.
The Scientology connection to Anonymous was something I predicted in a scientology lawsuit deposition clear back in 1996.
:-)
Henson: well it comes off the recreation budget. [He is making fun of this expensive lawyer, and it's getting Lieberman's goat.] This is training for the big action, Henson says. Lieberman takes the bait: What's that?
Henson: when some major government finally decides to really sit down hard on free speech on the net.
Lieberman spends a few minutes in a halfhearted attempt to get Henson to say something seditious, but gives up quickly. Perhaps it occurs to him that he is being trolled.
Lieberman: so you welcome this [lawsuit] as a training exercise?
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.org.eff.talk/msg/33112ae138985240?hl=en%E8%85%98ae138985240&
Anonymous ("the net") certainly used scientology as a training exercise starting in early 2008 that later figured into their defense of Wikileaks and their support for the various rebellions in the Islamic world.
That first Anon picket of scientology really impressed me when 9,000 people turned out. That was 100 times larger than any previous picket against the cult. I think it was instructive to Anon as well to see just how many would take part in something relatively risky. A number of people have been subjected to scn's legal attacks.
Keith Henson
PS Excellent article even if it does read somewhat like a PhD thesis.
End MGM. Get prospective parents of boys to Google: Men do complain