Anonymous Hacks Tunisian Islamist Sites

eldavojohn writes "The hacktivist group Anonymous has claimed another victim by taking down Islamist sites in Tunisia. Similar to an earlier attack on Turkish government sites, #optunisia has resulted in several government blogs and sites being replaced with 'Payback is a b****, isn't it?' The message lists censorship as the motivation behind this activity. The AFP is reporting that this is also in response to the reintroduction of Salafist laws and the caliphate. An additional Anonymous message read, 'We are not against religion, we are Muslims, but we are defending freedom in our country.' Censorship continues wholesale in Tunisia."

Comments

Safe target?

[XxtraLarGe]

I wonder if they're hacking these guys because they basically won't have any ability to retaliate, as opposed to the U.S. Government or the drug cartels in Mexico.

Re:Safe target?

[XxtraLarGe]

Note, I'm not saying that the hack without merit since it is in favor of free speech, but rather if that's the reason they're avoiding the big dogs, ever since the recent sting.

Re:Safe target?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous isn't run by a handful of people who make decisions like that. Half the time Anonymous is fighting against Anonymous. How many times does this have to be explained?

Re:Safe target?

[BlackSnake112]

There are more than enough bad guys out there that CAN'T reach you, I'd rather have them pestering "safe targets" for a while rather than them going after the bigger fish, and getting killed or deported.

You have seen what many Muslim people do when they are upset/mad/in a bad mood, right?

Re:Safe target?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know it's even the same person/people doing this hack vs. any other anonymous hack? If they are "avoiding the big dogs", who are "they"? The leaders of anonymous who may or may not exist? If someone writes graffiti on a Bank of America building signed "anonymous" are you going to say it looks like they decided to go after the banks? It sounds like you're trying to make sense of what could be basically random actions by diverse non-connected groups of individuals. Maybe some are 4-channers, maybe some are bored college comp-sci students, maybe some are frustrated employees of various organizations. Anyone can be anonymous.

Re:First problem

[GameboyRMH]

Freedom of religion is what leaves you free to have no religion.

Pretty random attacks these days

[Lucas123]

Anonymous seems to just have its fingers in the wind these days, shifting its sites all over the placewith no real direction or purpose. I mean, they even took down the Boston Police Department's website because the city forced the Occupy Wall Street wackos out of Dewey Square after letting them squat there for months.

Re:Pretty random attacks these days

[GameboyRMH]

Anonymous seems to just have its fingers in the wind these days, shifting its sites all over the placewith no real direction or purpose.

Who said they have any real direction or purpose? It's a big amorphous group of whoever wants to participate in whatever popular idea is floating around at the time, they don't have any long-term plan.

Not against religion?

[ZeRu]

So, when Anonymous hacked Vatican's site, they were against religion, but now they say they are not? I guess they need to take a more cautious approach when they know tomorrow could be thousands of angry people on the street screaming for their beheading.

Re:Not against religion?

[GameboyRMH]

Way to over-simplify and misinterpret:

https://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/anonymous-hacks-vatican-website/10567

They don't seem to like Scientology either.

Re:Not against religion?

[DigiShaman]

Anonymous is anonymous. It's a movement without any specific ideology behind their motives. There is no unity on anything they do. Accept for one. Anonymous can rest at ease that whatever actions they perform can happen safely and securely behind a wall of anonymity.

As an outsider looking looking to group them to an ideology (false premise), you'll just end up confused viewing them as schizophrenic. Don't do that. It's the wrong prism by which to view them.

Re:Not against religion?

[Nidi62]

It sounds like the people behind this particular attack against the Tunisian government are Tunisian citizens, and therefore Muslim. The group behind the Vatican attacks were probably Western in residency. Remember, Anonymous is like al-Qaeda: anyone can claim the name, as both are an idea more than an actual organization. And to address this particular case, this was always the worry that the Arab Spring would bring out Islamist governments to replace authoritarian, dictatorial, regimes. However, we were still right to support these revolutions because we have always claimed that we promote self determination, and these revolts were popular revolts and gave the people the opportunity for self determination. The problem is that in several cases-Tunisia and Egypt for example-the movement was, if not co-opted, then opened up the opportunity for more restrictive governments to form due to the current popularity of restrictive, radicalized Islam as a response to the encroachment of Western culture.

Re:Not against religion?

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientology isn't a recognized religion in most places. It's a cult at best, and a criminal organization otherwise.

Re:Not against religion?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Scientology isn't a recognized religion in most places. It's a cult at best, and a criminal organization otherwise.

I still haven't understood the reason for distinguishing between cult religions and so-called "non-cult religions". All of them seem disturbingly alike to me.

Re:Not against religion?

[chrb]

There are two points to consider with the whole Arab Spring Islamist thing:

1) The Islamist groups were often the only form of resistance against an unpopular dictator. People joining or supporting those groups weren't necessarily hardcore Islamists. Consider that the Islamist groups that fought against Gadaffi turned out to be our allies, and openly called for democratic elections. Also consider the Polish uprisings against Communism - the uprisings had many religious overtones (martyrdom, use of the Christian cross etc.) and many of the protests were overtly religious, and the protesters used the church to organise, but in the end they did this because the church was already a focal point in people's lives, one that people could rally around as a community. They didn't actually want a hardline religious society. This may also be the case with the Arab Spring.

2) The Islamist political groups that have been elected in these kind of situations in the past tend not to fare so well in future elections. The basic problem is that once they are in power people discover that the Islamist politicians are much like politicians everywhere, i.e. entirely fallable and often hypocritical. In the end, linking religion to a political group not only reduces respect for the group, but also for the religion as a whole.

Retaliation against Anonymous?

[Kylon99]

This counter tactic won't work for the Islamist sites that need to be populist, but it will work for the ones who have enough men, guns and money to seize power and control through fear, intimidation or murder.

Basically, if you attack them, they can simply murder some innocent person related to you. Say, find someone who studies computers and whether you declare this 'computer' thing an evil or not, simply murder them and publicize that they died in response to the attack. They would just be interested in creating a chilling effect, not in being accurate. This goes for any other group looking to dominate with fear, such as gangs, etc., but it depends on the amount of violence they control.

I'm just looking at this from a sociology point of view. The problem I see with this is the other side will need to be just as callous about the victims caught in the middle of the war in order to continue. Oh well. Change is always very tough. I hope things won't spiral out of control, but I wouldn't put my life on it.

Re:When you finally understand where all religions

[Anonymous Coward]

You DO know "agnostic" and "atheist" are orthogonal right? All religions, as well as atheism, are belief claims, while a claim of agnosticism simply means "I do not put the same kind of confidence in this belief as I would in something derived deductively from prior principles." For example, an agnostic atheist says "I have no particular God belief, but this does not mean there never is, was, or will be a God or Gods in any place, time, or meaning."

Re:First problem

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Actually, it's a lack of prohibition of having no religion that allows you to have no religion.

Re:First problem

[tqk]

Freedom of religion is what leaves you free to have no religion.

Freedom from religion would be better. That way, you could have your religion (in your basement, in the dark (as it should be - you alone comuning with your sky fairy)), and nobody would bother persecuting you for it. Everyone wins.