I don't know much about anonymous, but it's actually a pretty good letter...except for the penises in the hornets nest thing. Had to double take that one.
The letters are written by individuals trying to make the collective follow their orders. It's inevitable that the letters that surface are the ones that made the bigger impact, and to get there they have to be well written.
The penises and hornets nest thing is just to show the world how edgy and cool and free Anonymous is. I find amusing that many news websites and channels will display the full letter, penises included.
The biggest double take for me was when they called GeoHot a "fellow hacker". Excuse me? GeoHot is a hacker. Anonymous are script kiddies. Big difference.
What makes you so sure you know where to draw the line? Hotz is in the same kind of legal trouble that motivates Anonymous to be anonymous. And give that they are anonymous, how can you be sure that they aren't otherwise respectable hackers? Or is it your belief that Anonymous' tactics are unacceptable in a way that disqualifies their members' otherwise acceptable hacking work?
From Sony's perspective: Anonymous is going after their website, but Hotz is undermining their actual products! Who's worse, particularly when neither had much direct provocation?
They can do something HBGary-style and hack sony's servers to gather confidential information that would embarass the company and bring the stock price down. That would hit where it hurts, can be doable with some social engineering, and any company that big is bound to have some skeletons in its closet.
Not that I condone these actions, I'm just pointing out that they have done finer things in the past than just using LOIC.
Sony survived the rootkit incident. I doubt that Anonymous will be able to do even that much harm unless they turn up something that the SEC would take offense to.
They are too decentralized and disorganized to do anything effective. All they really can do is DDoS people's servers and cause temporary inconveniences.
A DDoS has the same effect on a company and their customers as a sit-in does on a brick-and-mortar establishment. Sit-ins have proven to be both effective and socially acceptable. The main question with a DDoS is whether the balance of power between the protestors and the target is too favorable to a small group of protestors, not whether the tactic can work at all.
I'm fascinated with Anonymous' impact as a political group. As far as I can tell, Anonymous is just another term for technologically connected young people, which otherwise would have been single individuals incapable of advancing an agenda. Perhaps it's just me, but despite their misguided actions, I believe me and anyone else who grew up with the Internet is deeply invested in their particular brand of libertarianism: strong belief in freedom of speech, transparency, and personal property.
How does anonymously damaging the property of those who hold beliefs you disagree with in any way consistent with those values? Further they aren't advancing an agenda they are harming one. I'm someone who agrees with much of what they advocate but everytime they "take action" I feel sympathy for that company.
What property is being damaged by Anonymous, and why does their anonymity matter to the assessment of whether their actions are right or wrong?
The way I see it, aside from temporary business interruptions from the occasional successful DDoS, the only thing Anonymous harms are reputations.
As to why their actions might sometimes be justified: most of their targets are (attempting to) abuse the legal system - most often by using copyright law for purposes that are harmful to the general public and beyond the constitutionally justifiable power of copyright law.
Surely you can understand that when the legal system is part of the problem, it is sometimes necessary to resolve the problem with extra-legal means.
There's a difference between "damage" and "permanent damage". If Sony has servers that are functioning correctly and Anonymous causes them not to function correctly than damage is being done. There is money Sony would have been making during that time that they are not making. As far as their Anonymity I didn't say anything about it making their actions right or wrong. The original post put forth "transparency" as a value Anonymous stood for and I was refuting that. By definition Anonymous people can't be transparent.
As far as your other statements you prove my point. The parties Anonymous tends to attack are people who are working completely inside the law but Anonymous disagrees with the law so they take it out on the company.
A perfect example of this is the Sony thing. Geohot set out to crack the PS3. Sony warned him not to by sending a cease and desist (we know this happened because he stopped his work for a while because of it). He continued to do it and eventually succeeded. Sony than sued him for doing it.
In this case Sony is not abusing the law. They are suing in accordance with it. But Anonymous disagrees with the law so they are attacking Sony (for the record I also disagree with the law but I don't blame Sony for that I blame politicians)
Finally your last statement is just scary. What you're basically saying is you have the right to break the law whenever you feel it's wrong. Extrapolate that right to everyone and you have chaos. Every person who feels society is unjustly weighted against them can rob a bank by that logic.
It's quite a stretch to say that Sony is operating within the law in their anti-jailbreaking efforts. The current laws on the books are being interpreted in ways that have serious problems with the constitution, and we're a few Supreme Court rulings away from being able to call the legal issue settled. (And that doesn't even address the fact that Sony's lawsuit is going poorly for them.) Sony is not operating within the law so much as within the system.
More importantly, it takes years for the legal system to deal with an issue even in the cases where it "works". Just take a look at the SCO case: they caused quite a bit of damage to the open-source software movement, and the company that chose to fight them is still in court and will never recoup their legal costs. Even if we do get a Supreme Court ruling 5 years from now saying that you can put whatever software you want on a piece of hardware you own, there's a lot of innovation being stifled in the meantime. The existing laws are not doing the job, and until they are fixed, there's a constant risk of bad precedents making it harder to fix things through the usual/proper/legal methods.
You are also reading too much in to my last statement. I am not saying that it is always right to break laws in pursuit of your ideals, I'm just saying that it's not always wrong. Something being illegal is not on its own a good indicator of whether it is wrong.
But that's the point. I'm not saying Sony is right but they aren't clearly wrong either. The way a civilized society deals with that type of situation is through the courts not through hackers launching DoS attacks.
As for your last statement I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you on the issue of the law automatically making something right or wrong. But if the law is wrong the entity you oppose is the government not the individual or company. Because individuals and companies are obligated to work within the system. Once you allow individuals to attack other individuals over disagreements its the beginning of the end for society itself.
We live in an age of fear where those in power try to make us afraid of the things we cannot see. Most 'isms (communism, terrorism, fascism) have been used to provoke fear at one time or another. Anonymous gives the fear mongers something to fear. An unseen enemy that is everywhere and nowhere.
I don't always agree with Anonymous' word choice or tactics. But, their work increases truth and transparency in the world and protects little guys from larger bullies. In general, I think they have a valuable place in the world.
You know how I know they are up to no good? Because if they were doing something good they wouldn't be anonymous - they'd want credit for it.
Anonymous is nothing more then a group of random people that meet over the internet to do harmful/border-line illegal activities. This stuff about "protecting you" is just a cover.
What is the big thing that they claim to support? Freedom of expression? Yet that is exactly what they are sabotaging by shutting down people's websites with DDoS attacks.
It's not even a "group", it's just a self-applied label. Anyone can claim "We are Anonymous, and we are going to do X", whether X is good or bad. Do the organizers of this have anything in common with the organisers of any previous "Anonymous" activity? Probably not.
It seems to me that Anonymous has gone rapidly downhill in their choice of targets and tactics. When they were reading OT3 outside the Church of Scientology, that was something that most right-minded people could get behind, but this.... actually I don't even know what this is about; the letter doesn't really explain.
This is probably inevitable -- over time the folks with bad intentions will crowd out the folks with good intentions, since good people don't want to be associated with bad people. I was "part" of anonymous when "they" were protesting outside Scientology, but wouldn't be "part" of it now that "they" have started DDoSing random websites.
Most open-source programmers put their names on their projects. When you are contributing to society, creating something good, or building something, you put your name on it. Just look at how many buildings and things are named after their creators.
On the hand, if you are doing something destructive, harmful, or criminal, then you hid your name from others. You can't do much harm by yourself though, so these people organize together under this so-called "self-applied label."
I negotiate for food and shelter with members of a nosy, judgmental, sometimes irrational species. I want to avoid self-censoring arguments which I consider valid but controversial, and that's why I comment using a pseudonym. What's your excuse for doing so, since you regard it as a sign of malfeasance?
In a hollywood romanticized way, I think Anonymous is a great idea, along the lines of Robin Hood. But in a practical way it causes me concern. Both for, and because of. Politically my biggest concern is with power, who has it and why. This sort of tactic goes against everything I believe in. There is a fine line between fighting tyranny, and fighting to be the new tyrants, which these tactics can easily cross that line. I also think of the 1960's when groups like this were vastly more common, and how those groups were broken up and taken down. I fear such a decentralized group, seemingly manifesting their missions out of chaos, could easily succumb to some tactile social engineering to destroy them from with in. No centralized command, leaves any sort of agenda in a constant state of flux, and leaves the identity Anonymous up for grabs when taking the blame for anything that is done. Which considering they are a threat, and relish in that, their image amongst the people who do not understand, who do not follow, can be easily swayed, ending up doing more harm than good, towards any agenda Anonymous and myself share in common. I wish them well in sticking up for the masses, against centralized abuses of power. But I fear this does not end will, either for them, or because of them. Power always seems to have a way to corrupt the good that can be wielded with it.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 68.0 ms ] threadThe penises and hornets nest thing is just to show the world how edgy and cool and free Anonymous is. I find amusing that many news websites and channels will display the full letter, penises included.
From Sony's perspective: Anonymous is going after their website, but Hotz is undermining their actual products! Who's worse, particularly when neither had much direct provocation?
Not that I condone these actions, I'm just pointing out that they have done finer things in the past than just using LOIC.
The way I see it, aside from temporary business interruptions from the occasional successful DDoS, the only thing Anonymous harms are reputations.
As to why their actions might sometimes be justified: most of their targets are (attempting to) abuse the legal system - most often by using copyright law for purposes that are harmful to the general public and beyond the constitutionally justifiable power of copyright law.
Surely you can understand that when the legal system is part of the problem, it is sometimes necessary to resolve the problem with extra-legal means.
As far as your other statements you prove my point. The parties Anonymous tends to attack are people who are working completely inside the law but Anonymous disagrees with the law so they take it out on the company.
A perfect example of this is the Sony thing. Geohot set out to crack the PS3. Sony warned him not to by sending a cease and desist (we know this happened because he stopped his work for a while because of it). He continued to do it and eventually succeeded. Sony than sued him for doing it.
In this case Sony is not abusing the law. They are suing in accordance with it. But Anonymous disagrees with the law so they are attacking Sony (for the record I also disagree with the law but I don't blame Sony for that I blame politicians)
Finally your last statement is just scary. What you're basically saying is you have the right to break the law whenever you feel it's wrong. Extrapolate that right to everyone and you have chaos. Every person who feels society is unjustly weighted against them can rob a bank by that logic.
More importantly, it takes years for the legal system to deal with an issue even in the cases where it "works". Just take a look at the SCO case: they caused quite a bit of damage to the open-source software movement, and the company that chose to fight them is still in court and will never recoup their legal costs. Even if we do get a Supreme Court ruling 5 years from now saying that you can put whatever software you want on a piece of hardware you own, there's a lot of innovation being stifled in the meantime. The existing laws are not doing the job, and until they are fixed, there's a constant risk of bad precedents making it harder to fix things through the usual/proper/legal methods.
You are also reading too much in to my last statement. I am not saying that it is always right to break laws in pursuit of your ideals, I'm just saying that it's not always wrong. Something being illegal is not on its own a good indicator of whether it is wrong.
As for your last statement I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you on the issue of the law automatically making something right or wrong. But if the law is wrong the entity you oppose is the government not the individual or company. Because individuals and companies are obligated to work within the system. Once you allow individuals to attack other individuals over disagreements its the beginning of the end for society itself.
I don't always agree with Anonymous' word choice or tactics. But, their work increases truth and transparency in the world and protects little guys from larger bullies. In general, I think they have a valuable place in the world.
Anonymous is nothing more then a group of random people that meet over the internet to do harmful/border-line illegal activities. This stuff about "protecting you" is just a cover.
What is the big thing that they claim to support? Freedom of expression? Yet that is exactly what they are sabotaging by shutting down people's websites with DDoS attacks.
It seems to me that Anonymous has gone rapidly downhill in their choice of targets and tactics. When they were reading OT3 outside the Church of Scientology, that was something that most right-minded people could get behind, but this.... actually I don't even know what this is about; the letter doesn't really explain.
This is probably inevitable -- over time the folks with bad intentions will crowd out the folks with good intentions, since good people don't want to be associated with bad people. I was "part" of anonymous when "they" were protesting outside Scientology, but wouldn't be "part" of it now that "they" have started DDoSing random websites.
On the hand, if you are doing something destructive, harmful, or criminal, then you hid your name from others. You can't do much harm by yourself though, so these people organize together under this so-called "self-applied label."
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