On Anonymous

[CM156_v1legacy]

Ah, yes more on Anon

This is the point where I have become quite bloody sick of them. Not just the news, but their existence. I could justify them if we lived in a Draconian society, but the thing is, we don?t/

In my mind, they are a cult of amoral cyber terrorists and hypocrites. As someone pointed out, they went after Gene Simmons for speaking his mind. He said some things I disagreed with, yes. But I don?t want him attacked just for speaking his mind.

And remember Wikileaks? They said that freedom of information was majorly important, and that it was wrong to oppose. However, if Wikileaks had a list of the names and addresses of all Anon members, do you think they would stand by? No, because freedom of information is just a means to an end for them. To me, it is like saying ?I want to kill anyone who does not respect the value of human life?. It just does not work as an ideal. They demand the powerful are held to account. I agree with that. However, that seems not to apply to them. Which, in my mind, is wrong.

In the end, they are bullies who think might makes right. And there are few things I hate more than that idea.

 

[EternalFacepalm]

So first you throw that backwards and false ideology of "anonymous" thats been completely beat down in 4 anon related threads here and than you call me a prick. Its good to see your a level headed individual.

Hope you enjoy that incoming warning your about to receive.

I didn't call you a prick; I said anyone provoking people on purpose were a prick. And how is the ideology I mentioned false?

 

[Chatboy 91]

At first I kinda liked Anonymous' ideologies, free speech, free Internet access, freedom of this or that. The more and more I thought of it though. I began to realise that these are more or less children with nothing really better to do with their spare time than be glued to the Internet. They believe in freedom of speech, as mentioned previously, if it is something they agree with. In essence it would actually not be freedom of speech at all. The ugly truth is, someone is going to disagree with you and your ideologies no matter what. Shit like that happens, you have to man up to it, grow some balls, and understand this.

As far as multi-billion dollar companies are concerned, the one's they hack and obsess over, their are people at the low end of those billionm of this or that. The more and more I thought of it though. I began to realise that these are more or less children with nothing really better to do with their spare time than be glued to the Internet. They believe in freedom of speech, as mentioned previously, if it is something they agree with. In essence it would actually not be freedom of speech at all.

Then their is the matter with multi-billion dollar companies they screw around with. The exec's of the company don't really suffer much, it's the grunts of the company that have to deal with the majority of the messes. Besides, doesn't everyone want a ton of cash to do with whatever they want anyway. There are a lot of things I disagree with about multi-billion dollar companies, it has most to do with them getting tax breaks and being treated as more of an individual rather than a collective. BUT, even the slimy exec's, that the people at anonymous have ever met, we can only assume they are slimy and hate filled, had to go through tons of **** to get where they are. Out of college, or however they earned their billions, requires a ****_ton of hard work, but... whatever, these companies deserve our animosity just because they exist, and drive our economy, and provide people with jobs, and give us things that make our lives somewhat more... fulfilling.

There are a lot of bad people in some of these companies that DO deserve to be taken to prison and found guilty of embezzling, fraud, and numerous other crimes. Their actions do need to be brought to the surface into the light of day, but it needs to be done in a more responsible manner.

Finally, I DO NOT WATCH FOX NEWS!!! I am not a conservative in anyway or anything like that. Most of my viewpoints, when compared to those of our business college at my university, clash.

Oh, and finally, Justin Bieber deserves being trolled because he is Justin Bieber.

They do believe in freedom of speech even in the instances where they don't agree. In the case of the Westboro Baptist Church, Anonymous refused to attack because they specifically said, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Also, tell Aaron Barr that he wasn't affected by the attack on HBGary. This isn't a matter of money, they don't simply attack corporations that are rich, they attack corporations that are corrupt. You cannot simply accuse these corporations or the people who work/run them, you need to bring the information to the surface in order for any accusations to stick.

 

[Nick_Snyder]

Gonna make this as simple as possible for you. Its a 12 year old acting stupid online. a bunch of mostly 21+ year olds completely wrecked her shit in the HUNDREDS. NOTHING she could have done would warrant this.

Nothing. And guess what? if they had come out from behind their keyboards, instead of being completely slimy poeple dispensing "justice" from hundreds of miles away. They would have all been arrested and put into INTENSIVE THERAPY for harassing in mass a 12 year old girl because she "deserved it"

This is not the way functioning humans adults are supposed to work. This is SICKENING.

Neither should a 12 yo girl function that way.It's her retarded kind that invented the kiddy cyber bullying.Running around fb posting shit on slightly chubby children further ruining their self esteem.You probably don't even know about that problem around the internet and it's not for the lulz or spawned from 4chan/anonymous.

PS:She did deserve it.And I lold when I saw it.

PSS:Thanks for making it simple.Totally reminded me of the whole ordeal and got me cheered up.

No 12 year old deserves that! She's 12 for Christ sakes! When you were 12 did you ever say anything relatively intelligent?

 

[Chatboy 91]

Ah, yes more on Anon

This is the point where I have become quite bloody sick of them. Not just the news, but their existence. I could justify them if we lived in a Draconian society, but the thing is, we don?t/

In my mind, they are a cult of amoral cyber terrorists and hypocrites. As someone pointed out, they went after Gene Simmons for speaking his mind. He said some things I disagreed with, yes. But I don?t want him attacked just for speaking his mind.

And remember Wikileaks? They said that freedom of information was majorly important, and that it was wrong to oppose. However, if Wikileaks had a list of the names and addresses of all Anon members, do you think they would stand by? No, because freedom of information is just a means to an end for them. To me, it is like saying ?I want to kill anyone who does not respect the value of human life?. It just does not work as an ideal. They demand the powerful are held to account. I agree with that. However, that seems not to apply to them. Which, in my mind, is wrong.

In the end, they are bullies who think might makes right. And there are few things I hate more than that idea.

Uh, in the HBGary attack they openly revealed EVERYTHING Aaron Barr had collected on Anonymous. The huge report that he was going to sell to the FBI, they gave out for free. They would be fine with the same thing happening on Wikileaks.

They are not terroists, they are activists, they are not hypocrites, they are not bullies.

 

[CM156_v1legacy]

Ah, yes more on Anon

This is the point where I have become quite bloody sick of them. Not just the news, but their existence. I could justify them if we lived in a Draconian society, but the thing is, we don?t/

In my mind, they are a cult of amoral cyber terrorists and hypocrites. As someone pointed out, they went after Gene Simmons for speaking his mind. He said some things I disagreed with, yes. But I don?t want him attacked just for speaking his mind.

And remember Wikileaks? They said that freedom of information was majorly important, and that it was wrong to oppose. However, if Wikileaks had a list of the names and addresses of all Anon members, do you think they would stand by? No, because freedom of information is just a means to an end for them. To me, it is like saying ?I want to kill anyone who does not respect the value of human life?. It just does not work as an ideal. They demand the powerful are held to account. I agree with that. However, that seems not to apply to them. Which, in my mind, is wrong.

In the end, they are bullies who think might makes right. And there are few things I hate more than that idea.

Uh, in the HBGary attack they openly revealed EVERYTHING Aaron Barr had collected on Anonymous. The huge report that he was going to sell to the FBI, they gave out for free. They would be fine with the same thing happening on Wikileaks.

They are not terroists, they are activists, they are not hypocrites, they are not bullies.

Not all they do is evil, I will admit. But they do enough in my mind to be called bullies. A bully thinks might makes right, that if they can do it, it is somehow justified. That is the same logic train Anon uses

Also, they would have not been fine with the whole Wikileaks hyothetical, because they would not be anonymous, and would actually be forced to account for what they had done. And that is my main problem with them: they have no accountibility. "With great power comes great responsibility". They have the first, but not the second.

Also, by your logic, are the WBC just "activists"?

 

[Nick_Snyder]

At first I kinda liked Anonymous' ideologies, free speech, free Internet access, freedom of this or that. The more and more I thought of it though. I began to realise that these are more or less children with nothing really better to do with their spare time than be glued to the Internet. They believe in freedom of speech, as mentioned previously, if it is something they agree with. In essence it would actually not be freedom of speech at all. The ugly truth is, someone is going to disagree with you and your ideologies no matter what. Shit like that happens, you have to man up to it, grow some balls, and understand this.

As far as multi-billion dollar companies are concerned, the one's they hack and obsess over, their are people at the low end of those billionm of this or that. The more and more I thought of it though. I began to realise that these are more or less children with nothing really better to do with their spare time than be glued to the Internet. They believe in freedom of speech, as mentioned previously, if it is something they agree with. In essence it would actually not be freedom of speech at all.

Then their is the matter with multi-billion dollar companies they screw around with. The exec's of the company don't really suffer much, it's the grunts of the company that have to deal with the majority of the messes. Besides, doesn't everyone want a ton of cash to do with whatever they want anyway. There are a lot of things I disagree with about multi-billion dollar companies, it has most to do with them getting tax breaks and being treated as more of an individual rather than a collective. BUT, even the slimy exec's, that the people at anonymous have ever met, we can only assume they are slimy and hate filled, had to go through tons of **** to get where they are. Out of college, or however they earned their billions, requires a ****_ton of hard work, but... whatever, these companies deserve our animosity just because they exist, and drive our economy, and provide people with jobs, and give us things that make our lives somewhat more... fulfilling.

There are a lot of bad people in some of these companies that DO deserve to be taken to prison and found guilty of embezzling, fraud, and numerous other crimes. Their actions do need to be brought to the surface into the light of day, but it needs to be done in a more responsible manner.

Finally, I DO NOT WATCH FOX NEWS!!! I am not a conservative in anyway or anything like that. Most of my viewpoints, when compared to those of our business college at my university, clash.

Oh, and finally, Justin Bieber deserves being trolled because he is Justin Bieber.

They do believe in freedom of speech even in the instances where they don't agree. In the case of the Westboro Baptist Church, Anonymous refused to attack because they specifically said, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Also, tell Aaron Barr that he wasn't affected by the attack on HBGary. This isn't a matter of money, they don't simply attack corporations that are rich, they attack corporations that are corrupt. You cannot simply accuse these corporations or the people who work/run them, you need to bring the information to the surface in order for any accusations to stick.

A corporation is a corporation. There are quite a bit of corrupt corporations out there. But there are a lot of those "corrupt" corporations that employ hundreds of people with jobs that have nothing to do with the actions of the company as a whole.

 

[EternalFacepalm]

I'm not provoking anybody, I'm not trying to provoke anybody. I'm simply not going to role over and except that ridiculous mindset of anon. Just because i don't agree with you, doesn't mean i'm provoking you.

Second of all, there are many a chan with a /i/ board, and you and i both know what that is. I've lurked on plenty of them and know for a fact 80% of the targets on them don't deserve to have hundreds of poeple trying to screw them up. They are bullies, nothing but. Freedom of speech does not extending to dropping dox on somebody because they fucked you over in a online game.

Thats called being a prick.

I don't agree with all subsets of Anonymous, but I do agree with some.
I also never stated you provoked me, at least it was never my intention to do so. It was more of a statement of how it's organized; if someone provokes them, insulting their ideals, they attack. That's pretty normal, and human, really.
I disagree with the part of Anonymous raiding Habbo, and invading sites for no reason; yet I do agree with those that protest without harming anyone. At least not directly, anyway.
The only problem with Anonymous is how confusing the entire thing is; they have some degree of organization, yet it's ruined by the fact that there are several groups using the same name, standing for the exact opposite.

 

[Chatboy 91]

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Not all they do is evil, I will admit. But they do enough in my mind to be called bullies. A bully thinks might makes right, that if they can do it, it is somehow justified. That is the same logic train Anon uses

Also, they would have not been fine with the whole Wikileaks hyothetical, because they would not be anonymous, and would actually be forced to account for what they had done. And that is my main problem with them: they have no accountibility. "With great power comes great responsibility". They have the first, but not the second.

Also, by your logic, are the WBC just "activists"?

It's not a matter of simply they can do it. They attack when something goes against their ideals.

As I said, when they compromised HBGary, they released a document which had a large list of names, phone number, addresses, and handle names for Anonymous members. They gave up their anonymity for the freedom of information.

I don't agree with the WBC on any level, but they have the right to freedom of speech as anyone else.

 

[Starke]

When exactly did people decide that it was specifically Anonymous who attacked Jessi Slaughter? It's the exact same issue as with the PSN hack, if it was a small splinter group in Anonymous, you can't hold all of Anonymous responsible. In the case of Jessi Slaughter I would sooner primarily blame 4chan, and the few members of /b/ who had the means to actually retrieve information about her.

When it was coming from the same font of human kindness as the rest of this shit.

The Justin Bieber issue was more of a joke then anything, I will be the first to admit it was unnecessary, but in case you forgot most of the members like "teh lulz". I am unaware of any major negative side effects.

The point is the Bieber thing was unprovoked. It was random. It was, in point of fact a result in the breakdown of their chain of command during a larger operation. But to say that it is "okay because it's a joke" kinda misses the point. These guys are playing with live ammo. There are no jokes at that point, just fuckups.

Gene Simmons was an idiot. Freedom of speech is one thing, threatening people with law suits and prison rape is a whole other issue.

Of course Simmons is an idiot. He's insane. It's impossible to do what he wants for a number of reasons. But that doesn't revoke his right to say it. And it isn't a threat. Not legally, and not under any sane definition of the word that makes sense to someone with a functional understanding of the English language.

You're also ignoring the fact that they have done numerous other positive operations and protests. Revealing corruption in the Bank of America,

Hardly. When you look at BoA's trackrecord, Anonymous didn't do shit. And that huge cache of information wikileaks had on an unidentified bank remains missing in action as well. If they'd had any positive influence on this we'd still be talking about Bank of America months later, but we're not, because they had no effect, really.

they properly ignored Westboro's threats,

By hacking their website ON TV. Yeah, that worked well.

they up held their beliefs of freedom of information in the HBGary attack,

Which was, let's review, dumb luck. They didn't go out of their way to uncover HBGary's nefarious plans, they went out there to ***** slap someone for daring to reveal who they actually were. Along the way, they got lucky and secured a data cache they shouldn't have. That's a black eye to how shitty HBGary's internal security was, but it wasn't a positive gain.

It's like breaking into someone's house to steal their TV because you don't like what they're saying about you. Along the way you find out they were planning to murder someone. That isn't a net positive, you still committed a fucking crime getting in there in the first place, and you can still be charged with that.

they helped during the Egyptian revolution by taking down government websites and helping provide internet access, they attacked Tunisian government websites to remove censorship of Wikileaks, and the list goes on.

Well, one of these things never happened... the rest... well, the rest never happened either. Let's take this apart. Tunisia happened first. Anon "noticed" the protests after they'd been going on for weeks, and decided to jump in ass for brains first. They launched DDoS attacks against the State sites. Tunisia went batshit, and cracked down harder on the protesters. We had people being disappeared, we had an internet crackdown, we had people dying. After the dust cleared, Anonymous patted itself on the back, told themselves they'd done a great job and rolled onto the next target.

In Egypt we had another anonymous instigated crackdown. You can say they aren't connected, and there is a legitimate fallacy: post hoc, ergo proctor hoc, but at the end of the day, this was cause and effect, not just before and after. Anonymous got people killed.

A group of anonymous hackers did work on getting around the internet lockdown in Egypt, but it is seriously doubtful that they were affiliated with Anonymous for a simple reason: they were competent. To date all of anon's attacks have been pathetically low tech, low skill intrusions or DDoS attacks on a compromised utility.

In the end, they hid behind anonymity, claimed success and glory for the victories regardless of their influence in them, and ignored their failures.

They absolutely believe in freedom of speech, freedom of information, and de-censorship of the internet and aside from a very select few, they are not a group of bullies.

"Owen has not only told me that he doesn't really give a shit about freedom of speech, he's also moderately against the action that's being taken on Sony," this Anon said.

... Right. You were saying?

For those not keeping score at home, "Owen" was one of those ShadowAnons who functioned as an actual leadership structure while hiding behind the masses claiming there was no underlying structure.

Link [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/the-hackers-hacked-main-anonymous-irc-servers-seized.ars]

 

[Jumwa]

An interesting article as usual, Shamus. Though the comments section seems to be going rather ridiculous. Or, rather MORE ridiculous than usual, I guess.

Hackers are annoying, I wont deny that, but coming from a guy whose own website was just hacked last night by spammers (and who had to spend a large chunk of today wrangling with issues to fix it) all but the worst of them are just nuisances at most. And Anonymous are mostly just teens and manchildren using basic denial-of-service software they just downloaded and double-clicked on who, as you rightly put it, have no monetary gain in mind. Basically they're after attention for their deeds.

Frankly, if occasionally having to deal with nuisances like Anonymous or the kindly spam jerks who complicated my day is the price of having a big, free internet with so many interesting things going on and being said, then I'd be prepared to pay it.

Also people, there's no need to quote the last seven comments in a conversation thread every time you quote somebody, yeesh.

 

[Chatboy 91]

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A corporation is a corporation. There are quite a bit of corrupt corporations out there. But there are a lot of those "corrupt" corporations that employ hundreds of people with jobs that have nothing to do with the actions of the company as a whole.

Fair enough, there are always casualties in these instances.

 

[Starke]

As I said, when they compromised HBGary, they released a document which had a large list of names, phone number, addresses, and handle names for Anonymous members. They gave up their anonymity for the freedom of information.

While claiming they were in fact releasing the names, phone numbers, addresses, and handles of people who were completely innocent of any crime and were being incorrectly affiliated with anonymous by HBGary.

Oh so noble a gesture.

 

[Starke]

snip

snip

A corporation is a corporation. There are quite a bit of corrupt corporations out there. But there are a lot of those "corrupt" corporations that employ hundreds of people with jobs that have nothing to do with the actions of the company as a whole.

Fair enough, there are always casualties in these instances.

The fact of the matter is, Anon has demonstrated, time and again, they don't care about the collateral damage of their actions. Which kinda puts a damper on the whole, "we're doing it for you" angle.

 

[Chatboy 91]

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Still holding onto that blatant absolute lie huh? well than I guess its time to kick it up a notch.

http://711chan.org/i/
http://boards.808chan.org/i/
http://rockstararmy.com/i/
http://partyvan.info/wiki/Main_Page

please everybody, enjoy these boards. They attack everything from a school{not fucking kidding, check the first link}, to myspace users, facebook users, hacking random poeple and anything vile you can possibly think of. This doesn't even touch on the racism and homophobia happening with almost every post. Most of these attacks are completely unwarranted. You will find that these "great acts of kindness and safeguarding our liberties" are strangely in the minority here. gee I wonder why... Oh wait, thats because they are BULLIES.

of course these aren't bullies. they are doing it for free speech. They are doing it for human rights and for US.

Right, because the idiots on those boards actually have any true affiliation with Anonymous.

 

[CM156_v1legacy]

It's not a matter of simply they can do it. They attack when something goes against their ideals.

But that's just the problem. Someone goes against my ideals, I adress my grevences within the boundries of the law. They don't.

As I said, when they compromised HBGary, they released a document which had a large list of names, phone number, addresses, and handle names for Anonymous members. They gave up their anonymity for the freedom of information.

Let's look at what wikipedia has to say on this?

On February 5-6, 2011, Anonymous hacked their website, copied tens of thousands of documents from HBGary, posted tens of thousands of company emails online, and usurped Barr's Twitter account in revenge. Anonymous also claimed to have wiped Barr's iPad remotely, though this act remains unconfirmed...

What HBGary was doing was wrong, yes. But last I checked, if you kill a murderer (in normal cases) you are a murderer. Break the law to expose a lawbreaker, and you STILL broke the law.

I don't agree with the WBC on any level, but they have the right to freedom of speech as anyone else.

Didn't quite answer my question there.