U.S. Senator: We Need to Look Into Anonymous, Pronto

[Brandon237]

good luck with that Anonymous leaves little to no trails behind.
also Anonymous is like a bear: it will only attack if provoked.
if you don,t provoke them they won,t attack you.

I have to agree with this, LulzSec is a little different, but they seem to have sunk now. But Anonymous is just too good, and they could probably stop the whole economy for a day if they felt like it. So leave them be. Go after the thieves who do not make themselves public. And let's be honest, with the amount of people out their with Both a political agenda and good enough computer literacy to become hackers, catching them is likely to increase resistance. The government needs a subtler way of dealing with them.

Also: While I understand that hacking, when done maliciously, can be very problematic, I think the sentences are too harsh compared to things like manslaughter, my friend actually did a research project on it, a man got less time for killing two girls than a hacker who didn't steal a cent or distribute any personal info, and the hacker was not allowed near anything with an internet connection for the rest of his life... A bit harsh when you look at it in perspective no?

 

[Skallagrimm]

Anonymous should stay unmonitered and free. Because it's the last free thing that I can think of.

 

[gbemery]

The hacktivism phenomenon is not limited to the private sector, government agency websites like the CIA have been brought down through DDoS attacks but

I wish people would start being more specific about this portion. The way everyone describes or glazes over it makes it sound like the whole main CIA website and network went down. It was only a pointless civilian info site setup by the CIA there was nothing serious about it. There was nothing major dealing with the CIA there.

 

[dashiz94]

Did anyone read the article or did they just look at the headline?

Something like this does not bug me at all, they're worried about cyber-security, not fucking Anonymous. It's an example.

To be quite honest, this could prove a hell of a lot more useful in the long run regarding safer information sharing, anti-terrorist actions, and military intelligence.

Or it could lead to Big Brother. But as of now it seems to be simply a monitoring agency that will take action against any major security hacks, which really isn't that bad of a prospect. And to the people thinking that this committee will be staffed by people who don't know what they're doing...you're dead wrong.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

First get rid of that ugly horrible outdated Monetary system and then deal with said hackers.

 

[viranimus]

Anonymous isn't the 'organisation' (if it can be called that) that is truly a threat.

The real threat for cyber security, as Anonymous/Lulzsec themselves have stated, is not the people who publicly release information without any intent of using it to abuse said information for their own personal gain. The hackers that we really need to worry about are those who don't leave a calling card - those who are thieves in the truer sense of the word, whom merely come in, take all the credit details and vanish to steal millions without anyone tracking them.

See, that brings up such a good point about this. The real "hackers" one has to be concerned with are the ones like the Russian underground hacker armies kind that exist for no other reason than to steal info to be used elsewhere.

Not some pimple ridden kid whos fapping to Hentai and living his moms basement DDoSing irrelevant government front pages.

So what purpose is there exactly to putting together teams to fight this and put up laws to act as tools to put a stop to this when the real threats will not be caught and even if they are, they are not even under the jurisdiction of the laws that were created.

Basically, leaving nothing left but a legilstative form of DRM that does nothing to stop the people in the wrong, and only hurts the people who had nothing to do with it.

 

[Low Key]

The hacktivism phenomenon is not limited to the private sector, government agency websites like the CIA have been brought down through DDoS attacks but

I wish people would start being more specific about this portion. The way everyone describes or glazes over it makes it sound like the whole main CIA website and network went down. It was only a pointless civilian info site setup by the CIA there was nothing serious about it. There was nothing major dealing with the CIA there.

Because while the CIA DDoS wasn't that big of a deal, they have proven they can get into government networks a la the FBI. They didn't get any data, probably because they couldn't elevate their privileges, but they proved they were controlling a server by posting it's configuration. But The Escapist is still the media, and the CIA just sounds cooler for print I guess.

 

[RJ Dalton]

I really think you could have picked a much more unflattering picture of McKain, there.

 

[Mantonio]

LAND OF THE FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeee.......

 

[Sinclair Solutions]

The photo here is gold.

And while I agree with everyone else that it seems to be an impossible task, I do agree that the internet needs greater security. If the Lulzsec attacks taught me anything, it's that there needs to be some level of security and policing on the internet. You don't need to attack free speech, but an effort to stop idenity theft and DDoS attacks would be nice.

 

[Nurb]

He's getting paid by certain industries just as the telecoms paid him millions to push against Net Neutrality

A person who doesn't have enough knowledge to work a potato shouldn't be involved in anything technological

 

[Giest4life]

Sarah Palin was a political hail mary to garner female votes, nothing more.

I always saw her as the Bayonetta vote.

Ultra-violent politics with more thought put into image than substance.

I agree with the content of your last statement but no the connotation of it. Politics, the I have always seen it, is about image than content--it is now and always was. In Gorgias (a Socratic dialogue), Socrates contends that a rhetorician who could present himself well in front of the Athenian senate would win himself the job of the state physician compared to an actual physician who could present himself so well.

Sarah Palin is note unique in her frivolity, just perhaps the worst.

 

[Neonit]

me thinks they are just afraid that there exist something, that is absolutely out of their control. i mean, countries, yeah, we can bombard them, but internet?

and it just goes to show that we DONT need politicians. there is no "president of internet" and it WORKS.

but yeah, lets stop those guys by making new laws. i wouldnt be surprised if half of those guys dont even live in usa so yeah, go right ahead and make new pointless laws. and sure, why not, lets make a "ministry of internet censure/control/cyber defense" and lets put our best pals at good paying positions to do absolutely nothing.

yeah. politics.

 

[Pyroguekenesis]

"We are anonymous, we do not forgive, we do not forget."
If we truly live in a democracy then people will find a way to prove it in a sense, confidential information is no less discreet for us than the government because if we give them that power - it's tyranny. I think groups like Anonymous are good, to show the government may not be as powerful and confident as they think they are.

To show that it is the people who are in power, if anything, that we ourselves the society, can turn on society if injustice is done. I mean, Wikileaks has done ALOT for the idea of Free Speech and Information. The US Apache Gunship Attack was one, where people can see just how ineffective perhaps the military's presence is in Afghanistan and how the military treats its own people.

However, if the groups gain too much power. That's where the government is supposed to step in. So, there is a balance - unless one wants totalitarianism and the other stupidity.

 

[Mr Companion]

I like how kids on the net are now threatening the lives of the people in our country.

No you dont

 

[neonsword13-ops]

...It took them this long to get the idea?

 

[Outlaw Torn]

Sarah Palin was a political hail mary to garner female votes, nothing more.

I always saw her as the Bayonetta vote.

Ultra-violent politics with more thought put into image than substance.

Don't forget the clothes made of hair and overt sado-masochistic themes.

I say the US just needs to pay Laurence Fishburne to go to suspected hackers' houses with cyanide pills and pretend the Matrix is real. They'll never see it coming.

 

[notmyday2009]

This issue is complicated because I do not see Anonymous as the enemy if they really wanted to do damage to the government and the economy they wouldn't make them self public. The true enemy in all this are those than don't warn you and give you little card that you been hack instead just rob you blind and by the time you notice is too late too do anything. I just wish our choices weren't to be at the mercy of the hacker or the government it seem like a lose lose scenario.I would say that Anonymous should get up there ass and fight those other hacker but I think that would go against there whole believe of free speech thing. I think all we can do right know is wait for a third option to appear since the option right know seem to be "How you want to get fuck?" instead of how can we stop the fucking in general if you get my meaning.

 

[Little Duck]

A good government is afraid of it's people. A bad government doesn't want fear and surpresses freedom to feel safer.