Who is Anonymous?

With all of these Internet censorship bills running around, it’s about time somebody did something. And who better to do it than, well, everyone. At least, that’s the approach the group of hackers known as Anonymous is taking.

Anonymous is what’s called a “hacktivist” group – a collective of activists whose main tool of influence is done through hacking. They began on 4chan back in 2003. The name was influenced by the posting process on the site. Anytime someone posted a comment without identifying themselves, it would be recorded as being commented by “Anonymous.” Soon enough, people began (jokingly) treating “Anonymous” as a person, and a meme was created. This slowly then turned into the group that we know today as Anonymous – a collective of unnamed people who could be anyone.

Credits flickr/luccast85

The idea of Anonymous focuses on an unnamed group of people. Each person’s identity is unknown and there’s no actual leader. This is where a lot of their strength lies since it enables Anonymous to be more of a concept than anything else – and a powerful one to boot. It’s not an organization so much as the fulfillment of justice as deemed by a majority.

In order for something to be backed by Anonymous, it first must be created on a personal level, where a member or two will come up with an idea in response to injustices happening in the world. From there they look for a majority of members to back the idea as posted on a myriad of social websites. Once an idea is deemed as being just, individual members began trying to crash servers and cause overall disruption through a number of techniques, such as flooding the bandwidth of targeted servers, forcing them to crash.

According to Wikipedia, membership into Anonymous is “conditional but easily achieved, being as simple as concealing oneself while performing online activities. The successes brought about by each individual are attributed to the group, and no individual recognition is had, and it’s not something they want either.

Something that you’ll encounter a lot nowadays is their symbol: the Guy Fawkes mask from the comic/film V for Vendetta – a movie surrounding a masked revolutionary (Guy Fawkes) and his attempts to fell a dictatorial government.

One of Anonymous’ most recent attacks, named Project Blackout, occurred on January 19, 2012, when the US Department of Justice and the FBI shut down Megaupload. What ensued has been called Anonymous’ “single largest Internet attack in its history.”

Case in point, the Department of Justice’s website was shut down in only 70 minutes after the start of the attack. They also disabled many other websites including those belonging to the FBI, Universal Music Group, the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America, and Broadcast Music Inc.

The best thing was, the timing of the attack couldn’t have been chosen for a better time. With SOPA floating around, there were many who were already supportive of any effort to defend the freedom of an open Internet.

What I find most interesting about the group is that the government is actually afraid of Anonymous. When asked to send a representative, either federally or locally, to an interview with CNN surrounding Anonymous, they declined. They didn’t want to send anyone “to the chopping block,” since Anonymous is well known for finding personal (and sometimes very embarrassing) information on anyone they feel is causing an injustice, and posting their information online for others to see (and harass).

Are they going to change the world? Perhaps. I mean, already members of Poland’s Parliament have shown up wearing Anonymous masks to protest ACTA (an online censorship bill). Seems like they’re having quite the impact to me.

Look to them in the future, as their motto states: We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group)

http://anonops.blogspot.com/