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Project Chanology. Gabriella Coleman on Anonymous. Anonymous. Anonymous is not a force to be reckoned with. Scientologists have felt their wrath for sometime, Sarah Palin did as well, as have MasterCard & Visa post-Wikileaks fiasco. I’m sure Aaron Barr is now realizing the impact Anon has. Aaron Barr is head of an internet security company, HBGary Federal. His company was contracted by Bank of America as a counter Wikileaks impending release of cables that will incriminate BofA. Anon vs. Ars Technica has written up a 3 page account of the situation, which is absolutely fascinating. His problems started here. What ended up completely backfired on Aaron. This leads me to a open up a discussion regarding the Anthropology of Hackers, a timely piece that appeared in the Atlantic yesterday by NYU’s Gabriella Coleman.

Week Eleven: Anarchism and the Politically Minded HackerMany hackers express some degree of ambivalence over the politics of hacking as Patrice Riemens has argued and as hackers themselves have raised. But with Anon there’s no identity. The darkness at the heart of Anonymous | Technology. Louise Mensch, the Conservative MP, didn't react as perhaps the sender of the threatening email she received on Monday had hoped.

She came out swinging - as anyone who knows her even a little might have been able to predict. "Had some morons from Anonymous/LulzSec threaten my children via email. As I'm in the States, be good … to have somebody from the UK police advise me where I should forward the email," she tweeted. And then followed up by refusing to be cowed: " I'm posting it on Twitter because they threatened me telling me to get off Twitter. Hi kids! Sticking two fingers up at Anonymous might have drawn some gasps a while back. Departing now As one departing member posted on Pastebin (the favoured site for declarations relating to the group): "Anonymous fights for freedom, you don't like people controlling you, that is admirable.

And here's another (I've tweaked his Capitals For Every Word style): Or another, from "cornfog": The fun may have stopped, though. Who's snitching on whom? Anonymous: From the Lulz to Collective Action. Taken as a whole, Anonymous resists straightforward definition as it is a name currently called into being to coordinate a range of disconnected actions, from trolling to political protests.

Originally a name used to coordinate Internet pranks, in the winter of 2008 some wings of Anonymous also became political, focusing on protesting the abuses of the Church of Scientology. By September 2010 another distinct political arm emerged as Operation Payback and did so to protest the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and a few months later this arm shifted its energies to Wikileaks, as did much of the world's attention. It was this manifestation of Anonymous that garnered substantial media coverage due the spectacular waves of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks they launched (against PayPal and Mastercard in support of Wikileaks).

This difficulty follows from the fact that Anonymous is, like its name suggests, shrouded in some degree of deliberate mystery. Anonymous. Anonymous is a banner that many channers , as well as hacktivists and IRC users, post under. Summary Often abbreviated as " Anon ", Anonymous refers to an indefinite collective centered around the chans .

This group of internet users communicates without consistent usernames on various chans. Between posting gore and porn threads, Anonymous stages largely unsuccessful raids on other websites. In the old days of /b/ , not many people took Anonymous seriously, and they treated it like the joke that it was. Because Anonymous is in essence a collective, ongoing flash mob , there's no true hierarchy or organizational structure. It should be noted that 4chan is one of the few chans that still openly embraces Anonymous. Origins Anon Anonymous actually started out in 1993 with the launching of anon.penet.fi by Johan "Julf" Helsingius of Finland . However, today's Anonymous grew out of the "tripfag debates" on 4chan. Current status Images Videos Stephen Colbert mentions Anonymous.

Related Pages. The End Of Self-Censorship. I admit I wasn’t surprised to learn in the diplomatic cables that the king of Saudi Arabia wanted America to “cut off the snake’s head” by blocking Iran’s nuclear projects. Abdallah al-Saud’s fears for his rival Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been well publicized for quite some time now. No one who remotely follows the news would be shocked at the candor of this powerful Arab leader, who is seeming so at ease with his “American friends” that he won’t hesitate to drag them into WWIII. Clearly, America’s international status is falling. Yet I was really surprised by the outrage my friend expressed in the YMCA locker room last month. His rage did not stem from the possibility of triggering another catastrophic war, encouraged by a grotesquely rich royal family that is autocratic in its domestic policies and takes an extremist view on the Koran. No, his anger was directed at WikiLeak’s “indiscriminate” actions by releasing the diplomatic cables.

The critical necessity to having an informed public. Understanding Anonymous: The Culture Of Lulz. We've written a number of times about the not-really-a-group Anonymous, and just how little those who position themselves "against" Anonyomous understand what it is they're fighting against. But even for those who are "of internet culture," explaining just what Anonymous really is certainly can be difficult. Either you live it and you get it, or you don't. That doesn't mean that everyone who "gets" Anonymous agrees with Anonymous. Hell, even Anonymous doesn't agree with Anonymous much of the time -- which is part of the point. But for those who are used to arguing against a group or those with an established position, the entire concept of Anonymous is completely alien. Quinn Norton is putting together what looks to be a brilliant exploration of Anonymous and related efforts. Of course, those who don't get Anonymous still won't get Anonymous after this article.

Bieber Hackers and the Anonymous image problem. Anonymous says it is an idea rather than an organization. That means that joining merely requires the statement, “I am Anonymous”. The result is that the Anonymous collective comprises innumerable ‘cells’, each with their own specific philosophy, attitudes and ambitions. These are often contradictory. CommanderX famously tweeted: “Anonymous Principles; 1) Don’t attack media. 2) Don’t attack infrastructure. 3) Work non-violently for internet freedom …History, and the collective consensus decided these principles (they are NOT rules).

" But this is not universally accepted even as principles within Anonymous. Anon Winston Smith told Infosecurity, “We won’t attack media is nonsense; the problem is that media is the problem.” Smith justifies his stance in an article currently on the anonateam website, commenting, “The media controls the way the world sees itself to maintain the state’s control over a people with limited resources.” How Anonymous is changing anthropology. We Are Legion The Story of the Hacktivists - Trailer.

I Love Anonymous! More and more, I am seeing Anonymous and The Pirate Party mentioned in the same sentence. In historical perspective, this is for good reasons. Make no mistake about it: I love Anonymous and deeply respect and admire their courage, commitment, and ability to deliver time and again. Two years ago, it was common to see The Pirate Bay and The Pirate Party in the same sentence. At the time, the people in the ‘Bay were complaining that they can’t be the only bastion for freedom — more people must stand up for their rights, many more. This appears to have happened.

Nowadays, the pair is more commonly Anonymous and the Pirate Party (or parties). There is a major shift in political values underway. The first wave consists of activists provoking the issue. The second wave consists of academics, analyzing and theorizing what the issue is about. All these three waves remain in full activity until the new values have been integrated with society. Greenpeace defied the law, too. I think the revolution needs a clearer introduction. I submit this for your consideration. : anonymous.

Anonymous: Herd Mentality or Convergence Theory Driven? Anonymous: Headless, Herd Mentality, or Convergence Theory Driven Entity? In my last couple of posts I took a look at what has been going on with Anonymous and HBGary Federal. Within those posts, I began musing on just how decentralised Anonymous really is. By looking at the overall picture of how Anonymous seems to work on the face of it, you might think that they are just a fluctuating group of online personae who sign up for certain operations that they desire to devote time to. However, no matter how many times I look at the big picture, I still see an underlying structure(s) that potentially have more static features that can be analysed and thus, allows for the potential of there being pseudo-anonymity.

Now, this may rankle some within the anonymous camp and likely will cause some comments here but, this is something that interests me as well as really is an academic thought experiment as opposed to Aaron’s little projects. With that said, lets move on to my theories. From Wikipedia: Borganism. English[edit] Etymology[edit] Noun[edit] borganism (plural borganisms) (rare) An organization of autonomous organisms that exhibit collectivism: individual "units" that have merged to yield a unified construct and may have a collective consciousness. (rare, idiomatic, science fiction, politics) Some forms of government.

Synonyms[edit] (biology): superorganism References[edit] We, Borg: Speculations on Hive Minds as a Posthuman State. Twitter. Anonymous members speak out at surreal SXSW panel. A protester wears an Anonymous mask to a rally in France. Anonymous member appears on a documentary panel at surreal SXSW panelGregg Housh tells crowd of about 200 that Anonymous associates remain motivatedHoush says prominent member "Sabu" had always been "vocal," "angry"Anonymous is the name of a "hacktivist" collective that has made headlines lately Austin, Texas (CNN) -- When it's revealed that a prominent member of a clandestine movement has been giving information to the FBI for months, you'd think it would intimidate others in the group into backing off. And that may have been the case when it was discovered that "Sabu," real name Hector Xavier Monsegur, had been arrested in June and provided information that helped lead to the arrest of five other alleged members of the "hacktivist" collective, Anonymous.

For a few minutes, anyway. But in the hours and days that followed, something very different happened. Elite hackers arrested Hackers take down Vatican website "That switched. Anonymous unmasked: Meet the hacktivist group’s non-hackers. They’re known as Anonymous, but they’re certainly not unanimous. The decentralized Web network — considered either transparency watchdogs or tech terrorists, depending on your perspective — has made headlines recently over members’ alleged hacks of major corporations. Last week, an FBI raid resulted in the arrests of 14 people connected to the “hacktivist” movement, including residents of Brooklyn and Long Island. Anonymous and its loosely affiliated groups have taken credit for infiltrating corporate websites like Monsanto and Sony, and the Arizona Department of Public Safety.

But not all Anonymous members believe in hacking, members of NYCAnon, a New York City chapter, told Metro. “Hacking doesn’t accomplish anything,” said Mike Vitale, 26, a network administrator from Flushing. Rather than targeting NATO or MasterCard like some Anonymous members, NYCAnon attempts to call attention to organizations that they say are abusive. Inside Anonymous, Members Find Shelter In A Collective Voice. Within the ranks of Anonymous, one member had crossed a line: He granted an interview to a reporter, discussing his role in the shadowy hacker group. "Attempting to use all the work that so many have done for your personal promotion is something I will not tolerate," another member told him in the group's Internet chat room after reading the article. The hacker who gave the interview was then banished from the online forum, a lesson to others who shine too brightly in a movement that takes pains to speak with one collective voice.

This incident sheds light on the inner workings of Anonymous, the loose-knit collection of hackers that has claimed responsibility for a wide assortment of computer security breaches in recent months, successfully penetrating the defenses of Sony, the CIA and other government sites. "How do you break the back of an organization that doesn’t have an organization? " While there may be no queen bee, members of Anonymous have distinct roles.