Member Claims Anonymous "Might Well Be the Most Powerful Organization On Earth" 241
wasimkadak writes in with an interview with Anonymous member "Commander X" in which he talks about how the hacktivists are the most powerful group on the planet. "Christopher Doyon, a.k.a. Commander X, sits atop a hillside in an undisclosed location in Canada, watching a reporter and photographer make their way along a narrow path to join him, away from the prying eyes of law enforcement. It's been a few weeks of encrypted emails back and forth, working out the security protocol to follow for interviewing Doyon, one of the brains behind Anonymous, now a fugitive from the FBI. Doyon, who readily admits taking part in some of the highest-profile hacktivist attacks on websites last year — from Tunisia to Orlando, Sony to PayPal — was arrested in September for a comparatively minor assault on the county website of Santa Cruz, Calif., where he was living, in retaliation for the town forcibly removing a homeless encampment on the courthouse steps. The 'virtual sit-in' lasted half an hour. For that, Doyon is facing 15 years in jail."
Poseurs (Score:5, Interesting)
It's funny how if a group is *actually* powerful, you never see them making claims that they're powerful. Their actions say more than words.
Anonymous are just poseurs. Not only are they poseurs on world-scale power, they're poseurs on computer hacking, all they know how to do is run DoS attacks. They're an embarrassment.
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed.
Re:Poseurs (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. It seems to me that in order to be considered 'powerful' you must be capable of making others bend to your will. Exactly what has this so-called 'powerful' organization done other than annoy people?
Of course it's silly, BUT... (Score:5, Interesting)
Anonymous is another (clearly not the first) example of what I'll for lack of a better term, call a "virtual nation".
It's obvious that the internet allows rapid worldwide communication. It's also obvious that it allows new aggregations of people to sort themselves out - that you can draw together like-minded people from all over the globe.
What's less-than-obvious is to call these aggregates "virtual nations".
But take a look at it from a slightly different perspective. People whose primary news source is Fox news live in the Unites States of America, and are quite proud of the fact. People whose primary news source is NPR also live in the United States of America, and are also quite proud of that fact. But when you ask the two groups of people what they thing the United States of America really is, beyond simple geographic attributes, you get two very different answers, two very different sets of allegiances. It's almost like they live in different nations. Perhaps in some sort of virtual way, they do.
But perhaps the best and worst example of a virtual nation is Al Qaeda. There is a group of people whose allegiance has little to do with physical boarders. Their sense of belonging, their cause, their peers transcend the mere physical. (Note that interesting characteristics don't make it good, and in this case, far from it.)
Anonymous is a less mature, less cohesive, less dangerous version.
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:2, Interesting)
The expression is "free rein." It comes from horseback riding.
Re:Powerful in their own minds, maybe (Score:4, Interesting)
15 years.
powerful in judges minds too. if that's real power or not is a wholly another matter..
thing with "anonymous" is though that potentially everyone is part of it. usually most "members" (probably like me and you) never do anything except maybe complain on forums about unjust sentences. this is pretty much also why most reporting on the issue is seriously fucked up. should just call them online flash mobs, that's what they are anyways.
(really, I guess he should have been out raping instead of flooding- hell, you could cause a real by blowing up a dam and claiming insanity and probably get off with less).
Re:Power (Score:4, Interesting)
You forgot the criminal equivalents to each category. There are probably drug lords, pirates, etc. in certain parts of the world with economic and/or military power similar to that of a small nation, funded mostly or entirely by the proceeds of their crimes.
Re:Powerful in their own minds, maybe (Score:5, Interesting)
They're best known for DOS attacks, but Doyon claims in the interview that they do much more than this. For example, the article mentions gaining access to sensitive email databases. He claims they often don't even need to hack to obtain these, that they're being provided by people in governments/corporations.
Whether it's true or not, I don't know. All I'm saying is that the claim to power is based on more than website defacing that they're best known for.
Re:Really? (Score:4, Interesting)
|So how many guns and tanks does Anonymous control?
Maybe all of them?
Never mind the tanks, it's the drones you need to be worried about. Fall out of the sky, dump payload on take-off, land safely in Iran, swap red for blue, just self destruct in mid-air... These things are flown over networks run by nerds, using code written by nerds, on hardware built by nerds. It's nerds all the way down.
This guy might have a point.
Re:Most powerful? (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course they are powerful, look at all the laws Anonymous has passed.
"Commander X" (Score:4, Interesting)
The most powerful organization on the planet doesn't give interviews from an undisclosed location.
I like what Anonymous represents, and much of the hacking that they've engaged in has had a populist appeal, but they are self-limited by their anonymity, and obviously they're no more the drivers of our social change than OBL was . . . he also gave his interviews from an undisclosed location.
If I were Anonymous or a member thereof, I'd be looking for a wealthy socially-conscious sponsor to legitimize what I was doing . . . and take the conversation they are trying to have out in the open, where it can't be dismissed.
Until they do that, they're just going to be treated like cyber-terrorists. I suspect that the need that Anonymous is attempting to fill will be met by someone else, wiser and cleverer.
Re:Most powerful? (Score:5, Interesting)
15 years? (Score:4, Interesting)
He defaced a non-critical local government website. It did not cause any disruption of important services, he did not benefit fiancially or in any other tangible way, and the attack only lasted 30 minutes.
For that he gets a penalty similar to what he'd get if he'd committed murder one. wow.
Not that I condone the crime, but any system that far out of touch with reality deserves to be taken down.
Re:Most powerful? (Score:3, Interesting)
However that's like calling socially active citizens the most powerful group in any given country, any group active enough to destabilize the status quo is broken up and a silent majority dislikes the chosen tactics of the vocal minority fracturing it and leading fewer to join the larger cause.
But that's just my two cents
On a related topic is a DDoS the new Picket Line?