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Scotland Yard Has Been After Anonymous For Months 278

jhernik writes "Scotland Yard has confirmed it has been investigating Anonymous since before the WikiLeaks wars broke out. The Metropolitan police has been investigating Internet vigilante group Anonymous, since well before its current online reprisals against companies not supporting WikiLeaks. 'Earlier this year, the Metropolitan police service received a number of allegations of denial of service cyber attacks againat several companies by a group calling itself Anonymous,' a police spokesman told eWEEK Europe UK. 'We are investigating these criminal allegations and our investigation is ongoing.'"
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Scotland Yard Has Been After Anonymous For Months

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  • The x-files were right!
    • Group?

      Anonymous is a Flash Mob, without geospatial coordinates.

      Why don't they investigate Burning Man attendees? Or men who glance at the covers of Playboy, as they bustle by the newsagents?

  • Obligatory (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Even on Slashdot FOE ( 1870208 ) on Thursday December 16, 2010 @08:55AM (#34572732)

    If Anonymous is made up of random people who care about the issue of the moment, how do you investigate them over time? I can't see how they would all care about the same things, as it's not like Anonymous hires people to do stuff.

    Unless there's some sort of "Anonymous Hacking, LLC" I haven't hear of...

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Unless there's some sort of "Anonymous Hacking, LLC" I haven't hear of...

      There is, actually, more commonly known as "the entire human race".

      I'd like to know what kind of budget Scotland Yard is working with that they can investigate everyone on the planet.
    • by syousef ( 465911 )

      If Anonymous is made up of random people who care about the issue of the moment, how do you investigate them over time? I can't see how they would all care about the same things, as it's not like Anonymous hires people to do stuff.

      Unless there's some sort of "Anonymous Hacking, LLC" I haven't hear of...

      You find anyone that's been involved and pin everything on them then use trumped up charges to lock them up for the rest of their lives. Have you not been paying attention?

    • by Chrisq ( 894406 ) on Thursday December 16, 2010 @09:04AM (#34572822)

      If Anonymous is made up of random people who care about the issue of the moment, how do you investigate them over time? I can't see how they would all care about the same things, as it's not like Anonymous hires people to do stuff.

      Unless there's some sort of "Anonymous Hacking, LLC" I haven't hear of...

      Knowing Scotland Yard their answer will be to track and investigate everyone.

    • Even if Anonymous is made up of random people who care about the issue of the moment, you can still investigate people who have committed specific offenses against a specific target. And, as we have seen, the vast majority of Anonymous are script kiddies who don't know how to hide their footprints, so that shouldn't be entirely too difficult.

      • by Gerzel ( 240421 )

        aye. Press release done in MS WORD without even bothering to scrub it of basic metadata, anyone?

        • Press release done in MS WORD without even bothering to scrub it of basic metadata, anyone?

          Jesus called this one 2000 years ago when he said: "Put your (M)S WORD in its place, for all who take the (M)S WORD will perish by the (M)S WORD."

          If only Anonymous were proper God-fearing people they'd have heeded the warning!

    • by Hatta ( 162192 )

      You don't. You bust anyone who is even tangentially connected and charge them with whatever you can. You can't take them down from the top, since there is no top. You can only scare their recruits away.

      • by Gerzel ( 240421 )

        Oh there is a top. It isn't a specified, well defined top but there are the big fish and the little fish in Anon just like anyone else.

        No I'm not a member, and not part of the group, but if Anon is what it says it is should that matter?

    • Demonizing your enemy in the face of public opinion is an old tactic. If they make the public think this group is responsible for 'less noble' causes, they will erode support. Doesn't need to be true, or even the same group, to be effective.

      • The think is, I don't think Anonymous needs popular support, so the PR tactic probably won't work. It's not like they need any kind of centralized funding, management or any of that, you just need several (hundred? thousand?) people that are are willing to go along with the idea.

      • Doesn't need to be true, or even the same group, to be effective.

        It's not even a challenge. Just point folks to 4chan and let them make their own horrified discoveries.

    • Worth noting that Anonymous lost England the Colonies in North America, and they've probably been after them ever since.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine [wikipedia.org]
      "Thomas Paine has a claim to the title The Father of the American Revolution because of Common Sense, the pro-independence monograph pamphlet he anonymously published on January 10, 1776; signed "Written by an Englishman", the pamphlet became an immediate success."

      http://www.pbs.org/benfranklin/l3_wit_name.html [pbs.org]
      "Benevolus — While in England, Franklin penned a number of letters under the name of Benevolus. These letters tried to answer some of the negative assertions made by the British press about the American colonists. These letters were published in London newspapers and journals. "

      Perhaps those are the Anonymous guys that England's really still mad at.

    • Re:Obligatory (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Gerzel ( 240421 ) <brollyferret@UUU ... inus threevowels> on Thursday December 16, 2010 @09:28AM (#34573084) Journal

      The thing is Anonymous isn't as random as they like to claim. It is basically a group of more or less the same individuals, a large pool if you will. Dis-organised, or unorganized if you prefer, but defiantly not random. It is basically an internet based multi-national political party by another name.

      Much of the "You don't understand us. We are x, y and z." stuff is just tiresome hype.

      • "more or less the same individuals"

        is this provable or even falsifiable at all?
        given that they tend to be... well... anonymous.

        • by Gerzel ( 240421 )

          Yes it is. You may even be able to see proof from Scottland yard in the somewhat near future.

          Also it is an informed opinion given on a website forum and not a scientific hypothesis in an academic setting; so there are different standards of rigor.

    • Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bberens ( 965711 ) on Thursday December 16, 2010 @09:30AM (#34573122)
      That may be true, but there's bound to be a relatively small core of people who are controlling the botnets. Those people might not be involved in every "Anonymous" attack, but they will likely participate semi-regularly in them. Those are the people they're after. Not joe idiot who downloaded the little flooding app.
      • Re:Obligatory (Score:4, Insightful)

        by definate ( 876684 ) on Thursday December 16, 2010 @11:56AM (#34575222)

        You think so? I've looked at a few of these, each time, and there's generally different people running it. While you might be passionate against Scientology, you might not be passionate about Iran, or Gene Simmons, or WikiLeaks, to name a few major ones.

        If you're not extremely passionate in each instance, and also have a lot of time on your hands, then you sure as hell won't be "controlling the botnets" every time. Hell, even based on a DDoS by DDoS basis, I've known a few people who were controlling one Scientology DDoS who weren't controlling the ones before or after.

        I think you think this group is far more cohesive than it is. Don't try to apply these old models of how groups/organizations work, for something like this, as these groups basically do permit you to come and go relatively as you please, and each new issue, allows for a new set of "group" "leaders". Your logic is akin to the United States treating "terrorists" as a cohesive group.

    • Check your FTP server, they log in there all the time.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      anonymous is a movement. as such, it follows certain sociological rules. #1: in any movement, there is a small group of core fanatics, and a large group of one-offs and on-and-offs. same with wikipedia, or al qaeda, or drug gangs

      now you could take out a portion of the core competency, and nothing will change. but if you tracked and profiled the core competency over time, and took them all out at once, you really would cripple the movement

      however, since the "cause" of anonymous is so simplistic, others would

    • Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Thursday December 16, 2010 @09:41AM (#34573252)
      If Anonymous is made up of random people who care about the issue of the moment, how do you investigate them over time? I can't see how they would all care about the same things, as it's not like Anonymous hires people to do stuff.

      You start by collecting log files after each attack and correlating IP addresses. You log the 4chan groups & IRC chats and see if you can identify who is who. You sift through the attacker's IP addresses and see if identify some of the culprits and their ISPs. You install some of the remote control bots on some sample machines and analyse the traffic and its origins. Eventually you have info to go an execute some search warrants and take it from there depending on what you find.

      "Anonymous" probably has an inner circle of ring leaders who mostly know what they're doing. A larger circle of volunteers who probably don't and act as proxies / bots for attacks, and then a large number of 1-time / wannabes who get involved on the periphery and then leave. I believe an investigation is bound to identify a lot of people in the outer rings and probably a couple in the centre too. People will rat on each other too for a lesser sentence or a warning.

      Proving it is another matter of course, but people who think they're somehow immune from prosecution because they're in a large herd are deluding themselves. At the end of the day if you aided a DDOS attack and it can be proven, you're in deep shit.

      • by kent_eh ( 543303 )

        People will rat on each other too for a lesser sentence or a warning.

        Except that ratting will be "Yeah, it Was JoeBob1337 that did most of the talking."
        And if JoeBob1337 is even half competent, he'll be on the other end of a couple of proxies, and pretty much un-findable.
        He might also be known as "BobJoe 7331". Or any number of other alternate names.

        • by DrXym ( 126579 )
          You assume everyone is smart enough to do what you say and does it perfectly. Chances are that in that cloud of anonymous people there are plenty of chat logs and other evidence floating around on PCs that could lead from one person to another, or at least corroborate other evidence. Some people who own those machines might even provide assistance to the police for a lesser sentence.

          Just look at what happened with Bradley Manning and Adrian Lamo. Manning is smart enough to use Tor & SSL to upload his

      • Or you could end up like Steve Slayo, who "downloaded a program called Poison Ivy on to 130 computers" and "was also an operator on an IRC channel used to organize the DDoS attacks against various federal websites." for Operation Titstorm and walked away with no recorded conviction and a $500 bond.

    • That's exactly it. Technically, I am part of Anonymous because I empathize with them and surf their various internet presences. I post and comment, I participate.

      I am not a criminal (that I know of), I don't participate in their 'attacks'. I support their cause, and appreciate the work they're doing to bring attention to the BS and injustice in the world brought about by closed censoring governments and corporations.

      I think they can handle some situations better, but it's near impossible to pin down WHO was

    • by rwven ( 663186 )

      Exactly. It's a completely decentralized group. There's no "leadership," and only discussed common goals of people who are inherently individual. They're chasing wind, and that's really not an over-dramatization.

    • All those traditional botnet DDoS attacks are usually done for extortion, which sounds illegal regardless, plus the botnet owner actually controls the action. There are however three seperate activities in an LOIC attack : publishing the call to arms, participating in the LOIC attack, and directing the LOIC traffic on IRC. I'd imagine the third activity is illegal under fairly modern anti-DDoS laws, but the first two might not be. Or how illegal they are depends upon the jurisdiction. It'll be interesti

    • Well, duh! They'll trace your IP and the consequences will never be the same!
    • If Anonymous is made up of random people who care about the issue of the moment, how do you investigate them over time?

      Same way you investigate protesters: Put surveillance on the meeting places and their targets. The only thing slowing them down here is limited human resources. The data required to locate these people is already there, there's just a lot of it. An awful lot of it. It's not like these guys are using a decentralized architecture with encryption and steganographic techniques to distribute orders. They are using a IRC client with a bag on the side. Hardly the epitomy of sophistication here.

      Frankly, I'm a littl

  • Breaking news! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Police investigate crimes!
    • by horza ( 87255 )

      Police are being seen to investigate crimes!

      Fixed that for you.

      Phillip.

    • by symes ( 835608 )
      Assuming a crime has been committed - in the UK we are allowed to protest peacefully. I can't think of anything more peaceful than sitting at your computer sipping coffee. Well, I can, but you get my point. Certainly extorting money under threat of DDOS is a crime, as is stealing data. I think Scotland Yard might have a hard time prosecuting these kids who are not in it for personal gain.
  • by Hogwash McFly ( 678207 ) on Thursday December 16, 2010 @08:58AM (#34572748)

    A source inside Scotland Yard has also confirmed that they are looking to bring Time Magazine's Person of the Year 2006 in for questioning.

  • Excuses (Score:5, Funny)

    by DarkXale ( 1771414 ) on Thursday December 16, 2010 @08:59AM (#34572766)
    They're just using it as an excuse to browse 4chan.
  • They are Guy Fawkes sympathizers, after all...
  • who the group might /b/...

  • by RMH101 ( 636144 ) on Thursday December 16, 2010 @09:04AM (#34572830)
    "Police interested in Anonymous", is what it boils down to. Shows no sign of a clue that Anonymous isn't an organisation as opposed to the section of the geeky general public who are pissed off with current state of affairs/doing it for the lulz.
    TL:DR - Scotland Yard can't Triforce.
    • They don't need a clue - this is more for show: Out-of-touch-elderly-British-citizen: "Did you hear the news on the telly? The Anonymous is out to get us!" Scotland-Tard: "Rest easy. We're on the case!"
    • Yo can call it "not an organisation" as much as you want, but Anonymous most certainly does have a seniority hierarchy and a leadership of sorts - there is a degree of organisation there, even if its fluid.
      • by RMH101 ( 636144 )
        Citation needed! I've not seen any evidence of this. The IRC channel for Anon Ops certainly doesn't display any such qualities...
        • by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) on Thursday December 16, 2010 @09:48AM (#34573342)
          "Citation needed!" is really becoming the modern version of "liar liar pants on fire"....

          The very fact that there is an irc channel indicates organisation, and if you look deeper for long enough you can see the underlying control there as well - there are users who frequent the channel more often than others, and who get listened to more often than others.

          If you want an example of how an uncouth mob can still have organisation and planning, take a look at any protest (the recent student protests in London are a prime example). Taken together, the mob is just that, a mob. Look deeper and there are people in the mob that incite the other members, take the first steps to violence and action, make suggestions - these are the ones that get stuck up on wanted posters and pursued by police.

          "Anonymous" is no different.
          • by RMH101 ( 636144 )
            I guess in any mob you'll have some individuals who partake more, some who partake less. In Anonymous's case I think it's more that someone thought "an IRC channel? Lulz!" and then it *evolved* from there. I don't think there's much more to it than that.
          • Are precisely the sort of people who would encourage massive amounts of Wikileaks supporters to DDOS with software they supply.

  • Wanted (Score:4, Funny)

    by gmuslera ( 3436 ) on Thursday December 16, 2010 @09:08AM (#34572848) Homepage Journal
    Scotland Yard is close to capture the leader of the Anonymous group, someone called John Doe.
  • by moxley ( 895517 ) on Thursday December 16, 2010 @09:10AM (#34572876)

    Obviously they just don't get it.

    If you say you are a member of "Anonymous," then at that moment you are a member of "Anonymous."

    If, several minutes later, you say "I am not a member of "Anonymous," then you are not a member of "Anonymous."

    Anybody can be a member, for any amount of time. There are no central lists, no membership rosters.....in many ways the organization doesn't exist, it;s a "dis-organization."

    • So it's like how the Tea Party doesn't exist because there's no central leadership?

      Scotland Yard is probably interested in if someone *was* in Anonymous, which can't be changed on a whim.

    • by Magada ( 741361 ) on Thursday December 16, 2010 @09:24AM (#34573032) Journal

      Anybody can be a member, for any amount of time. There are no central lists, no membership rosters.....in many ways the organization doesn't exist, it;s a "dis-organization."

      That never stopped the United States from chasing Al-Qaeda all over the globe. It makes good sport for the hounds, really.

      • Except Al-Qaeda actually has a strong leadership structure. It has ranks, it has chain-of-command, it has membership lists. It may be structured in a way that one department can't identify another, but it's quite possible to identify someone as an al-Qaeda member. Actually, al-Qaeda means "the organization" in Arabic, or so I've been told.
      • by moxley ( 895517 )

        You're exactly right.

        Al Qaeda was the example I was going to use, but a lot of people aren't aware that it is a fictional organization and seem to not like being told this, despite the fact that it is true and verifiable.

        Just because some western polticians and corporate news networks refer to it incessantly like a bogeyman doesn't mean it exists; in fact, in this day and age it very likely means you really need to check into any purported bogeymen that are repeatedly mentioned by either.

    • by Terrasque ( 796014 ) on Thursday December 16, 2010 @09:50AM (#34573360) Homepage Journal

      One of the better descriptions I've heard:

      [Anonymous is] the first internet-based superconsciousness. Anonymous is a group, in the sense that a flock of birds is a group. How do you know they're a group? Because they're travelling in the same direction. At any given moment, more birds could join, leave, peel off in another direction entirely.

      From the wikipedia page.

    • by c0lo ( 1497653 )
      Sun Tzu's translation in Alpha Centauri:

      If I determine the enemy's disposition of forces while I have no perceptible form, I can concentrate my forces while the enemy is fragmented. The pinnacle of military deployment approaches the formless: if it is formless, then even the deepest spy cannot discern it nor the wise make plans against it.

    • Specifically because of how Anonymous is designed.

      • by moxley ( 895517 )

        I agree.

        I think it's entirely possible that "Anonymous" could be an operation specifically designed to give the governments of the world an excuse to try to ban anonymity online.

        That is the sort of method that these governments use when they wish to curtail a freedom, or criminalize something that the populace would NEVER support criminalization of. Create a bogeyman, build it up in the media and the minds of the public and legisltors, and then cry out that "it must be stopped."

        I am NOT saying that this IS

  • how do you find/arrest/whatever a group of random individuals that are only connected through the lulz?
  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday December 16, 2010 @09:23AM (#34573018)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by Revotron ( 1115029 ) on Thursday December 16, 2010 @09:27AM (#34573072)
    Scotland Yard isn't investigating "Anonymous". They're investigating the people involved in the DDoS attacks. If you're a member of Anonymous but you don't participate in attacks, you're alright because nobody knows who you are, or that you're even a member of Anonymous.

    However, the minute you start attacking, you are immediately identifiable.

    "lulz yeah but we r anonymus. we r legionz!!!1 omg for the first time in my life i can actually identify with something. cool! are there any lonely girls here???/"
    Protip: When you're on the internet, you are NOT anonymous. Most of Anonymous is just a bunch of teen-angst lemmings who will only join the DDoS effort if somebody puts up a Rapidshare link to the LOIC software. None of them have any kind of initiative to do it themselves.

    "i'm not gonna get caught. lulz, i'll use a proxy"
    Furthermore, because they're all just angsty, lonely, horny teenagers (and even some 20-somethings), they have no foresight. They have no clue that their IP address can and will identify them in most cases. If they use a proxy, they're just creating a bottleneck, slowing the DDoS effort and providing their target with a single IP to block for mitigation.

    "hey man, ip address is just a number, man... i'm not a number!"
    None of them realize that your IP address can and will be stripped from logs and submitted to RIRs and ISPs, and they will obtain your subscriber details (more likely your parent's details) through the legal system in your country of origin. An IP address is just a number when taken out of context, but when it's put IN context your IP is your identity on the internet, and it CAN be linked back to the real world.

    "Amazon kicked WikiLeaks off of their servers because BUSH... i mean, OBAMA... sent an executive order to Amazon telling them that he would personally torture their mothers if they didn't! OMG! Attack Amazon because they're a business that chooses not to do business with certain people!!!"
    The last thing humanity needs is a bunch of angsty teenagers throwing a fit because their favorite website has to change providers. WikiLeaks violated their contract with Amazon. It is a BUSINESS matter. Get the fuck over it, pick up your toys and go to school.

    Don't like what I'm saying? Then suppress my freedom of speech and DDoS me. My IP is 127.0.0.1. And I'll even turn off my firewall for you.
    • by lee1026 ( 876806 ) on Thursday December 16, 2010 @09:43AM (#34573276)

      Play fair man. Anytime I send stuff to that ip, I get tons of stuff. Are you retaliating or something?

    • Wikileaks should go distributed. Everyone who would download LOIC should download Freenet instead and cache Wikileaks.

      With ICANN hijacking domain names and Sweden going after the top guy, they should just decentralise the whole thing, because the next step is a government hack of Wikileaks servers to kill off the leaked material.
    • Sure, it's not like it's possible to steal wifi or use an internet cafe or any number of options where an IP can't be tracked to you....

      • well to use an internet cafe, you have to actually get up and leave the basement and walk out of your mom's house. This is not an palatable option for most Anonymous members. Stealing your neighbor's wifi is a possibility, but then when the p0lic3 come knocking on your neighbor's door and start asking questions, and the nice old lady tells them she doesn't know anything about interwebs hacking but the geeky kid next door with the Star Wars T-shirt might, it won't take them long too figure out who's the Anon
    • Most of Anonymous is just a bunch of teen-angst lemmings who will only join the DDoS effort if somebody puts up a Rapidshare link to the LOIC software.

      I find it amazing that these kids would just blindly trust some "anonymous" person to upload a copy of LOIC to rapidshare without wondering if it includes some kind of spyware/backdoor/botnet. You'd think that the kids that I like to think of as the Internet generation would at least be wary of such issues, especially if they're going to partake in a DDoS voluntarily.

      They have no clue that their IP address can and will identify them in most cases. If they use a proxy, they're just creating a bottleneck, slowing the DDoS effort and providing their target with a single IP to block for mitigation.

      I came across one of their "call to arms" and the post specified not to use a proxy since it would DoS the proxy :-). It's not that most of th

    • They have launched a counter intelligence operation. This means they'll go after anybody who is even loosely associated with anonymous as a way to turn them into informants or operatives to bring down the rest of them.

      An aggressive investigation means many people loosely associated with anonymous will be entrapped and then used as pawns or as informants to bring down the more experienced hackers.

    • by dasdrewid ( 653176 ) on Thursday December 16, 2010 @01:03PM (#34576276)

      The last thing humanity needs is a bunch of angsty teenagers throwing a fit because their favorite website has to change providers. WikiLeaks violated their contract with Amazon. It is a BUSINESS matter. Get the fuck over it, pick up your toys and go to school.

      I disagree. I don't think Wikileaks violated their contract. Amazon's response is here: http://aws.amazon.com/message/65348/ [amazon.com] . Their arguments are

      a) Wikileaks doesn't control the rights to the content. This is an interesting assertion. Wikileaks has as much control over the rights of the content as the New York Times did when it published the Pentagon Papers, i.e. they were publishing classified documents that were illegally obtained by a third party. However, the US Government couldn't stop the Times from publishing. This would lead to pretty strong case that they *do* have some control as to the rights of the content. The US Government certainly doesn't have a copyright over the diplomatic cables (they being produced by government officers or employees as part of their official duties are not eligible for copyright), and since Wikileaks was never under any agreement with the US Government regarding access to the cables, there is nothing stopping them from publishing, just like there was nothing stopping the Times from publishing. Yes, it was a crime for the documents to be exposed, but once exposed, there is nothing illegal about holding or distributing the documents. The documents are now public domain. To get technical, Amazon requires that you own or control all of the rights to the content you host. If they are arguing that Wikileaks doesn't own or control the content, it can only be because the content is public domain. Therefore, all public domain documents should be disallowed on Amazon AWS systems.

      b) Wikileaks release of the documents could hurt people, because it is not possible for WIkileaks to have redacted the documents in such a way as to put people in jeopardy. They cite as evidence that some human rights organizations asked for Wikileaks to exercise caution in their releases. They ignore the fact that those same organizations also asked Wikileaks to continue doing what they are doing, regarding the documents. In neither of those cases are any actual specific cases where someone has been put in jeopardy cited. In fact, no cases have been reported where someone has been put in danger because of Wikileaks releases (excepting, of course, the death threats Julian Assange has received...). They are also making some pretty large leaps to say that people are being put in danger (remember, Wikileaks was booted because of the diplomatic cables, not the Afghanistan documents, which, by the way, are what those human rights organizations were referring to...Amazon is in fact using evidence from a completely separate situation and trying to pass it off as relevant...). The documents are government cables, meaning information like names and actions had to have been pretty well known to have made it as far as the people sending the cables. If they weren't known, then diplomats had to be in direct communication with the human rights activists, which leads to questions about whether they were activists or government operatives. Not that that changes much regarding whether they should be protected, but if they were operatives, it would seem that the government officials should have been protecting them even within the cables, so redaction shouldn't be that big of an issue.

      Also if any content that could put people at risk should be banned, then do they ban chemistry books that explain explosives, or Dianetics (it's available on Amazon.com...)? Hell, Amazon.com sells "The Anarchist Cookbook" for goodness' sake! Search for it on Amazon and you get pages of books with bomb instructions, improvised weapon instructions, techniques to cause havoc, etc...

      I simply can't take Amazon's argument seriously when it is so flimsy, if not downright fraudulent, and

  • Scotland Yard has been chasing a bunch of tomfooling teenagers for months, but hasn't even bothered to investigate substantiated investigations of wire fraud by the editor of a national newspaper [guardian.co.uk]. It's pretty clear who plays the tunes Scotland Yard dance to.

  • by elrous0 ( 869638 ) * on Thursday December 16, 2010 @09:32AM (#34573140)

    Scientology, in their typically thuggish fashion, has been urging governments and the press to declare this group "terrorists" for years. They will no doubt view this as a victory, and probably use it to threaten anyone else in the future who threatens to cross them.


    • Victims of this extrajudicial punishment network -- what some have termed "the torture matrix" -- maintain that its operatives are acting as judge, jury and executioner for what amounts to an evil shadow government. So-called "targeted individuals" -- and by extension, entire families -- are subject to physical assault and psychological and physical harassment that victims say amounts to officially-sanctioned domestic torture. Some victims have moved to other cities and towns seeking a safe harbor -- bu

  • So, do they know where Anon's head office is yet?

    • I said in over a dozen comments that this is exactly what would happen. I mentioned vigilante gang stalking, I listed websites, got told that it was just a conspiracy. I told people anonymous will be tracked down, got told I was a coward. I told people that these people would be gangstalked, have their lives destroyed permanently, you see?

      So now it's happening. Scotland Yard admits it. Anyone who wants to know what gangstalking is and what to expect if you have associated with anonymous:

      http://www.nowpublic [nowpublic.com]

  • Durarara!! It's an anime that touches on the exact issue related to Anonymous. It isn't an organized group and it is. There are a few faggots who are consistently using Anonymous as their own personal army but then every other member is just a random person who takes up whatever cause they feel relates to them. In general, you can't get a bunch of people to do something without having a certain skill of getting people to do something, therefore you have a structure to something even as random as Anonymous.
  • by osgeek ( 239988 ) on Thursday December 16, 2010 @11:14AM (#34574598) Homepage Journal

    XKCD [xkcd.com] nails it once again.

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