Anonymous Organizes Global Protests For WikiLeaks

pafein writes "Internet collective Anonymous launched a global protest for January 15 in support of beleaguered WikiLeaks. Anonymous has a history of defending Internet freedom, beginning with Project Chanology against the Church of Scientology. The group gained recent attention for itself with DDOS attacks on Mastercard, Visa, Paypal and the government of Tunisia."

and ?

[unity100]

anonymous is people. wikileaks serves people. anyone who tries to separate people with what serves them, are against people.

Re:Please don't.

[Eraesr]

I think the initial statement by Anonymous by attacking Mastercard and Paypal and such was a powerful one. However, the problem is that with a decentralized entity like Anonymous which lacks any chain of command or hierarchy to speak of, is that it always tends to go rogue. Maybe not even under the Anonymous banner.

In the Netherlands, the website of the ministry of justice has been attacked because police arrested a scriptkiddy that was involved in DDoS attacks. It is arguable that Anonymous' attacks on Mastercard have some grounds of morality, but attacking a website of a ministry that simply does it's job does not. It's these kinds of uncontrolled offshoots of an initiative like Anonymous that kills the credibility of Anonymous.

If Anonymous really wants to continue to have any impact then it should evolve beyond scriptkiddies firing TCP packets at websites and especially distance itself from uncoordinated rogue attacks which often are done out of sheer spite or a desire for vandalism.

Re:It's sad.

[Anonymous Coward]

I’m Canadian, so what happens in the US doesn’t directly effect me, however the shit that happens “down there” tends to roll back up here so this stuff tends to make me nervous.

What really disturbs me is that I suspect all these "slippery slope" arguments are about to be put to the test. The recent twitter thing is just the start. All the privacy issues that paranoids have been spouting about for years are becoming a reality. Admittedly I’ve made several snide “oh get a life” type comments to the whole “the government will use your social network posts to identify you as counter to their views and have you dealt with” type mentality, but things really are approaching this.

I just hope that enough people realize what this all means on the grand scale before it is too late.

Re:Please don't.

[sznupi]

It would be even better if Wikipedia wasn't associated with this - its 10-year anniversary will be celebrated at the very same day [wikipedia.org]

Such coincidence seems like a purposeful effort at creating confusion...

Why be anonymous?

[Oxdeadface]

So when is wikileaks going to publish the identities, phone numbers, and home addresses of all the members of anonymous? There's no reason that any organization should keep anything secret after all. Right?

Re:then you deserve to be told the below

[I_Voter]

Wrong! A republic just means that political rule is not by a hereditary nobility. The franchise was restricted, but people voted for representation. The USA was often described as a democracy. SEE: Tocqueville's, Democracy in America, pub 1835.

Wildly Wrong! In fact we had a great deal more political power than we have now! Those who had the franchise had jury nullification. Jury nullification included the right to judge contracts, speech issues, theft, etc.
The Constitutional Relationship of the People to the Law [tripod.com]

RE: per our Constitution, the government is supposed to have little political power as well. That brings up something that I think needs to be more widely understood, although it is not a constitutional issue. It is the effective outlawing of political parties. It gives incumbent politicians much greater power.
What is a Political Party [tripod.com]