Anonymous Takes Down Turkish Government Site

arisvega writes with word that the group of hackers known as Anonymous "has taken down a Turkish government website in a protest against recently introduced Internet filters that many consider to be censorship. They also appear to have published a manifesto. Turkey has a long history of Internet censorship, with the country's ISPs having blocked YouTube and numerous other sites in the the past couple of years." From the linked manifesto: "(The Turkish government) has blocked thousands of websites and blogs while abusive legal proceedings against online journalists persist. The government now wants to impose a new filtering system on the 22nd of August that will make it possible to keep records of all the people's internet activity. Though it remains opaque why and how the system will be put in place, it is clear that the government is taking censorship to the next level."

Re:Concerns..

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous hardly does any harm.
They are only effective because the public reacts to their actions.

For example, Anonymous helped the revolution in Tunisia to happen. On their own, Anonymous were useless, but the Tunisians reacted to what Anonymous did and this fueled the revolution.
Anonymous is effective because the population gets angry at the government or the population realizes the government is in reality weak and powerless ("The government failed miserably at protecting itself from HACKERS - what the hell do we have to fear, then?").
Anonymous works as a tiny spark, then populations of countries around the world must provide the fuel.

DoS attacks, even hacking are not that bad at all. These things are at most inconveniences.
I know, you will probably tell me "Look how they bankrupted ACS:Law and nearly destroyed HB Gary! They can be dangerous."
But if the population did not like Anonymous and cared about this issue (for example, imagine Anonymous hacked a charity for homeless children and stole the money), the people of Anon would become a lot easier to find. People who know something would start talking, the police would receive more help (i.e. better training, tools, more funding, etc.)...
Anonymous are protected in large part because nobody really hates them. If the government decided to give the police a few million dollars to help find Anonymous, most people would scream "In this economy?? You want to spend millions just to find kids who do pranks on websites??".

Note also:
We're not talking of legalizing what Anon does, so there is no issue of "if you say it's ok for Anon, then it should be ok for everyone else, even bad guys"
We're only talking about moral approval.
I approve of what Anon does because they go after powerful people and groups (e.g. corporations and governments) who do a lot of harm to society. I would not approve the same actions if they were done to cause harm to innocent or good people. It's like how murder, abduction and assault are illegal except when the police does it to put a criminal in jail. (I know, Anon are not the police... my point is, some actions are not illegal or wrong by themselves; instead, whether those actions are wrong depends on the situation).

Finally:
Laws, voting, etc... It's useless.

- Corporations pay off politicians. They help the politicians they like to get elected. If this fails, they can still pay the politicians we elected so that those politicians act in the interests of the corporations. We can not know in advance which politicians will not let corporations bribe them either. It all depends on luck: hopefully, we'll be lucky enough to elect the right guy but since we can't really know who he is until he's been elected.... You get my point.

- Using laws against corporations and politicians: it doesn't work. Many judges seem biased towards certain issues, or they simply tend to rule in the interests of the people who made them judges. Also, corporations can hire LOTS of expensive lawyers so Mr. Average Joe can't really hope to successfully sue a corporation who did something wrong to him.

- Changing the laws: it doesn't work in indirect democratic systems, where laws are made by the government. If the politicians are bribed by corporations or care about their own interests, they won't make laws that benefit society.
A few countries have Direct Democracies, such as Switzerland. Over there, any citizen can, at any time, suggest a new law or change a law. There are 2 phases:
1) Get enough people to sign your proposal (it has to be a fixed number, for example 1 million). This is done to show many people are interested by your idea, and putting your proposal up for voting is not a waste of time.
2) If you get enough people to sign, then the entire country is asked to vote on it. What politicians think of your law suggestion is irrelevant, the population is the only one who makes the decision. If the majority is in favor of your idea, your suggestion becomes a new law.

The o