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So I heard today that Anonymous has taken the US Sentencing Commission website off the net. I tend to think that anonymous is the modern equivalent of "Kilroy was here," a bunch of different people or groups that grab the handle when it suits them. Nevertheless, the media and government (not to mention TUs on the DailyKos) seem to think Anonymous is a thing. Given the history of paranoid thinking in the US Government, I suspect that we are all Anonymous, and you can be (arrested, charged and convicted) too. Actions such as mirroring dissident websites and providing IT support to protest or dissident movements have been shown to be very effective. The problem isn't so much the techniques for challenging dictatorial governments as those for protesting events in the "democratic" west. It seems to me that a couple of the underlying concepts of hactivism in a democracy might be off. 1. Information Wants to Be Free: Is anybody aware of one document in a multi-million record data dump? Information wants to be free supposes that information, once released, will be widely seen. This premises off the idea that reporters are looking to make a name for themselves by breaking a major investigative story. That may have been true in the 1980s, it is not true today. See Dan Rather or the Dixie Chicks for what happens to those who question the power structure too publically. Todays problem is one of information distribution, when the trusted news source filters out information of value. Take for instance the case the Bradly Manning. The signal he was trying to send, the video of the chopper gunning down unarmed civilian attempting to give aid to wounded combatants (a clear war crime), became lost in the public mind among the cable leaks noise. 2. The most valuable information is secret information (A.K.A. KGB Syndrome): E-mail never dies. Folks with half a brain don't put their illegal/morally questionable schemes on their network. Embarrassing and incrimination information may still exist, but getting the good stuff is a mass data grab is unlikely. Philip Morris started routing most internal communications through their lawyers decades ago. The really incriminating information is (likely) in a handwritten note about a telephone conversation sitting in an attorney's files somewhere. Corollary, much of the best stuff is either public, but pay walled on PACER or not digitized and sitting in a courthouse. Seriously, people say the damnedest things in depositions. 3. Network disruptions form a workable means of protest. This is basically the equivalent of shouting "Viva La Revolution." This can be effective, if there is actually a revolution. Defacing the Syrian Governments websites helps raise awareness that the regime does not have everything under control. If the government isn't already destabilized activism, such as shutting down the sentencing commissions website, gets lost in the noise. It does not create a clear event that remains in the memory of those that hear about it. I'd suggest the following might allow for better activism. A. One image enhanced to crystal clarity. Which makes the point better 1.6GB of data in an online archive or a single memo in which an insurance executive discusses the economic rational for denying a ten year old girl medical treatment - complete with a citation to the court file it came out of. B. Combine protest with social engineering. I suspect shutting down one government website was a fairly time efficient task. On the other hand what if you got a list of the article that Swartz downloaded from the court, worked up script to search for the e-mail address of the author of those articles then sent those authors a polite e-mail informing them that their work was involved in the case. You are telling academics (who weren't getting any royalties off the articles anyway) that somebody was prosecuted and committed suicide for wanting to read and share THEIR work. Que poo poo storm. C. Isolated instances of abuse in a large society will be filtered out as random noise. With enough people bad things are bound to happen to someone. The public must be convinced that a pattern of abuse exists before change can take place. Corollary, because the news sources serving the public are filtering reporting to fit their preconceptions it is difficult to raise awareness in the public mind of a pattern of abuse. D. The media must be forced to do its job or be (peacefully) replaced by those that will. You can find detailed analysis of the Republican plan to change the electoral college selection in certain states on left wing websites. To give some links http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/..._n_2558362.html and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/..._n_2546010.html This is a real thing with the endorsement of the chairman of the Republican National Committee. I have checked NPR, ABCNews and the New York Times website. This story has not crossed the barrier into the mainstream press. What if the suggested changes were put in place, and the next election produced the same numerical results as this one? In such a scenario the Democratic candidate would win a victory of five million votes and 51-47% of the popular vote only to lose election because of electoral changes taking place only in states known to vote Democrat but currently controlled by Republican legislatures. If the media cannot even report about a potential coup endorsed by the chairman of a major political party then we have a problem. Yeah, I suspect folks here will hold vastly differing views on this entire subject.
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| # ? Jan 27, 2013 06:07 |
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| # ? May 21, 2013 09:38 |
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I think that anything that fucks with the system is inherently a good thing. It doesn't really matter to me that Anonymous is a bunch of Guy-Fawkes-mask wearing internet libertarians, the truth is that the powers-that-be have always tried to keep the internet and network technology from it's full potential, because it threatens their stranglehold on information and power. I might make fun of those guys in real life, but when they do something like this, it's good even if it ends up being a bluff.
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| # ? Jan 27, 2013 07:00 |
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Nothing about the internet is valid. Wake up.
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| # ? Jan 27, 2013 07:19 |
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BUSH 2112 posted:I think that anything that fucks with the system is inherently a good thing. It doesn't really matter to me that Anonymous is a bunch of Guy-Fawkes-mask wearing internet libertarians, the truth is that the powers-that-be have always tried to keep the internet and network technology from it's full potential, because it threatens their stranglehold on information and power. I might make fun of those guys in real life, but when they do something like this, it's good even if it ends up being a bluff. Until a knee jerk over-reaction causes damage to the wrong people/company. Its an good online example as to why we dont let Joe Public carry out their own justice.
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| # ? Jan 27, 2013 07:26 |
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BUSH 2112 posted:I think that anything that fucks with the system is inherently a good thing. It doesn't really matter to me that Anonymous is a bunch of Guy-Fawkes-mask wearing internet libertarians, the truth is that the powers-that-be have always tried to keep the internet and network technology from it's full potential, because it threatens their stranglehold on information and power. I might make fun of those guys in real life, but when they do something like this, it's good even if it ends up being a bluff. There's attempting to achieve a goal or effect a change in politics and/or society and there's "loving with the system" because you're angry or just bored. The former can certainly be a good thing (depending on the goal naturally), but the latter never is. What did Anonymous achieve here? Beyond demonstrating that the security on that website was inadequate and giving the "powers-that-be" another perfect excuse for why restricting internet freedom would be a good thing?
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| # ? Jan 27, 2013 11:44 |
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Hacktivism is definitely not peaceful or victimless the same way as protesting is. The Anonymous people seem to be teens with too much power that desperately want to be internet heroes but just don't have the charisma to rally people to a cause. Not to mention that the causes are often pointless like this "an important internet person has died, it must have been a conspiracy!" poo poo. I'm all for the people pushing back against the government, but hackers just don't seem to represent the people. They're accountable to nobody outside of their immediate circle, unlike protesters that need to reach critical mass just to get heard.
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| # ? Jan 27, 2013 12:19 |
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uncop posted:Hacktivism is definitely not peaceful or victimless the same way as protesting is. Protesting is not victimless, too. Even the most peaceful ones generate tangible costs just by existing - police has to divert some of its forces to protect the protest from turning into a riot, streets need to be temporarily closed off (which causes disruptions in traffic, sometimes severe). The whole idea of protesting is to create a temporary inconvenience, or signal that you are ready to create one. quote:I'm all for the people pushing back against the government, but hackers just don't seem to represent the people. They're accountable to nobody outside of their immediate circle, unlike protesters that need to reach critical mass just to get heard. I'm not sure what do you mean about "representing the people". Do you consider every protest invalid unless it represents and gets accepted by everyone, or at least the majority of people? How do you feel then about the movements that explicitly protect minority rights?
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| # ? Jan 27, 2013 16:18 |
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I think the term "Hacktivism" may be over-broad if it encompasses everything from the release of illegally or immorally concealed information to internet vandalism. The former is an obvious public good, the latter is the electronic equivalent of spray-painting a big circle-A on a Starbucks. Edit: The goal of activism is also generally raising awareness in order to affect change. Anonymous didn't raise awareness of anything by vandalizing a website that probably gets double-digit hits a month. It was an act conducted entirely for e-cred that had basically no impact on anyone outside of their own in-groups. Rent-A-Cop fucked around with this message at Jan 27, 2013 around 16:28 |
| # ? Jan 27, 2013 16:23 |
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I think Hactivism like anonymous striking back at governments and NGO's is wonderful. They are able to embarrass and expose the people in our world who are so rich that they are beyond any justice. If somebody can give the bankers and the politicians a black eye then I'm all for it no matter the cost.
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| # ? Jan 27, 2013 16:35 |
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Gantolandon posted:Protesting is not victimless, too. Even the most peaceful ones generate tangible costs just by existing - police has to divert some of its forces to protect the protest from turning into a riot, streets need to be temporarily closed off (which causes disruptions in traffic, sometimes severe). The whole idea of protesting is to create a temporary inconvenience, or signal that you are ready to create one. A protest or blockade involves people actively doing something and being publically seen to be doing it. The hacktivists do nothing they wouldn't be doing anyway: having their automated tools look for websites with a vulnerability. The USSC site hacked was not chosen beforehand because it was involved in the Swartz, it's a site that is vulnerable and is part of the legal system so it was hacked.
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| # ? Jan 27, 2013 16:37 |
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Blueballs posted:I think Hactivism like anonymous striking back at governments and NGO's is wonderful. They are able to embarrass and expose the people in our world who are so rich that they are beyond any justice. If somebody can give the bankers and the politicians a black eye then I'm all for it no matter the cost. What was the point of going after MIT or Carmen Ortiz?
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| # ? Jan 27, 2013 16:45 |
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Grognard posted:Folks with half a brain don't put their illegal/morally questionable schemes on their network. This is verifiably false. Plenty of convictions are obtained from subpoenaed electronic communication records, or through wire-tapping electronic communications. The fact of the matter is that people who routinely think or behave in a societally mal-adaptive way tend not to regard what they're doing as harmful. They just think they're doing a job or that's just the way the world works. Look at the internal communications from Goldman-Sachs that refers to the clients they didn't care about as "muppets". There may be some who do take measures to obfuscate their communications but most people, including most people doing harm, don't think they're doing anything wrong, so they don't take any steps at all to censor themselves.
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| # ? Jan 27, 2013 17:08 |
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Agreeing with ductonius.ductonius posted:There may be some who do take measures to obfuscate their communications. To further elaborate, those measures are often laughably ineffective. Look at the Petraeus Scandal -- weren't they signing in to Gmail and editing a draft so that 'nothing would be sent over the network'? Way to think it through. And these were two intelligent people trying to hide one, isolated thing. The fact is folks with full brains put all kinds of crazy poo poo on their networks with only the simplest of obfuscations. Some people might be good at hiding their poo poo but that doesn't diminish the importance of the majority who aren't.
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| # ? Jan 27, 2013 20:12 |
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CeeJee posted:A protest or blockade involves people actively doing something and being publically seen to be doing it. The hacktivists do nothing they wouldn't be doing anyway: having their automated tools look for websites with a vulnerability. The USSC site hacked was not chosen beforehand because it was involved in the Swartz, it's a site that is vulnerable and is part of the legal system so it was hacked. Why would using automatic tools invalidate a protest? The fact it takes less effort and personal risk to do "hacktivist" things only means that it takes less people to create some sort of inconvenience to the authorities than during a traditional blockade. It can be viewed as both good or bad, depending of the cause they are protesting.
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| # ? Jan 27, 2013 21:45 |
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Gantolandon posted:Why would using automatic tools invalidate a protest? The fact it takes less effort and personal risk to do "hacktivist" things only means that it takes less people to create some sort of inconvenience to the authorities than during a traditional blockade. It can be viewed as both good or bad, depending of the cause they are protesting.
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| # ? Jan 27, 2013 21:50 |
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I'm not sure how that follows. It's on the news and we're hearing about it. I don't get how standing around with a sign in front of a government building is really any better than (sort of) sticking a sign on the government website. At least the Internet stuff is somewhat novel and you don't have to risk getting pepper sprayed or beaten by police.
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| # ? Jan 27, 2013 22:05 |
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A good way to get what you want and achieve social progress is to hack the government and undermine the infrastructure of the country you live in.
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| # ? Jan 27, 2013 22:09 |
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I consider hacktivists to be nothing more than whistleblowers. Given how much people could careless about scandal in the United States, hacktivists seem to only be hurting themselves when they get imprisoned for pissing off someone with real power.
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| # ? Jan 27, 2013 22:34 |
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Grognard posted:D. The media must be forced to do its job or be (peacefully) replaced by those that will. You can find detailed analysis of the Republican plan to change the electoral college selection in certain states on left wing websites. To give some links http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/..._n_2558362.html and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/..._n_2546010.html This is a real thing with the endorsement of the chairman of the Republican National Committee. I have checked NPR, ABCNews and the New York Times website. This story has not crossed the barrier into the mainstream press.
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| # ? Jan 27, 2013 22:41 |
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Gio posted:Then you didn't look hard enough because there is a lengthy analysis of the changes on FiveThirtyEight, and has been reported separately on every news outlet you listed. They discussed it on the cable news networks, and it has been reported by a ton of mainstream media outlets. It's losing traction because more and more it seems unlikely it will even happen. Also Huffington Post is kinda sorta mainstream media. We'll see. Virginia is backing down, but Michigan is also considering a switch to district-based awarding of EC votes and they haven't exactly been shy about pushing divisive stuff recently. Since the election, we've gotten abortion restrictions, right to work, they repassed the emergency manager law that was just tossed out by referendum (adding in a bit of funding for unrelated stuff so it couldn't be referendum'd again), etc. I'm unsure how it's going to play out now that their majority is slimmer in the legislature, but I certainly wouldn't rule it out yet. Remember, these are the same people who didn't hesitate to change the rules for delegate allocation in the primary - after the primary had already taken place. If you have to ask "are they crooked enough to try ________" then you can pretty reliably just assume yes.
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| # ? Jan 27, 2013 23:47 |
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Paul MaudDib posted:We'll see. Virginia is backing down, but Michigan is also considering a switch to district-based awarding of EC votes and they haven't exactly been shy about pushing divisive stuff recently. Since the election, we've gotten abortion restrictions, right to work, they repassed the emergency manager law that was just tossed out by referendum (adding in a bit of funding for unrelated stuff so it couldn't be referendum'd again), etc. I'm unsure how it's going to play out now that their majority is slimmer in the legislature, but I certainly wouldn't rule it out yet. pssst. Wrong thread.
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| # ? Jan 28, 2013 00:32 |
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I'm curious to see how this pans out. So far the "high profile" attacks have amounted to DoS attacks and breaking into some websites to steal usernames/passwords of tangentially related organizations, as far as I can tell. Headaches for some people for sure, but nothing that really gets anyone's attention besides IT managers. For example they haven't manipulated the prices of gold futures trading on CME. Or made every product on amazon.com free for two hours. In fact I think Anonymous tried to DoS amazon and failed, if the news reports are true. There's much more to the internet than DNS and webpages. I don't think the general public has a very high expectation of website security, so things like website defacements or stealing credit card numbers don't really inspire the general public to question the system. edit: or at least that's what I think Anonymous is trying to do? I'm not sure what their organizational goal is zmcnulty fucked around with this message at Jan 28, 2013 around 09:41 |
| # ? Jan 28, 2013 09:37 |
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zmcnulty posted:I'm curious to see how this pans out. So far the "high profile" attacks have amounted to DoS attacks and breaking into some websites to steal usernames/passwords of tangentially related organizations, as far as I can tell. Headaches for some people for sure, but nothing that really gets anyone's attention besides IT managers. Most likely, there are none, because Anonymous are not even an organization and have no structure at all. It's a bunch of symbols that became widely associated with hacking (and, arguably, ideals such as "transparency" and "freedom of information"), so everyone can use them during his own action to give himself some fame and legitimacy. Of course, some of the Anonymous-brand actions will succeed, and most likely these would be the ones reported by the mass media. If TV, radio or newspapers are your only source of information, then Anons really appear as an organization: dangerous, competent and - as ACTA protests shown - having infiltrated a significant strata of western society. So, really, they are the Laughing Man - less competent and spectacular, though.
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| # ? Jan 28, 2013 10:02 |
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| # ? May 21, 2013 09:38 |
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Gantolandon posted:Most likely, there are none, because Anonymous are not even an organization and have no structure at all. It's a bunch of symbols that became widely associated with hacking (and, arguably, ideals such as "transparency" and "freedom of information"), so everyone can use them during his own action to give himself some fame and legitimacy. I find Anonymous to be most like the Panther Moderns from Neuromancer, in motivation and style if not actual capability. quote:There was a kind of ghostly teenage DNA at work in the Sprawl, something that carried the coded precepts of various short-lived subcults and replicated them at odd intervals....The Panther Moderns were mercenaries, practical jokers, nihilistic technofetishists.
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| # ? Jan 28, 2013 15:42 |
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