Anonymous

            One group that I have begun to become more and more interested in is the internet group Anonymous. Anonymous originated on the imageboard 4chan, and represents thousands of members from all over the world. They are involved in many different things, but I am most interested in the ways that they have affected culture and politics.

            The term anonymous came from the fact that the posters to 4chan could post in a way that gave no indication to their identity. After a few hours each post would also be removed from 4chan’s servers. This is primarily done to save on server storage, but lends itself well to preserving an anonymous identity on 4chan’s website. 

A flag that symbolizes anonymous.

            One of Anonymous’ most publicized efforts was known as “Project Chanology,” a protest against the Church of Scientology. When an in house propaganda video was released into the mainstream media, Anonymous picked up on it and began their protests against Scientology. They began several methods of protest against Scientology including denial of service attacks to their website, prank calls, and black page faxes to their fax machines. These protests were not only behind closed doors or online. Anonymous also began to organize in protest on the streets. I find this particularly interesting. Some people will argue that online relationships do not ever amount to anything in the “real world.” 4chan, however, proved that they can indeed organize effective mass protests.

A protest outside of a Church of Scientology.

            One of the most recent actions that Anonymous has undertaken is its defense of the website WikiLeaks. These efforts have been named Operation Avenge Assange and Operation Payback. Their goals have been to attack websites of those that do not support WikiLeaks such as Amazon, Visa, Paypal, and MasterCard. One thing that I found interesting is that these attacks were actually successful. On December 8^th both Visa and MasterCard’s websites were successfully taken down. Anonymous has also worked to help raise awareness for cables that they believe were possibly overlooked by the media. They want to raise awareness for the cables that are especially interesting or that are embarrassing to governments and corporations.

            Anonymous was also involved in the recent revolts in Egypt. Websites that were created with the purpose of keeping Mubarak in office were taken down.

            The successes of these protests are particularly interesting considering 4chan’s nature. Because everyone is Anonymous, there are no real leaders of the group. And information that is posted could not be available even 2 hours later. If 4chan was able to organize these mass protests against the Church of Scientology I wonder what websites with a more organized structure could achieve. These vigilante acts can be dangerous, however. In my opinion, the attacks that I discussed were arguably done to benefit the greater good. Some efforts of Anonymous have not been as heroic. Sometimes 4chan will choose to focus their energy on harassing a single person for some small flaw in their beliefs or in their personality. This can be dangerous for that person and for their family when there is no accountability.

WikiLeaks

                  I want to do a short writeup about WikiLeaks. I seem to have missed all of the media buzz about it but I believe that it is still a great example of how technology has affected culture and society. WikiLeaks, in my opinion, is an example of how the internet can be used as a medium to equalize information and make it accessible to everyone. Wikipedia has been doing a great job of this by providing huge amounts of information from science to information about television shows to anyone with internet access. WikiLeaks, however, has taken a more controversial role of releasing private government documents to everyone.

                  This has obviously created a huge outpouring of various opinions about whether or not WikiLeaks is doing a good or bad thing. Some will argue that governments are created by the people so the people should be aware of what their government is doing for them. Others would say that it is expected for governments to make “tough decisions” and that the information is private. They would further argue that releasing sensitive information could put lives (such as spies or government officials) at risk. In my opinion, I think that WikiLeaks is a good thing. I feel like in a Democratic government the people have the right to see what the Government that they elected is doing. I can understand, however, why the United States Government would be working so hard to shut down WikiLeaks. If certain documents were released relationships with foreign countries could begin to deteriorate.

Too much emphasis in the media has been placed on Julian Assange instead of WikiLeaks itself. If WikiLeaks were to only leak documents about other governments such as North Korea, China, or Egypt and not the United States Julian Assange would be would be considered a revolutionary instead of a criminal. Assange is not the most important thing about WikiLeaks. If Assange were to be unable to speak for WikiLeaks anymore, a new spokesman would step up and carry on the job. In this way I feel like WikiLeaks represents the culture of the internet. Once something has been created or uploaded to the internet it is almost impossible to contain. If the initial source of information was to be shut down, several more websites would be created in its place, similar to the Hydra. WikiLeaks itself went through this process. Once the United States government became extremely interested in WikiLeaks companies began to try to not associate themselves with the company. Amazon, who was the host of WikiLeaks initially, pulled the website. WikiLeaks then had to find a way to host the website themselves. Until this time, however, you could find copies of the leaked documents on places such as Usenet and Bittorrent. The supporters of WikiLeaks banded together to voice their support in several ways. Some would simply make monetary donations to WikiLeaks for server fees. Others such as the 4chan group “Anonymous” would attack the websites of those who were outspoken against WikiLeaks or the Anonymous operations. They would perform denial of service attacks among other things in attempt to ensure WikiLeaks would remain on the internet for everyone to access.