AC = Domestic Terrorists? 519
Miang writes "A video from a recent FOX 11 (Los Angeles) newscast has surfaced on YouTube. In the segment, reporter Phil Shuman investigates so-called "Hacker Gangs" comprised entirely of anonymous users. The segment, which focuses mainly on users at 4chan, 7chan, and 420chan, seems to confuse /b/ raids and motivational poster templates with a genuine threat to the American public. For added FUD, the FOX team inserted an unrelated video of a van blowing up — twice! Presumably, one is intended to equate anonymous posting with domestic terror. The story and video can be found on the local FOX website, so it does not appear to be simply a clever parody." Cringe as you watch this video explain terms like 'LULZ' and show inspirational poster parodies as evidence of the evils of this terrifying "Group".
There is only one solution for this problem. (Score:4, Interesting)
Death to all those fanatics!!!! And yes, i will post anonymously.
I actually have sympathy.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Anonymous is what happens when you give people the ability to act without reprecussions, a good portion of the world turns into total a**holes. And they will surely retaliate, for two reasons. The first being the justification that "oh, we're called domestic terrorists, we better at least do something worth that name now".
The second being the justification "Umm, no. You totally misunderstand what we do here. We're just normal internet stupidity. want a sample? How about everyone in your company? We can do a mass raid if you want"
The second already is happening in droves, if you'll notice their forums.
Now, that said, the people i DON'T feel pity for are the "victims".
The male victim, who fails at trying to be anonymous, now has his name, and his story, all over all of the *chans. All he's doing is trying to get revenge because anonymous wouldn't raid his stupid girlfriend and that they told him he was being a moron. He spends most of his time actively trying to spread dirt on the *chans, including warning potential raid targets, making up lies about what raids actually are.
As for the female victim, her story is similarly stupid, but as I do not know the entire thing with all facts for certain, i will refrain from final judgement and spreading rumors.
But for most raid "victims" in general, their main flaw was that they posted too much personal information online, and made a point of either harassing others, who happened to be anonymous, or whining to anonymous for favors.
I am not anonymous, but it pays to know about them.
Anonymous, not Anonymous Coward. (Score:5, Interesting)
/b/ is mainstream (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, /b/ is so mainstream now, it beggars belief. Here is a Slashdot article that mentions it in passing without so much as stopping to explain the term. This was always going to happen. A group of people focused around memes, with a subset of them bent on spreading these memes to other sites? There is no more perfect recipe for notoriety than that. Rules 1 and 2 have completely failed, just as miserably as they would fail in a real-life fight club (where did those new members come from anyway?).
It's a shame really. For a short while, /b/ was a great little internet phenomenon. Anonymity, with all its baggage, and somehow no lawsuits. Now, though, the old guard is quickly moving on. Anybody who's frequented the site can attest to this.
As for the FOX clip... pure garbage. Most /b/tards call images "pictures", and directories "folders", and get confused between wallpaper images and desktop screenshots. The /i/nvasion people are a little closer to "hacker gangs", but even then, the "hacking" only ever amounts to SYN flooding and MySpace phishing.
Despite my pessimistic tone, I predict that "Anonymous" will continue to grow. As more and more attention is given to these "secret websites", more and more people are clamoring to become "hackers on steroids". This new Anonymous will be larger, with more brute force at his call, but at the same time stupider, and less apt to create entertaining content. And paradoxically, he'll be less anonymous than before. I see threads where a bunch of high-schoolers recognize each other based on posted photos and local memes. They greet each other by name and socialize. On /b/.
They say that raiding /b/ is liking pissing in an ocean of piss. But what if the people doing the raiding aren't pissing? What if they think this is a kickass beach where they can hang out and go for a swim with their friends and not worry about taking a piss while they do? It's not cancer, it's a full-on mutation.
Re:Conservative Fear (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, I have a story like that (AC for a reason) (Score:1, Interesting)
Back in college, there was a Direct Connect server on campus. A friend of mine ran it, and I was known to be involved with it. I think we had about 3TB shared, among 200 users online at any given time.
Anywho, a reporter for the campus rag decided to do a story on it. She first called the kid who ran it, and scheduled an interview. She then called me, at which time I told her that this reporting would be a bad idea, and that she won't be getting information easily. She got a little upset from that. When she interviewed my buddy, she ended up crying. He's a nice guy, but apparantly she was extremely upset that people didn't just give her information.
Later on Sunday, we had a kind of technology club meeting, and like 4 new guys were there (15 or so semi-regulars as well). We did not discuss p2p at the meeting, but after, we talked about this as of yet unpublished article. I referred to the reporter as a dumb broad, at which time one of the new guys yelled "THAT'S MY GIRLFRIEND!" I thought to myself, aww, crap, here we go. I talked him down after 20 minutes or so, but I swear, half the dweebs there thought we were going to brawl and bolted. It was kind of an anti-climatic ending really.
This is the same rag of a paper that printed this from the IT departement chair after some faculty computers were comprimised:
According to (IT guy), the hackers were members of the Internet Chat Relay (IRC) network, a group of people who are out to "make mischief and manipulate other people machines," (IT guy) said.
"Primarily they do it to steal personal information or cause mischief such as attacking other computers or deleting files," (IT guy) said.
Re:"so-called 'hacker gangs'" (Score:1, Interesting)
Corporate terrorism at its finest (Score:2, Interesting)
As an amateur psychologist and observer of human nature I'd guess anyone who thinks "lulz" is cool isn't a very sophisticated thinker; this bunch are probably just alienated kids.
Alienated? Is that the nice word for asshole? The world is full of them. Most grow out of it.
You don't have to go very far to find paid assholes [essential.org]. M$, telcos, the RIAA are all engaged in some very rough and ugly astroturfing and cracking.
They people raising the alarm over ACs are those who want an exclusive power to harass. Broadcasters, telcoms and software companies are used to having these powers and backing them up with the entire legal system. They want to exert and extend that centralized control over the internet and anonymity is incompatible with that. Eliminating our privacy and freedom to hamper assholes won't limit those who control the switches. They will continue to harass those who annoy them [slashdot.org]. When the rest of us have lost our freedom and privacy, the assholes will act with impunity.
Re:/b/ is mainstream (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Conservative Fear (Score:4, Interesting)
I sympathize with your compassion for anyone who is the victim of malicious mischief. I was quietly sitting in my dining room, next to a window, when a BB shot by some young punk broke the window and left a nasty welt on my arm. That said, I wouldn't call the FBI, and I don't think a couple years in Gitmo, are required (though the mental image does have certain appeal) as appropriate punishment for said miscreant(s).
The point here isn't the victims. It's not even the perpetrators... there have been pimply faced, antisocial, teenagers all the way back when young Ogg climbed up a tree and dropped a prehistoric rotten egg on Mrs. Umars head then promptly fell out of that tree laughing his furry protohuman butt off.
There's this E-V-O-L-U-T-I-O-N thing going on, and we're supposed to be rising to higher levels of intelligence and social functionality... the FOX NEWS folks (and there fearmongering minions) would have us devolving back into stupid brutes who club one another insensible at the slightest provocation. Kids are stupid... they do stupid things... don't any of your remember the stupid things you did in the throws of puberty? It's truly the human condition. Guide them if you can, talk to them because you must, spank them if you absolutely have to, but let's not cure adolescent inanity with the threat of thermonuclear deterent. The punishment cetainly doesn't fit the crime, and god knows once the hormones subside, and the frontal lobes develop a little more, most of these young jerks will mature into perfectly descent human beings. We just need to focus a little more on what's of real importance in the world and stop knee jerking at the sound of ever "BOO" emanation from the desk of FOX NEWS, because if you knee jerk long enough, all you're doing is Goose Stepping...
Extreme Disappointment (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:they are harmless! (Score:2, Interesting)