Not that I approve of anon. But the response from people in power towards this behaviour tends to be "Oh look, these guys do whatever we tell them. Let's make them proffitable."

So while not supporting anon, doing something is better than doing nothing when things you value are at stake, even though they might not always be good.

As the owner of a smaller site that shares a hosting provider with various clan forums, it's always really fun when a bunch of them decide to do a takedown "for the lulz". The provider has since restructured their network since it had increased to several times every week, which was getting extremely tiresome.


My personal irritation is that the addresses I've used to register with various sites they've hacked immediately start getting flooded with spam. While it's possible that the spammers just helped themselves, I think it's extremely naive to think that at least some people affiliated with Anonymous wouldn't have realised there'd be a tasty profit to be made from that sort of address list: indeed, "carelessly" leaving the data lying around just gives them plausible deniability. Not exactly the hallmark of heroes or good guys.

That could go for robbers to: Oh the banks gone a F'ed up lets just rob the main bank of America and take everyone monies...
Yeah lets paint them as grey when clearly it's just black...

If they truely cared for their cause, and the cause of others who support them. Why violate everyones privacy simple because they thing they're the saviors of the net.
As much as SOPA is bad for freedom, Anon are bad for privacy. I'd rather never be able to watch or download something online than have all my details and personal information strung out across the internet by some guy that doesn't see enough sun.

Isn't there some high ambiguity as to whether or not that's even a valid Anonymous threat?

Much ado about nothing.

Access to Internet should require that you prove that you have a life.

Calling and emailing my local gov't along with voting. If over 5,000 people gathered and protested in person, I believe that'd have much more impact than if they took down some government websites.
I spent some time on the site where the real powers that be behind Anonymous hang out, and where the idiots who intentionally download their malware discuss random things, so it's not as if I have no personal experience or connection to them. They just are out of hand, using a cavemanish way to accomplish ineffective and destructive goals.
I respected Lulzsec far more, despite how pretentious they were, for their ability to hack in ways that didn't involve clubbing a server over the head.

On a personal note, it just bothers me that the ones who are contributing are getting off on this. I'm sure many don't, but the thought that some might just makes me kinda mad. i mad bro

Well, I guess they go by "the ends justify the means". And I have a problem with that too.
And while I agree your bank example is a situation where I might think differently there's still a lot of times where it's not. I do think there's way too much 'sitting around and let someone else handle it' going on.
But as I said, I don't agree with anon, I just think sitting around always obeying everything an authority tells me is foolish. And I'm not saying that as some kind of rebel, I mostly do what I'm told as I've most often not been told to do anything I object to.

And the whole basemant dweller thing is really silly coming from a bunch of pimpled virgins who has no life and live with their moms. Because that's what we are right? Gamers?

When I see anyone who uses that stupid mask image as part of their cause, I know it's some one who I can immediately write off.

Ahh, mud slinging.
I never said they are some crusader for justice.
All I said is that they are doing something, besides if you look down the page a bit more then you will see this.


"Update, 2:10 p.m. PT: https://twitter.com/#%21/anonops/status/161535637542019072 denies that this video has anything to do with Anonymous:"

DDOS of FB is not going to expose any user information that anyone could not already see.
It would shock me if they even tried anything, after denying it on twitter.

Where did I call them heroes or good?
All I ever said is that they are doing something.
I doubt they will even try anything at all dealing with FB anyway.


Good luck getting five hundred people to do anything today, let alone five thousand.

I am not saying they are some sort of heroes, I am not saying that I agree with what/how they do things.
I respect that they do something, anything.

I have spent time sending emails and making a few phone calls, but in case everyone missed it the system is pretty much broken at this time.
Money talks, and this what is SOPA and PIPA is all about, money.
The people who want to see these bills pass have more money than those who want to see it denied.
The government can already do whatever they want as it is, they just want more "legal" power to do it.

I am done in this thread, I am not whiting knighting anon, yes I visit /v and /o along with /k.
No I do not agree with the methods, but I can see the value in people standing up in whatever way they want.

In the end it doesn't matter, SOPA and PIPA are taking all the heat while a few other bills are slipping by unnoticed, and when SOPA and PIPA fail they will get tacked on to the bills thats did pass.
Thats how these things work, slimy underhanded deals like that.

For the same reason that "rights that shall not be infringed" are infringed on today.

Don't worry, I don't think any of those were implied. I agree with you with both points; people don't protest like they used to (e.g the 60s against the Vietnam war) and politicians only listen to their bank account. However, these two seem, at least to me, very interrelated. If some legislation is passed that is against the will of the people, and said bill is well known enough by the people to realize that it has been passed, I think things will sort themselves out. How? Well, that's the million dollar question.
The underlying, and thread specific, point here is that these destructive methods don't do anything to solve either of these issues. Being polite little citizens is all we have to do, because being innocent and getting backstabbed is much more of a cause to rally behind. This is, of course, all hypothetical.

According to https://twitter.com/anonops, the video is fake, and they do not plan to take down Facebook.

Yeah, I just facepalm when I see that bloody thing.

I won't deny there is too much "oh someone else will fix it" going on especially when the Americans haven't ground the country to a halt over their freedom...someoelse will do it I suppose, I could rent a William Wallace look alike out to yous? It seems rather ironic that the country that stands up for "democracy" and freedom's own people can't stand up and make a loud enough fuss to prevent a few stupid laws, not like your toppling a goverment or something

I don't see how it would surprise you if they did, a bunch of people hiding behind masks have no reason to be honest or even trustworthy.
I thought Anon were supposed to be skillful and a threat....a DDOS attack, seriously, let's take down the biggest social media site with a distributed denial of service, here I was thinking it was gonna be an epic hack

Which leads me to believe that the government and/or SOPA supporting businesses are actually behind the threat and want to blame anonymous, thus ensuring public support for their Internet censorship bills.

I'm not American though.

Or maybe you didn't mean me by "your", in that case, nvm.

^

Anonymous is pretty sad lately barking at anything that passes by like a spooked pup. Don't care for facebook myself, but you don't see me getting PO'd threatening to hax their site and take them down. Personally i'm thinking Anonymous is gone the way of PETA where they do anything they can to get into the news.

Don't worry I am sure this guy totally won't be selling the CC and SS numbers he steals from your computer.

This is stupid, all it does is to give the US government more reasons and proof that the internet needs to be turned into a "police state". This is just like throwing fuel on the flames.

I'm sorry, I guess it did look like I was aiming my words at you. No, I went on a delusional miffed rant about the kind of people going 'ANON IS HEROES GAIS!' After many hacking group events in recent times, I have little love for these 'internet heroes'.

facebook has too many firewalls and other protections that it would be impossible to take it down

if sopa went through, i wonder if the same ppl hatin on anon would expect help from them

V for Vendetta was a good comic/movie, they've just ruined the whole image of the mask.

The ironic thing is that WB makes money off every mask sold, so unless they're making their own pulls off a mold... They're funding the very people they hate.

That's neither here nor there. As it is right now, all they're doing is feeding ammo to the people for sopa. They're giving them an excuse to say "Look! We told you! The people against SOPA are all cybercriminals!" They aren't hurting SOPA or similar bills. They're HELPING it. Indirectly, but they are.

Maybe if the majority of Americans weren't entirely ignorant as to whats happening in their government, everyone would be aware of this instead of needing egotistical hackers to "raise awareness".

I'm surprised that WB has a copyright on the image of Guy Fawkes, although I seem to recall that they're the same people who (perhaps apocryphally) thought they owned the rights to the word "shire", much to the bemusemant of many people who live in, well, the shires.