Instead of sitting in church on a bright Sunday afternoon, improving my soul with two or three gathered together (and God in the midst), I am at home, on the interwaster, catching up on some news. Ars Technica has a fascinatingly scary piece on one security expert's attempt to expose Anonymous.
Aaron Barr, the Wile E Coyote security guy at the center of the story, creates an elaborate ruse in an attempt to use social media to help ferret out the identities of the leading members of Anonymous. He is constantly dissuaded by an ever wise tech associate whose advice he ignores. Push comes to shove, and Anonymous hits back hard, destroying the company's ability to function.
After reading the piece, you are almost afraid to critique Anonymous, and yet Burr comes off as getting what he deserves, given his desire to generate publicity for himself regardless of accuracy (in naming anonymous names).
We've seen the group of hackers called Anonymous turning up to defend Mr.Wikileaks from U.S. government and corporate ire. To the average person, it can appear as a game of the powerful attacking the powerful in an elaborate spy versus spy.
Rephrasing, the U.S. government does a certain amount of things in secret, debatably for good, only to be spotlighted by Wikileaks, who with the use of secret sources, attacks its targets, debatably for good. Then, the various targets, whether Federal or corporate, begin to push back using their technical, political and legal weapons, only to draw out the secretive Anonymous cloud, who seek to re-balance the power against targets of their own choosing, and, debatably for good.
Each group claims superiority of intent, while exploiting variations on anonymous power. Some of this power is more unchecked than others, some more democratically installed and employed than others. But often enough its still power attached to ego, and little people always get hurt under the wheel.
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