Anonymous Ousted from Twitter and Facebook | Hacker News Reader

Anonymous Ousted from Twitter and Facebook

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51 pointsfredoliveira50 comments

You can call Anon a bunch of script kiddies, but they hit the front page of nearly every major news source today. What have you done for free speech lately?

edit: If you want to help http://pastehtml.com/view/1c8i33u.html

What has Anon done for free speech? Internet vandalism? I don't think that counts.

"Raising awareness"

"There is no bad publicity"

...etc...

"Raising awareness" is what slacktivists say instead of actually doing something meaningful to whatever cause it is they care about it.

People who disrupt business operations are bad people and shouldn't be propped up on shoulders. Preventing processing of high risk 3DS transactions and preventing busses from getting people home are both good examples of this.

People give Anon and Parks too much credit in my book.

> People who disrupt business operations are bad people and shouldn't be propped up on shoulders.

Exactly right, which is why Paypal shouldn't have disrupted Wikileaks' account. Bullying the little guy is quite cowardly of these multi-national corporations.

Good examples indeed! Especially the one about Rosie Parks. Of all the possible examples in the history of the world of disrupting business operations in a way that inconveniences people, I can see why that one came first to mind. Perfect analogue for a DoS attack: Denial of Seat!. Brilliant!

DoS, I love it. Technically, it was a DDoS, a Damsel's Denial of Seat, but credit goes to you. Wonderful. /bow

You cannot seriously argue that Rosa Parks "shouldn't be propped up on shoulders" because she instigated the first event in a series of coordinated events that stopped the buses in Montgomery County. She was not a bad person. She made a stand against racial segregation, something we now all acknowledge as unjust.

...

> You cannot seriously argue

No, I cannot. =) Knowing that, reread my post.

The acidity of your dripping sarcasm appeals to my gen x sensibilities.

They have hit the front page of nearly every major news source with a story that cements the connection between Wikileaks and anti-social vandalism and hacking in the minds of the public.

Well done, Anon.

All they have done is make it harder to get accross the point that Wikileaks is a legitimate news organisation (like The Guardian and the NYTimes who are also publishing the cables) and as such should be protected as exemplars of a free press.

Their actions are harmful, narcisistic and juvenile.

The NYTimes and Guardian were founded in the 1800s. They have a long history behind them. Everybody knows who they are. If the government tried to shut them down, people will be seriously alarmed.

Try to silence WikiLeaks and I beat that 95% (or more) of the average Joe on the street will have no idea who they are. Why do they care? They don't know and probably wouldn't care.

Sometimes people need to stand up and protest. Their actions are as harmful as holding hands in the street and blocking traffic. People did that before and it was considered peaceful protest. Almost the same, but they blocked internet traffic.

PayPal has a right to refuse to do business with anyone, and does so on a very frequent basis. Indeed as any of us do. Wikileaks can write their own payment system.

Messing with PayPal messes with a lot of small businesses that make their money through the internet.

It's a stupid move because anyone who was in the 'undecided' category with anonymous, and relies on things like PayPal, is now in the 'against' category.

PayPal is already back up and running. And Anonymous just lost a lot of support, as evidenced by this page. That's an own-goal in my book.

These type of actions are also very likely to backfire. PayPal is not going to change it's policy, neither is Visa or Mastercard. If anything, it will harden their opinions.

If you want to do something about free-speech then there are much better ways of going about it than this.

I think you over-estimate how much people within Anon actually care about public perception of the group's activities. As long as they are making headlines, that is all they care about.

It's like the kid in high school who you could dare to eat anything for $1. The more he does it, the more attention he gets, the more he is motivated to do it.

The more the press covers their activities, the more exposure they get, the more people join their IRC server, the more people download LOIC, which all turns into the more damage they can do. Repeat.

Look at the highest rated comment on this page, it contains a direct link to how people can get involved.

Yes, you're right. I guess in reality it's more like bullying and retribution than an organised protest movement with specfic aims. That would explain seemingly senseless moves like this, the aim is primarily attention rather than actually helping Wikileaks/Assange out.

  What have you done for free speech lately?

Free speech for me is that I can say what I think, not someone thinking they can make my correspondence public.

Are you a government?

Just wanted to point out - I don't support what Anonymous is doing. These businesses have been given two shitty choices - piss off the online community or piss off Governments that can roll them over 1000x worse.

And remember, businesses are just people - Anonymous is going to hurt mostly innocent people who work for these companies or work with them, not people who did anything to Assange.

the same argument is used by any scab apologist in a labor dispute

and it would be just as valid.

It would depend on the circumstances. Let me try again: the same argument could be used to call off the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Btw, I'm not equivocating the two; in fact I'm claiming that the argument (wrongly) does.

and the logic is just as valid.

jinx

I did feel really awkward posting and seeing you had posted almost the same thing at the same time. Hopefully, great mind think alike.

Anon isn't doing anything to hurt the people who work for those companies. Those people are paid to handle exactly these kinds of attacks, so if anything Anon is just making sure they're actually earning their paycheck.

The fact that there are only two choices and both are shitty is just a symptom of the fact that we are at a transition point in the relationship between government/business/everyone else.

...we are at a transition point in the relationship between government/business/everyone else.

This transition point is called "history." Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Of course it's just history, but you can't deny that there are points of inflection with regards to certain aspects, rather than interminable gradual change.

Yes, but inflection points like the one we're witnessing now are sprinkled all through the past.

Then I think we're in agreement -- I wasn't trying to say that there was anything particularly special about this one, just that we're in one.

This is wishful thinking at best and intellectual dishonesty at worst - you're thinking of just the IT people; what about the vendors who depend on MasterCard and can't process payments that they need in order to make payroll?

Should we just shrug and say "oh well - at least we're getting internet justice?"

It's Visa and Mastercard's responsibility to make sure their system is secure, that's what vendors pay them for.

You're being intellectually dishonest, and you're not fooling anyone. This doesn't absolve Anonymous of any responsibility for that they're doing.

What they're doing is both simultaneously petty and upstanding. The idea that they shouldn't do it because a vendor might not make payroll, because a sysadmin can't handle a DDoS attack on a major credit card system is absurd. Armored cars are armored for a reason. Major money networks should be armored as well, and if they're not, its the money networks responsibility if it happens, same as its the armored car companies responsibility if the car gets robbed.

Also, don't confuse fault with responsibility -- they are not the same thing.

edit: typo

And some of those people make scads of money with no repercussions when they do something like cut off a man's legal defense fund.

Do you honestly think a DDoS that lasts a day or two is going to cause Visa to have to downsize? What innocent people are possibly going to be harmed? Except for the poor hapless sysadmins over there, who are probably not getting much sleep at the moment.

It's going to hurt anyone who's dependent upon real-time payments for their cash-flow, which, last I checked, is anyone who runs an online business.

Besides, what gives you the right to interfere with their business? They, like any other business, have the right to refuse service to anyone.

What gets me is that what Anonymous is doing isn't terribly sophisticated. Imagine if they had an overarching military-like strategy and intelligence system to back them up, rather than a stand alone complex like "LET'S DDOS STUFF" and obtaining "docs" on people.

Shit. It makes me want to join in.

Also been thinking for awhile, what's needed is an intelligence clearinghouse.

An open revolution wiki that goes beyond dropping docs to one that mimics the world's intelligence systems. Collating information on organizations, people, things. Linking them together. What makes them culturally tick. Their logistical backbone. Their economic makeup. Their command and information gathering apparatus. Their political connections. Their geo and temporal locations.

A target-centric database that people can extract useable tactical information from, so when the times comes ...

You can't do what you suggest in an open, collaborative model. It's too susceptible to malicious actors.

What Anon needs is hackers, not spies. They need people who know what the fuck they're talking about to build tools and strategies. LOIC may be slightly improved, but it's still terrible. Having a bunch of angry skiddies is a great resource, if used properly to shield the activities of more capable members.

Also, it's dox, not docs. /pedantic

>You can't do what you suggest in an open, collaborative model. It's too susceptible to malicious actors.

Sure you can. All you need is a suitable counterintelligence and counter-deception wing to crosscheck sources. There's plenty of good open source literature out there on how to set up such a structure (the intelligence scholar Roy Godson's books being one).

>What Anon needs is hackers, not spies.

That's like saying what the military needs is more engineers and less intelligence. Obviously you haven't read your Sun Tzu. To win, you need both. You also need some overarching strategy as well, so far, it looks like Anon is lacking in that department.

They aren't stupid, there is an agreement that Twitter and Facebook would only attract haters and stop the recruiting process. Been checking their IRC for some time, the OPs aren't stupid.

For those interested, connect to their IRC through the IP, not the hostname as it isn't resolving aparently: 199.19.226.231

Also, the official Twitter accounts are: @Op_Payback and @AnonOpsNet

What Anon is doing today makes me thoroughly proud of The Internet. It's not just Anon's attack on some way-out-there reactions to what WikiLeaks is doing, it's the whole internet's attack.

Days like today restore my hope in humanity and our ability to resist our oppressors.

Sure, it might be illegal. Yes, it will probably cause inconvenience to many innocents. It is very likely somewhat foolish. But there sometimes "The Mob" simply has to retaliate.

Who was it that said People should not be afraid of governments, governments should be afraid of people?

The actual quote by Thomas Jefferson is "When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty."

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_said_people_should_not_fear_th...

So it is OK to harm anyone with no more reasons than a) you don't like him b) you can? And that makes you proud? Mastercard, Visa, Twitter and Facebook are our oppressors? Seriously? Government you elected should be afraid of you? Not accountable, but afraid?

Visa et al just got caught in the crossfire, Government made them do something stupid, government gets attacked through the proxy that they did something stupid through. You know the whole, attack their industry shebang.

This is how Governments are held accountable ;) You have to hurt their economy, nothing else sticks.

I suppose the DDOS cannon will be aimed at twitter and facebook next then.

How will they report their attacks then?

IRC and 4Chan

Reddit and hn, too!

While I am proud of Anon's resolve, I am ashamed of its foolishness.

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