Hackers’ Efforts to Identify Officer Create Turmoil
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
>Gabriella Coleman, an anthropologist who studies Anonymous and teaches at McGill University in Montreal, said she was taken aback that members of Anonymous would be so quick to release unverified information, and would speak so openly about their methods in online chat channels.
>“My jaw was dropping,” Ms. Coleman said, reading members’ communications. “I was surprised because what I was seeing was suggestive but not definitive. Anonymous tends to care about its image quite a bit, and if they were wrong, it would be really bad.”
I've worked in the information security industry for a while, and this is the exact kind of behavior expected all of us have seen and expected from Anonymous since they first gained public spotlight in 2008 (mostly with "Project Chanology"). Anyone who's spent any time in any IRC channel claiming to be tied to Anonymous, or anyone who's seen one of the related ~5000 Twitter feeds knows full well they are the definition of hasty, impulsive, disorganized, unsubtle, and incompetent in general. Which is exactly what you'd expect from a "group" (really a label) of miscellaneous teenagers. It's always humorous to see media outlets sometimes try to glorify them.
There have been some occasional exceptions with some of the spinoff groups, but generally speaking this is very much not unusual. They have been like that from day 1.
I question exactly how well this individual has apparently studied Anonymous.
"said she was taken aback that members of Anonymous
would be so quick to release unverified information"
At the end of the day, without identities and verifiable facts, none of this is news. It's hearsay. I don't know who's right and wrong here. You don't know who's right and wrong here. And I assure you that the NY Times reporter who wrote this story doesn't know who is and is not right and wrong here.
2. One can be the foremost academic expert on something pop cultural and be embarassingly,stupidly,obviously wrong about things that actual fans/participants know.
I summon gwern! Tell us of how badly wrong academics get Neon Genesis: Evangrlion wrong, gwern.
If they tend to be the same people involved and they tend to coordinate their actions the same way each time, then it is fair to say they are a single entity.
This is actually a very interesting and possibly revolutionary form of government. Actually, when you think about it, it's like the world's governments all under the umbrella of 'Earth'. Each going their own direction and each with their supporters and detractors.
I'd been off the Internet for most of today but even I knew that Anonymous's revelation was a flop this morning. I sometimes wonder if the Internet really will bring meaningful truth to discourse, rather than just shifting the echo chamber.
Agree. Since the minute this happened, focus was moved away from what happened at the scene. When people talk of this, it's never about the dead boy (much) but all about police accountability and I'd bet, a week from now, no one remembers the dead boy's name.
I would even bet that half of everyone reading this isn't even aware of what happened on the street and no one here knows of the background around that.
This sounds to me like an incident of one officer going ballistic for his own personal reason. Obviously that area has other issues but, as I said, I'd bet no one here knows the background of the issue as to why the kid was stopped in the first place.