Are you part of “Anonymous?”

“Anonymous,” meaning the group,  is best defined by what it isn’t, rather than what it is.  Anonymous as in a “single person” is someone unknown.  Anonymous, the group, is something new.  It’s not American, Democratic, Republican, progressive, liberal, conservative, fascist, socialist, good, bad or even “hacktivist.”  It’s also not registered, regulated or restricted.  The list of what Anonymous isn’t goes on forever.  I think my favorite quote from one of the many sites Anonymous claims, is “While Anonymous is not responsible for the actions taken by individuals, it is still characterized by those actions.”

Even calling Anonymous a group is misleading.  Although they’ve claimed responsibility for attacking everyone from to Citi Bank, we can’t really call them an army, at least not in the traditional sense of the word.  For one thing it’s almost impossible to think of an army who’s members to show up when they feel like it, serve as long as they want and then drift away.

But that is exactly how Anonymous works.  No one is in charge, there is no membership requirement and members can come and go as they please.  It’s more like a “disorganization” than a traditional organization. However, there are very few security experts that would call Anonymous ineffective.  They scare the pants off of companies like Citi Bank, dictators like Hosni Mubarak and just about every other big institution, private or public.  They should be scared, but we don’t have to be because unless we aren’t planning heinous cheating on a massive scale, shooting down peaceful protesters in the streets or suddenly stealing power to rule a prisoner nation. We’re more likely to be with them, than against them.  Think about how tempting it would be to spontaneously organize an attack on the insurance company who just denied your prescription drug claim, the car company that sold you a lemon or any one of a million unfair things that individually we can’t do anything about?

Who is Anonymous?

That’s the biggest misunderstanding about Anonymous.  Some knowledgeable “pundits”  claim they are mostly kids with too much time on their hands sitting in their parent’s basement, spending their lives playing video games and engaging in a dark conspiracy.  While this is possibly true for a few, undoubtably it is not true for most.

Because the membership changes from moment to moment, anyone can be part of Anonymous, or Anons as they sometimes call themselves  You, your boss, your co-worker, your sister, your children, the mail man, all they need to do is care about an issue long enough to get involved and then join with others for the few moments it takes to stage a cyber attack, type an email, march in a protest or donate a dollar, euro or doubloon. “Anonymous” is a name for something as amorphous as mist, a mist of people who care enough about something enough to do something about it.  Is that frightening?

What do they do?

Groups of Anons have harassed the Iranian government during the Green revolution, hammered away at merchants and services that refused to process donations for WikiLeaks, supplied communications infrastructure for Egyptians during their revolution and some even got involved in a recent school bullying incident when the victim was expelled for fighting back.  The current list of “ops” includes the Wisconsin protests, shutting down websites under the new copyright law, the US Air force’s apparent project to develop software that simulates hundred of phony Facebook identities, and goes on and on.  In short, they pursue perceived unfairness in the broadest sense of the term.  If they have a concentration it might probably be freedom of speech and the Internet.  Of course I use “they” in the loosest sense.  Depending on the cause, “They,” could well be me and you.

Where is Anonymous?

Easy answer: everywhere and nowhere.  However, currently anyone can read what’s going on with Anonymous by following Anonops on Twitter, going to or if you’re a little more computer savvy find them on the Anonymous IRC channels (IRC= Internet Relay Chat).  There is also an Internet Radio station at but that is currently down as of the publication of this piece.  However, all these facilities are under constant scrutiny and potential attack so they can be down from time to time.  Monitoring, listening or visiting these sites and services is not illegal and can be very interesting.  Like so many things on the Internet, don’t believe everything you hear or read and always have a healthy dose of skepticism.

The phenomena

So, should we worry about Anonymous?  The answer is that everyone has to make up their own mind about that.  Undoubtedly you will not agree with some things done by it’s individuals, but some you just might.  Anonymous is a brand new phenomena brought about by an interconnected world and it really does matter to us all.  It’s what used to be inconsequential everyday people now free to get involved in geopolitical evens on a massive scale.  These aren’t just hackers, some members do nothing more than wear masks and show up at demonstrations to embarrass their targets.  Some do no more than uncover something they think is wrong at work or school and then let the rest of the Anonymous community know about it.  Some just work the tools provided by other members to help the cause, any cause.

Where Wikileaks is about public scrutiny, Anonymous is about public action.  Some of what Anons do is illegal in some countries(and this one) and some of it is just plain old legal protesting.  Each Anon decides what they want to do and how far they want to go.  Anons can be generals one day and soldiers or bystanders the next.  Anonymous is a product of our times and, as I always advise, it’s better to know more than less about any new force in the world.




About Prentiss Gray

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3 Responses to Are you part of “Anonymous?”

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