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Anonymous in The Economist
- alanh 16y agoNot positive, but I think this is “only” a blog, and not part of the print distribution.
- icegreentea 16y agoIt's 'only' a blog. The economist goes to print Thursday nights, so we might still see an Anon article in the next edition.
- electromagnetic 16y agoI like the symbolism that Anon has become. Simply put Anon is the anger and frustration of millions (acted on by the few hundred) and is having real effects. If Anon is taking down Mastercard and Visa, then perhaps our governments will start obeying their own laws instead of trying to manipulate companies into compliance. Or at the very least, our companies might actually question whether obeying the government is in their best interests.
- tzs 16y ago> Simply put Anon is the anger and frustration of millions... And the idiocy of millions, considering that one of their "bank" targets (PostFinance) isn't a bank. It is a money transfer service operated by the Swiss post office for Swiss residents only. Assange is not a Swiss resident, so they closed his account, and are returning his money to him. > If Anon is taking down Mastercard and Visa, then perhaps our governments will start obeying their own laws instead of trying to manipulate companies into compliance. Or at the very least, our companies might actually question whether obeying the government is in their best interests. Let's see--obey an anonymous group of DDOSers, who at most can cause you a short term outage until you add more capacity, or obey the government which has the full power of the state behind it and can actually stop your business and seize your assets...this one is a no brainer.
- mcantelon 16y ago>Assange is not a Swiss resident, so they closed his account, and are returning his money to him. The timing was coincidentally close to many other "spontaneous" corporate actions against Wikileaks.
- derefr 16y agoSure, because somewhere inside PostFinance, a conversation roughly like this occurred: Boss: "Hey, everyone's talking about this Assange guy's financials—do we have anything to do with that?" Clerk: "I'll check. ...huh! We have him in our books as a client!" Boss: "But he's not even Swiss! Good thing we noticed, I guess."
- electromagnetic 16y agoHis account was opened legally when he was in the country, but closed because he wasn't at that time a resident. This strikes me as a rather absurd policy on how to hold an account given that you'll have to be closing down temporary residents accounts and reopening them whenever they exit or enter the country.
- bertil 16y agoA significant portion of Swiss residents spend only half of the year in Switzerland: they don't clear their postal accounts every month. ;) They close it when they realize you don't really live in Switzerland, even half-time.
- praptak 16y agoPrelude: Government representative: "Hey, nice company, wanna keep being friends with the govt?" Boss: "Sure."
- bertil 16y agoThe Post Office is actually a Government-owned company. I keep saying that Swiss is a socialist country (the main assets are government-controlled, health and welfare are compulsive, minimum wage is astronomic) but no one believes me… and I'm the only Swiss around. However, I don't think there was any US interference: Switzerland is a fiercely autonomous country (with a whiff of xeno…-scepticism). There most likely were sincere about discovering that he wasn't seriously considering to stay and discontinued service only for that: banking in Switzerland is like cooking in France — don't try to make sense of it, do as you are told, and admire in silence.
- kmfrk 16y agoAnon is (a) digitized mob mentality. No reason to commend it.
- jbooth 16y agoEven if the mob is right to be pissed?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- SpikeGronim 16y ago"right to be pissed" and "right to attack 3rd parties illegally" are two very different things.
- Malic 16y agoHistory will determine who writes those books someday.
- mcantelon 16y agoPaypal, Mastercard, and Visa chose to, in effect, attack Wikileaks by suddenly suspending their accounts. If they want to collaborate on an economic attack against an entity that hasn't broken any laws it's isn't surprising that they find themselves also attacked.
- potatolicious 16y agoSo let me get this right: if you're not with us you're against us, if you're not supporting them you're attacking them, "collaborators" the bunch of them. Where have we heard all of these before? Empty, vacuous rhetoric, that's all this situation has come down to. I'm tired of hearing about WikiLeaks because it's polarized and made everyone rhetoric-spewing, logic-hating extremists. Everyone involved, and sadly to say, particularly the pro-WikiLeaks crowd, has been making grandiose, pompous speeches as if it's their last day on Earth and they're the President from the movie Independence Day. Stop. Just stop. Julian Assange is not the messiah and you are not delivering the the gospel truth of life, the universe, and everything. There is zero need for the amount of hyperbole, rhetoric, self-aggrandization, and more weasel words than I can shake a stick at. Is this an important issue? No doubt, but polarizing speeches like yours aren't helping anyone. When you start using loaded words like "attack" and "collaborator" you've lost any semblance of credibility with moderates, and just come off as an extremist instead.
- steveklabnik 16y agoIt's the Ghost in the Shell. The Internet's collective id.
- w1ntermute 16y agoReminds me of this post on Reddit from 2 years ago suggesting the exact same thing: http://www.reddit.com/comments/66cj2/hello_scientology_we_are_anonymous_video#c02z2ds http://www.reddit.com/comments/66cj2/hello_scientology_we_ar...
- khafra 16y agoA particularly trenchant comment, coming from w1ntermute. I don't know if they make a better stand alone complex or temporary autonomous zone, though.
- Malic 16y agoAnon's actions are an attempt at inciting a stand alone complex? Yeah, I can see that.
- TomOfTTB 16y agoJust out of curiosity, can you name a time when a Government has responded positively to this kind of attack? Where a protest has defied the law and the Government has reacted by giving the protesters what they want? Because I can't. In every example I can think of the Government has doubled down on its crack down effort. I suspect we're only months away from a bunch of these people getting arrested for cyber-terrorism. I suppose this sort of thing can be effective if the government crack down becomes so oppressive that the general public turns on them (See the Kent State Shooting). But that's a pretty destructive way to make your point.
- GavinB 16y agoa protest has defied the law and the Government has reacted by giving the protesters what they want http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Town_peace_march http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Town_peace_march http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_wall#The_Fall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_wall#The_Fall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_parks#Her_Refusal_to_Move http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_parks#Her_Refusal_to_Move http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Satyagraha http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Satyagraha I think you make a good point--the reaction to an attack is generally a stronger counterattack, not reconciliation--but there are certainly counterexamples.
- Aaronontheweb 16y agoJust wanted to point out that the reasons for the fall of the Berlin wall were TREMENDOUSLY more complicated than just protestors complaining about it. Comparing the fall of the Berlin wall to a DDoS attack on MasterCard feels like a slap in the face to history.
- rapind 16y agoMost things are complicated. All I took from his reply was to say that protests have led to success in the past, and that the DDoS attacks are a form of protest (debatable). I didn't see anything trying to belittle the fall of the Berlin wall. Drawing extreme conclusions like this reminds me of "Unamerican" arguments from a few years ago.
- JSig 16y agoInteresting magazine to be writing about Anonymous. I sometimes feel that the magazine itself is a LOIC for the global banking system. It's possibly one of many publications (nodes) that publishes (DDOS) anonymous writings that seem to usually endorse the position that the world needs more debt.
- anigbrowl 16y agoHow is publishing in any way analogous to a denial of service? If I purchase a copy of the Economist, it does not impair anyone else's economic activity or ability to do business with me. Your suggestion that they promote indebtedness doesn't seem very consistent with the content either.
- bertil 16y agoI agree with you that the parallels were… creative —— but I've been one the wrong end of publication once, and it can be close to a DDoS. You can't respond, whatever the journalist misunderstood is the Word of God, and if he wake up on the wrong foot, it feels very much like a mob —— the paper actually triggered a crowd of 15 to beat me.
- Symmetry 16y agoReally? They seemed to print hand-wringing articles about how developed countries are too far in dept semi-regularly until the recent financial crisis. Example: http://www.economist.com/node/275183 http://www.economist.com/node/275183
- jonshea 16y agoVery interesting. I’m glad that you pointed out that the Economist is “anonymous”. (If you haven’t noticed, almost all Economist articles are published without a byline). It’s a quirk I’ve never been convinced that they adequately justify. One of my favorite gags is to claim that I write for the Economist? Don’t believe me? I challenge you to prove that I don’t.
- papaf 16y ago
- DanielRibeiro 16y agoThe corresponding twitter account has more info. Had actually. They got suspended, but google made us the favor of caching it: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_OP3u3LKyIIJ:twitter.com/anon_operation+Anon_Operation&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_OP3u3L...
- mcantelon 16y agoTwitter just suspended @anon_operations. Expect involutary Twitter fast. ;)
- DanielRibeiro 16y agoThey are up again: http://twitter.com/AnonOpsNet http://twitter.com/AnonOpsNet http://twitter.com/anonops http://twitter.com/anonops http://twitter.com/AnonOperation http://twitter.com/AnonOperation (not official, but seems to be working along: http://twitter.com/AnonOperation/status/12652603078877184 http://twitter.com/AnonOperation/status/12652603078877184) This tweet (http://twitter.com/#!/anonops/status/12651605946015744 http://twitter.com/#!/anonops/status/12651605946015744 ) is a wary thought on how things can scalate, and how badly: if we can't have twitter account, nobody can I just wonder if any of this will come on the panel with Tim Bray later tonight: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1981547 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1981547
- mcantelon 16y ago@Anon_Operationn too. Maybe the plan is to have multiple redundant ones then post to them via a script?
- mcantelon 16y ago@anon_operations is back up! Twitter said it was an accident. Hrm.
- SkyMarshal 16y agoThey apparently have an identi.ca account too, but it's dormant: http://identi.ca/anonoperation http://identi.ca/anonoperation
- orblivion 16y agoI'm surprised. I thought they organize mostly on 4chan, and then go down to IRC channels spontaneously and temporarily, and keep their identities only temporarily. Am I to understand that there are actually people who have a persistent identity? Who are "in charge"?
- count 16y agoNo. Just moot, but he's got nothing to do with it.
- URSpider94 16y agoThere was an article on New York Times online today as well. It's pretty funny to read how mainstream reporters try to explain Anonymous to their readers whose experience of the Internet begins and ends with email and Facebook. There was no mention of 4chan anywhere in the NYT article (probably for the best).
- known 16y ago"There are only two ways of telling the complete truth--anonymously and posthumously." -- Thomas Sowell