nipsen said:
Therumancer said:
I think a lot of people are forgetting that Anonymous has launched successful attacks against govermental computer systems both in the US and Australia. Taking down systems for as long as an hour, and halting a lot of goverment business.
..did they install Windows on them, or something..?
Seriously, though.. anyone with Windows on their computer can, given very easily achieved circumstances, apparently be put in jail for 10 years. That's literally what they're saying.
Anyway - disrupting government business is what people should do. And if government doesn't serve us, what good is it? That piece of paper with all the signatures on it - worth ***k all, all of a sudden. Government is us, you see.
Just do a search for Anonymous, attack, (target). For Australia for example here is one of the first links:
http://www.spamfighter.com/News-13934-Cyber-Attackers-Hack-Australian-Government-Websites.htm
Sites like Encyclopedia Dramatica despite their humerous bent also do a good job of covering what Anonymous is up to. This has included declaring war on the US goverment and it's allies at least once.
I myself have in the past advocated action against the goverment, and mentioned numerous occasions when I might take up arms against the goverment, even as an individual, knowing it would come at the expense of my own life. That said I'm hardly an anarchist.
See, the problem with a lot of anti-govermental action is that serving the people in a large country oftentimes comes at the expense of a lot of people. On any touchy issue there are going to be a lot of people in opposition, and going with the majority can leave millions upon millions of people feeling slighted. This leads to an attitude where it's "the goverment is only serving the people if I agree with it", or "If I don't like something, then it's oppressive and tyranical". Not to mention situations where the goverment has been given emergency powers specifically because the people themselves are oftentimes never going to like in the short term what is needed for the long term goals of the nation. Wars for example are never popular, and given the option the general masses of people are NEVER going to vote to go to war and ge themselves or their loved ones killed, even for the greater good. Ditto for the sacrifices made to operate a nation on a full wartime footing. Hence why the goverment has war powers and the like.
I for example am a huge defender of free speech, and it's one of those issues where I believe that even in the case of a majority of people wanting to ban something like hate speech, that they need to be protected from themselves, to the point of opposing both them and a goverment gleefully rubbing it's hands together in anticipation of all that power. This also applies to things like video games, and a lot of speech issues that I personally don't care for (ie free speech isn't free if it only applies to things you agree with). This is of course has certain exceptions such as international goverment operations. The need for espionage, black ops, and diplomatic games might not be a pleasant reality, but that's the world we exist in and full goverment disclosure is not a realistic ideal unless the world changes signifigantly. Should we achieve a world unity (ie no more seperate nations) then full goverment transparency becomes more reasonable.
Or in short, like everyone there are exceptions to my general beliefs, but I don't think opposing the goverment for the sake of opposing the goverment is a good thing, and it also cheapens it when there is a legitimate issue. Not doing what you like, does not nessicarly mean it's gone rogue and isn't serving the interests of a whole heck of a lot of people. With a highly divided and polarized nation, both the left and right wing feel they are being oppressed at various times and make calls for working against the goverment "in the name of the people" when neither represent a clear majority usually, and even when they do the opposition is so loud because it's millions upon millions of people who disagree.
In the past I've agreed with Anonymous on a lot of things, but in a lot of cases, especially recently I think they have been going a bit too far. I for example think their involvement in the wikileaks thing was actually counterproductive to their own existance, and also represented one of the very important exceptions to free speech principles. It's one thing to go after goverments for wanting to censor the general populance (ie trying to ban, or greatly limit the distribution of porn), it's quite another when it involves messing with covert and diplomatic ops.
I'll also be blunt in saying that recent "good press" tends to miss the entire point of Anonymous and what it actually "stands for" (which is to say it doesn't stand for anything). If you go to say Encyclopedia Dramatica and look up Anonymous and it's operations going back years, you'll find that this is not exactly a new group, nor is "Internet Freedom Fighters" the only hat they wear, or even the one they wear most of the time. This is a group that pretty much exists to troll on an uber-scale, and does things like pick out individuals they don't like and endeavor to make their lives miserable (though in many cases it's sort of poetic justice). Remember that for all of the freedom fighter stuff, this is also the group that went after Jessie Slaughter simply because she was a bit on the obnoxious side.
