Sapere Aude!

Anonymous: From Civil Disobedience to "Cyberwar"?

The release was credited as being a part of it and LulzSec's ongoing Operation Anti-Security. The operation is a new cyber campaign led by the two hacking collectives designed to protest and combat any and all institutions or governments attempts to censor or moderate the internet.

Already its brother-in-arms LulzSec has taken credit for attacks and hacks on Arizona law enforcement, the U.K.'s Serious Organised Crime Agency and two Brazilian Government owned websites.

Anonymous is yet to release a formal statement outlining its reasons for the hack.

via uk.ibtimes.com

Anonymous' DDoS attacks against PayPal, Visia, etc., they claimed were in retaliation for these companies cutting off WikiLeaks under government pressure.  You know, like AT&T did with the Bush Administration.  At any rate, on the standard version of civil disobedience this is a stretch since it requires the disobedient to accept punishment.  Anonymous is, well, . . . .   You see the problem.  Nevertheless, they had, I think, a legit beef and we might argue a little bit over whehter accepting punishment is a necessary condition for civil disobedience.  Now, with the rise of LulzSec things have changed.  If Anonymous was engaged in "civil disobedience" before changed to something more like "cyberwar" against companies and governments that censor the internet.  Some of these latest hacks aren't anything like a 21st century verion of the sit-in, as Anonymous has described it's previous DDoS attacks regarding WikiLeaks.   It's not just relatiation or a plea for reconsideration or justice like in civil disobedience.  This should be a good case study for information and computer ethics and political philosophy.  It sure is interesting to see some of the debate over the morality of these hacks carried out within Anonymous itself.  The key moral question: Do these information leaks harm innocents?  It seems pretty clear that with hacks like the Sony thing there's a great potential for haming innocents here. They released personal information for a lot of people that just happen to use Sony's service.  They aren't responsible for Sony's poor internet security, but they're all in danger of identity theft, etc.  That's a lot of potential collateral damage to point out a security flaw and it seems different than the Brazil hack.

Anonymous vs. LulzSec

Anonymous and LulzSec are not getting along.

After LulzSec released the account information of up to 62,000 innocent users, its 4Chan-born sibling Anonymous reportedly targeted it, leading to a declaration of war between the two hacking collectives.

Anonymous' targeting of the group has since been reported as a response to LulzSec's machine-gun approach to hacking.

Anonymous members have reportedly taken exception to LulzSec's habit of targeting anyone and anything in its cyber attacks regardless of whether the company or person has done anything wrong.

LulzSec's recent attacks on "soft targets" such as the gaming websites Minecraft and Eve Online and subsequent release of 62,000 innocent internet users email and social networking account information has widely been speculated as the straw-that-broke-the-camels-back.

The two collective's began trading blows over 4chan.org's message board. The first message from LulzSec reading, "Just saw a thread on /b/ where they're trying to hunt us: you /b/tards realize that we are everything you've ever tried to be?"

To which Anonymous replied, "We are the concentrated success of 2005 /b/, being 'hunted' by the 2011 furry horde. Challenge accepted, losers".

It's interesting that some of the discord appears to be a matter of ethics.