In some sense, Vibes was simply another fan, remixing a remix. Was it all just smoke and mirrors? But when I spoke with a variety of current and former Anonymous hackers over the past month, they all insisted that Anonymous was indeed reactivating. But then there is the second definition of Anonymous. Anonymous members will tell you that Anonymous has no members, that it is not a group, but rather a banner.
People rally to it. In its initial founding, it existed as trolls … people doing whatever they wanted, with that hint of vigilantism. It was designed to be totally open. Anyone can be Anonymous. In the new video Vibes made, Anonymous represents extrajudicial justice, the superhero entering to right what the normal course of the law cannot—an idea that can seem deeply appealing now that the ordinary enforcers of justice—the police—appear to some to be the source of the crime.
A viral video generates a wave of enthusiasm. Then the leaderless collective debates what to do. Sometimes it settles on performative acts of protest, such as hacking police scanners or briefly downing a website. But as occurred with BlueLeaks, oftentimes more skilled hackers steal and leak documents intended to buttress a political cause with substantive evidence.
However, both the group of people and the movement have changed over the years. Thousands of users were on these boards—almost all young men—but among them was a more die-hard band who hung out in the same chat rooms, feuded online, and met up in real life. They called themselves Anonymous.
The name was derived from the way 4chan presented usernames. Cottle was 20 and still living with his mother in Toronto. I would never work for the feds.
Should I delete everything? But mostly he felt like a fraud. Like cruel older brothers, they often picked the easiest target they could find—younger kids. And Cottle became the de facto leader of Anonymous, a role he relished. We are Anonymous 4. Anonymous is legion 5. Anonymous never forgives. Cottle and his friends also were the first to start using the Guy Fawkes mask.
They chose it simply because they loved the movie V for Vendetta , a film adaptation of a dystopian-fiction comic book. Read: The misunderstood legacy of Guy Fawkes. I more or less abandoned everything I was doing for this. Trump, in their view, is uniquely qualified to bring these elites to justice.
In August, the social-media giant removed 1, pages, groups and profiles associated with the group. Aside from all that, Cottle was asked on Reddit what he hopes the next generation of hackers will tackle going forward. He exercised 2. However, experts suggest it is unlikely to be a hack, and could instead be the result of a stolen piece of hardware being commandeered by protesters on the scene - if the videos are genuine in the first place.
Anonymous activists are also circulating years-old accusations against President Trump, taken from documents in a civil court case that was voluntarily dismissed by the accuser before it went to trial. Despite there being no single unified approach among Anonymous' members, the group has targeted groups over race relations in the past.
In , when the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, prompted widespread protests, members of Anonymous threatened to target the city if protesters were harmed. They then disabled the city's website, compromising communications at city hall, and targeting the city's police chief.
Some Anonymous members also attacked the campaign group Black Lives Matter's website over alleged "anti-white racism". George Floyd's death has led to what the BBC's New York correspondent Nick Bryant described as the most widespread racial turbulence and civil unrest since the assassination of Martin Luther King in It is against this backdrop that a Facebook page claiming to be linked to Anonymous released a video about Mr Floyd's death, alleging a string of other crimes involving Minneapolis police, and threatening to act.
The same Facebook page posted similar videos about UFOs and "China's plan for world domination" in recent weeks which - like the George Floyd video - feature an electronically-disguised voice discussing previously published news stories.
But it received much wider attention after the Minneapolis police department's website appeared to be knocked offline. The first major Anonymous operation to make headlines was against the Church of Scientology in , in which it used DDoS attacks to knock some of the organisation's websites offline, along with prank calls and empty fax messages designed to disrupt their communications.
In the years that followed, in the aftermath of a global financial crisis, the group acted in support of the Arab Spring protest movements, targeted Sony Entertainment over its attempt to crack down on hacking of the PlayStation 3 console, and supported the Occupy Wall Street protests, among others. They have continued to lend support to similar causes, and staged anti-establishment rallies around the world , but their prominence in mainstream media had diminished in recent years.
Although many supporters have praised Anonymous, members of the hacking collective have faced prosecution for their actions.
FBI arrests have led to charges of cyber-stalking, computer hacking and fraud. It's an amorphous group of people that can include anyone who wants to use the brand to put forth their cause, according to Internet activist Gregg Housh, formerly with Anonymous.
People associating themselves with Anonymous run the gamut. Members include women, men, Democrats, Republicans, the young, the old, and people of different races and nationalities, according to Housh.
While there are no specific goals, there is an overarching desire to combat censorship, promote freedom of speech, and counter government control that sparks people in the so-called collective into action, according to Housh.
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