Anonymous, that crazy “hacktivist” group, is always up to something. For those not in the loop, Anonymous is basically this group of hackers, who hack stuff. The group is pretty unorganized, operating without any formal leaders; instead all of them are opting to act as one. As their slogan says, “We are Anonymous. We are legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.” Anonymous likes to sound scary, but really, they’re “in it for the lulz.”
Anonymous is, in many ways, the personification of the internet. They’re very much an “anything goes” type of group. Literally nothing is sacred to them. It’s really the idea of freedom taken to its logical extreme, which in many ways, really makes them somewhat respectable. However, quite a few of their antics are more than a little extreme.
What are they up to today: attacking China’s websites? Their goal is to take down what has been called “The Great Firewall of China.” A few Chinese government websites have already been successfully hacked. The idea here is to protest China’s internet censorship methods. The internet is in many ways a lawless land, where all is fair, and to lose that would cause Anonymous to lose their way of life. The world needs its anything goes land, and we currently have that in the form of the internet.
While China can’t do much, if anything at all, to the internet outside of their own country, if China was able to prove that the internet could be successfully censored, it wouldn’t be that much of a stretch to assume that some other governments could follow. So in that regard, the cause of China’s internet is the cause of the worlds’ internet. Not to mention that trying to censor the internet is arguably just plain wrong from any perspective.
Anonymous has done a lot over the years, and while they definitely have had a lot of questionable motivations, if someone is going to go against censoring the internet, it’s hard to not support them: unless you want the internet censored. In which case, you are China. In which case, you probably aren’t reading this.
