Anonymous, in the den of new pirates

An anthropologist has conducted an investigation into the mysterious group of hackers, which is increasingly the focus of great lies. To discover them. And it shows who they are and what they want.

Anonymous, is the symbol of a geography of resistance, writes Gabriela Coleman in her long investigation into hacker grouping, soon published by the Alternative Press (A thousand Faces of Anonymous). Cultural anthropology lecturer, and researcher at McGill University, Coleman rebuilds the history of the world's famous cyberactivists, following in the footsteps of an evolutionary process, turning a handful of rebels inspired by student spirit, a cruel and idiotic fun (blown by spam-tolling different forums on the Internet), sending embarrassing personal information to the public, sending police or pizza to someone's home), in a real movement, in a state of fear of economic and political power.

I find the” hopeful and encouraging”- says Coleman “that the infernal chaos caused by these frauds at their beginnings was followed by a leap to another form, more engaged. Over the past five years, most of Anonymous' interventions have been oriented towards concrete political causes: they have played a supportive role during the protests -- Occupy Wall Street -- while developing and over Arab Spring; publicly denounced several episodes of rape and cases of violence by American police.

Jeremy Hammond, a hacker and activist, was sentenced to 10 years in prison after showing everyone the dark side of intelligent services and security companies in America”. If the beginnings were marked by a sense of humor, the real starting point of movement, explains the investigation, dates back to 2008, when scienceology tried to conceal a weak propagandistic video of Tom Kruis, exposing this to the reaction of members of a website, 4chan, who gathered everyone else into an online battle:” launched as a joke, it became a long protest campaign”, reports World.

The perspective from which Coleman monitors Anonymous' operations, it's always internal: it says it has had access to the working structure of groups, participating in discussions in communications channels, including secret chat-room; the portrayal of movement is that of “a multi-headed Hidre (even though there seems to be a core), with more groups in competition and anonymity as an important pillar, so that each one can use as ag; last of them the internal strife or abuses of computerism (x2> to treat the truth in a diplomatic way, but always leaving their own conclusions.

The author claims to have written the book on Anonymous to prove that kind of political activism, which punishes Cynics and apathy: “Although Anonymous is not perfect, a greater political risk is actually coming from those who avoid engagement, or have a speech approach to political life. Political apathy takes the form of a democratic process, with the naive belief that only publicity can be a trigger for significant social change”.

At Anonymous' core it seems to be the pleasure of sabotaging, of the child's entertainment that enters the big room and makes a mess, and preserves anonymity through disguise to not be discovered and caught, although the goal is not to be personal enrichment: the maximum is the pleasure of being illegal, or the imprisonment of pieces to Robin Hood.

This is in line with the times in which we live, such as the presence, all so strange, of a strong element of powerlessness, despite what Coleman claims, because the maximum it can achieve is a small thing, at least a more cynical vision of political war: they move forward to fight, but theirs is not a war, and they probably don't even have an ideological structure to support it, because of the flexibility, internal differentiation and the fluidity of movement.

This air or water element that distinguishes, of incapacity, like clouds that cause a storm and then scatters, is marked by the lack of a leader, and the continued changes of groups in computer piracy operations (there are also commissions that monitor stocks, and race judgment processes against different members); which avoids hierarchy of them and thus one having a political and organisational type.

The life - giving of a childish gesture is transformed into a festive moment into a system crisis, and it follows David's pattern of Goliath - revealing the fragility of giants. The unwritten rule is that any form of governing membership becomes harmful, so the group has continued anarchy, reports the World.al.

Coleman properly explains that Anonymous cannot be classified into an exact ideology, This is basically the panorama that it describes, recalling that pirates who make alliances with each other to defend themselves against the attacks, as it once did with their ancestors, who were the horror of the seas:”Crahas with the revolutionary movements of the past century, Anonymous is a strange and complicated phenomenon. After years of activism, they are increasingly known as advocates of social justice and civil rights; directly engaged and using a number of tools and actions, including the erosion of different websites, making too personal data public, intervention in government systems and companies, stealing and publishing secret documents, or causing a storm of reactions on social networks”.

American anthropologist also pays attention to FBI investigations, and numerous arrests in the ranks of Anonymous or his sympathies, but the message of civil disobedience, which is the basis of operations of “hackers and IT genius”, in defense of freedom of speech, or the transparency of institutions, is worth the next generations.

In recent scenes of the cult film “H for Revenge”, the palace of power is blown up: but what does such a gesture mean if another similar one is built? It's a symbolic act that proves great naiveness, and this aspect has taken a lot of root in them: for example, block Paypal, who calls him guilty for being subjected to American government orders, refusing to accept donations to the WikiLeaks, then everything turns out to function normally.

There's a pathetic aspect and an ethical implications of their actions, but only the second one is treated by Coleman, although she's right when she says that “ways of acting on Anonymous has proved to be successful and original: instead of dealing with people's private data, they preferred to interfere with the networks of governments and large multinational companies, producing information, which is as we know new oil.

“They have already inspired others to follow their steps, and recalls OpNimir, the protest that arose following the arrest of Muhamed Ali Al-Nimr in Saudi Arabia, which threatened the death penalty:” and most recently, against the terrible series of executions, Anonymous carried out a series of attacks, paralyzing many of the state institutions of Saudi Arabia.

Will this change the situation? Maybe not. But it is important to see people express their opposition”. Restricting the investigation, it is in the fact that the person who does it is not a hacker, so hers is a kind part of goodwill: like she and I are a little cut off from the system, from a system in which some control or are illumined and give instructions to others. However, if we were all able to access bank systems electronic school records or access human secret files, there would be chaos, a total madness: it is understood that the current legal limit becomes an inevitable obstacle.

The characteristic of Anonymous is that being a little bit out of the game of official spying (although they've infiltrated), and toʹte are fully, at least for now, Robin Hood's myth: we distinguish them because they're illegal and good, according to the sympathy that they arouse in us and until they influence what we care about, but that's probably part of our hypocrisy.

We are still in a fragmented and elusive dimension: from a point of view, hacker-activists can illuminate our awareness of things we imagine or feel, and from which we are supplied with evidence. Their actions and the information they discover, break a glass, and make you realize that there was a trick, that what we assumed was actually a mirror and, for a moment, through them, we look at the mirror: this is probably the group's greatest wealth. /bota.al/