HBGary Hired to Take Down Anonymous, Anonymous Takes Down HBGary

Anonymous is pre-internet. Those ancient graffitis you find on Roman buildings? Anonymous.

Fuck yeah Mechwarrior. Drunkscriblerian is running a tabletop Mechwarrior game for some friends and I.

TAKE ME WITH YOU.

I'll go with the obvious: What An Idiot. (He doesn't quite qualify for Too Dumb to Live.)

Anonymous is just a meme in and of itself, that's all. Nothing more, nothing less.

Pretty much this. But it's a resilient one.

Attempting to take down Anonymous by targeting a few active participants is rather akin to thinking you could eliminate profanity by targeting a few individuals who'd posted a lot of swear words on the Internet.

"They're not one thing, they're not even a hivemind. They're internet users, not bees."

A lot of them are also Something Aweful forumers, which actually gives this a twist of irony, considering Something Aweful's corporation (clan) in Eve Online was 'The Goonswarm' and considered themselves...

...Bees

Anon is probably the most anarchic...group in existence. This must be baffling to corporate slime balls that don't understand a non-hierarchical meritocratic system ruled in essence by mob think.

edited 16th Feb '11 7:23:32 AM by CommandoDude

^

They are both rather deserving of the title of slimeball, I just like anon more.

"Anon is probably the most anarchic...group in existence. This must be baffling to corporate slime balls that don't understand a non-hierarchical meritocratic system ruled in essence by mob think." - Commando Dude

Meritocratic my ass, a mob think that trolls emotionally vulnerable children and the grieving family members of people who commit suicide have too warped a notion of morality to ever qualify as truly meritocratic.

I do agree that Internet culture tends to be at odds with market-worshipping and/ or corporate culture, though.

But again, it's not the same mob.

That's the beauty of it. Anonymous isn't so much a group as it is a memetic tactic. You can be infected by the tactic from any of its uses and employ the tactic along with thousands of other Anonymous, even if you don't agree with the tactic's effectiveness.

^^

Smells like lolcow to me.

"But again, it's not the same mob." - Radical Taoist

Like I said earlier, if "Anonymous" can't be blamed for the bad it does, it can't be blamed for the good it does. You can't have it both ways.

Frankly, I find it disturbing that anonymous provides a means for those who engage in such vicious trolling to get away with it, in any case.

It's the internet, for what is essentially just words, you should get away with it. Anything else is censorship.

"Meritocratic my ass, a mob think that trolls emotionally vulnerable children and the grieving family members of people who commit suicide have too warped a notion of morality to ever qualify as truly meritocratic."

Meritocracy measures ability, not morality.

edited 16th Feb '11 9:43:36 AM by CommandoDude

I don't think they're anything. Most of anons operations don't even have common links between the two. We have treat each incident separately.

edited 16th Feb '11 11:34:22 AM by breadloaf

All I have to say is that for all the scum and villany that comes from Anon.... They're kinda like modern folk heroes. Think of the old stories of the prohibition-era gangsters. No one would admit that what they were doing was particulary savory... But dammit, they were doing it, and sticking it to the man! I mean, they did bad things to innocent people, too, but sometimes, it's good for the little people to see other little people kill a giant every once in a while.

I would totally watch a cheesy shonen anime adaptation of this with Barr as the Hot-Blooded Idiot Hero and the hacking represented with wild Internet Kung Fu battles. It already has the over the top dialogue, it just needs to be voice acted appropriately.

Holy shit, I would too, and I don't even fucking LIKE anime.

"It's the internet, for what is essentially just words, you should get away with it. Anything else is censorship." - Barkey

Uh, no, some of their trolling involved things that by legal standards would probably qualify as harassment, like their large-scale prank-callings of the grieving family of Mitchell Henderson, for example.

Morally objectionable, but until it crossed over to phones, as a person I wouldn't consider it ground for legal charges.

I have two good things to say about anon. 1)They piss of the powers that be and I am pleased with that. 2) They may be assholes but at least they are not corporate assholes.

This guys seems to have done this in such a ham fisted manner that the effort is beyond even pity and only deserves contempt.

Apparently HB Gary wants their own Anonymous? Sorry about the link, I don't know where to get the original email.

Alert the data anarchist hacker groups and watch them come down on these bot programs like the first of an angry god.

ಠ_ಠ

The only real way to take down "Anonymous" would be to tell them via a non-internet way that you got some dirt on them, provide the proof, and then let the group implode in on itself as it tries to weed out the non-existent weasels.

Wouldn't work. It'd only scare off the morons who are dumb enough to let you get their info in the first place.

And most of Anonymous neither knows nor cares about the identities of their comrades.

More on the technical end if anybody's interested.