
Anonymous goes after Sony, makes it personal... very personal - evo_9
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/04/anonymous-goes-after-sony-makes-it-personal-very-personal.ars
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blhack
Isn't this exactly the type of information that Sony was seeking on George
Hotz (geohot), as well as anybody who even _visited_ his website?

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whakojacko
Not specifically related to this article but Id like to give Ars major props
for following all of the recent Anonymous actions so throughly. Their articles
on HBGary were fantastic and they seem to be keeping up well.

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Jach
"I quarrel not with far-off foes, but with those who, near at home, co-operate
with, and do the bidding of, those far away, and without whom the latter would
be harmless." ~Thoreau

Before condemning I'll wait to see what is done with this information. If
someone dies, that'll be the end of it, but don't freak out over pizza
deliveries. I've been waiting for Anon to start endorsing violence, so far
they haven't.

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DanielBMarkham
It's very interesting to see folks rediscover what we always knew: there's a
big difference between a group with a purpose and standards and a mob.

It used to be that geography contained a lot of mob-like behavior. You might
be mad at the guy who lived in the nearby castle, but there were only so many
villagers you could round up. And some of those liked the guy, some didn't
want trouble, some didn't like your plan, etc.

Now the internet lets us find the most emotional people possible about a
particular topic and put them all together in one "place". Then people can
feed off each's other anger, saying and doing more and more preposterous
things in order to impress the group. Information that might challenge the
groupspeak is discarded. "Acts of valor" the group commit are spread far and
wide, drawing in more members, thereby creating a feedback cycle which
encourages more and more dramatic acts.

The thing is: _the issue doesn't matter_. The larger story isn't about Sony,
or Anonymous, or any one particular issue. It's about how governments are
going to be able to consistently function when the world is breaking up into
thousands of little angry groups like this.

I have no idea how this is going to play out, or how many kids and families of
corporation execs are going to suffer because of things they cannot control.
But there will be a backlash. It's building, and I'm concerned that when it
happens we are going to see governments step in and take control in ways that
are as equally terrible. </doomsaying>

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djtumolo
You may be exaggerating. I visited the #opsony room, and at one point they
were broadcasting how many LOICs were in operation. Millions? Thousands? No.
<100\. Less than 100 people in this mob of internet justice. And fewer still
doing more nefarious stuff like stalking down execs.

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DanielBMarkham
Yes, I am purposely overstating and glossing over certain details, mainly
because I'm attempting to extrapolate.

Thanks for pointing that out, though. Perhaps if we're lucky (?) tools to
monitor and control mobs will evolve faster than tools to communicate and
collaborate securely.

Anonymous is working at the basest level of security -- just drop by and jump
in. I imagine what we'll see soon, what we see already in organized crime, is
a combination of better ways of vetting while still integrating to the wider
net in order to attract new recruits. As they say in the movies, the night is
still young. If we get something with the moral foundation of wikileaks, the
activitst appeal of Anonymous, the secure communication system of Tor, and the
virality of Facebook? We're going to have problems (once again, I'm
overstating for effect)

Having said all of that, even if it's only 100 people, and even if it's always
100 people are less, that's a problem. Smaller groups that fly under the radar
are more problematic than large noisy ones. How many people did it take to
dump all the secure embassy traffic of the United States government?

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cabalamat
> If we get something with the moral foundation of wikileaks, the activitst
> appeal of Anonymous, the secure communication system of Tor, and the
> virality of Facebook? We're going to have problems

 _We_ are not going to have problems. Governments and corporations who want to
take away our rights are going to have problems.

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krakensden
It's all fun and games until you discover that you're working for today's bad
guys, your address is posted up, and there are cocks drawn on your face on
Encyclopedia Dramatica.

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zipdog
Before the internet, people were comfortable releasing small amounts of
personal data - and so they still release small amounts of personal data (to a
florist, into the garbage).

One of the issues here is that a few of these pieces of data are like Primary
Keys: home address, ssn etc: once you grab these you open up so much else, and
there's not too many alternatives to these keys (for those times you actually
need them).

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r00fus
SSN (and possibly home address) are not just primary keys, but super-keys in
that they are primary keys across systems and datasets (in general).

They may not be immutable as a primary key suggests, but are very hard/costly
to change, so the difference is moot.

Another reason to not give out your superkeys to anyone who doesn't need it.

Finally, though in general I'm in favor of privacy, with the complete lack of
corporate accountability, I support the intention behind Anonymous's actions.

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djtumolo
I dont think this is representative. There have been comparisons made between
Anonymous's DDoS and sit-ins. But there was also a more antisocial and violent
part of the civil rights movement as well.

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Apocryphon
Last night I watched "The Next Day", a teaser film for the inevitable Tron 3.
In it there's a Banksy-type group of hackers called "Flynn Lives" who commit
acts of sabotage and mischief specifically against ENCOM. I thought to myself,
"That's silly, how could there be an underground activist organization that
focuses its efforts on undermining a tech company that, while big and vaguely
sinister, doesn't actually seem to have committed any actual evil?"

Oh, 4chan, you've proved me wrong again.

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xsmasher
Sony has sued to shut down geohot and obtain the IP addresses of all visitors.
They obtained a TRO that prevents him from distributing information about the
exploit and which hands his hardware over to Sony. That's more than vaguely
sinister, and is arguably an actual evil.

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wladimir
Yes. If there is any tech company that is 'evil' at the moment it's Sony. I
don't agree with every action that Anonymous does, but honestly I hope Sony
gets their due like HBGary did.

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analyst74
On one side, I think it's great that "important" people who make major
decisions take personal responsibilities, instead of hiding behind
corporate/government entities;

On the other side, this sort of hack-attack could easily go out of hand: what
do we do if someone uses this sort of technique for malicious intents?

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r00fus
What if? I'm sure this is already being done, and probably sponsored by
governments/corporations.

Just because we get visibility into this sort of attack doesn't make it any
easier or legal to do.

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waqf
Ahem, they tried to censor Stringer's personal information but they left the
ZIP+9. You can get at least the address of the apartment block from that.

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jrspruitt
This is the kind of stuff I think will cause more damage, than do any good.
Yeah ordering pizza's is funny, but when you start digging into someones
family, I think it goes over the line. This is something criminal thugs would
do. This isn't going to do their cause's PR any good at all, which perhaps I'm
wrong, that their goal is to help support the "little guy" against the "big
powers", to accomplish that, its best to get the support of the people, to
expose corruption, not threaten people like this. Which, when this goes to
national news, its going to look really bad. Not to mention, this is stalker
grade stuff, which that freaks me out for some reason, I imagine socially
dysfunctional people, looking for some attention sitting around thinking,
Anonymous is doing it, people like them, I know... I'm going to go do
something completely insane so people will like me. These sort of tactics can
easily blow up in their faces, perception of the people is everything these
days, stuff like this can make it real easy to look really bad.

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AlfaWolph
It reminds me of Fight Club a little.

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yummybear
This is not cool - harrasing the man's wife, investigating the "schools their
children attend".

If you need to go after Sony the cooporation or the CEO, do so when they
assume that role, but stay away from family and personal business.

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radioactive21
I am for trying to poke at someone, but to me the line is drawn at family and
kids. Anonymous themselves might not do it, but lets say they make information
about the kids public and some weird psycho uses that in a bad way. Just takes
one incident involving a child and the public out lash could be severe.

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jc123
Public information + Social Engineering + Willpower = Zero Privacy

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ImprovedSilence
My only complaint about Anonymous is... Who watches the watchmen?

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mcantelon
State intel and law enforcement agencies.

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iwwr
This doesn't answer the question.

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mcantelon
So state intel and law enforcement agencies don't watch groups like Anon?

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iwwr
No, but who watches them?

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mcantelon
Foreign state intel. ;)

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temphn
Ok, now we're talking lulz. Tracking people's children? All's fair, I guess.

But taking down the PlayStation Network, well...that's over the line.

> "Anonymous is not attacking the PSN at this time," said the document.
> "Sony's official position is that the PSN is undergoing maintenance. We
> realize that targeting the PSN is not a good idea. We have therefore
> temporarily suspended our action, until a method is found that will not
> severely impact Sony customers. Anonymous is on your side, standing up for
> your rights. We are not aiming to attack customers of Sony. This attack is
> aimed solely at Sony, and we will try our best to not affect the gamers, as
> this would defeat the purpose of our actions. If we did inconvenience users,
> please know that this was not our goal."

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EGreg
Where are these chats between anonymous taking place? How are people getting
the chat logs? I haven't seen anyone talk about this.

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ascendant
I think personal attacks like that degrade whatever credibility they gain by
fighting for the little guy. Granted people have been prank-ordering pizza's
to other people's houses since waaaaay before the Intarwebz, but I'm sure our
generation of news-addicted alarmists will send up the flag saying this is why
we should give away all of our privacy and freedoms so the government can
protect us from bored teenagers.

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TomOfTTB
For me this isn't an issue of privacy as much as its an issue of decency. If
they released the bank records of these executives and said "these guys are
loaded so why are they suing some kid" I wouldn't have a problem with that.

But once you graduate to involving their families you cross a line.

The only thing that can be accomplished by releasing the names and addresses
of someone's spouse and children is to put them in harms way. That harm might
just be getting yelled at but it could be much worse. Which puts this act into
the category of "threatening someone's family"

As someone who agrees with Anonymous on the facts I would only support a small
fine for violating someone's privacy. But for involving their family I would
support and encourage local governments to send the members of this subsect to
jail

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wmf
I don't agree with Anonymous's tactics, but look at it from their perspective:
Corporate executives don't scare easily. What level of threat would convince
Sony to change its policy?

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Aaronontheweb
You're missing the point - trying to change a companies policies at the price
of being decent human beings is worse than whatever offense Sony committed.

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jongraehl
> worse than whatever offense Sony committed

This gives the impression that you're making a claim about something you don't
have much specific knowledge of. Or that you're absolutely sure that Sony is
incapable of offenses larger than a certain magnitude.

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drstrangevibes
apparently the "kids" are older than geohot

